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Even with Violet’s modifications, this tiny shack is so depressing and cold and uncomfortable. It’s almost as bad as the room with one bed they were forced to sleep in when they lived with Count Olaf, and Klaus hates that this is even bringing back those memories.
He curls up on his side, trying to get uncomfortable, but he can’t stop thinking about the crabs that scuttle around on the floor and the fact that they’re getting treated so badly simply for being orphans, and how he hates this horrible school so much it makes him want to scream. Unsurprisingly, he can’t get comfortable not matter what position he lies in.
Klaus sighs, much louder than he meant to. Which is when he feels a small hand tugging on his sleeve. He turns his head and, even without his glasses on, he notices Sunny has crawled over, sitting right beside him.
“Haku?” she babbles, but he knows she actually means, “Are you okay?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Not really, Sunny. What about you?”
Sunny shakes her head, pulling a face much like the expression Klaus is wearing. He chuckles weakly, sighing again.
“This is so awful,” Klaus whispers, looking at the blurry image of his little sister. “Why can’t something go right for us just once? It just isn’t fair. And I’m sick of it.”
His eyes sting, and then tears dribble down his face. Klaus sobs, trying to wipe his eyes and stop crying, but it’s no good. He just feels so dreadful.
“Klaus?” Violet whispers.
His older sister has sat up and looks over at him. She moves across the tiny shack and sits beside him, Sunny between them.
Violet brushes his hair from his forehead. Klaus sobs and scrubs at his tear-stained face. Sunny pats his arm and makes reassuring noises.
“I understand how you feel, Klaus,” Violet says, her voice soft. “But it is all right to cry. remember what Mother always said, about how crying can release pent up emotions and leave you feeling better.”
Klaus nods, remembering many occasions in which one of the children was crying and their mother comforted them, a hand rubbing their back as she whispered about how crying can be good at releasing your emotions and help you regulate your mental state again.
“I know,” he says, sniffing. “Everything just gets to me sometimes, you know.”
Violet nods. “I know.”
“Zinc!” Sunny says, which means something like, “I’m sure we all feel that way sometimes, Klaus.”
Klaus wipes his eyes. “Thank you. Am I the only one who cannot sleep, or…”
“No, we can’t sleep either,” Violet says. “Would it help if we cuddled up together? That often helps when we can’t sleep.”
Klaus nods, remembering being forced to share a bed at Count Olaf’s house, and climbing into Violet’s bed when spooked by a thunderstorm as a young child, and both of them and their parents huddling together for warmth that one time they went camping, and he knows that cuddling really can help you sleep.
He smiles weakly, his eyes red. “Yes, I like that idea.”
And so the three siblings cuddle up together, Violet and Klaus with their arms linked together and Sunny lying between them, all of them huddling together in the awful shack at the awful school, and Klaus doesn’t feel quite so helpless anymore.