Chapter Text
Klaus had been delegated to being the lookout for the last three missions, and he was starting to get bored.
“Number Four, lookout. Number Five, as part of entry team two with Number Three. Number Six, behind Number One and Two. Number Seven, you are to remain in the car and take notes until the mission debrief. Move out.”
Their father’s mission briefs were always the same, with the brisk and sharp way he would call out their designations before opening the car door and sending his children off to a dangerous criminal situation. Well, most of his children.
Klaus yawned and made a face, stretching out and accidentally hitting Diego in the head beside him. His brother scowled even more than usual, and shoved him back, knocking Klaus against the cold window. Luther frowned at them, already in his serious mission mode, and Allison only rolled her eyes.
“Lookout is boring,” he moaned, “I might as well stay in the car and be bored like Vanya.” He could hear the whine in his voice, as Klaus gestured with a pale skinny arm at his sister, who only blushed and averted her gaze.
Sir Reginald looked furious at the lack of complete obedience, and Klaus just wrinkled up his face in defiance.
There was no time for his usual lecture though as they’d arrived at the back entrance to the bank, and Luther was already flinging open the car door before they had come to a complete halt. Klaus sulked and moved slower than usual, his domino mask askew on his face as it usually was, and sighed as Diego pushed past him. Luther had already opened the door with his enhanced strength and Klaus felt a strange feeling of apprehension rise inside him.
Ben gave him a sad smile as he passed him, bumping his shoulder against Klaus' gently, and that was enough to get Klaus through the door of the bank.
The familiar sounds of sirens faded as they entered the dark service corridor, and Klaus knew that the police would be setting up a perimeter within minutes. They wouldn’t enter the building until they had a better idea of the unfolding situation and could determine the safety of the hostages inside, so the siblings knew they would be uninterrupted in their mission.
Klaus scuffed his shiny shoes on the dusty ground as he hung back for a moment to hear the door slam behind him. He’d turned around to get a last look out at the sun shining in the sky, and instead locked eyes with Vanya from her position in the car. She looked sadder than he expected, but the door had closed before he could get more than a glimpse.
Luther was already talking by the time Klaus reached the group huddle, and it was no real surprise that they’d started without him.
He didn’t see much point in listening anyway, seeing as his only job would be to stand in the corner and watch everyone else get to fight.
It wasn’t even that Klaus particularly wanted to join in on the uninhibited violence, but he wanted the option to. He liked kicking bad guys in the shins as much as the next teenager, but his recent aversion to the killing of the bad guys was what had caused his father’s current distaste towards him.
Then his siblings were suddenly moving off, and Klaus sighed heavily before following Ben, Luther, and Diego. He waved his fingers at Allison and Five as they headed off down a different corridor, and was unsurprised when they ignored him. His quiet gasp of mock hurt was cut off by Diego elbowing him in the ribs, and Klaus almost opened his mouth to protest at the unjust treatment but then Luther turned around to glare at him.
The sound of gunshots ahead made the protest die in his throat, and Klaus swallowed down his giddiness. He could hear sobbing and crying in the distance and his stomach twisted with anxiety.
Some naive part of him hoped this would be a tame robbery, as bank robberies went.
He was wrong.
.
They reached the lobby of the bank, and Luther sank into a crouch to survey the scene, motioning for them to do the same.
Klaus could see Allison and Five peeking out from one of the other corridors across the lobby, and he narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the scene in front of them.
The main lobby of the bank was a vast space, with light streaming in from a large glass ceiling that shone nicely on the polished black and white diamond tiles. There were seven robbers, and presumably more in the safe of the bank, that were spread out across the lobby and they seemed to be split up into different quadrants of the space. Most of them had guns, and all of them had thin black masks obscuring their facial features from view.
There were also hostages out in the open, some cornered in beside a group of desks and others sprawled out on the floor near the offices, and one of the criminals was yelling at them. Klaus could see the sadistic smile on the man’s face through the mask as he took in the terror on the civilian’s faces, and he frowned in disgust.
Luther made some hand gestures that Klaus didn’t bother paying attention to, and then signalled across to Allison and Five who sent back a thumbs up.
“Stay here, Klaus,” Luther growled at him as they started moving, and then added unnecessarily, “You’re the look out.”
Klaus stuck up his middle finger at his brother’s back, but obeyed the order, hanging back behind a marble pillar as his siblings sauntered into the midst of the scene. He leaned against the structure and scratched his elbow absentmindedly as he prepared himself for a boring few minutes.
It began as it usually began, with some confusion on the part of the robbers’ at the sudden appearance of a group of uniformed children, that quickly turned into anger as said children began to fight back.
The seven criminals were split up easily by the siblings, and it turned into an one on one, or two on one fight that honestly just bored Klaus.
He kept an eye on the man with the gun that veered off to the side to stand menacingly in front of a group of hostages. Klaus could tell from one glance that he wasn’t much of a threat though, from the nervous tension in his shoulders and the clumsy way that he that he held the gun.
Everything was going as it should, and Klaus quickly grew bored of leaning against the pillar and having no fun. He spotted a bowl of hard candies sitting atop one of the abandoned counters, and decided that it would be a better tactical position if he instead observed from that particular spot. Plus, he was certain that no one would mind if one of their hero’s helped himself to some delicious looking candy as payment for, you know, saving their lives.
Klaus was skirting around the robber in front of the hostages when he saw an unaccounted figure emerge from a side door that hadn’t been visible from their original position.
He stopped for a moment, eyes focused in on the new threat and assessed the situation. He saw the handgun in the man’s grip immediately, saw the way the safety was off and his finger was on the trigger. Even from across the polished lobby floor, Klaus could see that this man meant business, and that he didn’t seem like the kind of man who would have qualms about shooting a bunch of thirteen year olds.
This changed the situation, this new element to the equation that Klaus was pretty sure only he had noticed.
He waved violently across to Diego and Allison who were ganging up on one of the criminals and forcing him back into a corner with some fancy kicks and spins, but they didn’t see him. Ben was busy helping some of the hostages hiding under the desk to run across the room to one of the offices on the side of the lobby that they’d cleared. Luther was quite literally throwing bad guys around, his back to Klaus.
Five was, well Klaus wasn’t sure exactly where Five was with all his jumping around the room, but he was almost sure his brother wouldn’t let himself be distracted by Klaus.
“Three o clock,” he called out, pointing in vain towards the new threat, “incoming bad dude at three o clock, amigos! Over there!”
They all ignored him,
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he cursed, and dodged to the side when the man he was trying to get around noticed him and lunged, “lookout doesn’t work if no one listens to the lookout.” The man seemed confused for a split second, as if wondering if Klaus was talking directly to him, and that was the second that Klaus needed to knock the gun out of his loose grip and land a punch to his face.
He followed it quickly with a knee to the groin, and then a strong kick to the man’s face when he dropped to his knees. He was out before he hit the ground, and Klaus leaped over him quickly.
Klaus would be one of the first to admit that he was one of the weakest fighters in the Hargreeves family, but he was more than capable of taking down a fully grown man. He was good at it too, despite what some of his siblings might say.
The floor was slippery under his shoes as he sprinted across the shiny tiles, and Klaus felt his mouth go dry as he watched the man raise the gun, “Guys!”. It seemed to be in slow motion that the barrel of the gun moved and was pointed in the direction of Diego and Allison.
He could hear Ben behind him realise what was happening and the tone of fear in his brother’s voice, “Klaus!”
A flash of blue ahead of him signalled the appearance of Five, but Klaus already knew that they were both going to be too late. He made a split second decision to change direction slightly, and he skidded off to the left, towards the area of empty space between the gun and Diego and Allison.
The gun went off, Klaus threw himself forward, and the sounds of the shots were lost among the pure chaos.
For a moment, there was nothing but the feeling of air rushing past his face, but then Klaus was hit by a force that knocked the breath out of his lungs. It sent him crashing to the side, and as he fell, he registered the sensation of another hit, and then another.
Then his body slammed onto the floor, and his head cracked painfully against the cold tile.
.
If Klaus’ eyes had been open, he would have seen what unfolded in the immediate aftermath.
He missed seeing Number Five appear on the shoulders of the shooter and almost twist his head off with the strength of his attack, the man’s neck breaking instantaneously. He also missed the two knives that whizzed across the room to bury themselves in the chest of the man who’d shot him, barely milliseconds after Five had snapped his neck.
He didn’t see the instant devastation and guilt that radiated out from Luther as he whirled around to take in the scene, didn’t see the anguish in Ben’s face as he watched from too far away.
Allison screamed, and somehow in the depths of Klaus’ consciousness he registered it, and then Luther’s yell joined in.
Now, it was personal.
Ben’s body was already tearing itself apart as his face darkened, and his mouth opened in a silent scream as tentacles burst out of his chest. They shot out to yank the man’s already dead body from under Five’s feet and fling the body upwards in the air with such force that it hit the glass ceiling and left a splatter of blood on the clear surface before the body plummeted back towards the ground and landed with a sickening squelch.
The violence that unfolded in the seconds after Klaus had gone down was enough of a terrifying display of raw power that it sent both the robbers and civilians running for a way out.
Luther forced himself to turn away from the still body of his brother on the floor, Allison and Five already leaning over him, and let out another howl of rage as he reached out to grab one of the criminals by the shoulders and throw him into a marble pillar with enough force to crack the surface.
He turned to gesture to Ben, but his brother was already stalking towards the vault room of the bank with a dangerous tension to his body. Luther watched as the last three men remaining from the group of robbers attempted to make their escape, to run outside into the safer arms of the law, but were felled instantly by knives to the back. He nodded at the sight, and then started running towards his siblings.
.
Instead of witnessing the onslaught of violence, Klaus opened his eyes to the sight of Five slapping his cheek persistently. His brother wasn’t gentle, and it was the sting of his hand on Klaus’ cheek that was the first jolt of pain he experienced. He frowned, and opened his mouth to protest, but then a wave of agony crashed over him.
He tried to suck in a desperate breath, but the instant pain was so consuming that all he could do was gasp uselessly.
Klaus’ eyes widened, and he met Five’s grim gaze with confusion in his eyes. “Don’t move,” Five instructed, as if Klaus was about to go anywhere, and then he moved slightly to lean over Klaus and put pressure on part of his chest, and then Klaus was sure that he knew true pain.
He could feel his legs spasming against his will as he struggled to get away, could sense his lower body weakly bucking against the pressure.
Another force pinned him down by the thigh then, and he let out a strangled yell.
His vision grayed out for an indeterminate amount of time then, but when he refocused it, Ben’s face was directly over his and he looked like was yelling. It was then that Klaus realised his hearing must be gone as well, and he felt a sense of calm begin to spread through his body.
He rolled his head to the side, to see Luther kneeling beside him, and he could see a dark redness spreading across the black and white tiles.
A faint tugging sensation somewhere in his chest caught his attention then, and Klaus blinked slowly as he tried to focus his gaze on whatever Luther was looking at. He couldn’t quite move effectively though, and only managed to twitch his head weakly against the ground.
Gentle hands tugged at his face then, and moved his head carefully back up to his original position of staring up at the ceiling, and by default, Ben.
Klaus opened his mouth to say thank you, but instead all that came out was a weak cough that left a coppery taste in his mouth. Something warm slid down from his open lips, and Klaus knew that he should be alarmed, but he just felt tired instead.
Suddenly several hands were gripping his body, and Klaus’ world tilted again as he felt himself be rolled onto his side. He coughed involuntarily again and more blood leaked out from his mouth, dripping onto the ground at an alarming rate.
He struggled to inhale again, and all of a sudden his senses came rushing back to him.
“He’s going to choke, keep him still, keep the pressure—”
“Shit, shit, shit – Klaus, Jesus—”
“—need to get him back to Dad, Allison don’t let go of—”
“—me, Klaus, stay with me, Klaus keep your eyes open, we’re—”
“On the count of three—one, two, three, lift—"
The pain engulfed every inch of him, but somehow Klaus managed to scream despite having little to no air in his lungs. He used the last of his energy to jerk his body out in an attempt to do something, anything, but the agony overwhelmed him instantly.