Chapter Text
They’re twelve years old, and Klaus breaks his jaw dancing around with Mom’s heels and needs to have it wired shut for eight weeks.
Vanya wasn’t there to see it happen— she’d been practicing her violin at the time, wanting to finally be good at something while all the others enjoyed their free time between lessons— but she can’t imagine it was a pleasant experience. It must be a truly awful feeling, to be denied something as natural to you as talking, though truth be told if it’d been her Vanya thinks there wouldn’t be any difference at all.
(She doubts anyone would even notice, beyond maybe Five. Nobody else ever bothered to listen to her talk.)
She knows though, that despite the obvious frustration Klaus feels at not being able to speak or move his mouth as normal— and Klaus was ever a talker— there’s a peace to him too that wasn’t there before. He seems better rested, too— like he hasn’t had any nightmares since, and Vanya would know, what with her room being the closest to his. She’s since gotten used to falling asleep despite his screams.
(Vanya remembers she once used to run to his room every night when they were younger, scared for her brother and not understanding why he always screamed so much, childishly wanting to help despite being just ordinary. She doesn’t remember when she stopped, nor why.)
(It didn’t seem to matter either way. Klaus kept screaming all the same.)
She doesn’t know why that is, but she’s glad to see him him well despite the injury— whatever the reason may be, it’s helping, and that’s all that matters. By the time his jaw is healed, Klaus has not a trace of the dark circles that she’s gotten so used to seeing under his eyes.
Still, she can’t help but wonder.
“There you go, dear! As good as new,” Mom tells him gently once she’s deemed Klaus all good again, with Vanya right by her side eager to be of help in any way she can. “Not as bad as you thought it would be, right?”
He nods, sounding a little distracted as he hums his agreement.
“How was it?” Vanya asks before she can help herself, but once the question is out she doesn’t take it back. Even though it’s been eight weeks now, it’s still a little unsettling to see him so quiet, to not hear his jokes and his laughter. It feels wrong. Klaus is supposed to be loud and full of life, the opposite of her.
Klaus blinks, still feeling out his jaw for a moment before looking back at her. He smiles.
“Quiet,” he says in the end, cheekily, his voice rough from disuse.
And though that’s something the others have joked about plenty once the worry settled down— finally something that managed to shut Klaus up and allowed them some peace and quiet, maybe miracles do happen— Vanya doesn’t think he’s talking about that. Or at least, not entirely. There’s a sincerity in his eyes that betrays his smirk, and she has a feeling that there’s something that she’s missing here.
Then again, Vanya was never able to understand her extraordinary siblings, not really.
(She never understood Klaus at all, who complains about something that she would do anything to have. Doesn’t he know how good he has it?)
They tend to forget she’s not in with some of their inside jokes sometimes and not understand why she’s confused, mention a game she hadn’t been invited to or some secret she was never told then stare at her when she doesn’t react like they expected her to.
(She pretends it doesn’t hurt to be forgotten, so easily overlooked almost as if invisibility is her hidden power— or perhaps it is mediocrity instead.)
Vanya nods uncertain, hiding under her hair as she always does to hide the fact she regrets having said anything at all. She stays behind once Klaus finally leaves the infirmary, helping Grace tidy everything up again— leaving her to deal with the more important tasks while Vanya takes care of the simpler, easier stuff for her like tidying the infirmary bed and putting everything back in the right places.
When she goes to put away the painkillers Klaus had been on though— and it must’ve been a pretty painful injury, since he’d stayed on them until the very end and never stopped complaining to Mom about it— she finds the bottle missing, even though she could swear it’d been there one second ago.
Or was she just imagining things?