Title: Never Did Run Smooth
Author: Renata (renata at frowl dot org)
Fandom: Series of Unfortuate Events
Pairing: Klaus
Rating: PG
Notes: Spoilers through Grim Grotto. Seriously, turn back now if you haven't read that far.

Klaus had read about love, of course. It seemed to him that everyone wrote about love-- Shakespeare, Hemingway, Austen, Browning, Salinger, even Grisham, in his own way.

He thought, perhaps, there must be more than one kind of love. There must be the brief passion of Romeo and Juliet, there must be the sisterly love of Lizzie and Jane, there must be the quiet love of Anne and Gilbert, the doomed love of Cathy and Heathcliff. There was the supportive, partnership love of the Curies.

Klaus loved his sisters, and he had loved his parents. He had not loved Fiona, he knew that. They had been friends, and he had been sad to see her leave, and he had been saddened by her apparent betrayal, but he had not been in love with her.

Klaus loved books. Sometimes, he felt himself vaguely aware of a truth shimmering hesitantly around his consciousness, an idea so awful he could not even admit it to himself. Sometimes, he suspected he might miss the library the Baudelaires had left behind more than he missed his parents.

He couldn't possibly imagine telling Violet how he had felt. Violet, poor Violet, she had suffered more than he or Sunny. She missed their home and parents too, and she knew just how much responsibility rested on her thin shoulders. Klaus knew that he and Sunny would have been captured by Olaf a hundred times over if it weren't for Violet. Oh, yes, they all worked as a team, and he and Sunny could offer their assistance, but Violet was their clear leader. Violet was the one who had lost Quigley, Violet was the one who had to keep it all together, Violet was the one who quietly cried herself to sleep when she thought Klaus had already fallen asleep.

So what right did he have to complain about his lost books?

And yet-- in the same deep quiet place he knew about his loss-- he knew that books were more than just books. He knew that books were the way out, the way in.

But he couldn't find the words to explain this, so he was content to let everyone imagine that the reason he had been more quiet than usual was Fiona.

Get yourself free