Chapter Text
When Klaus finally wakes again it’s with a heavy state of lethargy weighing his body down. It feels like he’s coming down from a particularly good high, drugs leaving his body feeling entirely drained but not in a way that feels numb.
His eyelids feel glued together in a way that makes him wonder whether he’d been using arts and crafts, or whether it’s blood. Probably neither – it’s usually neither, just the gunk from his eyes that has been filtered from his eyes in some nasty way.
Nose wrinkling, Klaus lifts a hand up to his eyes and rubs away whatever pressure is holding his eyes closed and hears movement coming closer to him as he does.
“Klaus,” Ben says, voice quiet and soft.
Klaus rubs at his eyes, feeling wires in his hand and faintly wonders if Diego gave up and sent him to the hospital after all. They’d been in his car, hadn’t they? He and Ben had reached Diego’s car and then Diego had seen Ben and–
He opens his eyes.
–And oh, of course, they’re in the house of nightmares. The home they’d been raised in. He meets Ben’s gaze and offers a small smile to his brother. It’s weird to think that he’s been real all along because that means that…
Klaus lets out a slow breath, glance flickering from his brother and down to the cannula in his arm. There are some things he’s ready to think about and other things that he’s not. Ghosts? Yeah, not on the fucking list of ‘thoughts he wants to focus on’.
“Hey Ben,” Klaus breathes. His throat feels too dry, like he’s smoked and smoked without any drinks in between. He’s done it before, gone through the motions and left the skin dry enough that it feels like it’s cracking.
Klaus really isn’t about that life. The feeling sucks and he doesn’t like it.
“You sound horrible,” Ben says, and Klaus is pretty sure he says it just to hear the faint huff of amusement as Klaus raises an eyebrow at him. Ben offers him a faint smile, before his gaze lowers from Klaus’ face. Klaus dips his chin to follow his line of sight.
Oh hey, hadn’t he been wearing a shirt before all this?
“Mom patched you up,” Ben explains, as Klaus takes in the bandages binding his chest. Aren’t they supposed to be white, bandages? These are a cream colour and Klaus can’t help but poke at them slightly with his hand.
He winces.
“Don’t poke them idiot,” Ben says, exasperated. “You don’t poke a bullet wound that’s still healing.”
Klaus places both hands on the bed and slowly pushes himself up, glancing around the Academy’s small medical wing.
“You don’t,” Klaus says with a wry smile, as he lifts his fingers up and pokes at the bandages again. Yup, there’s definitely a dip in his chest from where the bullet had gone through, even all patched up, there’s still a faint inconsistency.
“Does it hurt?” Ben asks, when Klaus doesn’t make a sound. A cry isn’t climbing up the cracks of his throat, so Klaus shakes his head. Mom must’ve dosed him on enough pain killers that it wouldn’t hurt when he woke up.
Speaking of Mom – and in turn, their whole weird family:
“Where is everyone?”
“Oh,” Ben says, shifting so that he’s sitting at the edge of the bed Klaus is laying on. Faint surprise lingers in the widening of his eyes as the bed dips under his weight, but neither of them mention it. “It’s… everyone’s still around. I don’t think anyone’s left.”
That’s not an answer.
He says as much.
“Well,” Ben says, after a moment. “Vanya’s showering – she got a lot of your blood on her. I think Diego went after Mom. Luther and Allison went to look for Pogo, I think. To ask about,” – he waves a hand at Klaus – “all of this.”
Klaus leans his head back.
“And Five?”
“He’s waiting outside the door,” Ben says. “Mom said you’d still be asleep for a couple of hours, but he’s been waiting there the whole time.”
Klaus raises an eyebrow.
Huh.
Maybe he shouldn’t question it. Five coming back from the apocalypse to make sure the world didn’t end, well – he must have cared about them, right? So, it’d make sense if he were concerned.
With a faint groan, Klaus falls back against the bed, entirely dramatic. The wound twinges slightly but otherwise, he feels nothing.
He should probably talk to Five, shouldn’t he? Ask about what the fuck had happened at the department store, ask how Diego had been told about it. Maybe even bring up the weird interactions he’d had with the mannequin.
A short, almost delirious laugh rises in his throat. Chipped and broken, it echoes throughout the room.
“Klaus?” Ben asks, worriedly.
“It’s nothing,” Klaus says. And then, a little softer. “You’re real.”
“Yeah,” Ben says, just as softly. “I’m real.”
And Klaus isn’t the crazy one. He doesn’t know how to feel about that.
Vanya washes her brother’s blood from where it’d matted and dried in her hair and tries to think.
Allison had found Mom – and after a much longer pause than she’d have expected from Mom, they’d managed to get Klaus into their small medical bay, to operate and make sure he would be okay.
And he would be okay.
Mom had promised he’d be okay and Vanya… Vanya believes her. Mom wasn’t coded with cruel malware; her coding was kind and patient. She’s never been dishonest with Vanya, as far as she can tell anyway, and so she decides to believe Mom when she says Klaus will be okay.
That’s all that matters.
It doesn’t matter that Klaus had died and come back, that he can apparently see ghosts. It doesn’t matter that Vanya’s brother is as extraordinary as their other siblings, that he’s not like her.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. Klaus didn’t know, it wasn’t his fault and he’d been just as excluded from the others as Vanya herself was. Even more so, really, because he’d been told his entire life that his power wasn’t real, that he was delusional.
Vanya closes her eyes and leans her head against cold tiles, lettings shower water rain against her skin. She turns the temperature up until it’s just on the uncomfortable edge of bearable and tries to think through everything she knows.
The world is going to end and Klaus is apparently the only person to survive it.
Because he can’t die. Vanya shudders – that’s not exactly true is it, she thinks. Her brother can certainly die, she’d heard his heartbeat stop, felt his breath catch in his chest leaving him too empty, too lifeless.
He just hadn’t remained dead for long.
The world will end, and it will become quiet for her brother. And he will want it.
Vanya doesn’t know if she can believe Five on this. She should, if only to prove to him that whatever version of Klaus that he knows, isn’t the version that she’s known, has grown up with. Her brother would never…
She shakes her head, reaching for the shampoo. It’s Allison’s, more suited to Allison’s hair texture, not Vanya’s, but Vanya can’t find it in herself to care. She lathers it through her hair thoughtlessly, too focused on the apocalypse.
They probably need the help of the others, right?
Vanya feels selfish for even thinking it. She wants the help of siblings she willingly ostracised herself from when she published her book, but… but well, they’re the heroes. Even Klaus could’ve been if their dad had known.
Which raises another question – had their father known and just never mentioned…
And if he’d known about Klaus then maybe… maybe.
Vanya shakes her head. She doesn’t want to go down that route, doesn’t want to fill herself with anymore hope when she already knows the truth. Vanya isn’t special – it’s true. She’s always been ordinary.
Klaus pushes up from the bed with a twinge of discomfort as Ben attempts to stare him down with displeasure. He ignores it, like usual, and rolls his eyes, before looking across to the cannula in his arm.
“Klaus don’t–”
The warning is ignored as Klaus reaches to the cannula and yanks it from his arm. Faced with a trickle of blood beading against his arm as a response, Klaus grabs the blanket that had been covering him and presses it firmly against his skin to stem the bleeding.
“It’s fine,” Klaus says, even as Ben leans forward to press the blanket even firmer against his arm. “Ben.”
Ben’s gaze flickers from where he’s pressing against the bleeding, up to Klaus’ face. Quietly, he asks, “how long do you think I’ll be tangible like this?”
Klaus hasn’t really thought about it.
Since yesterday, he’s been shot, died like… too many times to count, made his brother tangible, admitted he was real and well… that’s a lot to process. He doesn’t have answers.
“I don’t know,” Klaus says, with a shrug and tries to keep any discomfort from his voice.
“Guess we’ll find out,” Ben says. There’s a pause as he looks back to the bed. “You probably shouldn’t be out of bed like this. You were shot Klaus.”
“I need to talk to Five,” Klaus says.
To… what? To apologise for not being at the Meditech building this morning? For breaking his promise. To ask why he was talking to a random mannequin and being shot at by cartoons come to life?
“I can get him for you,” Ben says, almost hopefully.
Klaus waves a hand at him, “I want to stretch my legs anyway. You can come with us. Explain why we followed him.”
“Ah,” Ben says. “Right.”
Klaus offers him an almost sharp smile, before letting out a small laugh. “I’m sure little number five won’t be too angry at us – you’re dead, and I’m like, newly alive so…”
He says that, but Klaus is still under the impression that their little, eldest sibling sibling is going to be pissed. Either way, who cares – what’s the worst Five could do. Kill him?
Klaus lets out another slightly strained laugh, and heads to the door.
He pretends he doesn’t see Ben’s look of concern as he reaches for the handle and pushes it open, glancing up and down the hall for his brother. Even as short as he is in his prepubescent teen body, Five isn’t the kind of person who blends in well with the wallpaper.
He glances up as the door opens, lips pressing together as Klaus peeks out through the door. There’s a myriad of things hidden in the faintly pissed expression he fixes Klaus with, but Klaus doesn’t try to look too deeply into it.
“Klaus,” Five says, exasperated, “you were shot. You should be resting.”
“Says you,” Klaus says, lightly. “Didn’t you just walk off a bullet wound when you were twelve?”
Is that an eye twitch? Ah, Klaus thinks it is. His lips quirk slightly at the sight, just for a moment.
“It grazed me,” Five says. Klaus shrugs – details, schmetails. It doesn’t really matter. Five pauses for a moment, watching him closely – the only way he seems to know how to. “Are you alright?”
“Died a few times,” Klaus says, brightly. The brightness fades as he spots the minute flinch from his brother, tiny but present. Maybe Klaus is making it up in his mind, but… something tells him that he isn’t. “…I’m alright now.”
“Good,” Five says, stiffly.
Klaus watches him for a moment, before offering a nonchalant look. “Ben pointed out that you’ve been watching me pretty closely, you know. You don’t need to be scared to take a selfie with your favourite brother.”
Five meets his gaze, holding it. For a moment, they stare across at each other, quietly. Then, Five lets out a small huff, shaking his head lightly. “Ben is my favourite brother.”
Klaus snorts. He glances back through the door, to Ben stood by medical equipment, watching him expectantly. He waves a hand in Five’s direction.
Klaus sighs, turns back to Five.
“If you’re going to be watching me all suspiciously,” Klaus says flippantly, “you can at least come in and stop being so weird about it.”
Five watches him closely a moment longer, before pushing away from the wall. “…Fine.”