Clara & Klaus - The Untold Story: Abstract

He couldn't see. Couldn't breathe. Acrid smoke filled the air, filled his lungs, made him cough. He couldn't think; he could only feel: panic, fear, confusion, desperation. He heard voices. Laughter. A child screamed.

Not a child. His child. He opened his mouth to call out, but the smoke rushed in, choking him, smothering his voice. He fumbled blindly, eyes stinging as he fought to breathe, fought to see something through the haze. The voices grew louder and he stumbled toward them. He couldn't hear what they were saying.

A light flashed. Someone called his name. He ran in the direction of the voice, somehow knowing his time was running out. More lights: spellfire. From where, he didn't know. It seemed like everywhere. Another scream, more distant this time. He frantically turned about, straining desperately to make out any shapes, to find out where he was. The smoke was growing thicker. There was no air to breathe. He gasped and felt his chest constrict. His legs felt weak and his vision swam. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. He collapsed to his knees and reached out his hand. He felt something - another hand. Small. A child's.

A light flashed, illuminating his son's face.

He caught one brief look at dull, vacant eyes before the darkness took over and he was falling...

Klaus jerked awake with a start, sucking in deep lungfuls of air as he struggled to disentangle himself from the sheets wound tightly around his legs. His heart pounded wildly as his gaze swept the room and he tried to remember where he was. This was not his room.

No, he remembered. He'd been moved so Clara could be closer to the girl. He was in Kit's house.

As it all slowly came back to him, he forced himself to relax, wiping his sweat-drenched forehead with a trembling hand. He was in Kit's house. He could breathe. Everything was fine.

Well, no, nothing was fine. But he wasn't in immediate danger. He fell back against the headboard of his new bed, trying to steady his breathing. He flicked on the lamp that sat on the bedside table and looked up, only to immediately lock eyes with an artfully positioned nude model staring seductively down at him from her position on the wall. Klaus immediately closed his eyes with a groan. Fuck Kit Harrington and his truly awful interior design choices.

Actually, while he was at it, fuck Kit Harrington's impulsive decisions and spontaneous paternal instincts. What on earth had gotten into the man? Normal people didn't go to Alabama for a week and come back with a five-year-old. Normal people didn't just find kids on the street and decide to keep them. Normal people spent months planning for children, deliberating, working out the logistics. Kit Harrington was perhaps the least prepared and least qualified candidate Klaus had ever met when it came to fatherhood. The naked women adorning his walls certainly seemed to agree.

Klaus sighed. His hands had finally stopped shaking, and his sweat was starting to dry, cold against his bare skin. He shivered, climbing out of the bed and pulling a plain grey t-shirt over his head. He needed some air.

Well, he needed a drink. But ever since the girl had shown up, he had been trying to curb his less healthy habits. She didn't deserve to witness his misery. Her own life was hard enough already.

So he settled for a walk up to the roof to clear his head. Tucking his wand into the waistband of his boxers, he slipped out of his new room and quietly wandered down the hall and up the stairs. As he emerged into the cool night air, he noticed he wasn't the only one there.

Clara currently had her back to him. He considered turning around and heading back inside before she noticed him, but he stopped himself. He really, really didn't feel like going back to bed. No matter how tense his relationship with the woman may be, he'd take an awkward conversation with her any day over the nightmares that his own mind provided. He stepped closer, noticing the unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth.

"Need a light?" he asked quietly, hoping he wouldn't startle her.

He noticed Clara tense up at his voice before she turned to him and nodded. He retrieved his wand from his waistband, conjuring a small flame from the tip and moving closer to hold it against the end of her cigarette until it caught. As he extinguished the flame, he couldn't help but notice the unfocused look in her eyes, the way she inhaled almost desperately, like the smoke was the only thing connecting her to the world.

He knew that look.

He averted his gaze while she collected herself, respecting her privacy. He knew he was not meant to have intruded on this moment. He would have felt bad except that she was no worse off than him. He looked out at the stars as he waited.

He wondered what it was that she had experienced to bring her to this place, but he knew better than to ask. They weren't friends. They weren't even friendly. He wouldn't want her prying into his personal life, so he wouldn't intrude on hers. The best he could offer was a silent understanding. He may not particularly like her, but he respected her enough to extend simple human decency when she needed it.

He turned to face her again when she spoke, meeting her thanks with a curt nod. He looked down at the offered pack in her hand, but didn't move to take it.

"Ah, no, thanks. I don't smoke." He swallowed, the thought of voluntarily inhaling anything but clean air almost physically repulsive after the dream he'd had. Regardless of nicotine content, cigarettes would be entirely counterproductive at the moment.

Instead, he took a deep breath of cool, dry, California oxygen and wandered closer to the edge of the roof, looking down. He didn't know what to say. Obviously he couldn't address the elephant in the room - neither of them wanted that - but anything else would seem forced and awkward. Eventually, he decided the silence wasn't uncomfortable, and didn't need to be broken unless she had something to say.

He sat down, let his legs hang off the edge as he gazed into the distance, trying not to think.

As Clara laughed, Klaus could only imagine how she must have interpreted his statement. He knew she didn't think highly of him. His decision not to smoke probably didn't align with her idea of his character. He was a drunk, a slob, a parasite. What was one more unhealthy habit to him?

Whatever she thought, he didn't care. She could believe whatever made her happy. She probably couldn't be farther from the truth, and as far as he was concerned, that was a good thing. The last thing he needed was pity.

A small part of him was glad for her blunt honesty and blatant disgust. It was as much as he deserved. To some extent, he was all the things she thought he was, and more. He was a liar. A murderer. A fool.

He glanced down at the ground several stories below and wondered, not for the first time, what he was still doing here. Out of all the possible outcomes, why had he been the one to survive? He could think of a dozen of his fallen comrades who deserved to live far more than he did. He would gladly trade his life for any one of them. Yet here he was.

He had considered, of course, the possibility of jumping. He had quickly squashed the idea. That was the coward's way out. Killing himself may ease his own suffering, but it would be of no help to anyone else. He wasn't afraid of death. He was afraid his death would be as useless as his life.

Still, it would be a lie to say he wasn't tempted, as his feet dangled over the edge.

Her voice interrupted his darker thoughts, pulling him back to the present. He turned his head halfway to acknowledge her as she spoke.

At her comment about Kit, he let out a quiet snort and shook his head.

"What was he thinking, bringing her here?" he mused, almost to himself. "Did he think fatherhood would be easy? Did he even think at all?"

Something vaguely contemptuous crept into his voice as he wondered about Kit's motivations. He appreciated the man as a friend and as a human being, but he had never entirely agreed with Kit's outlook on life. And the kid...so many things bothered him about the whole situation. Why had Kit decided to take her in himself? Did he know what he was signing up for? Was he ready for the commitment? Did he realize just how much damage he could do to a child if he was negligent, especially in these formative years? Not to mention all the damage that had clearly already been done.

Who the hell abandoned their kid on a park bench?

Klaus tightened his grip on the edge of the roof, angered by the thought. How fucked up did a person have to be to leave a helpless child on the street and walk away? He would do literally anything for the chance to see his son again. How could someone voluntarily give that up?

"Yeah, what do you know about fatherhood?"

His knuckles whitened as the words hit him like a punch in the stomach. More than you know, he wanted to shoot back, but the words died on his lips. The anger that had flared up at her words wasn't directed at her.

She was right. What did he know about fatherhood? He'd only been one for barely over two years, and then he'd failed, miserably, at the most important job he'd ever had. Keeping Toby alive.

His breath caught in his throat momentarily, the image from his nightmares flashing through his mind. He closed his eyes, turning his face away from her.

"Nothing," he breathed bitterly. "You're right."

After a moment, he collected himself, forcing his hands to let go of their death grip on the steel ledge. Her next question seemed to come out of nowhere. He glanced up at her, confused, then shook his head.

"He never mentioned anything to me. We didn't really keep in contact after we graduated."

Kit had up and moved to America, of course, while Klaus had stayed behind in the UK. They'd gone in vastly different directions with their lives. It was a wonder they had somehow ended up together again nine years later. He paused, something striking him. "What do you mean 'one of our lot'?"

He couldn't think of a single thing he had in common with Kit besides Hogwarts. They'd come from two different worlds, led two different lives, and only by chance intersected at certain pivotal points. The only group he had ever shared with Kit had been their Hogwarts house. Unless she meant wizards in general? Come to think of it, he couldn't remember seeing her do magic in any of the times she had visited. He hadn't even considered the possibility of her being a muggle, but maybe it made sense? He wondered, briefly, how she had come to cross paths with Kit. Had he met her separately, he would never have imagined the pairing. There was a story there, he knew, but one that would have to wait for another time. His brow furrowed as he looked bemusedly up at Clara, waiting for an answer.

Klaus stared up at Clara incredulously as she rambled about trust funds and palaces and sleeping rough for mental stimulation. What on earth? Does Kit do that?

As she finished her explanation, Klaus blinked slowly, trying to wrap his mind around where she could have possibly gotten that impression of him. A short, surprised laugh bubbled out of him at the idea. Him, living in a palace? If he had that kind of money, he'd never have resigned himself to sleeping on Kit Harrington's couch. If he'd had any other connections at all, he would have moved to one of the nicer states in New England or something and escaped the heat. He shook his head.

"Is that what you think? You think I've got a palace back home waiting for me? I lived in a pub. I grew up in a cottage. There's nothing fancy about me, Clara, and I certainly didn't come here for a bit of 'mental stimulation.'" His accent grew more pronounced as he scoffed. "I'm not Kit. I've got no artistic pretensions. If I could have an easy life, I'd take it in a heartbeat."

Screw easy, he just wanted normal. The normal life he'd just gotten a taste of before it had been ripped out from under his feet. A two-room apartment above the Leaky Cauldron. Simple. Comfortable. Just enough to make ends meet.

He'd been happy with that.

But now he was here, not even thirty yet and accepting that his chance at that life had been blown. He'd never get it back. He'd been lucky enough to have it once. If he were smart, he'd have held on tighter, like his own parents had with him.

But he wasn't smart, so here he was, a failure in every sense of the word. Homeless. An alcoholic. A widower. Why does the word 'widower' always make it sound like it's the man's fault when his wife dies? he wondered. Not that it isn't accurate in this case.

Normal was a washed-out dream at this point.