Five noticed a pattern on the third night. Namely, because one night is no pattern to speak of, two is a coincidence, and three - three is where that threshold starts. And Five? Five may be good at a lot of things, but the specialty still lies in numbers.
It took two more fucking nights for the shit to really start getting worse. He would keep note in the corner of his eye; he would head Klaus up in the middle of the apparent night, much as he would lie awake when the cold would seep too close from the windows and sit heavy against his bruised lungs.
Five could do little else but watch, with a creeping and suffocating guilt wrapped around his throat.
A person can only keep going without sleep for so long, and that is something Five had actively known as much as chosen to ignore when it suited him. But it isn't him, this time. It's Klaus. It's his brother, who found his fucking corpse. He made that mistake. He was the cause of something he never, ever wanted any of his siblings to stand witness to, the epicenter of ruin, because who better than him to know just what seeing your family dead truly does to you.
Ghosts, he would imagine, are one thing. Loss is slightly different. Hollow and empty and it isn't so much that Klaus found him, specifically, as much as what that discovery stood for in Five's mind: failure.
It was a culmination, across these nights. Across the sweeping show of symptoms, of the sleep deprivation really digging deep, carving hollow shadows across Klaus' already sharp face.
Five can hear the music from their doorway, and he makes a face as he crosses the threshold, a harsh scowl at the rattling beats. His body aches, but he has resolved to accept it - the faster he does so, the more alright he will be with living with it for the next month - and with a blink of his powers, he appears at Klaus's bedside, thumb finding the volume ring on the player, and rolling it down, listening to the tune fade.
"Klaus," for all of Five's decisiveness of action, his voice is wretchedly quiet. Almost gentle, if one would think Five capable of such a thing.
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It took two more fucking nights for the shit to really start getting worse. He would keep note in the corner of his eye; he would head Klaus up in the middle of the apparent night, much as he would lie awake when the cold would seep too close from the windows and sit heavy against his bruised lungs.
Five could do little else but watch, with a creeping and suffocating guilt wrapped around his throat.
A person can only keep going without sleep for so long, and that is something Five had actively known as much as chosen to ignore when it suited him. But it isn't him, this time. It's Klaus. It's his brother, who found his fucking corpse. He made that mistake. He was the cause of something he never, ever wanted any of his siblings to stand witness to, the epicenter of ruin, because who better than him to know just what seeing your family dead truly does to you.
Ghosts, he would imagine, are one thing. Loss is slightly different. Hollow and empty and it isn't so much that Klaus found him, specifically, as much as what that discovery stood for in Five's mind: failure.
It was a culmination, across these nights. Across the sweeping show of symptoms, of the sleep deprivation really digging deep, carving hollow shadows across Klaus' already sharp face.
Five can hear the music from their doorway, and he makes a face as he crosses the threshold, a harsh scowl at the rattling beats. His body aches, but he has resolved to accept it - the faster he does so, the more alright he will be with living with it for the next month - and with a blink of his powers, he appears at Klaus's bedside, thumb finding the volume ring on the player, and rolling it down, listening to the tune fade.
"Klaus," for all of Five's decisiveness of action, his voice is wretchedly quiet. Almost gentle, if one would think Five capable of such a thing.