On the way to the Academy again, Anneli remained uncharacteristically quiet and Five had noticed.
He watched her out the corner of his eye as they ascended the stairs, and he was about to comment on it now they were alone when a trail of dirty footprints caught their eye in the middle of the hallway.
Anneli furrowed her eyebrows and followed the trail, ending up at Klauses room.
Her heart skipped a beat when she saw him, alive, she didn't even think as she raced forward to hug him.
He stumbled back with a "whoa!" before settling his arms around the shorter girl, slightly dazed and confused.
Five stopped in the doorway to watch the scene.
She tightened her arms around his midsection and he patted her shoulder, unsure what to say to break the silence. Finally, she pulled away.
"I thought you had died!" She exclaimed, looking him up and down, noting some changes about him.
Something was off.
He was surprised for a moment. "Oh," he was weakly smiling. "Nice to see someone noticed my absence..."
"Hvordan gar det med deg?" She asked quickly, glancing him up and down, eyes lingering on the dog tags and the new tattoos. He looked like a different man. She answered herself before he even could. "You look bad."
"Thanks?" He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.
She backed away as Five stepped into the room, watching his brother closely, hands in his pockets.
His first inquiry was of his general rough appearance. Second being the dog tags and third, the new tattoos.
Anneli scrunched her eyebrows together when a flash of an image embedded itself in her head.
Her ears rang.
Klaus was on the floor in front of her. It was dark. He was sobbing over the body of a man she didn't recognise, covered in blood and dirt.
She stepped back, bumping into the wardrobe and caught herself, blinking out of it. Her chest ached as Five interrogated Klaus carelessly.
Klaus shifted his eyes to her for a split second but returned them to the floor.
"Your pals, when they broke into the house and couldn't find you, they took me hostage instead." Klaus explained with a pained expression.
Anneli sat on the bed next to him and wrapped her arm around his torso for comfort. He deflated at her kind touch.
"So in return you took their briefcase," Five shook his head with a small smile and she glared at him for not taking into account Klauses emotional state.
"Then I opened it..."
"And you were where? Or should I say when?"
Klaus put his head in his hands. "What difference does it make?" He hissed tiredly.
'Vietnam war,' she mouthed silently and Five straightened, staring wide eyed at his brother.
"Do you know what this means?"
"Yeah, I'm ten months older now-"
"-no, this isn't any sort of joke, Klaus." He paced up and down, thinking rapidly. "Hazel and Cha-cha will do whatever it takes to get that briefcase-"
"-Five," Anneli cut in, the dread returning to her stomach. He looked at her and noted her forlorn expression. She shook her head sligthly. "It's destroyed."
He visibly bristled with anger and shot his eyes to his brother in accusation.
But Anneli wasn't going to have any of it.
"Nei, hold kjeft!" She stood defensibely in front of Klaus, one hand still placed on his arm gently. "I get that you're upset but you cannot take this out on him, not when he's in this state."
He eyed her, astonished. "Are you serious? I could have started over-"
She shook her head, going to push him away towards the doorway. He stumbled back, offended. "Nei, out. Get out!"
She pushed him back by the shoulder and caught him swearing at her before she shut the door in his face. "Ha det."
In the silence, Anneli pressed her lips together and moved around the room, picking up items of clothing off of the bed and throwing them in the corner unceremoniously.
Klaus watched her, not having the energy to question what she was doing.
She grabbed a blanket half draped on the floor, shook it out to get rid of any dust and proceeded to wrap it around his shoulders.
"What are you-" he tiredly chuckled, before she gently pushed him over onto his bed so that he was lying down. He groaned but didn't move, sinking into his mattress, his shoulders relaxing.
"You should rest," She murmured, raising her hand and twitching her fingers in the air; the curtains drew closed immediately, swathing the room in a dim haze. She flicked the star fairy lights on around his bed so there was a soft glow and the drained man simply watched her, curled up on his side with his arms pulling the blanket closer around him for comfort.
When she stopped, her eyes were sad. "I'm sorry," she told him sincerely, eyes lowering. "For what you have lost."
He closed his eyes and sighed.
Anneli watched him solemnly before pressing a caring kiss into his hair, smoothing it back from his face before turning to leave.
Thought popping into her head, she hesitated at the door.
"Please don't turn to drugs, Klaus," she pleaded softly, looking at him over her shoulder. "You will only regret it later."
He smiled forelornly at her but didn't respond.
She left with a heavy heart, leaving the door ajar slightly and walking down the hall.
He didn't know the extent of it, but her words were always truth.
While she was gone, the deceased brother who stuck by his side decided to watch over him while she was unable to; and she didn't have to be clairvoyant to know it as it was a job they had shared many a time over the years, despite her not being able to see or hear him.
A silent understanding between them. And it was the only comfort she had leaving Klaus to his devices, knowing that Ben had pulled him from worse in the past when she was working for the commission.
She had trusted him in life, and she trusted him now, still.
When she neared Five's room, a hollow feeling sitting high in her chest, her ears picked up on a scratching sound.
She rounded the doorway and spied him scrawling with harsh determination across his walls in left over chalk. He didn't acknowledge her when she entered.
This made the chalk stick drop from his grasp in sheer surprise when she grabbed him by the shoulder, span him, and had a fistful of his tie with uncharacteristically icy eyes.
"You are as emotionally inept as a fucking teaspoon, you..." she broke off into a rant in faster spoken Norwegian and Five could only stare down at her, not understanding where she was going with this tirade.
He tried to prise her hand off of him but she was as immovable as stone it seemed.
"English!" His patience thinned and he snapped, cutting her off, throwing his hands up. "You're giving me a headache."
Her eyes narrowed. "I am giving you a headache?" She asked, astonished. "You listen to me. I understand that you have had a shitty childhood and adulthood, and later adulthood for that matter-"
"-where are you going with this?"
"Hold kjeft and I will tell you!" Her piercing eyes bore through his skull. "After I left the commission I lived with your brother. I was there every time he overdosed, every time he nearly died, everytime he almost relapsed or got beat up or mugged in the street." He regarded her as her voice cracked slightly. He had never seen her so fiercely protective, so disturbed. "I was the one who paid for his rehab, I was the one who picked him up every time because no one else wanted to. So you do not get to belittle him for a mistake he made because he just witnessed someone he loved dying, and even if you did not know that, you could clearly see he was struggling!"
Five blinked at her, at a loss for words. When he opened his mouth to speak she cut him off again, fuelling his frustration.
She could see he was not taking in the weight of her words and it fuelled her own.
"He does not know about the briefcases - he does not know the severity of what he did. He was driven by emotion and the least he needs right now is to be shouted at like a child who acted out, okay?!" She snapped, jaw clenching. "You do not understand the weight of what you say to someone when they are in a state like that - it could be the difference between life and death."
She uttered that last part quieter, seriously, and stared into his eyes.
He scanned her face and stayed quiet. For once she has rendered him speechless.
She almost laughed at the incredulousness of it all. She was hungover, and tired, and her shoulder hurt, but she would be damned if she let anyone talk to Klaus like that; Klaus who was practically her brother.
The world was soon to end and here they were with thinning options and she chose to start a fight. God, she felt like she was losing her mind. Still, he deserved it.
She wouldn't let any of the others speak down to Klaus when they were kids, she would be damned if she let someone do it now.
Five leant down closer to her face with hard eyes. "We don't have time for this, Anneli."
She let him go so suddenly he had to catch himself on the wall and she inhaled deeply, looking at him with sheer disappointment.
Anneli tried to find the words to describe what she thought of him but it was too difficult. Moments they had shared drunk filled her mind, moments where she didn't hate him and actually found common ground with him - where was that now?
"Your'e a heartless bastard, you know that?" She shook her head a little. It hurt her to come to this conclusion.
He turned to the wall, grabbing the chalk he had dropped and continuing with what he had been doing before he was interrupted. Callously.
"And you're not? We both killed people for a living - at some point you grow up and learn to get past it; though it seems you haven't."
She clenched her fists, boring holes into the back of his head. "Why do you act like this? Is it because you think detaching yourself from everyone will make it easier when we all die in a couple of days?"
He ignored her, writing on the wall. But she saw the way his fingers tightened around the chalk.
"Does it make you feel better knowing that if we fail, your siblings last memories of you will be you acting like an entitled asshole?"
She watched his shoudlers tense and his hand cease writing but he didn't turn.
"You need to stop treating people like shit when they try to care for you. I know we might all end up dead if we don't come up with something, but you're a coward if you-"
Anneli's words caught right in her throat as Five moved in the blink of an eye and a flash of blue light. Her back hit the wall and his forearm placed heavy pressure over her windpipe. The roles now switched, Five was radiating rage as he glared into her eyes, mere centimeters from his own.
This was the Five that had survived, the Five that had fought tirelessly at the commission to get back to his family, the cruel, calloused side of him that perhaps Anneli had refused to acknowledge.
"A coward?" He hissed lowly, not bothered by the fact she closed her eyes and grasped his arm in an attempt to move it so she could catch her breath. "I am doing what I need to in order to save my family and the rest of the world."
She struggled slightly, mouth opening but no words escaped. She gripped his arm tighter, nails beginning to dig in to give him the message.
It was like the air around him had darkened.
"If you don't like me then you're free to leave," he stated lowly. "I don't need your help."
"Let go." She croaked, chest burning with effort to inhale and exhale, but the arm crushing her throat was stopping her.
He didn't move, eyeing her threateningly, and she hit his shoulder to get him to release her.
She reached out with her mind and a heavy book, the same one she had launched at him before, rose from his bedside table and smacked him in the back. He loosened his hold and flinched as she shoved him away from her, using all her strength and sending him careening backwards.
Her knees buckled slightly but she caught herself against the wall before she fell, clutching her throat and coughing. Her eyes stung with unshed tears, slightly red.
Neither of them moved from their sides of the room.
In her struggle to take a deep breath without her throat burning, an ornament on his shelf rattled in place above her shoulder.
His eyes shot to it as it shattered, breaking it i pieces across the shelf and floor as though it had been hit by a bullet. Anneli didn't flinch, shooting a withering glare at him as she straightened and the open book on the floor turned its pages by itself angrily, slamming closed with a thud. His curtains shifted as though caught in a harsh breeze, knocking over a stack of CD's and sending them across the floor with a crash.
His eyes shot to Anneli who still had a hand at her already red throat. Her furious eyes caught him off guard for a second.
"You're doing it again," she muttered quietly, in a hoarse voice. He narrowed his eyes in question and stood just as she did, hand still prodding at the skin around her throat as it was sore. She backed away and looked him over. "Trying to push me away."
She wanted to say it didn't end well for him the last time he went around pushing people away, as it landed him alone for forty years - but managed to keep that to herself. She had a feeling it'd end bad for both of them.
He scoffed, turning around and shaking his head. "That's what you think I'm doing?" He asks humourlessly. "Did it ever occur to you maybe you're not as much of a saint as you think you are?"
His words dug under her skin and a voice in her head whispered to her that he was bluffing, but this wasn't a stupid card game, this was life and death. His words got under her skin like a needle. She didn't think herself a saint, she thought of herself far less than that. He was trying to get under her skin just as she had gotten under his.
"You're pushing me away because you know I am right."
Yes, thats exactly what he was doing. But he'd rather die than verbally admit that to her, especially now.
Anneli shook her head. "You need my help."
"Do I?" He retorted coldly.
She watched him stoically. "Yes, you do. Your ego may be too large for you to admit it-"
"-there's nothing to admit. You've been an annoying little tag along this whole time and I would have done better alone," he snapped back. "I kept you around because I thought you might be useful." She swallowed the lump in her throat as he looked directly into her soul. "Guess I was wrong."
This time the voice in her head didn't speak, which usually indicated the truth was being told and she wouldn't be happy hearing it. For once in her life she yearned for that hushed voice to whisper things to her, to tell her he was lying.
And his voice soon turned into her mothers voice, hissing at her about how much of a burden on her life she was, just beyond her ear in a haunting echo.
"That's all you'll be in life, and your friends will soon realise it." Her mother told her, gently bandaging the reopened wound on her hand as she quietly cried to herself. She should never have risked going next door to play. Her mothers voice was surprisingly gentle, as though teaching her a bitter lesson in life. "They'll want nothing to do with you when they find out what you really are."
He was trying to push her away and she kept trying to tell herself that. He was scared. He was frustrated and taking it all out on her. She knew this.
So why did it hurt so much when he basically called her useless?
She knew why.
Because it was what she had been called her entire childhood by the one person who was meant to love her unconditionally.
He wasn't backing down, wouldn't take back his words and simply waited for her to make a move; talk, or leave.
Her lips pressed together in a thin line and she stared blankly into his eyes, smoothing out any emotion out of her face.
"Fine." She said finally, turning to leave before looking over her shoulder. "But you'll regret this later on."
Her tone was knowing.
That was the second Hargreeves she had to say this to that day; the difference?
One would listen in the end, and one would not.