—we only see each other at weddings and funerals—

Klaus Hargreeves had been that one child who found fun in (almost) every situation. No matter how serious and life-threatening it was, Klaus would crack a joke—and Elna would laugh.

From an early age, there was this very special friendship between Elna and Klaus, because the two of them were responsible for almost all the pranks and stupidities at the Academy. You could be pretty sure that nightly breakouts, alcohol and wet toilet paper in Luther's shoes was either Klaus' or Elna's idea (sometimes also Diego's, but he had never been as creative as Klaus or Elna) and that you could find them giggling somewhere in one of their rooms.

There was also the fact that both of them had pretty quickly given up trying to be Dad's favorite child. He was too mean, too demanding, too beastly and everything they did was always wrong anyway. So they had decided relatively quickly to separate themselves from Dad and dance around on his nose (as best they could, at least). And after humiliating and horrible confrontations with Dad, they comforted each other and somehow always found ways to cheer each other up.

Now a grown-up and smoking Klaus was sitting in Dad's holy desk chair with his dirty shoes lying on the even holier desk, while a little Elna ran up to him.

"Klaus, that's incredible, you are good!" she cried and threw her arms around his neck, while he struggled not to fall off his chair.

"'Good' would be a bit euphoric, but I'm still alive and I'll take that as a win," he mumbled with his cigarette between his teeth as he wrapped his arms around Elna's back.

"Yes, yes," she replied, giggling and straightening up again.

Demonstrating Klaus knocked his shoes together so that a few crumbs of dirt landed on the desk before taking his feet off the table and sitting up straighter.

"Elna, Elna, you look fantastic!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, well, I know that very much," she grinned cheekily and turned in a circle, "But how could I ever top you?"

"Naw," Klaus smacked a kiss in her direction. "Oh, but Elna, your skirt—just fantastic!"

Giggling, she smoothed it out.

"And, maybe I'm high, but, my goodness, you look like you're  sixteen."

"Eighteen, actually."

"Whatever. Comes down to the same, huh?"

"If I got a dollar every time I was told that today, I'd have enough right now to afford two scoops of ice cream." Elna shrugged irrelevantly and took a seat on the old desk. "Essential oils on your face and oatmeal with cucumbers for breakfast. This mixture does the trick, trust me."

She winked at him and grinned to herself.

"Cucumbers? Really? Some Johnny recently told me that tomatoes are supposed to give you a youthful glow," Klaus stroked his face as if he was in one of those skin cream commercials, "But he must have been bullshitting me, because he actually tried to sell me a fly swatter as a tennis racket."

She asked herself for what on earth Klaus needed a tennis racket, but then remembered, that it's Klaus. So in response, Elna just smiled cheekily.

"Luther should try out your tip. As much as he frowns," Klaus spread his arms for a 'wide' stature and mimicked Luther, "Look at me, I'm Number One and we're never allowed to have fun, just like Dad always says!"

She laughed out loud at this imitation, "I've already recommended yoga to him to relax a bit."

"That would be a good start too!" Klaus exclaimed and fell back into his chair with a swing.

"But tell me," Elna poked him in the side with her foot and then let her feet dangle over the edge of the table, "how have the last few years been without my radiant and enchanting presence?"

Klaus lazily rolled his head over one shoulder in Elna's direction and cried out, "Terribly, of course! I didn't know where to go with me," he sniffed theatrically, "And you called so rarely..."

Elna giggled as she watched his melodramatic performance. It really was so incredibly great to see him again, she realized. And she could tell especially by the fact that she couldn't get the grin off her face when she spoke to him like that.

"You haven't even answered most of my calls."

"Touché, touché..."

A few minutes passed, during which Elna looked at her brother, the office, her shoes (there was in fact an ugly, large stain on the new red shoes!) and then back at Klaus with a lazy smile. Klaus, in turn, had stood up and was looking around the musty room. At this point, you might have wondered what ideas he had come up with, but Elna wasn't really bothered by that — she knew him well and therefore was pretty sure what he was looking for.

"Maybe look in the desk, old Reggie's probably got a few expensive things stowed away there," she said and jumped off the table.

"You know me too well," Klaus sighed with watery eyes.

But before he crawled under the table, he gave Elna one last tight hug, ruffled her hair and then disappeared under the tabletop.

———————.+*•.•*+.———————

December 7th, 2001

When Klaus Hargreeves woke up, it was bright. Too bright. Then something clicked and it was dark again.

"You're awake at last," whispered a twelve-year-old Elna with two braids, who was sitting on the edge of Klaus' bed and waving a flashlight in front of his face. "You snore, by the way."

Klaus blinked in confusion, rubbed his eyes, looked like he was about to fall asleep again and blinked again.

"What a lovely way to wish someone a good morning," he commented.

For a moment, the girl scowled at him before jumping off the bed and yanking the covers off him.

"HEY-"

"Shhhhhh!"

He threw a pillow.

She turned the flashlight back on and shone it directly in his face. Defeated and groaning, he fell back onto his pillow, pressing his hands to his face.

"Don't be like that now! It's two in the morning and I'm hungry for donuts at Griddy's," she whispered aggressively. "And so are you!"

Finally, the horrible bright light went out again.

When the boy heard this, he suddenly straightened up, this time wide awake and with a big grin on his face. Break out and eat donuts? Of course Elna could get him excited about that. Although she was sure it was more the breaking out thing that appealed to him.

He smacked her arm as he stood up, " Why didn't you say so right away?"
In response, Elna giggled to herself and said, "Get dressed, I'm going to get Five out of his sweet dreams"

She herself was dressed almost presentably. She had a scarf and coat on over her nightgown, and thick black tights over which she had pulled two different socks. One was bright yellow with sunflowers and the other was a shorter white sock with 'I love NYC' written on it. On top of that, she had her shoes in her hand to make it easier to sneak across the floorboards.

"Aye, aye, captain!"

With a mischievous grin, she quietly skipped out of the room and into the hallway to wake up Five. She knew pretty well why she was goading Klaus into such a strictly forbidden excursion, but why she was asking Five second of all people was a mystery. The chances of him using a creative paraphrase to tell her how stupid she was and then going back to sleep were pretty high, and maybe that was simply why she wanted to wake him up—to annoy him.

But maybe Elna honestly wanted him to come with them, because she liked him pretty much (and she was convinced he did too and just didn't want to admit it because he was too stubborn to do so).

"Five," she whispered.

"Five!" she whispered louder, "Wake up!"

Elna now stood in front of his bed and watched as he grumbled quietly and then went on with sleeping.

Then the second pillow of the night flew.

He woke up like a startled animal and sat bolt upright in bed, "What the-"

"Happy awakening, I hope you had a fantastic sleep," she said smiling.

Five groaned, rubbed an exasperated hand over his face and mumbled, "until just now, yes, and then you decided to terrorize my brain—what do you want?"

Unimpressed, Elna continued smirking, "Donuts. And you're coming with us."

Five squinted his eyes uncomprehendingly as he stared at her for a few seconds, probably trying to understand why this was so important to wake him up. "No," he then said, "no, I'm not."

"Oh, yes you do."

"No."

The light came on again and Elna used the same trick she had just used on Klaus, blinding Five mercilessly with the flashlight. He groaned in pain, squeezed his eyes shut and slapped his pillow over his face to avoid going blind (what a drama queen he was, Elna thought). 

"Have some fun and get dressed."

"You ass," he mumbled into his pillow.

Less than an hour later, three twelve-year-olds with no money were sitting at Griddy's eating donuts.

———————.+*•.•*+.———————

Now a grown-up Elna stood in front of the portrait of the thirteen-year-old Five and he looked exactly as she remembered. She almost thought he was about to make one of his snarky comments and she missed him. She really missed him and again the nagging feeling of hopelessness came over her because there never had been even the slightest trace of his whereabouts. It was terrible.

A few minutes passed as she stood silently in front of the painting. Memories of the time that hadn't been long ago for her circled in her head and she wondered what would have happened if he hadn't disappeared. He was as good as her best friend, next to Klaus of course. Although they couldn't have been more different to some observers, something held them together. Elna sometimes didn't know exactly what it was herself.

Five had always been the intelligent, structured, straightforward thinker. Everything he did was logical and the things he didn't logically need were a waste of time. Elna, on the other hand, was absolute chaos. Everything she did was impulsive, followed no concept and most of the time she was just out to create anything out of something—be it good ideas or stupid things.

But she listened to him when he talked about time travel and scribbled complicated calculations on the wall of his room, that she would never understand. And he also listened to her when she made up stories again and spun whole biographies about people she had seen once in her life.

And now he's gone. And Elna sighed.

"Luther wants to have a family talk in five minutes. Down here."

Startled, Elna gasped and whirled around in the direction the small voice had come from.

" Jesus, Vanya, you scared me!"

The woman addressed touched the back of her neck in shame and spoke shyly, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"No, no, it's all right! Stop apologizing," she replied placatingly and took a few steps towards her.

"Oh, I'm sorry for apologizing so much," she sounded unsure as ever, "wait, no, sorry for that- no..."

Vanya sighed. "It's good to see you again."

Elna smiled wryly and nodded when she heard that. Vanya really hadn't changed much. "I think it's good to see you again, too."

An awkward silence took over their conversation and stuck tenaciously between them. Seconds that felt like minutes passed and Elna didn't know what to say because it was Vanya standing in front of her.

It was true, she had really missed her and she was really glad to see her again, but they were too estranged. After Elna had left the Academy, she had spoken to Vanya once on the phone and it had been an awkward conversation, filled with the kind of trivial questions you ask when you don't know what to talk about. And because they had never really been close, neither of them had necessarily felt the need to repeat such a conversation.

Well, and then Vanya had published the book. Of course Elna had read it and she didn't really know whether she should be upset by it or not, because she was actually right about quite a lot of things. Still, it wasn't her favorite book.

Vanya fiddled nervously with her fingers and let her eyes wander around the room while Elna watched her and pressed her mouth together. Awkward tension.

"I read your book" That was a horrible way to restart the conversation.

"Oh... yeah," Vanya laughed in embarrassment, but she didn't apologize for it right away, "I understand if you thought it was stupid, really-"

"No, no. It's all pretty true, huh?"

"Yes, quite. I don't know what I was thinking, it was..." she looked at the floor, swallowed as she thought and looked Elna in the face again, „it was just out of emotion."

Perhaps she was expecting some kind of profound reaction from Elna, given the way Vanya was looking at her, but Elna just had the same expression on her face that she always had when she looked at people distantly—a tilted head and almost dreamy eyes.

"It's okay," she responded, shrugging her shoulders.

"Elna, I'm sorry-"

"Apologize again and I'll throw a jam sandwich at you," she suddenly grinned cheekily and had no idea how she came up with the jam sandwich (she was hungry).

Vanya's insecure expression turned into a more relaxed smile, which didn't mean that her embarrassment disappeared.

"Come here" Elna spread her arms invitingly and walked towards her. This was followed by a hesitant but then warm hug that lasted longer than one would have thought. There was still a strange tension that couldn't be chased away—but at least it loosened up a little.

"You're the first one who hasn't said anything about my age," Elna mumbled into Vanya's neck, to which she just giggled.

"Naw, what a sweet reunion!" Klaus' voice rang out as he entered the huge living room for the following family gathering.

And Elna broke away from Vanya to stick her tongue out at Klaus.

Diego followed behind, throwing one of his knives in front of him, and threw himself onto one of the sofas that were dotted around the room. He completely ignored Vanya and Elna's presence and stared annoyed out of the window. When Luther also came in and sat down on the sofa with his (as usual) far too serious face and far too tight posture, Vanya also moved hesitantly towards the seating options.

Meanwhile, Klaus had shuffled to the bar at the other end of the room and started to make himself a drink.

"Elna, sweetie, do you want a drink, too?" he shouted across the hall.

"Oh, yes!" she warbled and jumped towards the sofa where Vanya was sitting. She dropped onto it and grabbed a cushion to hug it to her—for whatever reason.

"You can't seriously be drinking now. It's Dad's funeral and you have to act like this?" Of course that came from Luther.

"Well, he never really cared about us either, did he? Then why should I?" Elna tilted her head, a lazy smile on her lips, "Besides, my coming here today is gesture enough, I think."

Luther was about to protest, but Allison walked in and sat down on a chair, and he stifled his speech. That was more than fine with Elna.

This was followed by a few moments of the most uncomfortable silence Elna had experienced since her arrival at the Academy today—and there had already been quite a few in that short time. No one wanted to start talking and the only sounds that filled the thick silence were the clattering, clinking and pouring that Klaus made at the bar.

So off they went to an extremely harmonious family get-together, which everyone, but especially Elna, was looking forward to very much. Ha-ha. (She thought of cute raccoons to block out the following conversation—with more or less success...)

——————————————————

A/N: My, my, the second chapter already...

Word count: ca. 2730