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Klaus almost wishes he wasn’t sober.
Without a doubt, it was great for Ben to be visible almost all of the time (Klaus was still working on the corporeal thing), and to have averted the apocalypse with his siblings. But, really, Klaus wasn't entirely sure that if he had a pocketful of pills, he wouldn’t down them in a heartbeat. They were just so loud. They had gathered into a group and were screaming at him collectively. Really, Klaus would be more than happy to appreciate their teamwork if they weren’t begging to be killed, or threatening to kill him. He’d heard it all a thousand times- the ghosts never seemed to be able to come up with anything more original other than “ kill yourself, I’ll kill you, please help me!” - but it had been years since he was clear headed enough to have been hearing it for months on end.
So far in his life, he had only found two solutions to the problem.
1. Drugs-- but with this whole… sober thing, that wasn’t really an option.
2. Some weird mix of astral projection, meditation, and some other thing Klaus didn’t really understand, but had seemed to discover after they had oh-so-helpfully averted the apocalypse.
Klaus went with option two.
Klaus had, miraculously enough, managed to get them to quiet down for a few hours. After spending a significant amount of time with his legs crossed, HELLO and GOODBYE palms flat up on his knees, the ghosts seemed to have lost their voices. Ben, faithfully at his side, had given him a grateful look, as tormented as Klaus himself by their unearthly shrieks. Klaus had taken full advantage of this brief reprieve and- ignoring the intense urge to down a bottle of something strong and amber- stripped down to his underwear and flopped face first onto the couch in the main sitting room, Five’s now-defaced visage staring down at him.
(It was the first thing Five had done upon his return home, post-apocalypse-aversion. His painting now sported a cliche pair of glasses, a mustache, and incredibly bushy eyebrows. Klaus had even deigned to take out his best sparkly marker, and had written NERD, in all caps, with a helpful arrow pointing to Five. He had given Klaus one of his rare, genuine little smiles when he had seen it.)
Klaus payed it about as much attention as he did the small army of spirits trailing after him, mouths hung open in now-silent shrieks.
Face pressed into the couch cushions, Klaus took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and prayed to a Little-Girl-God-that-hated-him for a few hours of rest.
Klaus should have just cut his losses and forgone the prayer to the ill-tempered God all together.
He closed his eyes and he was in a trench. Dave, lifeless, two feet to his left. Bullets whizzed overhead, bombs shook the ground, blood ran warm across his palms, and he screamed for a medic, turning to his side to see if there was one near him, and felt his shoulder blades press into the hard, cold concrete.
He was pressed into the corner, the howl of the undead ringing around them in the enclosed space of the mausoleum. He slammed his eyes shut, all of eight years old and terrified to chance looking a ghost in the eyes.
And when he opened them, a man with half his head missing was an inch from his face, screaming so forcefully spittle was flying from his lips.
Klaus blinked once, twice, before sitting up with a sigh. All around him, the ghosts seemed to be noticing his wakefulness, and began their screaming renewed, hiking the volume up a notch. Klaus sent a glare over at the man-with-half-a-head who had woken him, but he just pitched his screams higher, tongue lolling from his mouth. Klaus figured he hadn’t gotten the message to fuck off.
Klaus looked over to the chair Ben had been in when he went to sleep, and was unsurprised to find him still there, watching Klaus quietly.
“How long?” He croaked out. Ben frowned at him.
“You look awful.”
“And you look dead.” Klaus said, just as tired as he had been before he had collapsed on the couch. “How long?”
“An hour.”
Klaus sighed. Even during the years he had lived on the streets, he could usually manage a few hours in the corner of a seedy nightclub or in the back of a slimy alley. It seemed ironically fitting that he was sober, had a roof over his head, regular meals-- the whole shebang, and yet he couldn’t manage even half of what he used to run on consistently.
Sobriety, Klaus was finding, was a bitch.
Klaus flopped backwards into the couch and rolled over, wondering idly about suffocating himself in the cushions, before deciding that it was probably too soon post-apocalypse to traumatize his siblings by making them find his dead body. He rolled back over to resume breathing again.
“You should tell someone.” Ben said, still frowning. Klaus scoffed.
“Who should I tell? Reliable old Number One, who slammed me into a wall by my throat last time we attempted a heart-to-heart? Five, who’s too busy for anything short of the end of the world, up to and including emotions? Or what about one of my other siblings, who don’t see me as anything more than the useless junkie, the lookout?” he huffed, tucking his arms around himself.
“What about Diego, or Vanya?”
“They’re not gonna wanna waste their time on me, Benny-boy. Vanya needs to work on her powers, and I’ve bothered Diego enough over the years.” Ben frowns. Again.
“If you keep making that face, it’ll be stuck like that for the rest of eternity.” Klaus says, heaving himself from the couch. And-- oh. That was probably a bad idea. Klaus watches through blurry eyes as Ben says something, but for a blissful second all the noise around him is cut off, drowned beneath the roar in his ears. He stumbles sideways, catching himself on the back of the couch.
“Oh,” he chokes out, before he vomits onto the floor.
Or, well he would’ve, if he had eaten anything in the past few days. Instead, he heaves, and a thick glob of bile comes up, falling to the floor with a disgusting splat.
“Ugh.” He and Ben say at the same time, and Klaus lets out a delirious giggle.
“Klaus, please.” Ben begs, crouching next to him, hand hovering. Klaus wishes he had the strength to make him corporeal, if just for long enough for him to rub a soothing hand down his back, but he was currently using all of his strength to keep himself from crashing face first into the ground and breaking his nose.
Klaus waves his hand at him, before trying to force himself to his feet again. He’s not sure when exactly he had ended up on the floor, but he knew that if he was going to even begin to convince Ben that he was fine, he would have to make it back to his feet.
Which he really didn’t wanna do.
(Which he wasn’t really sure he’d be able to do.)
He grabbed the cushion of the couch, and pulled himself up at an angle until he was kneeling on the cushion. He allowed himself a moment for the spinning to die down before pushing himself all the way to his feet. He swallowed down the nausea, and allowed himself a longer moment to breath.
“I’ll go find Vanya, but I’m not telling her anything.” he conceded.
Ben, predictably, frowned at him.
Klaus found Vanya in her room at the end of the hall, playing gently on her violin. At first, everyone had been slightly weary to allow her to play violin again, Vanya herself included, which was rather reasonable, considering that the last time she had played it she had been glowing white and resonating with power, before Allison had been able to talk her down.
Klaus figured that, since she had then decided to use the build-up of her powers in a very concentrated blast towards the Commission’s goons, he really didn’t mind her playing because it was rather pretty. She obviously cared enough to protect her siblings, so Klaus wasn’t worried about her attacking them again.
He had been the one to encourage her to play, with Ben at his shoulder saying the same thing. Ever since that first night, where she had played a gentle song that Klaus had never heard before, she had offered to let him listen to her whenever he wanted. Klaus had taken her up on that offer multiple times, because the sounds of her violin often helped to drown out the ghosts around him.
When he peeked his head into the room, she smiled at him but continued to play. He took the silent invitation, and slipped quietly into her room, plopping onto the floor a few feet away from her and crossing his legs. He saw Ben settle next to him, and he wasn’t blue, which meant he probably was only visible to Klaus.
He leaned back, resting his pounding head onto the wall behind him. He let his eyes close, feeling the music wash over him.
He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there, listening to Vanya play, and trying to focus on that rather than the rolling of his stomach, caught between nausea and hunger.
Eventually, Vanya’s playing came to a soft close, the last note ringing out, high, haunting and alone. He let it echo around him for a long moment before finally cracking his eyes open, squinting up at his sister. She was frowning down at him, and he giggled when he realized that both Vanya and Ben were making the same expression.
“Klaus,” Vanya said, squatting in front of him. “Are you ok?”
Klaus immediately knew what he would say. He was fine. He wasn’t sleeping, he was constantly on edge with all the ghosts he wasn’t used to seeing, he hadn’t had an appetite in days, and he sometimes wasn’t sure if it was 1968 or 2019-- but he was fine. Really.
“Tell her, Klaus. Please. ” Ben urged from beside him, and Klaus felt a pulse of doubt. This was Vanya. She may have said some things in the past about how he was a junkie, their dad’s greatest disappointment. But… she still cared about him, didn’t she? Before what happened with Five and Ben, they had been close enough to hang out occasionally. He loved her and, surely, she felt the same. Right?
He should tell her. Siblings tell each other things. And besides, it would make Ben feel better. He’d tell her, she’d go make him a fluffernutter sandwich, and then Ben and everyone else could stop bothering him.
Mind made up, Klaus opened his mouth, and--
Someone knocked on the door. Vanya sent Klaus one more concerned glance before calling out to whoever it was to come in. Allison stepped into view, leaning her hip against the door jamb.
“Luther wants us downstairs for a family meeting.”
Vanya nodded at her.
“Alright, we’ll be down in a minute, let me just put away my violin.” Allison smiled at the two of them, eyes lingering on Klaus for just a few extra seconds, before she turned and made her way down the hallway, heels clicking along the way. Vanya went about putting her violin away quickly, tucking the now-white instrument and bow into the velvet-lined case reverently. When she finished, she turned back to Klaus, concern dancing in her eyes. He forced a smile up at her, trying to put every bit of conviction into it that he could. Allison’s interruption was most definitely the universe’s way of saying suck it up, you big baby.
“I’m fine, dearest sister of mine.” the cheer in his voice was only a shade off from his normal exuberance, something Vanya was unlikely to notice. For one guilt-inducing second, Klaus was glad that she couldn’t hear Ben beside him, who had decided to argue to un-hearing parties that Klaus was definitely not fine. Vanya smiled at him, oblivious to Ben beside him, and headed towards the door, believing Klaus to be just a few steps behind her.
And, really, Klaus tried to be a few steps behind her, but it seemed the rest of his body had not gotten the message. He tried to push himself up from the floor, but his legs and arms were both shaking badly and unable to support his weight. The nausea returned twice as strongly once he began to move, and it felt as if his bones weighed a thousand pounds. Still, he pushed upwards with all his strength, and managed to slide himself upwards by leaning his whole weight onto the wall.
By the time Klaus made it all the way to his feet, he wasn’t sure he would be able to stay there, but decided that standing there and dwelling on it would only make it worse, and started to stumble his way forward.
Out in the hallway, Klaus decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to try and stumble his way around the ghosts lingering there, moaning, and stepped through them with a shudder. The feeling left him unsettled, but he figured it was just one more bad feeling on top of the collection of them that he seemed to be gathering.
As he passed the bathroom he saw the ghost whom he had oh-so-affectionately begun calling “Dick” at age 11. He was one of the ones who had managed to hold onto that weird bit of humanity, which ghosts can sometimes possess after death, for all the wrong reasons. He leered at Klaus as he passed, and for the first time in a long time Klaus was glad to be wearing the ugly, shapeless sweatpants that he had stolen from Diego’s room, for how much of him they left obscured from the spirit’s eyes.
He had been seeing that particular ghost since he had gotten his powers, and he always stayed in the bathroom whenever Klaus showered, and made comments that made Klaus want to peel his skin off. He had not missed him at all.
He had met other ghosts like this one over the years, when he’d been between hits or sleeping off highs in alleyways. They were hauntingly lifelike, able to cling to something in this life strongly enough that they retained their humanity, or what they had before they had died. Like Ben, who managed to stick around due to his intense need to make sure his siblings stayed safe, the very thought he’d had as he died--
Nope, no, no, bad train of thought, Klaus. Do not go there, because you will not come back, and Vanya was nowhere in sight which meant she was definitely already in the main living room, which means he was definitely moving too slowly.
He forced himself to shuffle faster, and decided to forgo his dignity and slide on his butt down the staircase.
He managed to make it three quarters of the way down the staircase before he heard Luther’s loud, thumping footsteps descending the stairs behind him. His stomach swooped.
“Klaus, why are you scooting down the staircase?”
Klaus turned around, and laughed nervously. He wasn’t sure how to get himself out of this one. Sliding down the stairs on his butt was definitely not the weirdest thing Klaus had ever done, but since he’d been sober, his siblings seemed to expect a certain amount of level-headedness, and for him to stop with his inane comments and actions. But, really, those things had been around long before Klaus had gotten hooked on drugs.
“I- uh. I’m. Allison said you wanted us for a family meeting.” He finally went with, figuring avoidance was the best method of distraction. Luther squinted down at him.
“You’re not high, are you?” Luther asked, frowning. Klaus felt a pang of hurt go through him. He knew what he looked like- glassy eyes, waxy skin, dark undereye bags- but it still hurt for Luther’s first assumption to be that he resorted back to drugs. Not that he was sick, or exhausted, or anything else. Just giving in to his addiction once more.
Ben, sitting on the bannister, scoffed, glaring at Luther. He’d yet to really forgive Luther for what happened before and at the rave, but Klaus had begged him to leave it alone, because he was sure he’d done stupid stuff when high or drunk. Ben had argued that he hadn’t gotten anyone killed while he was high, and Klaus had taken the high road in the argument and stuck his tongue out at Ben, ending the argument rather eloquently, if he did say so himself.
“Wow, Klaus, I really thought you were better than this.” Luther said, staring at him judgmentally. And, oh, Klaus probably should have said something back. Either way, Luther gave him one more disgusted once-over and continued his way down the stairs, walking past Klaus without looking back once.
Taking the steps three at a time, Luther made it to the door in no time, and he slammed it shut on his way in, the noise resonating around them in the no-longer-empty, because oh, shit-
Klaus dove to the side, putting his arms above his head to shield his eyes from the bright light of a mine going off. Shit, Dave was next to him just a second ago, where did he go? He heard the bullets whizzing over-head, so he only raised his head an inch or so. He’d risk the danger to make sure Dave was ok, he had to be ok Klaus didn’t know how he’d survive this damn war without him--
The cool marble of the stairs pressed into his elbows and stomach. In a flash, he realized that he was in the Academy. That he hadn’t left the academy, that the war had been over since before he was born--
Klaus gripped the bannister with two shaking hands, pulling himself back upright. He ignored Ben, who was giving him a sad, knowing look. He may not have been in Vietnam with Klaus, which he marked up to some weird time travel bullshit, but Klaus had still explained the bare minimum of what had happened. He couldn’t bring himself to go into details, and Ben hadn’t pushed, but he had told him about the ten months he had spent in the A Shau with Dave at his side, and a unit who had his back like no one living every had.
Klaus found himself at the bottom of the stairs, and wondered drearily how long he’d been there. He kept seeming to get lost in his own head, stuck in memories, unable to register what was happening around him.
He forced himself to his feet, and staggered the few feet to the doorway of the living room. He leaned against the wall, pressing his forehead against cool surface. It felt good against his burning skin, and Klaus allowed himself a moment to pull it together. Behind him he could hear three ghosts screaming in discordant harmony, and the sound grated heavily against his already pounding head. Through the thick, ancient oak doors, Klaus could hear a whole host of ghosts screaming, the same ones that always followed his siblings. He knew he had his own, somewhere in the bunch, but they blended in with the other ones who followed him, begging him to help them.
Klaus felt a bright flare of hate for Sir Reginald Hargreeves. Wasn’t enough that he had to fuck them up mentally and emotionally, he had to teach them how to kill from birth, too? Really, the Old Man never knew when enough was enough.
He took in a deep breath through his nose and blew it out his mouth, just like Ben had told him to do after he had Klaus help him flick through one self help book or another. See, Ben? Sometimes he did listen.
Klaus pulled himself off the wall with some effort, and steeled himself, drawing up the last dredges of energy he had.
He pulled open the door.
Immediately, all eyes in the room swiveled to him. If he hadn’t already been sweating, he’s sure he would be now. Vanya was frowning at him worriedly from where she was tucked into the corner of one of the couches, and unintentional mirror of the face Ben always seemed so fond of making. Allison looked pretty neutral, but both she and Diego had given him an up-down look. Luther, despite Klaus having been in the room for all of five seconds, was already frowning at him in a mix of anger and disgust. Five was nowhere to be seen.
Klaus decided it prudent of him to remove himself from the conversation as much as possible, because his mouth-to-brain filter was flimsy on the best of days, which today was decidedly not, and he was unsure how long he could even look to be paying attention before he zoned out entirely.
As he settled on the bar stool, Klaus realized that no-ones eyes had left him, and was struck with the recurring feeling that he probably should have said something.
“Bonjour, moi frères et soeurs, comment allez-vous tous?”
Blank looks, before exasperation rose up and they rolled their eyes, scoffing at him.
Klaus sighed in relief. The less attention they payed to him, the less likely they were to bother him. He settled back, leaning his elbows onto the bar to hold his weight, back pressing into the countertop.
The rest of his siblings had apparently decided not to wait for their seventh sibling, because Klaus could hear Luther droning on about Vanya’s training, how the rest of them should work on reaching their full potential, blah blah blah, he’d heard it all a thousand time from Dear Old Daddy, usually as a prelude to “You’re my greatest disappointment, Number Four.”
Klaus let his mind wander, not that he could really do anything to stop it. He thought of Dave, one of the only reasons he was doing this whole… sobriety thing. Bad as he felt, bad as he wanted to just shoot up and be numb, he’d withstand the screaming of a thousand more ghosts just to get to tell Dave one more time how much he loved him.
His hand came up to clutch at Dave’s dog tags. He felt it like an ache in his chest, his absence. Dave had been better than any high, better than every high. Klaus could almost imagine him, next to him. Warm, real, alive.
Cold, gone, dying.
Blood on his hands, dirt in his hair, clean lines cut down his face from the tears. Explosions, shaking the ground, lighting up the darkness of--
The mausoleum, his own screams for a medic echoing around the stony chamber, too quiet to be heard over the screams of tormented souls around him.
His hand tightening around the metal tags around his neck. He knew, he knew that he was sitting on a barstool in the living room, his siblings across the room from him. But he couldn’t see anything through the dirt flying through the air, through the dark of the mausoleum around him.
He could feel the seat, and the bar pressing sharply into his back.
“-2019.” He could hear Ben saying beside him in his ear. “You’re at the Academy Klaus. You’re safe. It’s 2019. You’re at the Academy…”
Eventually Klaus lost Ben’s voice in the clamor around them, the rest of the noise around them filtering in. Ghosts, as usual, the loudest, screaming from the corners and edges of the room. But just below that, Luther’s bellowing voice. His eyes snapped open when he realized that Luther was close- too close- -
He gripped the tags in his hand so tight he feared they’d snap, as Luther, a foot from his face, roared his name.
“Yeah. I’m here, I’m paying attention.” he said, voice strained. Luther practically snarled at him, and Klaus jerked his head back on instinct.
“This is important! Can’t you stay sober for five god damn minutes, Klaus?”
“I- I am sober! Ask Ben, he’s been with me all day.” Luther scoffed.
“If you were sober, I’d be able to see him to ask him. But instead, you’re so high that you can’t even keep your eyes open to listen for an important meeting! You can’t do anything more than sit here and yank on your stupid necklace.”
Ben hisses at Luther, and Klaus knew that if he had the energy to make him corporeal, Luther would be flat on his ass in less than a second.
“Where’d you even get those tags, anyway? Steal them off one of your junkie friends? Trade it for a quick hit, or a… favor?” Luther said the last word smugly, as if his implications made him above Klaus. And Klaus knew that, knew that Luther was better than him (perfect Number One).
But he wasn’t insulting Klaus, at this point. He was insulting Dave, because the only piece of Dave that he had left were these tags.
The stool he was on scraped as he stood up, and now the shaking in his limbs wasn’t from exhaustion, but from anger. How dare he. How fucking dare he speak of Dave like that? He took a step forward, bringing a hand up to shove at Luther’s barrel-chest. In his shock, Luther let himself be pushed back a stumbling step.
(Somewhere in the back of Klaus’ mind, he registered the fact that his hands were glowing blue along the veins. Across the room, Diego had taken an abortive step forward, before noticing that Klaus’ eyes were glowing brightly blue in a way entirely too reminiscent of the way that Vanya’s had, and he decided that Luther probably deserved whatever he had coming to him.)
“You,” Klaus said, and his voice sounded like wind through trees, hauntingly echoing in a graveyard. “Don’t know shit about anything , so if I were you I’d watch my fucking mouth.”
Luther bristled, but before he could do anything, Allison shrieked behind him, and he suddenly noticed the glowing blue figures around the room. They lingered in corners, and around his siblings, and they were screaming. Grotesque, and garishly gory, they just stood and shrieked . Luther looked back at Klaus, who was glowing slightly and-- levitating a few inches off the ground? Either way, his hands were blue and shaking, and Luther could see Ben, steadfast at his shoulder, glowing blue like the rest of the spirits around him.
Five chose that moment to appear. The racket in the room immediately went up a notch, a large group of spirits appearing with Five. The Boy jumped, whipping around, and Luther faintly noticed Allison holding a softly sobbing Vanya.
The additional noise seemed to be too much for Klaus, and he slammed his hands over his ears with a pained cry. The ghosts around them glowed brighter, and seemed to notice for the first time that they were noticing them. They began forwards, entrails and blood trailing behind them.
Luther panicked, brain defaulting to the training they had received as children. Neutralize the threat at the root.
He leapt for Klaus, wrapping him up in a tight grip. He remembered somewhere in the back of his head Klaus mentioning, in passing, that the ground was his anchor in the spiritual world. If Luther could just get him back on the ground, he could stop this madness.
As soon as Luther closed his arms around Klaus, the man began to buck and shake in his arms, screaming. Wall hangings and knick-knacks around the room began to shake, before floating up into the air. Luther, for all his strength, was fighting hard not to be pulled up into the air with Klaus.
Klaus continued to scream, voice joining in with the dead around them, unearthly and bone-chilling.
“Let him go!” Diego yelled over the noise, kicking at a ghost as it came closer to where he, Allison, and Vanya were huddled.
“He needs to be on the ground!” Luther yelled. “That’s his anchor to the real world!”
“You absolute dumbass!” Yelled Five, before going down under the surge of ghosts behind the bar. He reappeared a moment later next to Luther, hair whipping in the wind that was gathering force around them.
“You need to let go of him! You’ve pushed him into some panic-induced trance, and he’s not gonna get out of it with you fucking death gripping him!”
Ben appeared next to Luther.
“Put him down!” Ben yelled, shoving at Luther. Luther staggered from the force of it, arms loosening around Klaus. Klaus went floating from his arms, spinning slowly as he rose, and curled in on himself.
Everyone watched in horror as Ben’s chest rippled. Now was not the time to lose control of the beasts in his chest.
But as the tentacles unfurled toward’s Klaus, there was something almost… gentle about them that they had never seen before. Carefully, because there really was no other word for it, the tentacles gripped Klaus, pulling him softly to the ground.
The moment his feet touched the ground, Klaus gasped, eyes snapping open. They glowed blue for a moment, bright and unearthly, before dimming back to Klaus’ normal brown.
“Oh,” Klaus said, and promptly collapsed. Ben’s tentacles caught him and lowered him to the ground, before slithering back into Ben’s chest with an awful slurping sound.
Klaus groaned. Immediately around him there was a flurrying of shushing, and he knew for certain that his siblings were in the room. No one else on the planet could make the act of quieting down so noisy. Or make a shush sound so condescending (Five). And he had definitely heard the thwack of a notebook slapping someone (Allison).
Klaus was reluctant to open his eyes. The ghosts would scream and scream whether they thought he was awake or not, but maybe his siblings would leave him in peace and not-so-quiet if he pretended to still be unconscious.
“They know you’re waking up.” Ben said, an inch from his ear. He jerked back in surprise, and a flurry of furious whispers broke out among his siblings. Klaus managed to crack open his eyes enough to glare at Ben, who smiled smugly back at him, the little shit. Here Klaus was, laid up in the-- Med Bay?, and his brother couldn’t even have the decency to help him avoid likely-uncomfortable conversations with his siblings.
Klaus couldn’t remember how he had gotten here, and usually when he woke up in a hospital with no recollection of how he got there, he would get a stern talking to from the nice nurses who he saw all-to-often, and then a one way ticket to a 30-day rehab center. Klaus figured that if he was in the Med Bay and his siblings were all gathered around him, waiting for him to wake up, he’d probably done something stupid. Therefore, he probably had a lecture incoming.
This was not how he wanted to start his morning. (Was it even morning?)
“Please tell me none of you gave me mouth-to-mouth.” He says, cracking open his eyes to glance at his siblings. They were all looking at him with varying degrees of concern; Diego, with his big doe eyes, so full of worry he was practically dripping with it; Allison, a frown marring her movie-star-perfect features; Vanya, clinging to Five’s hand tightly and looking as if she may burst into tears at any moment; Five, whose face was perfectly straight, but his anxiety was belied by the tightness of which he returned Vanya’s grip, and the twin spots of color high on his cheeks. Luther, a few steps away from their huddle, looked vaguely angry and disappointed. Good ol’ Luther, one can always depend on him to react to every situation the exact same way.
“Klaus -” Vanya started, stepping forward. Luther cut her off quickly.
“What the hell was that, Klaus?” Allison whapped him with her notebook again, and Diego glared murderously. Klaus just shrugged.
“Dear old Daddy always said I had untapped potential, but then again that was usually followed by a three days in the mausoleum, Number Four, so I never really payed him that much mind.”
“Well, he was ri-”
“I swear to God Luther, if you finish that sentence I will jump you back to the moon.” Five threatened. Allison was scribbling furiously on her notepad, and Vanya had a calming hand on Diego’s shoulder. Luther crossed his arms and grumbled to himself, but Five had already lost interest in him.
“Mausoleum?” He asked.
Klaus shrugged again.
“ Tell them!” Ben hissed, and Klaus glanced at him. He looked more worried than he’d been in a while, which was saying something, considering the fact that Klaus made it a habit to sleep in seedy clubs and take copious amounts of questionable substances. Or, had.
He sighed.
“Dad used to… take me to the mausoleum out back, for “extra training.” He thought that I would just… develop the ability to control ghosts if I spent more time around them, or something? I don’t know what he really hoped to accomplish besides giving me trauma.”
His siblings all stared at him in disbelief, and he winced internally. Now came the disbelief, where they told him to stop lying, grow up, stop trying to be the center of attention all the time--
“He locked you up too?” Vanya asked, voice small. Klaus felt like a cavity had opened up where his chest was, the terribly sad look on Vanya’s face making every instinct in him scream protect the small one!!
“Hey, hey no, listen it’s ok, really, I got used to it real fast, drugs were a hell of a muffler for all those screams--” He rushed to reassure her, before realizing the horrified looks on his siblings faces. What had he even said wrong?
“It always comes back to drugs for you, doesn’t it?” Luther asked, scowl firmly in place. Klaus shrank in on himself, wrapping his arms around himself. God, he was so tired. He couldn’t do anything right, could he? Couldn’t even make his little sister feel better. Jesus, what a wreck he was.
Allison’s notebook went flying, and nailed Luther in the head. Klaus could read her blocky handwriting very clearly from where it had flopped to the floor, STOP BEING A BUTTHEAD!!!!
Must have been a pre-prepared response.
Five popped into existence next to Luther, fisted a hand into the material of his coat, and jumped out of the room. He came back a few seconds later, stepping back into existence beside Vanya and quietly scooping up her hand again.
The rest of his siblings, Ben included, didn’t really seem to worried about if Five had actually gone through with his threat or not, so Klaus decided that he wasn’t either.
“Setting aside the whole mausoleum situation, for now, where did all those ghosts come from? Did they wander over from the graveyard?” Diego asked, sad-concerned eyes back. Klaus winced.
“Not… quite.”
“They’re from us, aren’t they?” Vanya asked. “A whole new group of them appeared in the room with Five.” Klaus winced again, and nodded.
“Yeah, they are. I’m pretty sure they’re from missions when we were kids. It’s why I go to Vanya sometimes, she doesn’t have nearly as many as the rest of us do, and me and Benny-boy are pretty tired of the noise.”
THAT Y U R NOT SLEEPING? Allison wrote. She must have been able to tell from his appearance, not that he was surprised, he looked a wreck. Klaus shrugged. Nodded. Shrugged.
“Your tags.” Diego said abruptly. “Luther shouldn’t have said what he said, but… you were awfully defensive about them. You didn’t care much when he insulted you but-- why the tags?”
Klaus took in a breath, and glanced over his shoulder at Ben, who gave him a reassuring smile. Klaus took a breath in, steadied himself, and let it out.
“When Cha-Cha and Hazel attacked the house, they didn’t find Five. They found me. I had my music too high, or I was too high and I didn’t notice until it was late. They tort-- tried to get information about Five out of me, information I didn’t have. Diego’s cop friend found me, cut me free. I was beyond sober at that point, and between the pain and the screaming I was just-- done being present. I grabbed their briefcase on the way out, hoping to pawn it off and get high and just forget.” Klaus’ siblings were already staring at him in horror, but he didn’t notice, keeping his eyes very steadily on his hands in his lap, Ben’s slightly-see-through one covering both of his own.
“I got on the bus, opened the briefcase, and suddenly, it was 1968, Vietnam. I tried to open the briefcase again, that first night after I got there, but I must have tired it out or something, because it didn’t do anything. For a while after that, I was too scared to use it, because what if it took me somewhere worse this time? Sure, I’d landed right in the middle of the shit, but at least I had landed on the side that wouldn’t kill me on sight. But then… then I stayed on purpose. Dave was there, and I followed him to the front lines. I got sober for him.” Klaus dragged his hands down his face.
“I loved him. But then he died, and I thought, if I could just go back, stop it from happening, then I could take us both out of here. But when I opened the case again, I was back on the bus, not 12 hours from when I had left. Ten months I spent there, but I wasn’t gone even a day, here.” Klaus laughed, bitter and sad. “Guess that makes me the oldest, huh?”
Klaus felt the anger, frustration, and crushing loneliness well up in his chest like a wave, and the very tips of his fingers glowed blue. Ben, at his side, ran a steadying hand down his back, the pressure of his hand there and so very real.
Klaus broke into unsteady, heaving sobs.
“I don’t know what year it is, sometimes. I feel like I’m in the forest, my CO yelling at us to hurry the fuck up. Or I’m stuck in that damn mausoleum, looking up at dad as he sneers down at me three more hours. I don’t know where I am half the time, when I am, but it seems that no matter where I go, the ghosts are always there, always haunting me.” He heaves in a breath, chest shaking. “I’m just so tired.”
Diego joins him on his other side, pressing himself close.
“It’s ok,” Diego says. “Rest now.”
Five pops into existence behind him, and presses his back against Klaus’ as he sits.
“I’ll watch your back.” He says. Ben flickers blue, before turning back to regular colors, visible only to Klaus. He doesn’t leave Klaus’ side.
Vanya and Allison step closer, and place a hand on him wherever they can reach.
Klaus leans into his siblings and-- things aren’t perfect. The ghosts in the corner scream incongruously, and he can only hope he can get a few consecutive hours of sleep. His head aches, and his stomach churns. He’ll never be able to forget the horrors of his past.
But he knows that when he wakes up, his siblings will be there.
He doesn’t really think he needs much else, beyond that.