maskormenacelogs | [open] And the nights, they last forever...

"Yeah- yeah, I mean, when you boil it down to it." He laughs, but it doesn't reach his eyes, and he can't look at any of them. Merely turns his head to stare out the window and try to calm shot nerves that are frayed beyond repair.

"You know, Ben would always end up crying in his sleep after his training. I could hear him through the wall." And more than half the time, when they weren't monitored anymore, he'd snuck into Ben's room and slept on his floor to keep his own nightmares at bay.

"I think dad made him constantly try and summon the horror for longer and longer, you know-?" It's so much easier talking about trauma when it isn't his own, and he's a coward for holding himself just at the edge, refusing to take the plunge.
"He was always inventing tortures for us, you know? All of us."

Diego doesn't move, doesn't speak as the conversation continues around him. He seems frozen where he's stood since he good-little-soldier'd for Luther minutes ago. Biting his tonuge for the command of his leader, and little else at all.

A frown etches across his features at the mention of their individual training. What difference did that make? They all suffered in various ways at Reginald's hand, every single one of them had scars deeper than bone and barrow from him. Diego has never been a fan of Klaus' playing the suffering oneupance game.

So he just continues to stand to the side, jaw tight, and listening.

Allison, who made no move to shift from where she was, was lowgrade hoping this newest twist and turn of Klaus' conversation is not about to go back to the crypt nights in their earliest teens. There's a glance over Klaus and Luther talking softer, wondering if he had anything new to say. Wondering if this would be something entirely unknown and add to the pile that had truly imploded them all (and a world).

A small crease between her brows settling, reserved specifically for those drastic secrets of their father's and Pogo's, about Vanya and Luther, that had upended everything about their lives and redefined. It ticks away at the foggy, first waking, memory on the medical gurney in the Academy, trying to tell Luther what had happened, and hearing Pogo say that Vanya's powers were the very last of their father's secrets left to come to light.

It was hard to trust it, him, either of them, and harder still to think that Klaus of all people had something he hadn't said anything to anyone about in two decades. Allison shifted to look at her communicator in her hand by her leg again. Willing it to do something. So many messages and calls to Ben, and yet still not a single answer. It bothered her. Klaus almost dying, Klaus not dying now, and Ben still not there, still not knowing at all.

Edited 2019-07-01 19:56 (UTC)

"You know you're talking about Ben more than what's going on with you, right?" Luther says, and it's that bone-dry patience and stating the obvious because, well, calling a spade a spade is the only way he gets through anything these days. The sword cutting through the Gordian knot of the Hargreeves and all their infinite tangled thread of complications and trauma and secrets and evasion.

But he's still wearily patient. The line between intervention and interrogation has turned out to be surprisingly narrow, and he doesn't want it to turn into the latter.

"Have you been practicing your new abilities at all, or just drowning them out?" It's the question of the day, the month, Klaus' entire life, and Luther's finally asking it himself. That team leader voice sliding back into place. "Because I'll practice them with you. Whatever it takes. To make this better and get it under control. And it won't be like it was, with him."

No question which him Luther means. That specter haunting all of them, still casting that long shadow.

Edited 2019-07-01 21:23 (UTC)

"No, I know, I'm just- Dad tortured us. All of us. In different ways." He's talking with a lucidity he rarely possesses, an anger at the unfair treatment of his siblings and he feels so small- a concern for them all that he hasn't acted on or even largely felt since before he took his first steps into the dark ocean of his addiction.

But the next sentence. The next sentence has his words catching and dying in his throat, as Luther- as Reginald's perfect little soldier throws him and his memory into perfect contrast. That training, with this power, with any others that crop up- it won't be like Reginald.

The laugh that bubbles up was broken, and soft. A hysterical sort of laugh that breaks then falls to pieces as he can't hold back the tears anymore.
He hides his face behind his hands, letting himself fall to pieces one more time.
All the help he'd ever needed was in arms reach. And he'd been too much of a coward to ask for it.

Klaus is shuddering into pieces, crying, a dam welling up and tears spilling over, and Luther doesn't know what to do. He's glued his teammates back together before, back in the good bad old days, patching them up just well enough to keep on ticking another day and another — but tenderness was never on the Hargreeves curriculum. It was an improvised thing, discovered between the cracks. And so he rests an oversized hand on Klaus' arm, delivers a tentative pat, his expression strained at the edges. "We'll figure it out," he says.

Diego's still in the corner, pinned in place like an automaton with an order that Luther forgot to retract. Allison still thoughtful and silent, absorbing it all.

He clears his throat. "Alright, guys. C'mon. Let's give him some space. We can pick this up later." It's a dismissal: an at ease, soldiers, a we'll finish this another time. When Klaus isn't so recently woken-up and scraped back from death's door. Luther's voice is awkward and halting, though, and so he fishes his communicator out of one cavernous coat pocket, if only just to have something else to do with his hands. "And seriously, where's Ben? I told everyone to get over here—"

While he starts chivvying the others towards the door, Luther finds Ben in his contact list, jabs the number.

And a phone in the room starts ringing.

Edited 2019-07-12 18:26 (UTC)

He's been there before all of them. Been there, silent and ghosting. He's been crying silently off and on, over more than just Klaus being a fucking idiot and falling into this act again. Over his siblings not giving him a chance here. Or not giving him a break. It breaks his heart to know that Klaus was nearly dead, and he knows babying him wont help, but it still kills him to see his brother, stupid or not, go through this.

It bothers him that the others are hard on him, but he also knows they are going to be, and it's maybe needed. Someone has to be hard on him. Ben stands there, arms crossed, watching as Luther starts to shuffle people out.

That's fine. He can collect himself and talk to Klaus alone. He can explain to Luther why he 'wasn't there' later. This will give him the moment he needs to collect himself.

Only, then there is a phone ringing. And he realizes after the second ring that it's his. He scrambles, and hits the button to push it to voice mail. The ringing stops.

He stands still, still a ghost, heart racing. Or it would be if his heart raced in this form. Damn it, he should have silenced that. He looked to stare at Luther, still in ghost form, hiding there a moment. Well shit.

He rubbed at his face, and shifted from ghost to Ben, standing in a corner, looking annoyed at being found out.

Honestly? Diego's sick of it, of the trauma oneupance, of the excuses and justifications. Klaus was tortured by Dad just as much as the rest of them. They all grew up, grew past it, maybe not completely but enough to be functional people somewhere out in the world.

But not Klaus. Never Klaus. Because he had to suffer the most, be the worst off, and never move on. The way he leans on excuses like crutches drives Diego up the freaking wall. And he might have said something about it, but suddenly a series of things happens.

First, Klaus breaks somehow, impossibly further down, laughing that hysterical, broken thing that suddenly and without warning turns into tears.

Luther is giving a dismissal and ushering them out the door to-- Diego isn't sure, give Klaus privacy? Talk to him one-on-one for himself? Whatever it is, everything halts the second Ben's phone rings from inside the room as Luther punches the button to call again, for the he-lost-count-th time.

Diego was almost to the doorway when it happened, prepared to slip out and away and figure out what to do with the rest of his day. He pauses and turns, slowly, back to face the room again as Ben fades into existence from ghost to solid and whole. "Are you fucking serious right now?" He snaps, face twisted with annoyance. How dare he make them all worry the way they had half the day? And why had he been hiding anyway? What was he so scared or ashamed of at all? Shouldn't Ben have been the most obvious one to be here, at Klaus' side, such an easy assumption it wasn't even a thought, like each next breath that came without it, either?

Allison nearly drops the communicator still in her hand when it beeps.

She'd forgotten it was in her hand altogether when Klaus went from quietly talking to hysterically laughing to suddenly sobbing. Even as her face crinkled up in concern, she made a note to check with the nurses about all the withdrawal reactions he'd been going through, and the ones they could expect while he was here and unable to get his next fix. Also, maybe to ask how well their stock was watched here, too.

It's a horrific thought to wonder if there was anything left in his system. If his stomach had been pumped. What exactly he'd taken. Why. Why so much. Things that had drilled themselves in circles in the waiting room, while there was nothing but bright floors and even brighter lights and low-grade constant fear. But watching him go through mood swings that drastically fast, while Luther patted his arm, brought it back.

Allison was in the doorway. The same as she'd been since coming in behind the other two. She'd been looking at her communicator before that all had happened, and so when it rings, at first Allison startles, almost dropping it while pulling it up. Thinking for one swift moment that Ben is finally calling her back. Except in that same swept up second, she can see there's nothing on her communicator. And still, the sound comes again, another loud ring, making Allison look to the confused faces of her siblings.

Diego gets there first, and Allison's gaze swings in the direction he's yelling, catching it all in fast clipped seconds. Ben, standing in the far corner of the room. Ben, with his eyes all red and puffy (so much like she remembered when he was so small). Ben, with his communicator in his hand. Ben, who would not have had a way to get into the room through her since they got let in here, which meant --

"You've been here the whole time?"

Before them? During the hours spent trying to reach him in the waiting room?
When she'd started worrying if something terrible had happened to him, too?

It's like some sort of fever dream, the sudden ringing of a communicator, dizzyingly loud at his bedside. Seeing all his siblings fall into place, the realization haunting, echoing across the room, reverberating like an echo chamber.

He thinks he's dreaming. Maybe he is. Hallucinating maybe, some sort of Delerium induced by whatever he was given to counteract, a lack of drugs and a lack of anything else really other than IV fluids in his stomach. His hands ache. His fingers hurt. His throat feels raw and his eyes red from crying.

And all he can do, when Ben materializes, standing there like the final missing piece that finally clicked back into place, is stare. Stare at him, at Luther, at Diego, at Allison- until the sudden realization that Ben has been there all along, has stood silent as he fell to pieces again (and again, and again) hit him.

He wants to yell. Wants to cry. Wants to ask why the hell he'd sit there silent.
They've been through this routine more times than Klaus cares to admit, Ben the first face he's seen in the ER, welcoming him back to sobriety.

He reaches for a pillow behind his head and chucks it at his face instead.

He was there the whole time. He ran a hand over his face aggressively, trying to clear it. He stood there, almost bashful for the moment, only to grab a flying pillow as it came hurtling at him.

He opened his mouth to say something but couldn't. they wouldn't understand. He'd been in this position so often that it was old hat to stand and hide there. And he wasn't ready to face everyone as annoyed an angry as he was. As upset as he was.

He wasn't sure how to handle this and wanted to duck out as it was.

Moving to sit the pillow back down on the end of the guys bed, he just mumbled "Sorry..." to everyone. Not looking at anyone.

Diego's brows lift at the quietly muttered apology, which for all it's worth in the moment, feels blank and empty. None of this makes sense, and Diego, for one, has no problem pointing that out. "Why were you hiding?" The question is sharp and pointed, his eyes locked entirely on Ben. Nothing and no one else in the room even matters, until that simple question is answered.

Hiding. Yeah. He was hiding. He rubbed his face, looking away from the others. "Can we not?" He didn't want to deal with this. It was bad enough Klaus was here and dealing with this he didn't want to take their aggression because Ben didn't want to be seen.

He should have text. He should have done something. He knows that. He just.... wasn't thinking. He wanted to talk to Klaus alone, but he was upset at him too.

"I'm sorry, okay? I should have said something." He didn't want to talk to anyone. He should have been there for Klaus. Should have done more. Should have been there to try to prevent it. His argument had caused this in some way. He should have...

"Sorry." He mumbled again.

He was too tired for this, too wrung-out, exhausted by the very prospect of how close they'd gotten to seeing Klaus die on them. From something that wasn't a fight. Not something Luther could fix with clenched fist and enough violence. He still wasn't used to it.

"We'll deal with that later," he says, and his voice has automatically canted a bit into 'chiding principal' as he looks at Ben. Answer your goddamn phone in an emergency has rocketed its way to the top of his orders for the team. Also something he'd never had to consider before — mobile communicators had just never been a thing back home.

It's maybe a foreboding signal of a lecture their living dead brother's going to receive later, but for now, Luther continues what he was doing earlier: herding himself and the others out. This time, it's to give both Ben and Klaus some privacy. Sort out... whatever they've got to sort out which has Ben dodging his closest brother.

Diego isn't happy about it, any of it, but he can never really ignore that tone in Luther's voice. Even when it isn't being directly pointed at him, there's something there that always draws him to act. He falls into line every. Single. Time.

But he'll worry about being frustrated at himself for that later, for now, he simply takes that silent order to leave and follows it right out the door.

Ben looks so stricken that Allison can't entirely tell what her reaction even is once the first shock and anger flashes as bright as it can at the surprise of him being there all along. Then it's met too fast with Ben's misery and shame, and Klaus' hurt-confusion, which was all too fast followed with Luther's voice. All stern business.

And something slides sideways, uncertain and possessive as she looks between her brothers, one in the bed and one in the corner, on the way to Luther, who is still serious about them leaving and the stray thought that hits hard isn't about here and now. It's that she's glad she never had to wake up alone in the medical room. She never even had to question where he was, where else he might have chosen to be or had to, when she opened her eyes.

Until now. Just now.

When it had seemed if anyone else would have understood that kind of choice without having to think about it, it would have been Ben and Klaus. Waking up to Luther already there in the hospital wing. Luther, who refused to even consider leaving her alone the rest of that day and night, even when she wouldn't look at him, talk to him, listen to him. That she'd gone to him the first moment she could the even earlier morning, after what happened after the psycho attacked them, and the chandelier fell.

Things might not be fixed between them (yet?), but they weren't ... whatever this was. Between Klaus and Ben.
There were some doubts Allison didn't have about Luther, or herself, at all where it came to things like this.

Ben had been here -- without letting Klaus know, or any of them -- but he'd still been here. In the room.

She didn't know what it all meant yet. But it was something both less than her own waking like this, and not nothing, too. Because he wasn't actually somewhere else. He hadn't ignored it. There was something else. That something else was wrong. She didn't know what it was. But it lay in that silence and sadness on Ben's miserable expression. She tried to catch his eye for a second, something not angry, complicated and concerned there, before she nodded and turned to walk out after Deigo.

[open] And the nights, they last forever...

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