Broken Masks

Chapter 37 - Alois

(A/N: Hi people! My Ipad, which I've been writing this book on, hasn't been playing ball for a while, which is why I haven't uploaded for ages, but I found a solution so chapters incoming! I've just started 6th form and, according to one of my new friends, I may have been adopting all the socially awkward people like an anxiety fuelled dad)

Klaus was being walked to a room deep in the basement of the police station. His guards, slightly less wary of him then before, walked around him in a circle as Lena, Tommy and TJ lead the procession to the evidence room where one of hell's worst torture devices lay in wait to slice into his brain. He could feel himself panicking slightly, but he kept taking long slow breaths in through his nose for five counts and out through his mouth for seven, just like his therapist had taught him too. It wasn't really working all that well, but even the little amount of comfort the breathing exercise gave him was help enough.

After two lift rides and a long flight of stairs, mixed with multiple long corridors, the small parade finally reached the room which made the hairs on the backs of everyone's necks stand on end. Klaus closed his eyes, trying to focus only on his breathing, but then snapped them open again when he felt a shadowy presence loom behind his closed eyelids.

"TJ..." Klaus whisper-shouted, his voice wavering with panic. Everyone snapped their heads to Klaus. Fingers moved to triggers as fast as a blink, and breaths were sucked like straws. Everyone knew Klaus was in the process of switching who was in front.

TJ quickly pushed through the terrified guards and grabbed Klaus by the face. He rested a hand of each cheek and forced Klaus to look up and into his eyes. Klaus's real eye, the eye filled with emotion, met his. It was burning with terror. The blonde smiled a small, reassuring smile, brushing his thumbs over the apples of Klaus's face, he whispered to him.

"Ok Klaus. Listen to me. You're strong; so, so strong. You can fight him- we can fight him. That side doesn't need to be here right now, and you don't want him here either. You can keep him down. I promise you."

Klaus screwed up his eyes for a moment, let out a small sob and fell forward into TJ, wrapping his arms around him as he shook.

"Klaus?" TJ asked carefully.

"Yeah... it's me."

Klaus heard Lena sigh in relief a few feet away, but he didn't move. Klaus needed his TJ, his light, his rock. The man grounded him to reality, to sanity. He held the darkness back, blocking it like a cork on a shaken bottle; inches from blowing, one tug from an explosion, but still secure and unmoving. Reliable.

TJ drew back slowly, searching Klaus's eyes for any sign of Machiavellian. There was none. Once he confirmed this, the blonde turned to Lena and nodded stiffly, and the tension that had been drowning every person in the group lifted. TJ went to draw away, but Klaus caught his hand before he could, and held it in both his own. His eyes had moved to the door before them, and his body trembled in fear.

With one final glance back at Klaus and TJ, Lena unlocked and pushed open the door. The darkness within seemed to seep out, carried by the cold breeze of stale air that fell out the opening. Reaching into the darkness, Lena clicked the light on, and Klaus's grip on TJ's hand tightened. There, sitting squat like a great, dark toad, coated in dust and a strange oily substance, was a transfusion setter. It's sweeping metal frame, it's rigid dentist chair, its unforgiving leather restraints. This was the machine that created Klaus. Created Machiavellian. The machine that broke Alois.

And Klaus was horrified.

He clamped his hand over his mouth, bile rising in his throat, and a sound pushed past his lips. A voice that he hadn't heard in years. A tiny, child-like, innocent voice.

"No...", Alois whimpered.

TJ's jaw fell open, staring at the man- the boy beside him. TJ has known Klaus for years, and never in all that time had he heard this voice. He watched as the raven seemed to shrink into himself; his mannerisms morphed into something TJ had never seen before. Klaus wasn't there anymore, but neither was Machiavellian. The person before him was the one who came before.

Within his mind, Alois stood alone in the dark. He had never once, in his time sharing a mind with Klaus and Machiavellian, left the room he had made for himself. He had watched through the keyhole in the door, the cracks in the walls, at everything the other alters had done. He cried when Machiavellian killed, he screamed in frustration when Klaus lied. And he fell in love with the man he never spoke to.

He was an innocent Klaus, a scared Klaus, an honest Klaus. A Klaus never tormented by Machiavellian.

He was Alois.

"No... don't wanna..." Alois murmured, curling into TJ's side, his hands clamping the blonde's like a vice, his legs becoming weak and his weight falling completely against him. He turned and looked up at TJ, and his eye seemed to widen, sparkling with wonder. "You're even more beautiful in real life..." he whispered to the blonde. TJ seemed to freeze, as a pale pink crawled up his neck and to the tips of his ears.

It was Lena who came forward. She did what TJ had done; taking Alois' face in her hands, she got the boy to look her in the eyes.

"Hello Alois," she whispered, her voice comforting and warm, "Do you know who I am?"

Alois nodded, tears starting to leak from his one working eye.

"Hi Lena..." he mumbled, his face shy and nervous as he seemed to try and hide it in TJ's side.

"I don't think I've met you before, and I wish I could have more time to get to know you right now..."

"But you want to find your Jess," Alois finished.

"Alois... I don't want to put you in that horrible machine. So I want you to go back. Let Klaus do this. You're fragile, I have to protect you. Let go, let Klaus take over. Go to sleep..."

Alois' eyes slowly closed, and his body slumped. TJ grasped him round the waist, preventing his fall. After a moment, the raven's eyes opened and he straightened up. The childish innocence in his eyes was gone, and his posture changed back to that of Klaus.

"What..." he started, furrowing his brow as he tried to remember what happened.

"Klaus?" Lena asked cautiously.

"Yeah?" He responded, his confusion still prevalent on his face.

"We just met Alois."