chapter six

Blair was in a bit of a predicament. A quagmire, dare she call it. It wasn't her intention to get kidnapped alongside her brother only to be tortured for information about one of her other brothers, but sometimes life was a bitch. After the week Blair had gone through, she supposed that it was only right for it to end with torture.

The people in masks had taken Blair and Klaus to some disgusting and worn-down motel for their interrogation. After they had been pulled out of a trunk very unceremoniously, they had been duck-taped to chairs and given various methods of torture for ten hours. Their kidnappers had taken off their masks at least. Blair had memorized their face structures in case she'd need to talk to the police or hunt them down herself: there was a woman with a short bob and blunt bangs who seemed to be the leader of her duo, and there was a man with jelly dripping off his shirt and a face that looked much too kind for his profession. There was so much more that Blair had noticed, but she felt no need to memorize every single detail, especially when she was certain that she'd be the one to go after them, not the police.

Blair had been kidnapped before. Plenty of times, actually. Most of them were planned, though. When they were planned Blair would take a bit of torture, get information from her kidnappers through deception, and then kill them. It was an easy strategy, but not a relatively pain free one.

It was merely means to an end.

When they weren't planned, Blair always found a way out. Whether she got herself free or one of her team members came in to save her ass, she always survived to tell the tale. Blair was not planning to end her streak of kidnappings escaped any time soon.

"Number Five, where is he?" The woman grunted while she strangled Klaus with a wire.

Klaus was struggling for air, but he still choked out, "don't... stop. ...I'm almost there."

Blair picked up her head and looked at her brother in confusion.

"Is that a...?"

The man got off one of the beds and headed over to look at Klaus. "Yep."

The woman backed away in disgust. Blair could figure out what they had been talking about without having to look, so she cringed and dropped her head again. Hours of torture had left her tired, and she could barely keep her head up. At least the torture and sleep deprivation had distracted her from her horribly disfigured knee.

Klaus coughed before taking in a deep breath. "Oh... there's nothin' like a little... stranglin' to get the blood flowin', am I right?" He took another deep breath before starting to giggle.

The man got off of the bed again and slapped Klaus on the face. "What is so funny, you asshole?"

"Well, for one... you spent the last ten hours... beating us senseless, and... you've learned absolutely nothing. I mean, nobody tells me shit. The truth is, I'm the one person in that house nobody will even notice is gone." Blair turned her head to glare at her brother. "You assholes kidnapped the wrong guy!" He broke into laughter again which resulted in another slap on the head.

"Please make him stop talking," the man ordered.

Blair turned her head to the right and tried to give Klaus a comforting smile. She tried to convey her love for him in that one expression, tried to convey that she would notice if he was kidnapped, but she couldn't tell if he had understood that or not.

"What about you? They oughta notice your disappearance," The woman asked, stepping in front of Blair's chair and glaring at her. "Tell us what you know about Number Five."

Blair shook her head. "I don't know shit."

A sharp punch reached Blair's jaw. Instead of whimpering or crying like any regular kidnapped teenager might, Blair just spat the blood out of her mouth.

"You were at the Griddy's shootout," the woman recalled.

"Yeah, but Five is a secretive bastard," Blair lied. "He doesn't tell us anything. Did I shoot? Sure, but that's more of a 'I-got-to-save-my-own-ass' kind of thing than a 'let-me-help-Five-with-his-world-domination-plan' sort of thing."

The woman rolled her eyes. She was obviously pissed at the attitudes of the two siblings, pissed by how they didn't seem to care how much torture they were dealt. "Let's waterboard them."

"Hey! Watch your mouth! What did I say about eyes front?"

Waterboarding was one of Blair's favorite methods of torture. She liked swimming and used to play the flute, so she could hold her breath for insanely long periods of time. Waterboarding was easy for her to endure. As for Klaus, well, he was Klaus. He merely laughed and thank the duo for giving him a drink when they were done.

Blair rolled her eyes at the man's harsh words. "Klaus, just stay calm. We're gonna be alright, okay? When they realize you don't know anything, they'll let you go."

Klaus didn't reply. The torture had been getting to him more than it had been getting to Blair, but that was to be expected. Blair wanted to help Klaus in any way that she could, but she also didn't want to exploit Five. If Blair was to take Five's apocalypse seriously, then she'd need to withhold all information from the two torturers with animal masks.

But there was also a part of Blair that would do whatever she could to get Klaus out of the situation. She was technically his older sister now, even if she didn't look the part. She didn't want Klaus in the middle of this where he could get hurt. Her own safety didn't matter to her as much as her brother's. If she could get him outside of the dingy motel room of two psychopaths, then she'd be happy to endure their torture for however long was needed.

Speaking of the devils, the two torturers exited the kitchenette and headed towards Klaus and Blair. They were wearing their masks again, but Blair could still tell who was who just by their bodies. The kidnappers seemed more determined than they had been before they had their side conversation in the kitchenette— they likely had thought of what they probably supposed was a genius method of torture.

Blair had seen it all. These two weren't really special or unique in their torturing methods.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait..."

"Let's see," the woman mused as she held up Klaus' jacket with one hand and used the other to rifle through it.

"What are you doing? That's mine. That's my personal stuff," Klaus protested.

The woman pulled out packets full of pills. "Oh. What do we have here?"

"Let me see that," the man demanded.

"Hey, no, no, no, no. Be— be careful with that. It's— it's my... asthma medication."

Blair inwardly cringed at the feeble excuse. She could tell what they were doing. They were getting personal, using Klaus' belongings as bait to talk. Blair had come with no belongings: nothing in her pockets, nothing up her sleeves. Klaus, however, had more than enough drugs on him for the kidnappers to bait him into talking.

Oh shit, Blair thought.

"Now we're getting somewhere," the man chuckled, dropping the packet of pills onto the ground and aggressively stomping them into a fine dust.

"Hey. No, hey! Whoa! No, hey, hold on! Hold on!" Klaus protested. "We can have a conversation. We're adults. Well, except for Blair."

"Okay, you want more?" The man threw down more pills.

"No! No! No, no, no! Stop! Please, listen." Klaus screamed. "Listen, I can... I can get you cash. Amputee hookers, whatever. Hey, just, please, just listen. Just don't... no... please."

Blair turned her head towards Klaus. "Klaus. Hey, Klaus, buddy, calm down. You're okay, alright?"

The man opened up a package of chocolate and popped a piece into his mouth. "Chocolate! Mm-mm-mm! You want a piece?"

Blair's eyes widened as the package went over her head to the woman. "Klaus," she hissed, "isn't that special chocolate?"

"They're gonna be high as kites," he giggled.

Blair nodded. "Just keep calm, alright?"

The woman started dangling a packet of pills over Klaus' head tauntingly. "This could all be yours for the low, low price of telling us everything."

Klaus sighed. Blair could already see it.

He broke.

"Okay, fine," Klaus said, crying softly.

"No! No, Klaus doesn't know anything," Blair protested. "Klaus!"

The man stepped forward and duck-taped Blair's mouth shut. She screamed into the duck-tape but it only came out as a mere grunt. Her arms and legs yanked forward in their restraints as she tried to break free of her chair to little success.

"I don't— I don't know where Five is. I wasn't lying about that. But I can tell you that he's... hasn't— hasn't been making much sense since he came back."

"Elaborate," the man demanded.

"I... uh," Klaus stammered, "He's just... he's been acting like a— a— a lunatic. He's been sitting in this van in front of a— a lab or something, and... looking for the owner of an eyeball. One of those fake ones."

"That makes no sense."

The woman moved away from the window and stood in front of the two siblings. "Hold on, just hold on. Tell us more about this eye, and why is it so important?"

Blair yelled against her muffle, pulling Klaus' attention to her briefly. The woman reached forward and turned Klaus' head back to her face with excessive force.

"He said it had something to do with the end of times, or something," Klaus croaked.

"Well, Number Five knows now. We left him a message. And when he comes for you, we'll be ready."

Blair was over the interrogation. She was done with the torturing, she was done with it all. As the man moved to turn Blair's chair towards the front door, she glared at him. Allison always told Blair she hated when she glared at her because her eyes turned into a murderous dark color. Literally. It was like someone put a filter on her eyes that made the whole eye turn black. Like a demon.

The man was taken aback by it. While the rest of the Hargreeves family was used to it (even if they didn't like it), these newcomers knew nothing about Blair. They didn't know her powers, her abilities.

They were clueless.

Granted, Blair was also a little bit clueless. Her Father always emphasized the great power she had, but all Blair had ever been able to do was to make people see their worst fears. While that was cool, Blair didn't think it was a great power. For a while that had been bothering her. Maybe it wasn't that that was the 'great power' but something she had yet to discover.

Or maybe she was overreacting.

The lights were shut off and the curtains closed as the two kidnappers headed into the back part of the motel room. Klaus and Blair were left near the front as bait for Five, a lazy tactic but ultimately still useful. It had proved itself victorious in the past. Although, it did lack a finesse.

Blair faded into her thoughts. The silence made her think about everything: her past, her present, and her dismal looking future. Blair hated getting lost in her thoughts. She didn't want to think about the past. Blair hadn't even wanted to leave the past.

It was unfair. Blair had a great life going for her back then. She had a boyfriend, a steady job, a future in ballet, friends that would last a lifetime, and the entire world in the palm of her well manicured hand. Blair still didn't know why she popped into the present, but she missed the past. As much as she loved her blood family, she missed her real family.

"You went there again, didn't you?"

Blair bolted upright, eyes wide. First thought told her that maybe she was so sleep deprived that she could hear her subconscious chastising her for getting lost in her memories of the past, but then came the second reaction. Leaning against the cabinet by the doorway was Ben. Ben. The Ben that supposedly died many years even though Blair wasn't there for it and had never been told how it happened.

"Ben?" Blair whispered.

Ben looked up, his eyes just as wide as Blair's. "You can see me?"

"Yeah," Blair smiled. "Yeah, I can."

A woman screaming and pleading in Russian tore Blair's attention away. The two kidnappers seemed oblivious to the Russian woman and Ben, somehow. It was impossible. No one could scream as loudly and as vulgarly in Russian as that woman and not notify half the state. How had no one noticed her?

Ben, too, Blair supposed, but he's not swearing people out in Russian so I guess he's easier to miss.

"Klaus, can you see Ben, too?" Blair asked.

Klaus nodded. His whole body was shaking and tears were streaming down his face but he nodded and said, "yeah, I can. Why can you?"

"I don't know."

Klaus looked towards the Russian woman just as she turned and looked at them. The three siblings cringed and looked away as they saw the gunshot wound on the side of the woman's head.

"Look at her," Ben commanded. "At how she's looking at them."

Maybe Blair was hallucinating. Maybe she and Klaus were having a shared hallucination. Those things happened, right? The Dancing Plague was mass hysteria, and the Tanzania Laughter Epidemic as well. They were just hallucinating things from blood and sleep loss, right?

"She's one of their victims," Ben speculated. Klaus and Blair turned their heads to the woman. "We can use this..., go on. You haven't been this sober since you were a teenager, since you decided to keep the ghosts at bay. This is your chance, Klaus. To control them, to learn their secrets. Try to talk to her."

"Wait, can you always see this woman..., and... Ben?" Blair asked.

Ben nodded instead of Klaus. "That's why he took all those drugs. He didn't want to see all of the other ghosts."

"But you're... always here?" Blair asked. "Like when Klaus told Luther and Allison that you'd agree with him about Mom, you were there?"

"Yeah, the other ghosts only appear when Klaus' sober," Ben explained.

"So why can I see you?"

It went silent.

"Hi..., hi," Klaus smiled at the Russian woman. "Hi, uh, what's your name?"

The woman turned towards the three Hargreeves. "Zoya Popova."

"Oh! That's a lovely name," Klaus smiled. "And can you tell me what happened?"

The woman kidnapper leaned forward and snapped, "what happened is if you don't shut up, I'mma cut your tongue out with a grapefruit spoon."

"Zoya Popova," Klaus spat. "Old Russian broad, short, with a limp." He started laughing. "Oh, she's really pissed at you guys."

Blair still couldn't wrap her head around the whole thing. "So, this is real? You see dead people?"

Klaus pursed his lips. "Yep."

"And now I do too?"

"Yep."

Blair's confusion only grew from there. More and more dead people began to appear. It was like they were drawn to Klaus (and Blair, but she still didn't understand that). Eventually they had a full circle of pissed off dead people who wanted to contribute their five cents. It was gruesome, strange, and a little too much like some campy horror film. They were practically having a town meeting among dead people.

"She chopped my hands off and let me bleed to death in the bathtub."

"He took me to a temple, slashed my throat, watched me bleed out."

"She crept into my room, put a pillow over my face, and told me not to bother praying."

"They attached jumper cables to my nipples and shocked me for hours."

"He pretended to have car trouble, and when I stopped to help, he ran me over. Uh... forward, reverse. Then he saw my wife waiting for me in the car. She ran."

Over, and over, and over again came the gruesome tales of murder. Every mutilated, bloody, and crying person wanted to tell their story to the two shaking Hargreeves. Blair's head hurt listening to everyone, and she started to understand Klaus' never-ending need for drugs. How could someone listen to this all day every day? Blair had only been experiencing it for a little while an she already wanted to get high off her ass just to make it all stop.

"Just shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up," Klaus protested. "Everybody just..., everybody just shut up, please shut up. Jesus, you guys are worse than the drugs."

Blair shook her head as if it would get the stories out of her head before dropping it down to her lap.

"Car guy, where were you driving?" She asked, hoping that maybe it could distract her from some of the other stories she had heard.

"It's Jan Mueller and we were taking a trip in the Swiss Alps," he answered, a hint of a smile crossing his face.

Klaus looked up. "Swiss Alps, huh?"

The two assassins turned Klaus and Blair around silently.

"Which one are you? Cha-Cha or Hazel?" Klaus asked.

"Hazel," the man replied.

Blair nodded. "Hey, uh, do you remember Jan Mueller? Him and the wife were coming back from a ski trip in the Swiss Alps."

Cha-Cha's face brightened up in a surge of recollection. "I remember. Forward. Reverse."

"Yeah, that's it," Klaus chuckled. "Yeah! And his wife... escaped down an alleyway. He says to say thank you."

"What's he talking about?" Cha-Cha questioned Hazel.

"I don't know," the man lied.

Blair smiled at the man. "But..., you do? Don't you? Cause Jan told me to thank Hazel for having spared his wife, and I don't think there were any other Hazels there the night that you killed him."

Cha-Cha turned towards Hazel with a glare. "Bathroom. Now!"

The two assassins turned heel and went to go talk in the bathroom for privacy. Blair's smirk only grew as she thought about what would go down in that bathroom.

"Nicely done," Ben complimented.

"Thank you," the two siblings said consecutively.

The duck-tape over their mouths were put back on by the woman when she returned before she rejoined her partner in the bathroom for what was likely a severely uncomfortable conversation. When Cha-Cha was out of ear-shot, Blair and Klaus started scooting their chairs towards the door with very little grace. Blood and sweat coated the two siblings and they undeniably looked like a mess, but no one else would see how terrible they looked.

Klaus positioned himself in front of the curtains while Blair sat a few feet behind him. There was a figure passing outside the blinds that caught their eyes. Although any noise they attempted to make came out muffled and incoherent, the two siblings screamed into their duck-tape for hopes of catching the silhouette's attention.

Two seconds of screaming passed before the siblings realized that screaming wasn't the way to go. Blair took a deep breath and slammed her head onto the table by the door. Klaus quickly caught onto her plan and followed suit, their foreheads banging on the table in a disturbing symphony. After what felt like years of sobbing, groaning, and pain, the door opened with a click and a woman stepped into the room.

Blair wanted to smile desperately. Someone had heard them and was going to get them out. The psychos holding them hostage were weird people, and the whirlwind that was seeing dead people had distracted Blair from figuring a way out, but that didn't matter. Someone had come to save them.

"Are you Diego's siblings?" The woman asked calmly.

"Yeah," Klaus tried to say.

Her police badge glimmered in the rays of sunlight passing through the blinds while the officer said, "I'm Detective Patch."

Blair grunted into her duck-tape to catch the woman's attention and then gestured her head towards the bathroom. Patch nodded and held a finger in front of her lips to quiet the two Hargreeves. From her pocket she pulled out a knife and slashed through the restraints on Klaus before moving onto Blair.

With wobbly legs, Blair stood up. She gripped Klaus' arm in a feeble attempt to stay on her feet, and the searing pain from her knee came rushing back in tenfold. Patch pulled out her gun meanwhile and fired a shot at the bathroom where Hazel had peeked out to see what was happening.

Klaus and Blair dove behind the bed and crashed onto the floor. Blair's knee began to burn upon impact and she couldn't hold back the whimpers she had been fighting for hours. Cha-Cha had really fucked up her knee, hadn't she?

"Police! Drop the gun or you're going down!"

Blair couldn't see what was happening, but she heard a thud and a, "I'm coming out. Don't shoot."

"Hands behind your head, asshole," Patch snapped.

"Okay," Hazel agreed. "Just don't shoot."

While Blair was trying to safely peek over the bed and get a glimpse of the action, Klaus was pulling out the air vent cover and shaking Blair's shoulders. He gestured towards the open vent and pointed one finger at his sister. He turned the finger to point at himself before finally jutting it at the open vent.

It was easy to understand. They'd escape via air vent and hope Patch could take care of Hazel and Cha-Cha by herself. Blair saw no other choice but to follow her brother, even if she didn't feel totally comfortable with leaving Patch behind.

"Let's go," Klaus hissed, crawling into the air vent.

With one last look at the woman who saved her, Blair crawled her way into the air vent of freedom.

episode four : man on the moon