pusillanimous- Violet Baudelaire x fem! reader

Chapter Thirteen

A/N: HOLY SHIT THANK YOU FOR 40K READS! I also would like to say I'm going to be making some small changes to this fic. It's going to be more based on the books rather than the netflix series, and I'm probably going to be going back and editing previous chapters more, as well as adding breaks between each book in the original series. Okay end note ily :)

Violet and I continued to work for hours until our shift was over. We went back to the bunkhouse and waited. Still, Klaus didn't return. We ate our dinner of who-knows-what casserole. Still, he didn't return. Finally, after most of the workers were asleep, Klaus walked in, still without his glasses. He walked straight ahead, paying no mind to anything, not even his lack of vision.

"Klaus! How did it go?" Violet asked.

"Did she fix them? Are there new ones on the way?" I asked.

He stayed silent and kept walking until he got to his bed, turning and sitting down in a strangely robotic fashion. Violet and I followed him. I furrowed my brows as I sat beside him.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

No response.

"What happened today, Klaus?" Violet questioned.

Still nothing. Violet and I looked at eachother.

"Would you like to go to sleep?" Violet asked.

"Yes, Sir," Klaus finally spoke.

He laid down on his back, moving robotically once again. He closed his eyes, falling asleep immediately and without question.

"Klaus?" Violet began. "Klaus? He didn't even take his shoes off."

"And he called you sir," I spoke. "I really do wonder what happened to him today," I continued as I started unlacing and removing his shoes for him.
...

The next morning, we awoke to the same horrible clang of pots and pans as the day before.God, how can anyone stand to live like this? I pondered as I sat up, already feeling a headache coming on.

The foreman speaks on the loudspeaker this time. "Lucky boy," he says, "would you like to go to work?"

I watch Klaus sit up and get out of bed. "Yes, sir," he says, walking away, forgetting his shoes and socks once again.

My eyes widen as I watch him walk out barefoot. Violet picks up his footwear and looks at me. "Again?" she says.

"Come on, children!" spoke Phil. "Let's hurry to the mill!"

"Phil, something's wrong with my brother, he's hardly speaking and can't remember anything," Violet expressed.

"Look, he's missing his shoes!" I pointed out.

"Well, look on the bright side!" Phil replied. "It's stamping day! The easiest part of the business!"

"We don't care about the business, there's something wrong with Klaus!" said Violet.

"Now, let's not make trouble." We had no other choice but to follow Phil back to the mill as he spoke. In the mill, boards were already being tied up and the string machine was already on, making an inordinate amount of noise. At lunchtime, while the other workers received their gum, Violet and I took Klaus, who was still barefoot and silent, into the corner of the room.

"Klaus, please say something, anything at all," Violet said.

"You're frightening us all," I continued. "We can help you if you just tell us what Dr. Orwell did."

Still, Klaus did not speak. Violet began to sob as she stared at his blank face. I looked over to her, furrowing my eyebrows in concern.

"You were right. Yesterday," she said. "Both of you. We should've just left, but I didn't listen to you and now something's wrong with you. I'm so sorry."

Klaus didn't seem to hear her speaking to him. Not only did he not reply, he simply sat there staring straight ahead. He showed no reaction whatsoever. Violet buried her head in her hands and continued to sob. I pulled her into a hug, allowing her to cry into my chest as I stroked her hair.

"Hey," I began. "It's not your fault. You couldn't have known this would happen. We're gonna figure this out, okay? I promise. We can get through this as long as we stick together."

She nodded and continued to sob for the next few minutes. We held eachother tightly until the foreman began banging his pots together once again, signalling the end of lunch.

"Back to work, come on!" he called. "You too, midgets."

Violet and I pulled apart from eachother. I wiped the tears from her soft cheeks, taking a deep breath and motioning for her to follow me in doing so.

"Come on, it's stampin' time!" yelled the foreman. "Everyone line up. You," he pointed to Klaus, "you lucky midget, get to operate the machine. Come here so I can give you the instructions."

"Yes, sir," Klaus finally said, standing as he walked toward the foreman.

Violet looked on as her brother left, and I remembered that she was the eldest sibling. She must feel responsible for him, I thought. She needs to realize she never could've prevented such ostentatious (a word which here means extreme) horrors as the ones they've faced since their parents' death.

Some of the other workers lifted a bundle of large wood planks onto the mat of the stamping machine. Klaus then pulled a lever, bringing a large stone down onto the top plank, marking onto the pale wood the logo of the Lucky Smells company in bright red ink. The workers that had brought the pile of planks over blew on and fanned the logo to make it dry faster.

As Violet, Phil, and I brought over a new pile of boards, I couldn't help but think: How in the world does Klaus know how to operate this? Why did foreman Flacutono ask him to operate it rather than any of the others? Someone who's an adult, maybe?

"See, he's alright!" said Phil. "He's working the machine perfectly! You worried so much for nothing," he smiled.

Phil continued to speak until he was cut off by a crashing sound and a scream echoing from his own mouth. The large, ink-covered stone had been brought down not on wooden planks, but rather halfway between the string machine and Phil's left leg. Foreman Flacutono rushed over and pushed Klaus off the machine, lifting the stamp back up. Everyone clambered around to see the damage. My eyes widened, seeing Phil's calf smashed into a flat disk shape, his uniform now stained with the same red ink from the stamp.

Phil sat up, laughing hysterically. "Half-price pedicures for life!"