Always Remember Us This Way | Klapollo

4. (!)

A/N: (!)= mature/triggering content. This chapter contains mentions of death, suicide, alcohol use, and mentions of vomit.

XX

If Klavier could, be swore that he would take it all back, and find a way to change things.

He knew that every addict and alcoholic of any caliber thought that, but how could he not? His life was run by something that he shouldn't even have to deal with.

He wished that he could go back to that first sip, and tell himself that it wasn't the way to cope. He didn't know any better, he saw his father do it, and so it was all he knew to do. Even if his father had fallen from grace, and was awful to be around, Klavier didn't think that would happen to him. After his father died, it didn't really matter.

He felt idiotic now. Kristoph had warned him. He even tried to break Klavier of the habit when it first began. Sneaking in his room, trying to obtain the bottles that he had hid under his bed. Klavier thought that it was an amazing hiding place, but Kristoph knew him much better than that.

It was hard not to fall into alcoholism, even when he had seen the repercussions first hand.

After his father had passed, right in the living room, things had changed. Not that they were very amazing before, but at least nobody was dead. Death made things even worse.

Everybody knew that the day was coming, Klavier knew that his father was going to wind up dead soon, but he never expected it to be in the way that he did.

Their mom had left for the day, he forgot for what now, but she wasn't home and able to help. Now, Klavier assumed that she just needed to get away for a bit. Both kids were asleep at the time that it had happened.

They both weren't expecting a thing, until they heard their mother's piercing scream at an ungodly hour, and they rushed out of their bunk bed.

"Klavier! Kristoph! Go back to your room. Please." She pleaded, her voice breaking and cracking. "You don't have to see this. Please."

Klavier has caught a glimpse, though. A glimpse of something that would continue to haunt him for years to come.

His father's body, a pool of vomit near him, his skin a strange blue-ish hue. A couple bottles were next to him, of course empty. Bottles that were once full before. Things had gotten bad before, but obviously it had never been this extreme.

Once he and Kristoph rushed back to their room, he had cried and told his brother what he had seen.

"What happened to him? Why would he look like that?" Klavier was only about ten years old at the time, his brother was thirteen. Klavier was still quite naive and optimistic about things even when they were bad, to this day he wished that the trait was still a part of him. Back then, he had no idea about what he had seen.

Kristoph did, though. He didn't want to break the news to Klavier. He wasn't sure if it was death exactly, or if he had just passed out, but he knew that something was very wrong. "I don't know." The older boy lied, not able to bring himself to go back to bed. Neither of them did, not until the paramedics arrived and announced that their father had died.

Their mother had never really given them that many details. Later on, they discovered it was alcohol poisoning. He had a major breakdown, for reasons that they'll never be completely positive on, and ended up consuming more than his body could handle, which was especially bad because there was damage already done. Either way, his body just gave up. It finally had enough. It was only a matter of time, nothing was going to change.

Klavier thought a lot about how he was asleep in his bed while his father was dying, and he wondered if Kristoph felt it too.

The Gavin house always had a negative aura about it. Klavier couldn't recall a time when things were REALLY happy. His early days as a child maybe, but he barely remembered that. For as long as he knew, his entire house functioned in a way that could only be described as dysfunctional, toxic, and unhealthy.