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1.
The statue goes up four days after the funeral.
It is unfinished, with no face, no plaque, no name. It is brass and marble and stone, dead things being built to pay respects to a dead boy.
It is too soon.
2.
When they arrive for breakfast the next morning, six identical plates wait for them at the table.
“Mom,” Vanya is the one to speak, uncomfortable as she stares at the empty side of the table. Klaus’ plate will go untouched, seeing as he hasn’t set foot outside his room, but the sixth...
“Eat your breakfast,” their mother insists, ignorant of their discomfort. Diego and Vanya exchange awkward looks across the table and Luther’s already reaching over to take the eggs from the sixth plate onto his own, avoiding eye contact with Mom.
No one knows what to say, but eventually, Dad sighs from the head of the table.
“She just requires a minor programming tweak,” he assures, waving it off as if they aren’t discussing the fact that she’d made a plate for their dead brother. He guides her away to his study when breakfast is done and Vanya’s stomach twists with something sharp and ugly. She’s wondering if Dad has ever thought about rewriting Mom’s code to forget her, too.
The next day, there are only five plates set down on the table at breakfast and Mom smiles warmly as she does it, like nothing is wrong.
The empty spot with no plate is so much worse, like that pit of grief inside of her has been given teeth.
“Eat up!” says Mom. “You children need to grow up big and strong.”
All of them but Ben, thinks Vanya, and stares at the empty spot all breakfast, trying not to look at Dad and wonder how he could be so heartless to write Ben out of Mom’s coding so quickly and easily.
3.
“Is he...?”
Luther glances towards the ceiling when Allison trails off, towards Klaus’ room where heavy thumping shakes the floorboards. He’s dancing or jumping or trying to bring the house down. Maybe it’s all three.
“Yeah. I don’t think he’s come out of his room since...”
“The funeral.”
They’re thick as thieves standing together in the parlor, exchanging their whispered secrets like it’s not allowed. In a way, it isn’t. Dad would never permit weakness amidst his number 1 and 3, and gossiping about how Klaus is handling things isn’t dignified.
“Should we do something?”
Luther’s grief hangs heavy on his shoulders, but it’s not sadness that he registers most. It’s the selfish flame trying to kindle itself into a fire and make noise about what he needs. He doesn’t want to think about Klaus or Ben, he doesn’t want to face Dad’s disappointment that he let Ben die.
He wants…
No, he needs.
He reaches out and squeezes Allison’s hand in his, carefully, and gives her a pleading look.
Upstairs, it asks. It asks, Please?
Allison, whose words are so powerful, doesn’t need to utter a single sound to knock the breath out of Luther. She squeezes his hand and leads him upstairs, clearly looking for her own escape and he’s so glad that he’s not the only one being selfish right now.
They’ll get Klaus out tomorrow.
4.
“Children! Come, pose for the new portrait!”
“Are you fucking kidding...?” Diego exhales the words under his breath as Pogo presses the domino mask into his hand apologetically. His fingers tighten on it and he ignores Dad’s heartless demand, knowing there’s no way it’s happening today, because there’s no way they’re digging Klaus out from the mountain of whatever drugs he’s taken.
Diego needs to focus on something, anything, before he goes crazy and takes it out on Dad.
“Pogo. Where’s Ben’s...?”
His fingers tighten on his mask, thinking of the last time he’d seen Ben’s domino mask, how it had ripped nearly in half, stained crimson.
Pogo looks away and Diego feels his heart sink.
“Did you throw it away?”
“I’m afraid Klaus wouldn’t allow that. It’s with him.”
He doesn’t want to think about the shrine that must be piling up in there. Maybe Ben’s books, his clothes, his schoolwork. Diego wants to protest that he needs something to mourn his brother too, Klaus can’t take it all. He’s halfway up the stairs to pound on Klaus’ door so that he can demand the mask back when he thinks about Ben.
What would Ben want? What would Ben do?
Pounding his fist on Klaus’ door, Diego closes his eyes and lets his temple rest against it. “Klaus!” he shouts, and when he breathes in, he tries not to think about the last time he’d seen Ben and how little he’d wanted to go on that mission. He didn’t want to be a hero, he just wanted to live his life and have his brothers. “If you need to, listen, if you need someone to talk to about B…”
He stops. He’s frozen.
The letter dies on his lips.
“About B…”
Picture the word in your mind, he hears Mom say, but he doesn’t want to.
That just means seeing Ben again and he’s not sure he’s ready for that. Diego closes his eyes tightly and ignores the tears on his cheeks. See it, sound it out. See it, and then get it out. “If you want to talk about Ben,” he says, and he’s picturing his brother this time, but not the last time he’d seen him. He’s thinking about Ben when they all went for ice cream and Ben spent the whole time with his nose stuck in a book while Diego and Klaus flirted with every pretty girl that passed. “I’m right here.”
The only response is the slow shuffle of a body against fabric, like someone restlessly tossing and turning in bed, so at least Diego knows that Klaus is alive. Still, he doesn’t come to the door and he doesn’t let Diego in. Somewhere inside, Ben’s mask will remain, buried under whatever other junk Klaus has accumulated.
“Fine,” he mutters, not sure why he expected anything else. “Be that way.”
Fingers clenching and tightening on his knives, Diego heads outside before the sound of Dad’s voice makes one of them veer just too close for comfort near the old man’s jugular, because Ben wouldn’t want that.
5.
The baggie of heroin is calling his name.
“Klaus.”
He’s in that dangerous spot between coming down from the high, but not being entirely sober enough to take another hit, but what does it matter if he goes? Now that Five is gone and so’s Ben, it only makes sense for one of them on the ends to follow suit, so it’s down to him and Vanya and he’s pretty confident about his odds on this one.
He’s been high since the funeral. That cacophony of noise from the graveyard had sent him right into the blissful waiting arms of Happy Heroin, taking away every last voice until blissful silence.
It should be him and not Vanya who goes. Then, he and Ben and Five can hang out and do whatever it is ghost brothers do.
“Klaus!”
“I hear you, sweetheart, Daddy is coming,” he promises the little baggie, crawling on the floor to retrieve it. His body feels as if it weighs three hundred pounds and it’s all grief, filling up every crevice. He’s full of death and ghosts and grief and when he finally clasps the baggie, he finds himself staring at a pair of shoes.
Someone’s here to lecture him.
He takes his time peering upwards, cautious to find out who’s interrupted his blissful romp through the early stages of grief. When he does, grief turns to anger and confusion.
It’s Ben, standing there in a pair of jeans and his favorite hoodie, staring down at him with disappointment and so much sadness that Klaus wonders if he’s started leaking it out and now it's affecting other people -- other Bens.
“Ben,” he exhales.
He shivers and shakes, stumbling to his feet. Of course, Dad lied to them, of course Ben didn’t die on the mission it was all just a training exercise and that bastard made them believe that Ben was gone, while he was probably sitting in the basement eating the peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches Vanya put out. Klaus has never been able to summon Five, so why would he see Ben?
Ipso facto, ergo hippo, Ben’s not dead.
He’s not. He’s not, he’s not, he’s....
“Klaus.”
If he shuts his eyes tightly enough, Klaus doesn’t have to look at him. His cheeks are still salty, but he stopped crying four days ago when the casket sank down into the ground. He’s been high since then because he can’t take the ghosts. He’s high and that means that Ben is here and alive.
“You know I’m not,” Ben says.
“Shut up, Ben,” Klaus hisses, right up until he hears himself. “No, wait, don’t,” he pleads, a sudden turn when he worries that Ben will do just that – shut up and disappear and leave him alone (again). He reaches out to touch him, but he can’t. His hand goes right through him and Klaus’ whole body convulses, a swallowed sob trapped with nowhere to go.
Dead, dead, dead.
“You’re dead.”
“You’re high.”
“And yet, here you are,” Klaus says, in awe and wonder. If anyone could somehow manage to break through the barriers Klaus had erected around his abilities, of course it would be Ben. “You must really give a shit about me to be here.”
“Maybe.” He sounds uncomfortable, like he always did when Luther or Dad wanted him to use his powers, but then, that’s just Ben for you. “Or maybe it’s the other way around.”
Stuck in this détente, Klaus’ grip on the bag slips away and he stares at him with the wonder and the fear of a young boy who isn’t sure if he’s having a dream or a nightmare (and worse, not sure which one he’d prefr). Dad always did want him to have more imaginary friends, didn’t he?
He could banish him away. He could send Ben packing and risk never seeing him again. Or, he could give in to this terrifyingly bad idea and let Ben carve out a spot for himself in Klaus’ life. It would be nice to have some company out there, on the junkie road. Besides that, he’s not ready to let go. He’s not ready to wake up and face the day without Ben and what’s he supposed to do? Suddenly become Diego’s BFF? Sit around and talk boys with Allison (he’s tried that, she doesn’t like it).
So, given the choice, Klaus knows which one he’s taking.
“Yeah,” Klaus agrees, his laugh high, slumping back against the cushions as he stares at Ben with wonder. “Okay. Ground rules...”
6.
The statue is finished.
“I don’t really look like that, do I?”
Dragging his suitcase behind him, not bothering to look back at the house he’s fleeing, Klaus barely pauses, cigarette still dangling from his lip. “He probably has one for each of us in the basement waiting to go, half-finished and making us all look ugly. At least you got a good quote.”
“May the darkness within you find peace in the light?” Ben’s face twists up, unimpressed. “I’m pretty sure that’s about the tentacles.”
“May they find peace fucking whoever’s stomach they’re plunging out of these days,” Klaus intones, hefting up his suitcase and hissing for Ben to get a move on before Dad does something ridiculous like lock him in an even bigger, darker, scarier mausoleum to teach him some kind of lesson.
Ben follows after him like a good little duckling, eager to please (as ever).
“So. Where are we going?”
We.
Klaus knows a tether when he feels one. He can feel its grappled hooks digging into him. No matter how much liquor or drugs or poison he pumps into his body, he knows that he’s going to have Ben there with him. He even suspects that it’ll be on purpose and that he’s actually doing something with his abilities for once.
With his dead brother in tow, Klaus is staring down the barrel of acceptance and decides fuck it. Ben’s dead, but he’s not going anywhere just yet. There’s a whole world out there to see and so many drugs to do in it.
“Let’s go see a movie,” Klaus says. “And get some, what do you think, pancakes? No. Waffles. Everyone loves waffles.”
Fuck acceptance. Acceptance has never met Klaus Hargreeves and should yield to aptly named step number six in the stages of grief - Ben.