Chapter Text
After the swapping fiasco, Reginald, having seen it all on the camera in Four's room, forced them into special training where they would practice swapping places despite Four's fear of being inside the mirror. They also worked on the time it took for Eight to move from mirror to mirror. After many training sessions, they figured out that Eight could, indeed, go inside almost any reflective surface. Some of them messed up his voice, depending on how reflective a surface was. The only thing he had trouble with was liquids because of how much they moved.
By age nine, Four discovered additional powers. He could move things without touching them (Reginald called that telekinesis), and levitate. Their father was sure Four had also managed to possess One, at some point, too, when he'd gotten annoyed with their brother. For some reason, his new powers only worked when he wasn't wearing socks and shoes, though, which meant Four thus wandered the house without his shoes most of the time.
Unfortunately for Four, new powers also meant more training and a lot more trips to the mausoleum.
At the age of twelve, seven of the children got tattoos on their wrists to symbolise the Umbrella Academy. The only one not to get a tattoo was Seven because she didn't have powers and she would never go on missions with them. Reginald even went so far as to have Eight and Four swap places so the former could also get his tattoo. The boys almost refused, but Reginald threatened to destroy every mirror in the house.
When they were thirteen, they went on their first mission. It went really well and Eight met them at the bank they were supposed to go to and stood on lookout with Four. With being in any reflective surface he could find, he was able to inform the others of any bad guys that were hiding or simply unaware of the Academy's arrival.
The mission went surprisingly well. One, Two, Three, and Five took out the first few robbers whilst Six used his extra 'limbs' to get rid of the last few hiding out in another room. When it was all over, they let the hostages go and followed them out to be met with a hoard of reporters and civilians desperate to know what was going on.
Reginald announced to the public who they were and with that, cameras everywhere went off. They were allowed half an hour to answer questions from the reporters and the public. Everyone loved them.
A month later, Four had fallen down the stairs wearing Grace's heels and broken his jaw. After getting it wired shut to let it heal, he figured out that drugs kept the ghosts at bay, and that's when he started sneaking out at night to find people in dark parts of town that would sell to a kid. He pawned a lot of Reginald's valuables in order to get cash for his habit.
It was almost a year after their first public mission when Five disappeared. It happened at dinner when Five struck up another argument with Reginald about the possibility of time travel. As always, Reginald told him no because time travel was too unpredictable, but Five wouldn't accept that and had run away. He didn't return.
Four fell further into drugs than before and none of the others were sure it was just because of the ghosts anymore.
When they turned fourteen, which wasn't long after Five's disappearance, Reginald had Mom name them. As in, a proper name. Not just a number. The children were overjoyed by this fact and could hardly contain themselves when it was time to get their new names.
Mom started with One, as expected, and made her way to the end of the line where Vanya stood shyly with a mirror in her hands facing away from her so everyone could see Eight.
The names were as such; Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Ben, Vanya, and Alexander, or Alex as he preferred to be called. Apparently Mom had chosen popular names originating from the countries the children were born in. Klaus and Alex were from Germany. But that didn't matter to them, though, because they had real names!
At nineteen, Ben died. Well, he didn't die so much as the Horrors inside his stomach had killed him. According to the mission report from Luther, he had lost control of the tentacles and they'd ruthlessly torn him apart.
A week later, Reginald put up a statue in the courtyard in honor of Ben and held a small, short ceremony where the children were given the privilege to grieve.
It took one more week for Ben to appear to Klaus. He didn't look like the way he'd died, unlike all of the other ghosts. Ben told him he'd learned to hide it because he didn't want to upset Klaus.
The next day, Klaus left the Academy. He packed small bag full of things he could sell for drugs, along with a few items of clothes and a mirror. With his headphones around his neck, he crept out of the house in the dead of night and didn't return.
The first thing he did was find a party. A big one where he wouldn't be able to hear the ghosts or Ben trying to convince him to go back home and reconsider.
A couple of hours into arriving at the the party, he was approached by a handsome man wearing a white tank top and black skinny jeans. The man had apparently seen Klaus from across the bar and had thought him quite handsome himself.
Klaus woke up in his bed the next day.
A year after leaving home, Klaus had found another attractive male whose home he could crash at. He did so under the facade of being with said attractive male. He didn't particularly like the guy- he was too controlling- but he did make the most fantastic osso bucco.
And then he was homeless. Freelancing, he preferred to call it. How could you live a good life if you had things like a house tying you down? Occasionally he would sleep with someone when it got too cold (Ben and Alex didn't approve) or he would check himself into rehab just for a place to stay during the winter, but other than that, he slept on the streets or got himself so high he passed out someplace and woke up in another.
That's how it was for Klaus (and Ben and Alex because they didn't want to leave their brother the way he was, whether they could leave or not.
Sometimes Klaus would swap places with Alex just so his brother could find him a decent motel to stay at or to get him some food when he was too exhausted to move, but when he didn't want to, he kept a pocket mirror on hand for the company (even if he wouldn't admit that aloud).
Life was tough for Klaus, to say the least. He was technically homeless and most days he was too busy funding his drug habit to remember to eat, but, somehow, he was managing to get by.