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Chapter Text

Two very important things happened then. Allison chose Vanya, and moved the gun beside her ear. She fired and threw it away behind her. The others fell to the ground in heaps, their lifeforces restoring as the brilliant white light withdrew into Vanya. A shimmering ripple hazed the air around her and her back arched – which is when Allison saved the world. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her sister, taking her weight and, purely coincidentally, holding her at an angle.

This would be too small a detail to note, were it not for the particularities of physics.

Because Allison held Vanya slumped in her arms, when the great beam of power shot upwards it hit the ceiling as well as the glass, and then missed the moon by half a degree – or three hundred kilometres.

The shockwave of its passage did rattle the moon two degrees off its axis, which would destroy the surfing industry for years to come and caused unexpected flooding in several low-lying areas, but everyone just assumed it was climate change and ignored the suitably outraged astrophysicists and hobby stargazers (several of whom thought their telescopes were misaligned).

The beam winked into the darkness, avoiding everything until it found Jupiter, but, being the forgiving gas giant it was, it allowed Vanya Hargreeves’ power to thunder through it without harbouring any ill will toward its small blue sibling. (Although it did set in motion an electrical storm that would wreak untold chaos through the unreachable clouds for several hundred earthen millennia.)

oOo

Back on earth, Klaus crumpled to the ground at the same moment the Commission sent its second wave of masked assassins with gleaming red eyes. Winded and dazed, he wobbled to his feet and scrambled to join his sisters on stage, heart seizing as he took in Vanya’s terrifying stillness. He looked to Ben, knowing he wouldn’t have the strength to carry two dead siblings with him and hoping Ben couldn’t see that truth in his eyes.

“Is she –?”

Allison nodded, and Klaus exhaled to his knees, relief rushing through him with all the dizzying speed of a high.

Which is when the roof started creaking and the guttural snarl of gunfire lit up the rear seats of the Icarus Theatre.

“Everybody get down!” Luther shouted, but there was no cover on stage. They were open and vulnerable as a stuck vein.

“We gotta get outta here!” Diego hollered at almost the same moment.

“There’s no time!” Five screamed back, but Klaus was already moving. A chunk of ceiling splattered one of the attackers, a cloud of dust billowing at the end of the aisles while more rained down around them.

Klaus leapt nimbly off the stage and stood, feet apart, before the first rows of velvet-lined seats. He didn’t bother telling his family to run. Even though this was the first time they might actually listen to him.

Instead he looked to Ben. The fear in his eyes was not for himself, but it hardened into resolve and he nodded at Klaus just as a deep, groaning crack resounded above them. Someone shouted again behind him but Klaus wasn’t listening.

It was now or never.

He closed his eyes and reached for that stillness inside his mind, that instinctual moment of control he never knew existed. His hands were fists at his chest and in one movement he wrenched them apart and opened his eyes to the ethereal glow of his favourite brother standing before him. He could feel Ben with his mind, with a static tingle along his arms that thrummed and zinged in his hands.

Ben turned to face the oncoming attackers and thrust his chest out, unleashing the beast he had always hated. Two tentacles swept over the chairs, knocking three red-eyed killers to the ground. Two more reached for the ceiling, the dim blue glow illuminating the cobweb of cracks skittering along it. He braced, grunting with the effort as another section lost its fight with gravity.

The whole building was coming down.

oOo

Up on the stage, Five spared half a second to marvel at the sight. Then he yelled at Luther to grab Vanya and head for the rear exit, then jumped into space with the familiar tingling pressure. He rematerialized outside, in an alley half a block over. He ran along it, heart thumping almost painfully in his neck, then jumped to another alley. In the third, he found what he was looking for.

It took him seventy-three frustrating seconds to hotwire the window cleaning van parked in the shadows, and another two full minutes to navigate his way back to the Icarus, the seat pulled fully forward and his toes stretching to reach the pedals. As he drove, he saw a section of the ornate rooftop cave inwards.

He pushed the accelerator flush with the floor.

oOo

A bullet snapped its way through Ben’s two attacking tentacles and bit hard into Klaus’s shoulder. He flinched, jaw clenching as pain roared into being, and Ben flickered. The ceiling lurched and Klaus sucked in a burning breath and commanded his power back. Ben returned, instantly directing all tentacles to hold the roof, now mere feet above their heads. The masks advanced on Klaus, guns spitting endings at his family.

Which was a hell no.

Zoya Popova was the first to come to mind. She hobbled into the theatre, alight in gentle blue, nattering to herself in astonishment at the sight of Ben’s true form. She brought the rest of Hazel and Cha-Cha’s victims with her and they formed a shimmering blue wall between the men in gasmasks and the Hargreeves. Then the Vietnam dead took up the line, burying bullets and standing fast as they had in that godforsaken jungle.

“Klaus!” Diego yelled, his voice sounding far further away than it was. “Come on!”

“GO!” Klaus screamed back. “I can’t hold it!”

The tingling along his skin had become a vicious, acidic burn. He was on fire, choking on smoke, the world engulfed in blue flames. Blood trickled from his ears and along his neck, oozed from his nose. It was tart and metallic on his tongue. He could feel every bullet thudding into the valiant dead, could feel the weight of the roof as it beat Ben down, one lost inch at a time. He could even feel the texture of the ceiling against Ben’s tentacles. It was so much.

Far too much.

            He couldn’t tell who was screaming anymore but given the ache in his throat he assumed his voice must be adding to the clamour. The dead were shrieking, but for the first time in his life their wails weren’t aimed at him. Their voices were raised alongside his, in defiance of the living hurling tiny pellets of death at them, their lifeless hearts ablaze with a new fire of purpose, of courage, of revenge. For the first time in his life, the dead were making Klaus Hargreeves smile. For the first time, he felt pride in his power.

            The smile quickly turned to a grimace. Blood pulsed from his shoulder, sending a molten river down along his breast, trickling along his shaking arm. His heart pounded in his ears, almost drowning out the theatre’s dying moans and the dead’s wailing cries. The world shrank to that choking beat and the staccato pulses of the machine guns. He couldn’t hear his family, didn’t know if they had left or were still trapped on stage. He could barely feel Ben now, and the fire dancing along his skin was blazing to a higher pitch.

            “Hold on Klaus!” Ben yelled, but he couldn’t.

            With a grunt no one else heard, Klaus fell to his knees. Dozens of dead winked out of existence. Every fibre of Klaus’s being was focused, completely and utterly focused on holding Ben, and the roof, in place. More dead flickered and vanished, and the masks stalked closer, completely unperturbed by the ceiling pressing ever closer. Another battalion of soldiers faded like smoke and Klaus could hardly see, everything was shades of black and blue and smoke and dust. Ben yelled to him, probably something encouraging, but there was a ringing in his ears that stole the sound. It was probably linked to the burgeoning pain in his head, as though his skull was splitting along his thought lines. Darkness sucked at his mind, his limbs, his shoulders, whispering sweet promises of rest and silence, of blessed numbness, but he held on to whatever strength was fuelling him. He needed to save his family. He needed to do something good, something that mattered.

            Even if it killed him.

oOo

            Diego grabbed Allison’s hips and all but threw her forward as another chunk of ceiling crashed into the ground where she had stumbled. Luther was running, bent low over Vanya’s limp form. The theatre rained down on them but thanks to Klaus they could weather the worst of it. Diego hesitated as his siblings sprinted through the hallway to the fire exit. Five was backing a van right up to the door, the thin metal ceiling singing a discordant tune as rock tumbled over it, denting and scratching it without mercy.

He looked back to Klaus. He could only see a sliver of him through the hallway and door, but it was enough. Only a few ghosts remained and as he watched, two more flickered and disappeared. Diego whipped four knives out of their holsters and guided them through the hall and into the glowing red eyes of four attackers. Three crumpled instantly, the fourth fell backwards with his finger on the trigger and a platoon of bullets chattered into the ceiling. Ben’s ghost mirrored Klaus, falling to his knees as another, far bigger section of the roof thundered down onto the seats. All other ghosts vanished, save a single soldier who turned away from the few remaining mercenaries and walked calmly towards Klaus, carefully shielding him with his body, unflinchingly accepting bullet after bullet in his back.

Klaus was flagging. He and Ben were all that kept the building from being razed but the effort was sucking all colour from his skin. His blue-wreathed fists shook so hard the light shimmered and Diego knew, with complete certainty, that the second Klaus’s strength failed, the very moment he released his power, the roof would collapse. Icy realisation sank in his gut. He was too far away. There was no time.

He couldn’t save Klaus.

oOo

The world was blue and smoke and pain and burning. Ben was slipping away from him and Klaus held on all the tighter. His lungs stung. His throat burned. His skin was alight with lightning that sunk razor fangs into his every muscle even as it slowly faded away. The ceiling inched lower, then gained a foot, then another.

Someone was standing above him, someone bathed in a blue glow that illuminated their helmet, their uniform. Their face.

He knelt in front of Klaus, smiling with such pride, such naked love, Klaus almost lost his grip on his power. The ghost leaned closer, reaching one hand to Klaus’s cheek and that amazing smile widened. For half a heartbeat, Klaus didn’t feel the crushing weight or the stabbing bullets biting into his conjures. He didn’t even feel the pain.

“Dave,” he half-whispered, half-wept. He forced himself to concentrate, to take in every detail of that perfect face, those wonderful, wonderful eyes. Eyes that saw every part of Klaus and kept on looking. Eyes that shone with laughter and through fear, that had been the first true solace Klaus had ever known outside a needle.

Dave didn’t speak. He just smiled and wiped a tear from Klaus’s cheek. He leant closer and kissed Klaus, slow and sweet and perfect. The deep aching fissure that had rent his heart apart filled with the balm of that kiss and Klaus tightened his fists. The contact became more real, warmer, without the ghostly tingle and for one long, incredible moment, he was home.

            And then it shattered. Ben cried out as the theatre crumbled around them. Two knives flashed through the air but Klaus didn’t see where they landed. His gaze was fixed on the love of his life, blurred though he was by tears.

            “Don’t go,” he whimpered. “Please don’t leave me.”

            Dave only smiled.

oOo

            Diego was not going to lose someone else. He was not losing Klaus.

            Knives cartwheeled through the air in dazzling silver, dropping attackers as he ran back through the theatre. The soldier was covering Klaus, kissing him with a tenderness Diego could feel even through the chaos eroding the world. Ben was a far fainter blue than he had been a minute ago, as was the glow around Klaus’s fists. The muscles in his arms looked all the more severe in the waning light, shadows eroding his thin frame. Diego opened his mouth to yell that he was coming, when a giant arm wrapped around his middle and his feet lost contact with the ground.

            “What are you doing?” he howled up at Luther as he dragged him away from their brother.

            “I’m not losing you both,” Luther growled, his other arm shielding their heads from falling debris.

            Diego writhed in his grip but one arm was trapped at his side and the other couldn’t reach any of his remaining blades. He settled for punching every part of Luther he could reach with all the strength he could muster.

            “I’m not leaving him!”

            “Yes you are!” Diego’s legs swung as Luther barrelled around a corner. “He’s giving us a shot and you’re not throwing that away!”

            “You s-s-selfish s-s-s-son of a b-b-b–”

He couldn’t even get the words out. He twisted in Luther’s grip, barely able to breathe under the pressure, and caught a final glimpse of the scene in the theatre, just in time to see Ben falter and vanish with a desperate cry for Klaus to run! Diego’s stomach lurched as the ceiling fell and the last thing he saw before Luther threw him into the back of the van was Klaus – skinny, annoying, heartfelt Klaus – collapsing onto his back, the blue light fading from his hands just as the soldier threw his body over him. Then the debris sent an explosion of dust billowing through the passageways, Allison yanked the van doors closed, and Five rammed the accelerator to the floor.

Chapter Text

“Turn back!” Diego howled, thumping Luther as hard as he could. He still didn’t let go of him. “Five! Go back!”

            He couldn’t see Five’s expression from the back of the van, but his shoulders were tense and set.

            “I can’t do that.”

            “The fuck you can’t!” he yelled. “That’s our br-brother! We can’t just let him d-d-die!”

            Allison was crying silently beside him, clutching Vanya desperately. Luther tightened his grip.

            “It’s too late, Diego,” he said, his tone harsh and clipped. “Klaus is gone.”

            “No! No – let go of me you stupid ape – Five!”

            “If I jump back for Klaus you all die,” Five snapped, still not turning around. For perhaps the first time, he sounded old.

            “We can – we could – w-w-we –”

            “He died for us, Diego. H-he’s dead.”

            It was the quiet tremble in Luther’s voice that stilled Diego’s thrashing. He looked desperately from the back of Five’s impassive head to Allison’s tear-stained face, to Vanya lying unconscious in her arms.

            He just lost his brother.

            Again.

            Klaus.

            The van swerved sharply, throwing Diego and Luther into the wall. Luther’s hold broke as he reached out to steady Allison. Window wipers clattered from the shelving, sealed cans of cleaner rolling free. Diego grabbed the front seats to steady himself and peered through the windshield.

            “Careful, Five!” Luther snapped.

            “We’ve got a tail,” Five snarled back, lurching the steering wheel in the opposite direction and almost crushing Vanya with Luther’s bulk. “Hang on!”

            “Aw shit.”

            Diego clambered into the passenger seat while the others did their best not to be impaled by wiper blades in the back.

            “How many?” he asked, eyeing the wing mirror and quietly grateful for the fresh surge of adrenaline making him forget.

            “Three,” Five said through gritted teeth. “I should’ve known. Contingency plans. The Handler’s getting smarter.”

            “The what?”

            Five didn’t answer. A black van rammed into their side, shattering Diego’s window and almost severing the wing mirror. He cried out, throwing one arm up to shield his head while the other reached for a knife and whipped it into the enemy vehicle. It jerked away and Five steadied them, then took a hazardously sharp turn down a narrower road.

            “Five, who the hell are these guys? Who was that back there?”

            It took him a minute to answer as he wove through traffic, then took another late turn just as the first bullets bit into the rear doors. Luther threw himself over his sisters, pinning them as one of the bullets bit into Five’s headrest, ripping stuffing into the air an inch from his ear. He flinched and pulled at the steering wheel, knuckles white.

            “They’re from the Commission!” he yelled. “My old employers – they want the apocalypse to happen, that’s all you need to know!”

            “So how the hell do we get rid of them?” Luther shouted, looking over his shoulder through one of the bullet holes.

            “We don’t,” Five snarled. “They’re trained. Well. They won’t stop until they’re all dead. Or we are.”

            Another chatter of bullets screeched past the sliding door and Diego curved another blade out through the shattered window. It spun into an enemy tyre, bursting it and propelling the SUV into the air at an angle; it veered to the side and crashed into a parked car. The van behind it didn’t have time to react and rammed into its rear in a chorus of twisting metal. Diego just had time to smile at his handiwork when three more black SUVs and vans surged from behind them.

            “Shit, there’s more. Five – watch it!”

            Another van screeched from a road to their right – Five wrenched the wheel and avoided a collision, but the side of their van scraped chillingly along the enemy bonnet.

            “We can’t keep running!” Luther yelled from behind them. “We need a plan!”

            “Well we can’t stop and fight,” Diego yelled back, his tone mocking. “What the hell else can we do?”

            Beside him, Five cursed. Diego whipped around, expecting to see a bullet wound.

            “What is it?”

            “I can get us out of here,” Five sighed. “But it’s gonna be rough. Everyone – hold on to something.”

            Before Diego could so much as throw Five an aggravated look, his fists twisted the steering wheel, a pale blue aura surrounding them.

            “Oh shit,” Diego whispered, then grabbed the dashboard. The entire van began to tremble, the metal bending and squealing as Five roared with exertion, eyes wide, hands shaking, his grip so tight he could’ve broken the wheel. The shaking spread to the van, the blue aura widening to shimmer around Five as a high, piercing note shrilled through the air.

            Four black SUVs waited at the end of the road, blocking their escape. To Diego’s horror, Five sped on, eating up the distance as the windshield cracked with the strain. The partially severed wing mirror jerked on its single cable, bouncing against the door in a desperate attempt to escape the impending crash. They were less than a hundred yards from the blockade – fifty, no, thirty –

“Oh shit!”

            The stolen cleaning van winked out of existence less than half a second before colliding with the Commission’s elite temporal rectification squad, leaving nothing but a few shards of glass and a broken wing mirror skittering between the parked wheels.

oOo

            Back in the Icarus Theatre, the dust was settling. Lieutenant Wyatt Aymer let his machine gun hang on its strap around his shoulder and picked his way through the red-tinged wreckage. His mask kept the air perpetually crisp, and the red lenses offered a constant stream of information along the bottom of his field of vision. Mission orders, medical analyses, location information – it even kept track of his ammunition, connected wirelessly to his weapon, every round of which held a unique number code read at the moment of firing. It was an invaluable asset, not least because of the constant temp-locked link to headquarters. But Wyatt’s favourite aspect of the mask was the fact that it turned the world into shades of blood.

            He made it to the first row of seats before the stage, where the freak had stood and killed his men with that horrific thing. Being mostly centred beneath the initial wreckage, it was covered in great slabs of concrete and broken cornicing. They lay in a haphazard heap, like a piece pf paper crumbled into something halfway artful. Wyatt stood, considering it, as his few surviving men recovered their comrades’ bodies. There could be no trace of their presence when they left, not so much as shard of red glass or a single shell casing.

            Wyatt stepped over a chunk of ex-ceiling and stopped. A pale, dust-grey hand was just visible in the shadowy hollow below two sections of concrete. Squatting to grip the edge of the rock he heaved it backwards, stepping aside as it thumped flat. He rolled another block away, then grabbed the skinny arm and hauled the freak free of the rubble. His arm flopped lifelessly as Wyatt released his wrist.

            Wyatt tapped the side of his mask, engaging a trauma breakdown. Though, even if the freak was dead they’d still want samples of his bone marrow and brain tissue. The Commission hadn’t known about the fourth Hargreeve’s kid potential.

            He scanned the scrawny frame as the analysis compiled itself. He sure looked dead. Blood drenched his arm and chest, turning the military vest a deep burgundy and staining the dog tags that pooled beside his neck. His right arm looked broken, or at least dislocated. The black hair was almost white with dust, as were the slightly parted lips.

            Text blinked in his periphery and he focused on it.

            A heartbeat. Well. That was unexpected. Wyatt glanced back to the mound of rubble that had fallen on the freak, then back to the lines of diagnosis. Dislocated shoulder. Expected punctured lung. Gunshot wound. Expected broken ribs. Broken leg. Heartrate dangerously low.

            Wyatt frowned. How had he not been crushed? He peered under the wreckage he’d pulled the freak from and saw a space little bigger than he was right where the freak had been. The rubble looked almost deflected from his body – was that part of his power?

            He kicked him lightly in the ribs. The freak didn’t move. Well, alive was alive and that would be enough for the whitecoats back at HQ. Maybe there was more to the Hargreeves than the legend and the time bomb.

            With a small, satisfied smile, Wyatt Aymer bent down and heaved Number Four over his shoulder, not caring that the dog tags fell from the unmoving neck. He hadn’t expected to be grinning after a Mission Sigma. He’d lost a full platoon of men, after all, not to mention the world was still turning. But the night wasn’t a total failure. Maybe bringing back Five’s brother would save his station. Besides, there was a lot the Commission could do with summoning the dead.

Chapter Text

The last thing Klaus remembered was Dave. A final glimpse of his shining face as the world blackened around them.

            There was a brief moment, right as Klaus opened his eyes before the pain could register, in which he was convinced he was dead. And that he would see Dave smiling at him, welcoming him to their eternity.

            The disappointment was worse than the dull ache in his chest. His leg throbbed with gnawing persistence, every breath stung his ribs, and his shoulder felt like embers. All of which would’ve been fine, would’ve been a worthy distraction from the too-bright lights and the severe lack of Dave, but then Klaus made the mistake of thinking. It felt like his brain spasmed. Like someone had replaced it with smoke and lightning and crammed his skull with thought-stopping pressure until it almost cracked.

            Wincing, he tried to raise a hand to his forehead in a vain attempt to rub the agony away. Something stopped him. He opened his eyes to slits and peered over his good arm.

            Huh.

            Leather straps kept his wrists and ankles firmly fixed to the metal bed on which he lay, another thick strap crossing his chest. Klaus squinted past the blistering lights, panic building sluggishly. The room was stark. Bare. All whites and silvers. Medical. The lights were halogens, subtly strobing in time to the pain throbbing through him. With a moan, Klaus let his head flop back onto the thin mattress, grimacing as that sent another wave of awful through his body.

            “Ben?” he mumbled, keeping his eyes tight shut. “Where ‘m I?”

            Ben didn’t answer. Klaus risked opening one eye.

            “Ben?” He coughed – winced – and forced himself to look around properly.

            A door with a heavy lock. A small silver table laid with vaguely recognisable instruments Klaus wasn’t sure belonged in a hospital or horror movie. A rectangle of glass on the far wall, angled to show himself his reflection. He frowned. Waved his fingers. Shit, that was him. Maybe it was the austere whiteness of the room but he looked ... grey. Dark circles ringed his eyes that had nothing to do with eyeliner. He was naked save a pair of hospital-issue pyjama bottoms and ow, no wonder his ribs hurt! There was a continent of deep purple bruises tinged with lakes of splotchy red covering his chest. Another bruise dominated one side of his forehead, a long cut just visible at his hairline. The bullet wound in his left shoulder was stitched but unbandaged. His leg – which was definitely broken, yes, very, very broken, ow – was encased in the weirdest cast he’d ever seen. It was white (shocker) but rather than the usual canvas-like plaster it was a lattice of plastic that conformed perfectly to the shape of the limb. He raised his head and squinted down at it. Tentatively tried to wiggle his leg – and instantly regretted it.

            “Okay, okay, okay,” he whispered to himself, forcing deep breaths past the fire in his ribs. “Calm down, Number Four. Calm down, Klaus. We just need Ben. Ben will know what the heck is going on here.”

            Except there was no Ben. No ghosts at all.

            Which was ... new. Especially since Klaus had no doubt he was stone cold sober. His damn heart proved that with every wave of awful it sent through him. Taking a steadying breath, Klaus closed his eyes and concentrated. He needed Ben. Reaching for the familiar presence, he exhaled.

            And launched into a coughing fit he was sure broke a few more ribs. Gasping for breath, Klaus fought to curl in on himself, hindered by the strap tight along his chest. His eyes watered as his lungs refused to find their rhythm, shocked by a new pain that scorched somewhere deep in his gut. Beating back panic, Klaus eventually coaxed a few halting breaths past the forest of spikes that’d replaced his chest. He tasted blood and glanced to the mirror. Yep. Nose was bleeding.

            That wasn’t worrying at all.

            He lay back down, muttering supposedly calming things to himself as he struggled to think past the smouldering cotton that was his brain.

            No Ben. Which was bad. No ghosts. Which was good ... ish. He’d probably just overdone it in the theatre – yeah, that made sense. His powers needed charging.

            Meaning Ben would come back. Soon. Dave too, maybe.

            A tear leapt from the corner of his eye at that. Tickled past his ear. He’d see Dave again, he’d be okay. He glanced to the mirror again, too dizzy to look down at the dogtags. He frowned at his reflection. Looked down at his chest, gritting his teeth against a swell of nausea.

            They were gone.

            No.

            No, no, no. They couldn’t be gone, they were all he had of Dave – they’d been around his neck from the hour Dave’s heart stopped beating. They couldn’t be gone. That would mean Dave was ... was –

            Klaus pressed his aching head into the mattress, blinking quickly at the ceiling. He couldn’t take deep breaths, they hurt too much. Maybe they weren’t lost forever, maybe ... maybe Five had them. Or Allison. He’d ask Ben when he turned up, Ben’d know. Ben would get on his case for blacking out and ev-everything would be fine.

            Which was when a gut-wrenching thought occurred to him. When Ben returned he’d find out if he’d failed his family. When the ghosts came back he’d ... he’d know.

            Breath gushed from him in sharp, controlled bursts. For now he needed to figure out where the flippity frack he was. It had a distinct high-end-rehab vibe except for that tray full of nightmares. He forced his mind back, trying to remember anything after Dave threw himself over Klaus, saving him. Again. Just like old times. But there was nothing. Not even a vague hint. Though, given the colouring of that bruise on his temple, that wasn’t so shocking.

            His stomach sank as it dawned on him. A story that filled the missing chunk of his life that made as much sense as it was horrifying.

            What if he had saved his family? And what if they decided he was dangerous, like Vanya? Was she here somewhere too? Was this some sort of mad house for the apocalyptically insane? Was – had they left him here?

            No. Right? They wouldn’t.

            Except that they might. They’d locked Vanya in a dungeon for Christ’s sake. He’d left her there too, he remembered with a pang. It was hard going against Number One and if Luther had decided they needed to sequester Klaus until they understood his new powers ... well, it fit.

            Some heroin would be really good right now.

            Exhaustion pulled Klaus into a sleep-like haze of dull pain and shifting lights. He jerked awake, thinking he was falling, a split-second before the door opened with a too-loud clank.

            A women walked in. Short, curvy. Brown hair done up like the ‘30s. She smiled at Klaus and he grinned back uncertainly, watching her walk over, high heels clicking on the hard floor.

            “Well Mr Hargreeves,” she said with the air of a headmistress about to dole out double detention. She stood over Klaus, her face half-hidden by the blinding lights behind her. “You caused me an awful lot of trouble.”

            Klaus squinted against the light and burgeoning migraine. “Oopsie?”

            “Oopsie indeed. I have some questions for you.”

            Klaus swallowed and his throat twinged. God, he was thirsty. “I have some questions myself,” he croaked. “Like where the H-E-double toothpicks am I?”

            The woman smiled a tight-lipped smile that sent a chill through Klaus’s spine. There was no warmth to it, no humour. It was empty. Cold.

            “You’re in my facility.”

            “And ... who are you?”

            That smile again. Klaus would shiver if he wasn’t certain it’d hurt like hell.

            “I am the Handler.”

            “The who-dler?”

            “Hm. I run the Commission.”

            Klaus waited for her to elaborate. She didn’t.

            “Where’s –” Klaus had to swallow and try again. “Where’s my family?”

            The smile was like a slap. “That’s what I’d like to know, Number Four.”

            Klaus blinked. Ice twisted in his gut.

            “The apocalypse was due to take place two nights ago, courtesy of Vanya Hargreeves. It did not occur.” Klaus belatedly thanked the little girl he wasn’t sure he believed in that he – everyone – was still alive.

“You summoned a beast in the Icarus Theatre,” the Handler continued, voice like a winter breeze. “Used it to kill a lot of highly trained men I paid good money to hire. My associated and I believe that creature was Number Six.”

            “He’s not a creature,” Klaus croaked defensively. “He’s Ben.”

            “Mm. Number Six died thirteen years ago. For you,” she added, almost to herself. “I want to know if these two events are connected. Your summoning and Vanya’s failure.”

            Klaus twisted his arms, testing the strength of the strap. The bullet wound snarled in warning.

            “Look lady, I’m sure you got full marks at evil witch school but I, uh, I’ve gotta, y’know –” he raised his eyebrows, nodding to his crotch – “so if you could just unstrap me and point the way to the little boys’ room I’d be much obliged.”

            The Handler sighed. Reached to the metal table. A syringe filled with a thick yellowish liquid sailed across the harsh lights, making them wink like stars.

            “I should tell you,” she said calmly, “I’m not as patient as my predecessor. Not as playful. She relished the minutia of the job. I value results. Consistency. Preserving the Timeline, you understand?”

            Klaus shook his head – then winced as his brain flung itself against his skull.

            “The hell are you on?”

            Her lips pursed in that horrible smile. “I need to know some things, Number Four. It is in your best interest to tell me now, before you force me to be ... unpleasant.” She twirled the syringe in her fingers and the needle glinted in the light. Klaus swallowed. “I understand you attempted to get sober after Vietnam.”

            Klaus frowned. “How – how did you –?”

            “It is my job to know. Now tell me: who is responsible for averting the apocalypse? Number Five?”

            No, it was Allison, Klaus thought instantly. Just as quickly, he swallowed the knowledge down. “I don’t know.”

            “I don’t believe you.” The syringe spun through the air, drawing his gaze and warring want with will. “You summoned an army. Can you conjure any dead? What limitations have you?”

            What? Did she think he understood anything about what he could do?

            “Look, lady, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to but I’ve spent more than half my life trying to get as far as I could from those undead bastards, I’m telling you – I don’t know shit about how it works. Neither did my dad and he studied me my whole life.”

            The smile changed. Became sharper. Almost a sneer.

            “You disappoint me, Number Four.”

            Klaus shivered and forced himself to smile. “Aw, speaking of dear ol’ dad, you sound just like him!”

            “Let’s try another avenue, shall we? Where is your brother? Where is Number Five?”

            He’s alive? This means he’s alive, right?

            He had no time for relief. “I don’t know.”

            “Where would he go after stopping the apocalypse?”

            “I don’t know! We don’t exactly talk.”

            “Where would he go, Number Four?”

            “I seriously don’t know! I swear, no one tells me stuff!”

            She considered him, eyes shielded by glare. “I don’t believe you, Number Four.”

            “My name is Klaus!” he snapped, fear making him stupid. Again.

            “Tell me this, then,” she said as her hand gripped his arm, fingers cold and unforgiving. “Would Number Five come for you? Would he risk himself to save you from me?”

            No.

The syringe twirled once on its way to the crook of his arm.

            “Hey, no – no, just hang on a minute, okay? Look, I’m telling the truth, I don’t – no – no! Just don’t, don’t!” The syringe sailed closer and something hot and ugly surged in Klaus’s chest, eager for that brief, piercing pain. “I don’t want it! I don’t want it!” he cried, tears blurring the needle as it reached his skin. His head flopped back in defeat and he thought of Dave. Of Ben. His family. “I don’t want it.”

            The prick. The cold spreading through his blood. It pulled him away from the woman with the terrible smile, into a darkness he recognised. A darkness he loved as much as he hated. The last thing he heard was the stranger’s voice, words shaped by the smile that set his stomach plummeting.

            “I hope when you wake you’ll be more cooperative, Number Four.”

Chapter Text

Time had abandoned him. Left him alone to be pain’s plaything. Klaus was no stranger to pain. Not even to the confusion that comes with a brain full of opioids. But this ... This was different.

            He was never aware of much. He knew when it would start, because the darkness would recede, revealing his body still locked in the agony of healing. Then he’d feel the straps. Taste the gumshield they forced into his mouth. Heard the harsh whistle of his faltering breath through the tube that kept his lips parted.

            When the strap tightened around his forehead, he knew to think of Dave. He was the only escape left, even if the familiar weight was gone from his neck like some parody of the emptiness aching through his heart. When the shocks started, he’d remember that night in the tent when the others were asleep and he reached for Dave’s hand, a part of him scared he was wrong about this. That same part exploding into joy when Dave pulled him closer and kissed him for the first time.

            Thoughts would still while the electricity blazed through him. It was fury. Disdain. It didn’t care that it set his every nerve alight. Didn’t care that it burned his thoughts into a static haze. Didn’t care it wasn’t helping.

            The Handler asked the same questions every session. And every session Klaus would smile around the drool as they pulled the gumshield out, and he’d joke. Tell her there was nothing like three hundred volts to get the juices flowing. That a good zing was better than a cocktail of coffee and cocaine. He’d laugh through the aftershocks and pretend for all he was worth that it didn’t hurt. Reaction is the motivation for violence. Denying them his fear was his only rebellion and by Little Girl he would die a disappointment to this classy bitch.

            When he wasn’t on the cold metal table, he wasn’t awake. Or, aware, anyway. A few times he thought he heard Ben, maybe saw him out of the corner of his eye. But whenever he turned to see him, he’d be gone.

            His leg was free of his cast and the ghosts still hadn’t returned. Klaus wondered if his younger self would’ve thought electroshock therapy was worth the silence. Although, a small seldom-heard part of himself maintained Dad would never be this brutal.

            On the rare occasions he was left to think, he’d think of his family. Comfort himself with disjointed daydreams of the five of them living happily – or civilly – together. Living. Allison helping Vanya with her powers. Diego and Luther driving each other insane. Five finding some new drug now he was free. They were safe. From each other, from apocalypses, from the Commission. He felt like he’d had something to do with that.

            It was a nice dream.

oOo

            “I thought you said he was the weakest one,” Batchelder moaned.

            The Handler pursed her lips. “The research suggests he is.”

            “Well he’s told us squat after weeks of this. Seems pretty strong to me. Else he’s right – he doesn’t know shit.”

            “Language.”

            “Sorry ma’am.”

            “The boy started drugs at thirteen. He’s been homeless most of his adult life. You know how he was involved with Number Six’s demise. Prison shortly after – the evidence is there. He shouldn’t last this long and be silent.”

            Batchelder looked up at her, beard twitching as he rubbed his nose. “So what do we do with him? The fellas are getting bored.”

            The Handler considered. She’d expected to make more progress by now. All eyes were on her – new Handlers weren’t named every day after all. Especially not after an assassination perpetrated by an ex-employee. Not to mention the biggest event of the Timeline being undone right at the last second.

            She needed something to show for these failures lest they be branded as her own. The Commission was counting on her and the Time Council’s silence felt less than encouraging.

            The Handler turned back to the monitor and watched Number Four seize on the table as the paddles were pressed into his temples again. This wasn’t working. For whatever reason, he wasn’t talking. No amount of tweaks would mend the splintered timeline now. They needed something drastic. They needed Vanya Hargreeves.

Number Four would tell her where she was.

She reached for his file and leafed through the pages. A note extracted from Vanya’s book leaped out at her and she stopped. Read. Read again. Smiled.

Any lock can be broken. With the right tools.

oOo

If it was possible for a ghost to lose his voice, Ben’s would be a hoarse croak. Of course, being dead, you didn’t have to worry about things like that. In fact, Ben only had two worries these days: where was his family, and how the hell was he supposed to get Klaus out of this hellhole when he was as invisible to Klaus as he was to everyone else.

The electroshock “therapy” somehow kept all the ghosts separated from Klaus. Even Ben couldn’t break through, which meant the “treatment” was even stronger than the worst cocktails Klaus had shoved into his bloodstream. Klaus was so far gone into the haze of torture he couldn’t even be pissed these assholes had stolen his sobriety. His arms bore a minefield of track marks swimming in marshy bruises.

But the worst thing, of course, was that Klaus was alone. Or at least, thought he was.

Ben stepped closer to the bed and tried, again, stupidly, to lay a hand on Klaus’s arm. Intense pins and needles blazed into his hand as it shimmered blue like an old television fighting static. He withdrew his hand and looked Klaus over, the Horror churning inside him.

The bruising was almost gone, save the marks of those who handled him so roughly. They’d reset his shoulder, stitched up the bullet wound, and removed the cast from his leg, but Ben doubted Klaus could walk on his own. Not that they let him try. He’d been strapped on his back every day since the Icarus. Ben tried not to think of the symbolism there.

“Klaus?” he tried again for the hundred-and-third time that day. “Can you hear me, buddy?”

Nothing. Klaus didn’t so much as twitch in his drugged sleep.

“Klaus, I’m here. You’re not alone.”

Ben sat up on the bed by Klaus’s healing leg and fiddled with his cuff. It was too quiet. Being around Klaus was never meant to be quiet. He couldn’t even see the other ghosts. Whatever combination of the Icarus and this place kept them so far away Ben couldn’t even sense them, no matter how hard he concentrated. He wondered why he was still here. He could come and go from the Void all he wanted, could exist in the molasses of nothingness like he did whenever Klaus made him want to unleash the monster, but even that made him wonder. Whatever connection he and Klaus shared, whatever kept Ben around during the highs and ODs, was stretched taught now, but it was still there. Ben was sure if Klaus only got a few minutes of quiet, of halfway sober peace, he’d see him.

He looked back to his brother and his heart burrowed away from the sight. His cheeks were gaunt, all trace of that shielding smile gone. His brow was furrowed in pain even in sleep. Or maybe he was having the nightmares again. Ben made a game of guessing which one – Vietnam or mausoleum usually – but Klaus was too deep in sedation to offer any clues save the tension in his jaw whispering that even sleep was no respite for him.

Ben’s fingers curled. The Horror surged under his skin but he didn’t release it. There was no point. He couldn’t do anything without Klaus.

He reached a hand out and hovered over his brother’s skin, pretending he could feel the warmth.

He wasn’t anything without Klaus.

“I’m here, Klaus,” he whispered, because it was all he could do. “I’m here.

Chapter Text

            The van hit the road and bounced viciously. A tyre burst with the shock of an explosion, metal squealed and groaned as they swerved drunkenly to the side. Five was unconscious, collapsed against the door, jaw slack, brow smooth, blood snaking from his nostril. Diego braced himself against the dashboard and swore, eyes wide and struggling to catch up to the obviously rural surroundings. How far had they jumped?

            “OH SHIT!”

            Luther’s panic broke through Diego’s paralysis and he lunged for the steering wheel as they veered towards an abandoned fill-up station. The van tipped onto two wheels with the force of Diego’s desperation. Luther threw himself the opposite way in the back and they blundered back onto four wheels. The other wing mirror snapped off as they careened past the low wall separating the station from the road, the screech of fleeing paint deafening in the still night. Awkwardly, still sure they were about to die, Diego wrenched his foot over the gear stick and slammed it – too hard – on the break. The engine cut out, Diego hit the windscreen, Five colliding with his back moments later, and the van, barely alive, whined to an ungraceful stop.

            The silence stole into the van and accentuated their terrified heartbeats.

            “What the hell?” Luther groaned, righting himself and pulling Allison free of the cleaning supplies that covered her and Vanya. “Where are we?”

            Diego grimaced as he slid back into his seat. A hand to his temple revealed a sluggish line of blood. Five didn’t stir when he shook him.

            “I don’t know. Five’s out.”

            Allison cut the air with her hand and clambered out of the hole-ridden double doors. Diego and Luther followed suit.

            There was an old, potholey road, the gas station, a few telephone wires, and field. Nothing else. Heavy cloud obscured the sky, stealing the stars and plunging them into the inky orange twilight of the single working street lamp flickering in shock further up the road.

            “How far did he jump us?” Luther breathed as he extricated himself from the van. It bounced upwards on its suspension as his weight left it.

            Diego glanced to the unconscious teenager. “Too far.”

            Allison was writing. Her marker was bent but apparently had survived the trip.

            What are we going to do?

            Diego and Luther exchanged a look. One set of eyes challenging, one quickly hiding their lost cast.

            “We head back,” Diego said at the same time Luther muttered, “We lay low.” They scowled at each other.

            “‘Lay low’,” Diego repeated, repulsed. “What the fuck do you mean lay low?”

            “Look, Diego –”

            “We have to go back for Klaus!”

            “Klaus is dead!”

            The shout hung the air, refusing to dissipate. The meaning pressed against them, a heavy mantel none of them wanted to wear.

            “He might’ve made it,” Diego said quietly, anger tight through the words.

            “Diego, stop. No one could’ve survived that.”

            “He survived Hazel and Cha-Cha!” Diego spat. “He survived whatever made him meet God and see dad!”

            “Diego he wasn’t being literal –”

            “How the fuck do you know?” Diego shouted. “You don’t know him! None of us do! He saved my life three times today, Luther. He saved yours. Saved Allison’s. Vanya’s too. And what, we’re just meant to say thank you and move on? No!” A pause. Then, calmer, “Didn’t you learn anything from Ben?”

            That blow stung and Diego knew it. Luther turned away, hiding his expression. His broad shoulders caught the orange glow, making him look oddly small in the half light.

            Allison stepped forward and held her pad out to Diego, her expression gentle and compassionate. He hated it.

            He’s gone, Diego. We can’t go back.

            “We have to.”

            More scribbling.

            And get caught? A pause to write. Five could’ve died getting us out of there.

            Diego looked back to the van. One brother unconscious, one sister out cold with enough power to destroy the world.

            One more brother dead.

            He shook his head, banishing tears.

            “I can’t just leave him. He’s different lately, he’s ... I can’t.”

            “Those assholes in masks are gonna be crawling all over that theatre, Diego,” Luther said in his Number One voice. “We go back, we insult Klaus’s memory. He died saving us. We can’t throw that away.”

            Memory. That’s all he was now? Like Ben?

            “We need to get off the grid,” Luther continued. “Somewhere safe, to regroup. Somewhere those nutjobs can’t find us. Make sure Vanya and Five are okay. Then ...” He sighed. “Then we figure it out.” He stepped toward Diego, hand extended. Not in challenge, but in offering. “Together.”

            Diego considered the gloved hand. Luther had never held his hand out to him before. Never said ‘together’ and really meant it, like he just had. He looked up, deep into his brother’s eyes.

            “I’m going back,” he said quietly. “For his body. I owe it to Klaus.”

            Allison’s expression said more than she could fit on the pad. She wrote furiously while Luther glanced between them.

            “Diego –”

            “Save it, Luther. I’m going.”

            Allison shook her head, irritated, scratched something out, and wrote again, pen twiddling. She held the notepad out to Diego. He had to squint to read the rushed writing.

            How’re you gonna find us?

            He shrugged, not caring. “Just tell me where you’re going.”

            There was a very awkward pause.

            “Well?”

            “Um,” Luther began, clearly without knowing how to finish. Allison rolled her eyes, smiling, and wrote.

            I know a place.

            “We need to be off the grid until Five’s back in action,” Luther cautioned.

            Allison raised sassy eyebrows and underlined the last message. Then added,

            I know how to avoid people.

oOo

            Diego was well-versed in avoiding cops. Probably the most valuable thing he learned from the Police Academy. All their protocols and paperwork made them slow, even for potentially-terrorist-related incidents.

            By the time he reached the remains of the Icarus Theatre the maniacs in red-eyed masks were gone. The cops had cordoned off the area and were waiting, by the looks of it, for the fire department to declare it fit to enter. Diego snook around the back and slipped inside through the yawn of a door.

            The dust hadn’t settled. It hung in a ghostly haze, saturating the air and Diego wondered if Klaus saw something like this.

            His gut writhed as he picked his way stealthily through the carnage. He could hear fire personnel on the upper floors and side passageways, assessing the structural integrity of the building. The sheer amount of ex-roof was incredible. Somehow it looked even worse than the ruined Academy, maybe because he had seen Klaus and Ben holding up all that weight.

            Scrawny little daydreamy Klaus, holding up a building to save his family.

            Dying. To save his family.

            What was it about the Hargreeves that they could only appreciate each other when someone was gone forever? It was only after Five disappeared that they realised how important his snarky headstrong attitude was. How he was the only one with the courage to stand up to Dad. Only after Ben died did they realise how crucial his calming presence was, how much they needed that quiet peacekeeper among them. Now Klaus was dead all Diego could think about was what a big-hearted little softie he was. Now he thought about it, Klaus was the one who’d notice something was wrong, would chatter on and on until you smiled or were too busy being annoyed by him to remember what you were down about. And now he lay under two huge slabs of theatre and Diego was nowhere near strong enough to shift it and pull him free.

            He sank to his knees beside the scene of his brother’s sacrifice, no longer caring if anyone saw him. Tears burned under his eyes, rushing upwards to see for themselves that his little brother was really ... gone.

            A spot of red caught his attention. A grey that didn’t quite fit the powdery scene. He picked it up.

            Dogtags.

            Dogtags?

            Diego frowned and wiped Klaus’s blood away with his thumb.

            DAVE KATZ.

            These were Klaus’s. Diego had never seen them up close before. Who was Dave Katz? This didn’t feel like just one of Klaus’s accessories. Diego remembered him holding them to his heart right before the red-eyes attacked.

            The dogtags blurred. Dreading the sight, Diego looked up, into the hollow beneath the two slabs.

            Diego crawled forward, needing to be sure. Yes. No Klaus.

            No Klaus?

            Diego looked back to the dogtags. How had they gotten here, over a yard from where Klaus was pinned? They must’ve fallen off. Meaning Klaus had moved. Or been moved.

            Meaning he was alive.

oOo

            Allison was a genius. Luther hadn’t realised how wily her fame had made her. On the rare occasions she wanted freedom from hounding paparazzi, she knew how to completely disappear.

            Five was still groggy by the time Diego made it back – alone, and with a fire in his eyes.

            “Where’s –”

            “Gone. They must’ve taken him.”

            What? Hope, hot and jagged, flared in Luther’s gut. Klaus was alive?

            “Who?”

            “The Commission,” Five cut in, his voice low and withdrawn. The others looked to him, Allison glancing up from Vanya for the first time. She still hadn’t stirred. Luther tried not to worry about that.

            “The Commission?” Diego repeated. “Those red-eyed weirdos?”

            Five shook his head and straightened himself in his seat, wincing and half-reaching for his chest before mastering himself. “They’re just hired guns. The Commission is my former employer.”

            There was a beat of expectant silence.

            “And?” Luther prompted when Five looked lost in his thoughts. He blinked, seeming to remember he wasn’t alone.

            “And they want the Apocalypse to happen,” Five snapped. He gestured to the unconscious Vanya. “Just because we missed the moment doesn’t mean it’s not gonna happen. Vanya might still ...” He hesitated, glancing to Vanya with an expression that sent a pang of guilt searing through Luther’s gut. Five shook himself. “If they find us we’re all dead.”

            “Dead?” Diego repeated, his shoulders tense in a stance Luther knew well. “Why would they –”

            “To get Vanya. To get me.”

            “But Klaus –”

            “If he’s still alive then he’s bait, Diego. We can’t go after them, not now.”

            “Why not?” Luther demanded before Diego could. After everything, after somehow averting the goddamn apocalypse, why couldn’t they win? Just once, really win. “You really think they’re gonna treat him okay?”

            “No,” Five said coolly, matching Luther’s furious gaze with eyes like ice. “They’re gonna use him. Anyway they can. They saw what he did in the Icarus. The Commission, they know almost everything they wanna know, but with Klaus? With a way to interrogate ghosts? Hitler, Castro, Duvalier, Amin – monsters they let live, they let kill millions of people. Think how much ‘smoother’ World War III will run if they can get tips from the world’s best mass murderers? The dictator elite? From the people who had entire communities turn on each other and hack their neighbours to pieces? No,” he shook his head. “Klaus is too valuable to them. Plus, he’s my brother, and they want me. They’ll want to know what happened to stop Vanya destroying the world.” He heaved a sigh with an expression that reminded Luther his little brother was not the thirteen-year-old he seemed. “They’re gonna torture him until he breaks, and then they’re gonna come for us.”

            Silence oozed between them like spilled blood.

            Luther exchanged an appalled glance with Diego. For once, they were on the same page.

            “We’re getting him back,” they said in unison.

Chapter Text

            It took Klaus a long time to realise he was awake. It happened with a sickening jolt of wild fear.

            Everything was dark. Utterly pitch.

            He flinched upright and winced as his forehead thwacked into something solid less than a foot above him. His shoulder and leg hissed at the movement and he lay back down, bringing a hand to his face, his elbow bumping a wall close on his right. The air was cold and stale, rich with a scent Klaus had never managed to forget, only dilute with cocaine.

            “Hello?” he tried. The sound was eaten by unseen walls, his voice tiny and insignificant against a weight he could sense more than feel.

            His breathing quickened. Each shallow inhale stabbed at his ribs. He was dreaming. That was all. Most likely the staccato of his breath would chatter into gunfire and he’d see D– he’d feel the blo– then he’d be sure. The nightmare would change and he’d be okay.

            Besides, he hadn’t seen a ghost in weeks. Not even Ben.

            Focusing on breathing past the snarls that were his ribs, Klaus spread his arms as wide as he could – which was not wide at all. He could barely bring his hands level with his shoulders. He stretched his good leg and felt more wall against his bare feet, the texture coarse and grooved. He spread fingers he couldn’t see before his face and pressed upwards. The ceiling was mere inches above his nose. He added his other hand, gritting his teeth as his shoulder growled under the strain. Wood bit into his palms, resolute and unmoving. Each sting a mockery of his paltry strength.

            Okay. Okay. This was just a weirdly vivid nightmare. There’s no way he was actually – that someone would – why would they? He hadn’t hurt anyone, hadn’t –

He crossed his arms over his chest, needing something to ground him, needing to feel the warmth of flesh against him, even if it was his own.

            He frowned.

            His fingertips glided over his arm again.

            Oh no. Oh no.

            Needle marks littered the crook of his arm like shrapnel. Klaus thumped his head against the ground and left it there. Even in his dreams he couldn’t stay sober.

            God, he missed Ben. Ben’d know to wake him up right now.

            Except ...

            Realisation bloomed like a poisonous weed in his gut. Memory slunk back into his mind like a snake intent on crushing him whole. The air grew tighter, more solid, harder to swallow. Blackness closed in on him, the weight pressing hard against the narrow wooden box that trapped him.

            “Help,” he whimpered, eyes wide and futile. “Help! Heeelp!”

            He hammered his fists on the ceiling of the coffin and dust fell into his eyes. He gasped, tasting soil, and the panic took him.

            “BEN!” he howled, thrashing with an energy defying his injuries. “DAVE! DAAAVE!”

            His breathing was a series of sharp, clean cuts made with the precision of a seasoned sadist. Texture materialised and dematerialised around him as his brain struggled to understand, memories faulty and disjointed. He’d been in the theatre and he’d ... god, what if he died? Or they thought he died and buried him and somehow he was back? Had he met God again? Why didn’t he remember?

            No. There was something in between. Cold hands and sparking fire. Drugs.

            Questions. About him. About Vanya. And Five.

            Understanding stilled his frantic limbs. He lay still, eyes flicking uselessly.

            They had him. Whoever they were. He hadn’t given them what they wanted.

            Pride, soft and fragile, blossomed briefly in his chest before terror smothered it again. He hadn’t given Vanya up. He hadn’t betrayed his family. Again. That was ... that was good. He’d done good.

            And that’s why they’d buried him alive. To make him rethink things. Make him talk.

            Klaus drew in a shaking breath.

            I won’t survive this.

            The thought was simple and pure as the first raindrop that ripples the still waters of a lake. All these years he’d been running from the mausoleum. Flooding his mind with opiates  to drown out the memories of that smell, those walls, that all-consuming darkness. Even all those nights huddled in shop doorways or curled up in alleyways, the memories had come for him, telegraphed by the dead who could never escape what he had. Years of running away and now he was trapped and completely defenceless.

            He was going to die. Afraid and alone.

            Well at least he’d see Dave again. And Ben. Or maybe there’d just be nothing this time, and he could finally rest.

            That didn’t sound so bad, really. It was just the dying part that was gonna suck.

            The air was too close. The weight of the earth crushing from all sides, kept from his skin by thin planks of unsanded wood. He felt achingly sober, yet there was a fog in his mind that hovered at the edge of his consciousness, only noticeable by an odd sense of absence.

            Had Dave felt his burial? Had his ghost been trapped in a box underground, alone and forgotten? Had Ben known this aching silence that consumed even his own breaths? Had their spirits been this cold?

            What would they say if he could reach them?

            The thought was a slap. If he could summon them, then he wouldn’t have to die alone, not completely. Forcing himself to calm, Klaus closed his eyes and tried to forget the cramped nook, ignored the rich scent of soil seeping through damp wood.

            Dave. My heart. Please, come to me.

            He didn’t have to open his eyes to know it hadn’t worked. He couldn’t feel it, that barely-there tingle that meant he wasn’t alone. But Dave was always hard. The time difference, that was the problem. Ben was easier. Ben stuck around through all but the dangerous highs.

            Ben, he pleaded with his powers, please, buddy, I need you.

            Klaus frowned, fists clenched and trembling.

            Please, Benji. I need my brother.

            “What do you think you’re doing?”

            Relief swept through him with the force of a flash flood. He snapped his eyes open, looking for Ben, but still couldn’t see anything. He might as well have been blind.

            “Ben! Oh, god, thank you! Jesus I was starting to think –”

            “What are you doing, Number Four?”

            “I – what?” Was there something off about Ben’s voice?

            “I thought you’d let go.”

            Klaus frowned in the darkness. Turned his head toward Ben’s voice.

            “What? No, they drugged me, I –”

            Ben laughed. The sound was cold and mirthless. Klaus quieted.

            “You really gonna blame them? C’mon, at least be honest with yourself. There’s no them. You just dove off the wagon again. Because you’re weak.”

            Ben’s voice shifted. Klaus turned his head to frown into the blackness. Hot pressure swirled in his chest, closing his throat.

            “I, uh, I don’t really need the tough love talk right now, brother-mine.”

            “There’s no love about it, Number Four. I’m sick of being stuck with you. I thought I was finally free but no. I’m still here. Because you won’t let me go.”

            Klaus swallowed molten air. This wasn’t – Ben wouldn’t – how long had he been thinking this?

            “Ben, I thought –”

            “You thought wrong, Four.” His voice was louder now, almost a shout. Or a snarl. “I’m sick of babysitting the family fuck-up, just because I died first and your guilt-ridden scrawny ass couldn’t let me go! I could’ve been at peace all these years but you keep holding on to me. You’re the reason I can’t let go.” The silence scorched as Ben drew breath. “I’m just glad Dave got rid of you. Thanks to that time jump he got to move on and not be dragged down into your pathetic excuse for a life. You’re my cage, Number Four. My prison.”

            Klaus was abruptly aware of how distant his injuries felt. He wished they’d hurt more. It’d be so soothing right now.

            “But,” he began, his voice small and afraid. “What about our deal, Ben? It was your idea, you told me I couldn’t –”

            “Break it.”

            The hiss was worse than a gunshot. He couldn’t speak.

            “That deal was only ever for you, Four, and you never gave a shit about it. How many times did you try to OD? You never cared about it. Or me.”

            “You’re my best friend, Ben, I –”

            “I’m your only friend, Four,” Ben spat. “And that’s only because I’m trapped. Chained to you by death and your curse. God knows I never deserved this. I want you to break it, Number Four. Then I can be free.”

            Number Four didn’t try to speak again. There was nothing to say. Something small in him that had been cowering in the shadows of his soul finally broke apart. Its shattered pieces were shrapnel, cutting through him to the point that he could almost smell the blood. After a long silence, he forced his quivering jaw to work.

            “I’m sorry Ben.”

            “Sorry won’t set me free. You know what you need to do, Four. Break the deal. Set me free.”

            The memory brought the shadow of grief with it like a battering ram into Number Four’s heart.

The first weeks after Ben died. Maybe the second time he’d managed to conjure him. Four’s desperate desire to just end it all and join him. A surefire way to avoid the ghosts, for good this time. But Ben had appeared before Four could tip the bottleful of pills down his throat.

            “Don’t do that, Klaus.”

            “Why not? Death seems like a pretty sweet deal to me, brother-dear. Why not join you for the long vacation?”

            “Because they need you.”

            Klaus had laughed at that. “No they don’t. They never have. Why should I stick around for them?

            “Then do it for me,” Ben had said after a moment, his eyes alight with stubborn fire.

            “What?”

            “Live for me, Klaus. I get to see the others with you.” He’d smiled, all trace of that awful, deathly horror gone briefly from his eyes. “You keep me alive. So let me return the favour.”

            Klaus had hesitated. Considered the bottle in his hand. Enough to kill himself twice over. He set it down.

            “Deal.”

            No. No. Ben wouldn’t go back on that deal. Not after they saved their family together in the theatre. No, something was wrong. Klaus had to get out of here.

            His hands fumbled the raw planks, searching for a break. Soil trickled down, hard and damp against his skin. He coughed. A scream built in his burning throat, squeezing through gritted teeth like blood through a bandage. Desperation surged through his bloodstream, drowning pain and lending strength and Klaus punched his arms forward, to the sides, kicked and kneed in a frenzy of determined terror, and all the while Ben’s voice laughed in his ear.

            It’s not Ben, he shouted inside his head, It’s not Ben! It can’t be!

            His fist thumped against the side of the coffin, skin breaking against the ragged plank. It moved. With a gasp, Klaus squirmed onto his side and punched the plank. Soil bled through as it buckled. A breeze curled into his grave, its touch gentle and comforting as hope itself. Sure he’d lose his mind if it wasn’t real, Klaus braced his back against the opposite side of the coffin, his spine twisted in the narrow space, and forced his knee up into the weak plank. It broke with deafening snap. Laughing in giddy relief Klaus clawed at the opening, collecting splinters and forcing the hole to widen. Before it was big enough he crawled forward, remembering the weight of his helmet and the resolute, sweat-slicked length of his rifle. The scent of soil and mud filled his nostrils, spiced with the hot tang of fresh blood. He could barely fit through the gap and the edges of the broken planks bit mercilessly into his arms and sides but the false Ben was still laughing and god, anything was better than that.

            Earth pressed around him. Death’s own hug squeezing his lungs. His breath was too loud, an intruder in the stillness of the soil. He pulled himself forward, tears cutting paths through grime and sweat. There was something solid under him, just beneath the dampness. It arced like a tunnel, forcing him to dig straight and panic burned in his throat as every instinct in him screamed to climb up, to air, to sun, to people – but only the way ahead was clear and even that was a battle for every foot.

            Breathing grew harder. Klaus could feel the pressure hovering inches around him, the entire weight of the world kept at bay by a glorified concrete pipe. That was getting narrower. Or maybe that was just the fear oozing from his every pour, filling up the paltry space so that his every breath pressed his chest against the loose soil covering the tunnel floor.

            “You can’t run from this, Number Four,” Ben’s voice called, his tone falsely sweet. “You can’t escape what you’ve done.”

            Klaus closed his eyes tight and laid his forehead on his arm as tears leapt from his cheeks. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He wasn’t strong enough.

            “I’m not strong enough,” he had panted that first day, half-collapsing against the rock wall of the gorge. The stream burbled at his feet, soaking through to his socks ‘cause this hellhole wasn’t miserable enough already.

Dave stopped as the rest of the troop jogged on, seemingly unperturbed by the oppressive heat, the endless miles of rugged terrain, the damn bugs. Klaus met his eye.

“I can’t do it.”

            Dave stepped closer and clapped a hand on his shoulder. He squeezed, his touch firm and trustworthy, and Klaus looked up into those beautiful eyes, into that smile that was brighter than the sun.

            “Of course you can do it, Klaus. I got you. I’m not gonna leave you. C’mon.” His hand slipped from Klaus’s shoulder to hover between them, an offer that felt more significant than help up this damn cliff. “I’ll take care of you.”

            Klaus had smiled around his ragged breath, straightened, and held Dave’s hand for the second time.

            Neither let go until they were both safely up the river.

            I got you.

            With a strangled cry, Klaus thrust his hand out and pulled himself on, holding the image of Dave’s sunlit smile in his head. His fist found a wall of hard-packed earth and with a yell he pummelled it, pounding it until his arm shook and seized with strain. With a final punch his hand burst through the barrier and he opened his fingers to the unmistakable caress of moving air. Panting, half-crying, Klaus bullied his broken leg into propelling him forward and slowly, achingly slowly, he pushed himself through the earth and fell onto a cold, hard floor.

            He righted himself, wrapping his arms around his aching chest and sobbing openly in relief. Exhaustion weighed on every muscle. Stone walls pressed against his shoulders and he sank into them, relishing the cooler air tracing his skin.

            “Klaus?”

            He started. “Diego?” He looked around, eyes adjusting to the faint blue-tinged light. He broke into a broad grin. “Diego!”

            He tried to run over to his brother, but his battered body had had enough and he winced back into the corner. He didn’t care – he could finally breathe. Joy swept through him, banishing pain.

            “Don’t move, Klaus. You’re hurt.”

            “Yeah no shit!” he laughed, watching as Diego came to squat by his side. Another tear cut its way down Klaus’s cheek. “It’s so good to see you, Diego.”

            Diego smiled sadly. “Wish we could say the same, bro.”

            “We?”

            Diego jerked his head over his shoulder and Klaus followed his gaze. His heart stopped.

            Luther was leaning against the far wall, impaled on rebar, one arm missing. Allison stood beside him, blood coating her front and the side of her head, which was partially caved in. Five sat on what looked like a concrete bench, smiling at Klaus as though there wasn’t a giant hole in his narrow chest. Vanya ... Vanya sat by Five, her crushed face trying to smile.

            “N-no,” Klaus muttered, turning horrified eyes back on Diego. Only then did he notice the blood glistening at his side, camouflaged by the dark clothing. Bullet holes. Half a dozen of them at least. Blinking away tears, Klaus looked up to meet his dead brother’s gaze. “No.”

            Diego shrugged, smiling that indifferent smile of his. “It’s okay, man. At least you tried. I guess.”

            “I – I thought – you –”

            “You gotta help us now, Klaus,” Luther called, his voice echoing slightly. “We don’t wanna stay here in this place.” He gestured with his one arm to the room they were in. Klaus looked around for the first time and a fresh thrill of horror spiked through his heart. That wasn’t a stone bench under Five. It was a tomb. The walls weren’t stones but grave markers. “You gotta let us go.”

            “Let us go, Klaus,” Five echoed.

            “C’mon, set us free,” Vanya agreed.

            Allison held out a blood-soaked pad: We don’t want to be stuck here with you.

            “You gotta sober up, Klaus,” Diego said, his voice imperious. “We can’t move on unless you let us go.”

            Klaus pressed himself into the corner of the mausoleum, shaking his head as though that could rid his eyes of his murdered family.

            “I-I don’t know how,” he whispered, tears leaping from his lashes to splatter on the cold stone below. He wished he could copy them.

            “Then figure it out,” Ben said, stepping from the shadows with his hood up, a savage smile curling his lips. “And Klaus?” He took a step forward, eyes gleaming in a way that sent an icy shiver along Klaus’s spine.

            “You better hurry.”

Chapter Text

            The Horror surged and writhed under his skin, just shy of breaking free. Ben focused on its strength, its energy, determined, this time, to make this work. He could feel the pressure pushing him back, like repellent magnets, warding him away. He gritted his teeth and balled his fists, concentrating all the harder. He had to break through. He had to.

            There! A moment of calm in the silent chaos trapping him, a sudden absence of the solid fog. He didn’t have time for pride or relief.

            “Klaus!” he shouted, already straining to keep himself steady in this battering tide. “Klaus, listen to me!” He gasped a breath, the effort making his extremities fainter, less real. “Klaus it’s not real! They’re not real! It’s the Handler! You’re drugged, you’re –”

            Like a slamming door the buzzing pressure returned, forcing him back a step, breath catching. He stumbled, overbalanced, and fell into a heap, barely noticing the discomfort of not feeling the impact.

            “Goddamnit.”

            Feeling hollow despite the Horror’s mild churning, he looked up at Klaus. He hadn’t moved from the corner in the hours – or was it days? – since the false ghosts had forced him there. He’d looked up at Ben during those fleeting seconds of presence, but his eyes were as empty as they had been since he’d woken up in that coffin. Ben doubted his words had sunk in.

            Shit. There was a knack to this, he was sure of it. It was just like those early years of his ghosthood, battling Klaus’s drugs when he couldn’t stand to see Ben anymore. Those few times Klaus had tried to stop himself seeing anything again. Somehow, maybe because they were brothers, maybe because they were connected by whatever insanity brought them into the world, Ben had grown to withstand all but the strongest of overdoses. Then, once he’d gotten the hang of slipping in and out of the Void when he was tired of Klaus’s shit, he’d barely noticed the effort it took to hang around when all other ghosts were drugged away.

            This was the same thing. He just needed to level up, that was all. Train harder. He needed to be seen long enough for Klaus to understand what they were doing to him. He’d laughed his way through the electroshocks and interrogations, but this enforced solitude save the family he thought was dead? Ben knew Klaus well enough to know he wouldn’t survive this. Not for much longer. He already looked far away, withdrawn within himself. He barely reacted to the fake ghosts anymore and it was that, more than anything, that frightened Ben.

            Throughout their years together, the one thing Ben constantly advised and the one thing Klaus could never do, was ignore the ghosts. He couldn’t take the screaming, the accusations, would flinch away from the gory figures. That he was confronted now by his own family, all gruesome in death, and remained silent and still? Ben hadn’t seen that since Klaus had returned from Vietnam. But there was no dire distraction now to pull him out of it, no purpose to draw him from his grief. He thought he was alone.

            And worse, he thought that Ben had betrayed him.

            Ben couldn’t see the apparitions. They existed for Klaus alone. But he could guess what kind of things they said to make Klaus howl and cower as he had those first hours. He’d heard Klaus beg the fake-Ben to stop, to take it back.

            He’d heard him mention the deal.

            Ben stood up. Whatever his drug-induced self said to Klaus, it had to stop. There was no counting on the rest of the family. He was all Klaus had left, and dead or not he was going to save his idiot brother.

            After all, Klaus had saved him.

            He took a deep breath. And another. Squared his shoulders. Shook out his arms. Stared at Klaus. Willing himself to connect again with that power lying slumberous in his brother’s mind.

            He closed his eyes. Felt the Horror stir. Remembered that electric tingle that’d buzzed along his skin when Klaus had manifested him. Imagined Klaus’s power as a waiting energy, a powder keg in need of a spark. Thought himself a flame.

            The pressure fizzled and vanished. Ben opened his eyes and leapt to Klaus’s side, hunkering down to his level.

            “Klaus? Klaus it’s me.” He tried grabbing his brother’s shoulder but his hand passed right through him with that faint sensation of pins-and-needles. “Damn it. Klaus, you need to hear me, okay? It’s Ben – the real Ben. Those ghosts you see aren’t real, you’ve been drugged –” The pressure was beginning to build and he forced it back with sheer willpower.

            Klaus’s blank expression twitched.

            “I need you to keep our deal, Klaus,” he said quickly, unsure how much longer he could hold his presence. “I’m still here, buddy, you just can’t see me. I need you to hold on – I’ll figure something out.” The strain made his voice shake. Klaus turned his head, cautious eyes glancing to his.

            “Ben?”

            Ben beamed. “Yeah, buddy, it’s me. I’m here, okay? You can keep me around, you need to use your power like in the theatre –”

            Something in Klaus’s eyes flickered and darkened. “The theatre,” he breathed, brows pinching.

            Crap. “Klaus, stay with me!” His grip was slipping. The pressure hummed soundlessly around him. “Klaus, you gotta fight it! It’s all lies, what they’re saying is lies! It’s the Handler, remember? You gotta stay with me! Klaus, I –”

            Klaus’s gaze went right through him as the drugs forced him away.

            “– love you.”

            Ben slumped back, wishing for the impossible.

            The first time he saw Klaus after he’d died, he’d thought for one insane moment that he’d somehow lived. That all those impressions and feverish dreams weren’t real, that he’d been in a coma or something. But no. He was dead. And Klaus had summoned him from a twilight of waiting, from an unbearable weight of uncertainty and fear. Ben knew that corridor still waited for him, beyond the Void. The final hurdle before whatever lay beyond and the one all Klaus’s ghosts were too scared to overcome.

If Klaus died, could they both hover in the in-between? Or would they be sucked through that corridor Ben had been too afraid to traverse? How did the other ghosts do it, what kept them tethered to life? Even after all his years bound to Klaus, Ben still couldn’t say. Unfinished business was the party line, but, speaking as ghost, he was pretty sure it was the bog-standard fear of death. But, call him a pessimist, somehow Ben didn’t think he’d be able to avoid that last journey without Klaus holding him here.

            Which meant, if he didn’t figure out how to save Klaus, they were both doomed.

            The Horror shifted uncomfortably under his skin.

            Yeah. No pressure.

Chapter Text

Howard Bryce was bored. As usual. It’d been two hours since he finished the busywork and now he was stuck with monitoring the security footage with nothing but the paper to entertain him because, shocker, Frank had stolen his book to read last night and didn’t put it back in his work bag. Six hours still to go and he’d already read the first five articles.

            It was going to be a long shift. At least he had his Walkman.

            He whiled a few minutes away checking the bank of black and white monitors on the desk, gaze cycling dazedly from the empty Hall of Records to the emptier bullpen, over the cells and back to the screen looping a deserted lab. The only spark of entertainment was the skinny guy in the sub cell. That was a weird one, even by this new client’s standards. Howard was paid (very little, to be fair) to look the other way while the facilities were rented out to some commission or other, but even after a decade as a prison guard that skinny little guy got under his skin. There was something about him. More than the screaming or clawing at the concrete walls till he bled, more than having heated conversations with thin air. All that was pretty standard for mooks in Solitary – Howard had seen enough inmates go crazy from isolation before Frank convinced him to change gigs – but the stillness now was something else. He didn’t work weekends, but last Friday the kid had been utterly motionless on his screen, and he was in the exact same position now, days later.

            But then, that whole coffin thing might have that effect on someone. Howard suppressed a shudder. Sometimes this place was worse than the damn prison. Maybe it was time to look for something that didn’t involve tying people down and pumping them with drugs of questionable legality.

            Howard shifted his weight and turned up the volume of his Walkman. This job wasn’t so bad. He got decent benefits, good hours ‘cept these occasional night shifts. Besides, it was close to home which meant more time with Frank and Lola, their chihuahua. He returned his attention to the newspaper, hoping the next article would be more interesting, and so missed the shimmer of light preceding the sudden appearance of four adults and a teenager in the main foyer. Had he seen them, he might’ve raised the alarm, but they were gone again in another flash of bright grey, reappearing in the record room, mostly out of sight of the cameras.

            Howard just read on, nodding along to the Eskies.

oOo

            They split up once they reached the record room. Efficient though it would be, Five didn’t have the jumps to check every room, even if he went himself, and he needed to save some energy for getting everyone out of here. It was a long road of nothing to get to the nearest town.

            Klaus better be here. Five was running out of ideas. And patience.

            He and Luther raced to the upper floors while Diego, Allison, and Vanya headed down. Luther wasn’t exactly stealthy, but it seemed there was no one around to hear his echoing footsteps.

            “This way!” Five hissed, ducking along another corridor. He glanced at the cameras blinking dully in the shaded corners of the ceiling.

            “Five!” Luther whispered loudly, “where are we going?” He gestured to the corridor of identical doors they were ignoring. “Klaus could be anywhere in here!”

            “I know,” he snapped. “That’s why we need the control room.” He nodded to the nearest camera as they raced under it. “Get eyes on the situation.”

            “That’s not gonna be unmanned,” Luther warned.

            Five smirked. “Why d’you think I brought you with me?”

oOo

            Allison tapped his arm and he turned to see her pad shoved in his face.

            We don’t have time for this! Underlined. Twice.

            “I know that,” he whisper-snapped back, grabbing her elbow and hurrying her along to the next door. How’d he get stuck with these two? “But we gotta start somewhere!”

            “What if –” Vanya began, far too loudly. Her hearing was still off after the gunshot.

            Diego flapped his hand at her. “Shhh! We don’t have time for what ifs!”

            She scowled at him and for a second he could believe his pint-sized sister was capable of apocalypse-level destruction. Y’know, if she wasn’t so wiped from the apocalypse-level destruction.

            “We don’t have time to open every door either. We should split up,” she urged, voice lower but not enough. “They’ll know we’re coming here after last time.”

            We gotta be quick.

            Diego took a moment to miss his solo career.

            “We’d be a lot faster if you two shut up and helped me look!”

            He wrenched open another door. Two people were inside, chained to their beds by the ankle. They shrank from the paltry light of the corridor, hands raised to shield themselves from an expected blow. His gut twisted. Screw Five’s rules, he wasn’t letting the Commission screw up any more lives.

            “Help me,” he whispered, flicking out a knife and kneeling before the nearest bed. The man on it was shaking, thin, with electric blue eyes with neither whites nor pupils. His veins were unnaturally prominent. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Diego said quickly as the man flinched away. “We’re getting you out of here, okay?”

            “Diego,” Vanya cautioned, “Five said –”

            “I know what he said.”

            He felt Allison kneel beside him and turned to see a familiar look that said you’re an idiot but I’m with you, one hand held out. He grinned, slapped a blade into her palm, and went back to picking the manacle free from the man’s scrawny ankle. Not for the first time, he wondered what state Klaus would be in if they found him.

            When. When they found him.

            The lock clicked free. Diego stood and held out his hands to the man with lightning eyes.

            “C’mon. Now’s your chance.”

oOo

            The door wasn’t locked, but Luther was pretty hyped up – enough to forget to hold back and definitely enough to pull the whole damn door off its hinges.

            “Nice going, Luther.”

            He glanced to Five and shrugged, then looked in on the man having a heart attack in the control room.

            “Holy shit! Holy – I – hold on, stay right there, I –!”

He fumbled for the gun at his hip, legs flailing as he tried to stand from his wheelie chair. Five strode across the room with a confidence that didn’t fit a thirteen-year-old’s body. Before the man could do more than whimper, Five had a hand on his, keeping the gun in its holster, then lashed out with the other elbow, knocking the man unconscious. He fell backwards, one arm coming to rest on a flat red button on the base of a tannoy mic. His headphones clattered to the desk, tinny music blaring right next to the speaker. Brass and banjo beat into the air, reverberating through the entire compound with a frantic beat. Luther reached out to move the man’s arm off the speaker button, but Five distracted him.

“There! It’s Klaus!”

“What?” He followed Five’s finger to the lower left monitor on the bank. It showed a tiny dark room with a figure huddled in the corner – a very familiar figure. “Klaus. Where is that?”

Five was already moving, pulling the walkie from his pocket.

“Diego, Vanya, I found Klaus – repeat, I found Klaus. South-west corner, bottom floor. We’ll meet you there in two minutes, repeat, two minutes.”

He stopped on the threshold, looking back to Luther.

“You coming or what?”

Luther glanced from the screen to the guard to Five and back. “Should I –”

“What?”

Luther raised a finger to the music pouring through the speakers.

Five listened for a moment. Shrugged. “I kinda like it. C’mon, they already know we’re here.”

Luther nodded, then paused. He turned back to the Walkman and, with a sly smile, turned the volume up to max.

“Blind country all around it’s starting to get tight.

“A burning scent without relent has dragged us through the thick of it –”

oOo

            “– and slipped right out of sight.”

            “What the hell is that music!” Diego shouted over the din, pelting along the corridor with Vanya and Allison on his heels. A door opened up ahead and six men ran out, guns ready and raised. “Look out!”

            “Holy hell almighty if I only understood –”

            Diego slid on his knees, flicking two knives from his harness, guiding them through the air and into the men’s eyes.

            “ – why you sent me one so flighty –”

            The air above him shook as Vanya raised her hands, sweeping the other four into the wall where they crumpled, unconscious.

            “– I could tell the trees from wood –”

            Diego looked up to her, jaw open. “I guess your powers are back then?” he shouted.

            Vanya gave a slight smile, a slighter shrug, and took Allison’s hand. Diego raced after them, heading for the stairs.

oOo

            “Tear along the line! Tear along the line!

            “The quarry’s as quick as the thicket is thick –

            “Now don’t be left behind!”

            Luther yelled as he threw the rent-a-thug into his buddies, bowling them over like pins. Five zipped around them like a nightmare, blood pouring in his wake as men dropped in time with the beat of the song and for the first time, Luther truly believed his once-little brother was a lethal assassin. He wasn’t even using his powers. Like he didn’t need them.

            “Keep it moving, Luther!” Five yelled over the music. “They call backup and we’re screwed!”

            “Tear along the line! Tear along the line!

            “Don’t be left behind!”

oOo

            The stairwell swarmed with soldiers, clad in black – devoid of the glowing red eyes but no less deadly. Diego’s knives flew like swallows, flashing silver then red as he half-ran, half-leapt down another flight.

            “I’ve got you now, I cried, albeit still in flight.

            “A biddable hound, a formidable sound, I’ll catch you even if

            “I have to chase you through the night!”

            Screams were lost to the beats of bass and brass as Vanya flung half a platoon over the rails. Allison kicked another into the wall and he did not stir again. An alarm pulsed dully under the rhythm of the song and Diego could almost feel the soldiers massing, gathering like a tide of cockroaches to be crushed, swarming on every floor to overwhelm them.

            Well. He wasn’t gonna make it easy on them.

“Your cover now abandoned

“There’s good sinking to be done

“More than I had planned on

“I was thinking there’d be none.”

oOo

“Tear along the line! Tear along the line!

“The quarry’s as quick as the thicket is thick

“Now don’t be left behind!”

Was that ... music?

Ben stood up. Took a step towards the door, putting himself between it and Klaus.

“Klaus? You hear that?”

Klaus didn’t answer. He hadn’t made a sound in hours. He just stared at his hands while the hallucinations tore him down. Ben was out of energy. He couldn’t make contact anymore.

But there was music. Faint, faraway, but distinct. A decisive beat with a lilting melody that reminded him of the sort of thing Luther would blare in his room on those rare occasions they’d had the house to themselves. Music that would ooze through the house and reach every one of them, all alone but connected by the melodies. Music that would draw them from their post-mission hazes, pull them gently back to bodies that still breathed, to a house that, despite anything, still felt safe. To a family that couldn’t articulate what needed to be said, but what was still implicitly understood.

Music that brought them together.

“Klaus,” Ben said, a little louder, a smile creeping its way across his lips. “I think ... Klaus, I think Luther’s here.”

            “Tear along the line! Tear along the line!

“Don’t be left behind!”

oOo

            “Mr James, sit down, we’ve got some news about your wife.

“Mr James, this morning I’m afraid she lost her life.”

A shimmer shocked through the air and the soldiers went flying. Vanya faltered and Allison held her up, putting an arm around her. Diego yanked his knife out of a guy’s skull and glanced over to them.

            “She okay?”

            Allison nodded, looking uncertain.

            Blue warped the scene and Five and Luther stumbled into the wall, a soldier thudding to the ground having been trying to choke Luther out. Five stamped on his face, silencing him, then looked up at the others.

            “We good?”

            Diego snorted. “As long as you can jump us out of here then yeah.”

            Five offered that tight-lipped smile and turned away, gesturing for them to follow.

“Out beyond the bound’ry rang three shots and she was felled

“And I searched all around me but he didn’t leave a tell.”

            “You know where we’re going?”

            Five turned back to him. “Klaus is two floors down, third door on the right.”

            “Well why don’t you just jump us there?”

            “Because,” Five explained, kicking the door to the service stairwell open. “We’re under over a hundred tons of concrete and lead piping, not to mention several hundred miles of electricity. Klaus is even lower and even if I could teleport myself back there, I couldn’t jump him back up here. So I need you guys to keep the Commission’s goons off us until we can make it back to a jumpzone.”

            Diego halted on the stair. He caught Luther’s incredulous gaze. “You’re kidding me.”

            “Perfectly serious.”

            “You mean you can’t get us out of here?” Luther clarified.

            “Got it in one.”

            Allison slapped Diego’s arm and he flinched, took in her expression, and frowned. “Yeah I know he’s being crazy but –”

            “What if they send more soldiers?” Vanya asked quietly. Diego glanced to her. She looked beat. Pale. And somehow even smaller than usual.

            He caught Luther’s eye again and nodded.

            “We’ll handle them,” he lied, layering the confidence on thick and even shooting her his best, most charming smile. “Umbrella Academy at full strength? They don’t have a chance.”

            Vanya smiled weakly. “We’re not at full strength, Diego.”

            “You’re right,” Luther cut in. “Not until we find Klaus.”

oOo

            The grating trill of the phone woke her. The Handler snatched it from its cradle and scowled herself awake.

            “What is it?”

            “He’s back, ma’am. You were right.”

            The Handler smiled. “Where?”

            “The Alkali Facility.”

            “You’re prepared?”

            “Vanya Hargreeves is with him this time. We’ll need backup.”

            The Handler sat, satin sheets falling into her lap. She brushed a rogue curl from her brow and thought.

            “Protocol Delta authorised. Send everyone.”

            She hung up without waiting for confirmation. Her smile grew.

Finally, after months of little progress and fewer leads, finally, she would have Five Hargreeves. And the rest of his family. Number Four may have held out longer than anticipated, but she doubted that would be the case for all of them. Besides, withstanding torture oneself was one thing. Watching someone you love suffer it is quite another. And after all, Five had abandoned his mission for his family. Jumped through time and space to save them from his past. Their future.

And with Vanya Hargreeves in their grasp, that future would be back on track in a matter of hours, according to the Timeline.

Finally. She was going to win.

oOo

            Ben reached out for the door hidden in the wall of tombstones. The music was so faint he could barely make out the words. But it was definitely there.

            “Someone’s coming, Klaus,” he said, more to himself. “I can feel it.”

            He glanced back to his brother, ignoring the pang the sight sent through him. He walked back over to him. And smiled.

            Klaus was moving. Nodding his head ever so slightly, in time with the music. Tapping his middle finger against his elbow to every other beat.

“Mr James do hear me, if it puts your mind at ease

“Mr James do steer me a direction if you please.”

            With a screech that obliterated all other sound, the wall of the tomb scraped open. Ben sprang to his feet, stepping futilely in front of Klaus as the Horror surged at the ready. Did he have the strength to manifest himself? He’d only managed a few sentences with Klaus, dragging himself into the corporeal world was a whole other battle.

            The door ground to a halt, and Ben’s breath caught.

            Luther. And Diego! And – holy hell, it was all of them! Ben beamed as they blundered into the cramped space, relief almost pushing him into the Void when he saw Vanya, alive and, okay, a little pale, a little exhausted-looking, but alive! They were all alive. Klaus was wrong. They’d done it. He’d saved them.

            He turned back to kneel beside Klaus, who was still nodding rhythmically, eyes wide and staring and as dull as they had been since the coffin.

            “Klaus! Holy shit!”

            “He’s alive!”

            “He’s alive?”

            “Thank God!”

            “I told you!”

            “Okay everyone, get out of here,” Five snapped, utterly unmoved by the sight of his lost brother. He waved the others back imperiously and Ben almost laughed as Luther nearly tripped over Vanya. “Luther, there’s no room, wait outside!”

            Diego pushed past Five, eyes fixed on Klaus.

            “Go easy, Diego,” Ben breathed as his brother knelt on Klaus’s other side. “Go easy.”

            “Klaus?” Diego said, his voice softer than Ben could remember hearing it. “You in there, buddy?”

            Klaus didn’t move.

            “What’s wrong with him?” Luther called from the doorway.

            “He’s been tortured for god knows how long, that’s what’s wrong with him,” Five snapped.

            “What d’you mean for god knows –”

            “I told you,” Five snapped, exasperated, “the Commission exists outside of time. We can’t know how long it’s been for him.”

            Silence filled the space the words left. Diego turned back to Klaus, unsure.

            “C’mon, Diego,” Ben whispered, willing his brother to hear him. To understand. “You gotta break through. Come on.”

            He watched Diego lift a hand – more slowly than he’d ever seen him move – and lay it gently on Klaus’s tapping hand. Klaus stilled, brow tensing.

            “It’s okay Klaus,” Ben whispered, hoping he could hear him.

            “Klaus?” Diego tried, his voice still uncharacteristically gentle. “It’s Diego. And Five – we’re all here, Klaus. We came for you.” He paused, waiting for Klaus to react. He didn’t. “We found you.” Nothing. “Klaus?”

            Five stepped forward and elbowed Diego aside. Far too quickly, he grabbed Klaus’s chin and turned his head up to the faint light streaming from the corridor. Klaus flinched, breath quickening, but he held still, tense as a bowstring.

            “Damnit Five!”

            “Shh. Give me a minute.” He peered into Klaus’s vacant gaze for a long moment, dark eyebrows pulled together in concentration. Recognition flickered in his dark eyes. “Diego,” he said suddenly, holding out his other hand.

            Diego looked blankly at the offered hand for a moment, then started and reached into his pocket.

            “Uh, guys?” Luther called quietly from the door. “I, uh, hear something. I think we’ve got company.”

            Five and Diego ignored him. Ben peered over Five’s shoulder to see the silver something Diego placed in his hand. Five released Klaus’s chin and slipped Dave’s dogtags over his head. They fell into place on Klaus’s naked, bruised chest and Ben let out a sigh nobody heard.

            Klaus looked down at the dogtags, his expression still that awful blankness. Slowly, achingly, he reached for the tags. Turned them over with trembling fingers. Dave’s name glinted in the half-light.

            The silence pressed against them, save the tinny pulses of far-off music.

            Klaus raised his head. Ben, Five, and Diego all leaned in closer, waiting. Watching.

            Life flickered in Klaus’s eyes. He blinked. Looked from Diego to Five to Luther and Allison behind them, to Vanya.

            To Ben.

            Ben smiled at him, nodded.

            “It’s okay, Klaus.”

            Klaus’s gaze flickered to someone who wasn’t there, his brow tightening, then back.

            “Y-you’re real?” he ventured, gaze steady on Ben’s.

            “Who’s he talking to?”

            “Yes, Klaus. I’m real.”

            Cautiously, Klaus pointed to Five and Diego with the hand not holding on to Dave’s memory.

            “Them?”

            “We’re real, Klaus,” Diego said quickly, gaze flicking unseeingly to Ben and back to Klaus.

            “Real,” Ben clarified.

            Swallowing, Klaus nodded. Took a shaking breath. Met Diego’s eyes.

            “We’re real, Klaus,” he repeated, softer this time. “We’re here to bust you out.”

            For a moment that felt infinitely longer, Klaus glanced from sibling to sibling, from living to dead, from real to not-real.

Then his fist closed around Dave’s dogtags. Tears welled in his eyes, the green shimmering as the dullness fell away.

            “Hi guys,” he muttered, smiling faintly. “Can, uh ... can I get a ride home?”

oOo

            Klaus wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but Diego and Five sure felt real against him, the stairs they were climbing seemed solid, and he could see Ben – the smiling Ben, the Ben that didn’t hate him.

            But it wouldn’t be the first time he’d dreamt of them all being together again. Though, his dreams never had creepy, half-heard music floating uniformly through the air.

“Out beyond the bound’ry lurks this brute he will be found

“He may try to run but I will smoke him from the ground.”

Oh and yeah – his dreams never included a freaking army of gun-toting assholes surrounding them as they barrelled out of the stairwell.

“Oh fuck.”

Klaus almost giggled. It was funny hearing little Number Five curse like the old coot he really was.

“Uh, Five?” Luther said, pulling Allison and Vanya behind him. “What was that you said about jumping us the hell out of here?”

“I said we need to be higher for it to work.”

Luther gulped. “That’s what I thought.”

The hallway was black with soldiers, six wide, dozens deep. Guns and blades waiting for blood.

There was a beat of silence as Hargreeves and Commission stared each other down. Then with a yell, Luther hurled himself forward in the same moment Diego ducked out from under Klaus’s arm and whipped a knife into the air.

“Tear along the line! Tear along the line!”

Bullets flared into life and Klaus flinched against Five, waiting for the pain to rip him apart like it had Dave.

It never came. He looked around and saw Vanya with her hands out like claws, mouth open in a scream as bullets halted in mid-air. Klaus blinked. Exchanged a look of amazement with Five. Then Five was gone and Luther was throwing people and Allison was grabbing a man around the neck with her thighs and Diego was yelling and the music was loud and Klaus fell backwards, stumbled, and fell.

“The quarry’s as quick as the thicket is thick

“Now don’t be left behind!”

            The soldiers filled the entire hall. There must’ve been a hundred of them, maybe more. Klaus watched his family fight them back and knew there was no way in H-E-double toothpicks they were getting out of here alive.

            Not without help.

            He looked down at his shaking hands, wondering if he had it in him to be of use.

            “Come on, Klaus!” Ben yelled beside him. “You can do it! Come on!”

            Ben looked more alive than he had in years. His eyes were alight with excitement and determination, with a vigour Klaus couldn’t remember ever feeling. He was weak, he was useless, he was the family fuck-up, the dud, the –

            The one who saved his family at the theatre. That ... that was real. So maybe ...

“Tear along the line! Tear along the line!

Klaus stood. Every bit of him was shaking but he didn’t care. If they had any hope of getting out of this mess – a mess they were in because of him – then it was together. The Umbrella Academy. At full strength.

Luther – bellowing his defiance as he hurled grown men into their fellows, his massive arms swinging like clubs in the confined space.

Diego – blending punches with knife throws with the proficiency of a trained killer, slicing down not only his opponents but anyone who was giving his siblings too much hassle.

Allison – a flurry of curly hair and deadly limbs as she kicked her way through soldier after soldier, a dance of economic brutality.

Five – flitting from one mark to the next with an efficiency made all the more horrifying by the youth which brought it, his fury endless, his accuracy deadly.

Vanya – hands Klaus had seen draw the most beautiful music into the air were now fists punching raw power into the mêlée, the forgotten sister, the lost power, making the biggest dent in the enemy.

But not big enough.

With a deep breath, Klaus spread his stance and looked to Ben. He nodded, and Klaus smiled, fighting back his own doubt, his own terror, his exhaustion. He pulled his fists to his chest, to Dave’s dogtags, and bowed his head over them. Closed his eyes. Remembered that fizzling calm he’d felt in the theatre. Remembered that he could do this – he could help. He could matter.

Remembered Dave.

I got you.

With a roar Klaus wrenched his fists to his side, the blue glow casting his features in stark shadow and before him Ben threw back his head and unleashed the Horror. Soldiers crashed into the ceiling and fell back to earth with grunting cries. Two tentacles pushed through the crowd, forcing a channel between them and Klaus yelled for his family to run. Diego fought back to him and grabbed his arm.

“Not without you!”

“Don’t be left behind!”

With a strained smile, Klaus took a wavering step, then another. Ben moved with him, keeping the way clear for the other Hargreeves. Inch by inch, they fought their way along the corridor, the clamour of the battle drowning out the final triumphant bars of the music that still didn’t make sense but Klaus now wanted on his bathtub playlist.

But the hallway was long. And more soldiers were coming. Among them, a short lady with a fancy hairdo. Holding a gun. Pointing at Klaus.

Her eyes were cold, her smile colder.

“Goodbye, Number Four.”

Ben hurled another four soldiers aside and turned, too late, to see the gun fire. The bullet spat across the distance between the Handler and Klaus, its aim true, trajectory perfect.

Dimly, Klaus heard voices calling his name.

He could see the bullet spiralling towards him. His end, at last, flying to meet him.

“I got you.”

Dave’s shining face materialised in front of Klaus, beaming at him as the bullet snapped into the back of his helmet. He jerked forward, smile not even faltering, then straightened.

“Dave!”

“You got this, babe,” he whispered, pride exuding from his eyes like the blue glow surrounding him.

Klaus grinned. Nodded. Dave stepped aside, into a line of Vietnam dead that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Klaus looked to the boys he’d fought with, filling the corridor to his right. His left. Ranked behind him.

He turned back to the Handler, relishing the shock breaking through her composure.

“My name is Klaus.”

The ranks of dead ran forward, following Klaus and Ben, the Hargreeves bringing up the rear. Soldiers fell like high grass to their stampede, their bodies soft as the mud in that jungle.

The Handler didn’t even have time to scream.

Chapter Text

            “Klaus?”

            He jumped and looked up to see Vanya leaning on the doorframe, one hand raised against it. In case she needed a fast escape.

            Klaus let the tags fall to his chest and hitched up a smile he didn’t feel. “Hey sis. How’re you finding our lavish new digs?” He gestured grandly to the peeling wallpaper and grimy window. “Puts the oul’ mansion to shame, dunnit?”

            Vanya’s lips twitched but she looked down and Klaus inwardly kicked himself. In all the craziness he’d forgotten the mansion was rubble. And who’d rubbled it.

            “Between you and me,” he said quickly in a carrying whisper, “I think the place was due for a remodel. Dad never tapped into the potential for slides and ziplines.”

            That won him a classic Vanya grin. She pushed off from the door and came to sit on the end of his bed – as far as possible from him without taking to the floor. He wondered which one of them she was more afraid of.

            “I just wanted to ... check up on you. How’re you doing, since ...?” She trailed off, tone lilting in a question as though inviting him to share the details of his time away. He almost laughed at the idea.

            Klaus tugged his smile up like a pair of ill-fitting jeans. Despite everything, it was great hearing Vanya’s voice. So gentle. Safe.

            Well, mostly.

            “I’m toppers! Just, you know, mildly exhausted and peripherally terrified by my own abilities, the usual.”

            She threw him one of her searching glances. “I think I can relate.”

            “Heh, yeah. How are you doing, O powerful one?”

            She shifted uncomfortably. “I, uh ... pretty wiped. Which,” she hesitated, shifting her weight which may have brought her a full inch closer to him, “kinda helps.”

            “I bet.”

            They shared a silence for a while. Klaus wanted to speak, to fill the air with something other than the ghosts, but for once he couldn’t think of anything to say. Until he remembered waking up at the Commission.

            “Hey, Vanya dear?”

            “Yeah Klaus?”

            He hesitated, wondering. Well, it’s not like he hadn’t been vulnerable with her before. Chances of a sequel to The Book were pretty unlikely at this stage so he shifted up in the bed, wincing as his broken bits harrumphed.

            “I’ve been meaning to say, since, y’know, you’re not dead and all.” He swallowed, not meeting her eye. “I know we all kinda ... went MIA from each other after Ben became my personal bro-pal, and that sucked for all of us, but, uh, I mean, y’know the whole apocalypse thing? I just –”

            “You don’t have to say anything, Klaus,” Vanya cut across him, embarrassed, tucking a rogue lock behind her ear.

            “No, no, I do. Look, Vanya, when Luther –”

            “It’s okay, Klaus –”

            “It’s not –”

            “I know you didn’t –”

            “I should’ve stopped –”

            “I know.”

            A beat. Then, “Well, I guess I’ve said all I can, huh?”

            A shared smile. A softer silence. One with room for courage to test its strength.

            “When I first woke up, uh, there, I thought ...” He swallowed and avoided Vanya’s gentle gaze, the little crease between her eyebrows reminding him of simpler times. “I thought maybe Luther and the others got, uh, got spooked by my corporealising dear Benny and had ... y’know ... locked me up somewhere.”

            “Oh.”

            “Yeah – and it made me think of how I just let Luther keep –”

            “Klaus, it’s not the same thing –”

            “Isn’t it though?” He levelled her with a serious look. “I did nothing and you were in pain. If you’d done the same for me I’d be dead. Or worse.”

            “I don’t blame you, Klaus,” she said softly, staring at her hands twisting the duvet.

            “Thanks, sis.”

            “How are, em,” she began a moment later, “the, uh, y’know ...” She gestured vaguely to the room she thought was empty.

            Klaus shrugged and felt his smile slip down a notch. Tried not to look at the roomful of soldiers or the short brunette that wouldn’t take her eyes off him.

            “The usual.”

            “It’s not easier now? That you can control them?”

            Klaus laughed hollowly. “I can’t control them, sister-mine, I can apparently just manifest the nice ones when the stakes are insanely high.”

            “You haven’t tried summoning anyone since?”

            “Nope.” He popped his lips on the word.

            “Not even Ben?”

            Not even Dave.

            “Battery’s a bit low methinks.”

            “Ah.”

            “Yeah.”

            The ghosts were whispering at him. He shook his head and tried to remember something happy.

            “Oh hey! Do you remember that time –”

            “Why a tomb?”

            “– we – I – what now?”

            A delicate blush dusted Vanya’s pale cheeks. “Why did they put you in a tomb?”

            Cold stone against his shoulders. The dank smell of forgotten death. The rattle of dried leaves. A lightless weight pressing against him, full of pleas he couldn’t answer.

            “I, uh, dunno. Just thought it’d work on me I guess.”

            “Klaus.”

            “You should tell her,” Ben offered quietly from where he leant gothically against the wall like a misunderstood emo. Klaus stuck his tongue out at him.

            Vanya glanced past Ben’s head and back. “Is Ben here?”

            “Yup. Being sassy, for a change.”

            She grinned. Looked a foot above his face. “Hi Ben.”

            “Hey Destructor.”

            Klaus snorted. “He says hi.”

            “Was he ... with you? A-at the Commission?”

            Klaus exchanged a weighted look with Ben. They hadn’t exactly had a chance to talk about the Imposter.

            “Uuuh, well, I thought he was. Turns out he wasn’t. But he turned up when I needed him,” he added, smiling fondly up at his brother. “Like always.”

            Ben looked away with the kind of smile that made grief and love well in Klaus’s chest in equal measure.

            “I’m glad.”

            Klaus took a deep breath and wished it was Allison or Diego talking to him, not Vanya. He knew how to distract them, how to rile them up. Vanya, though ... she was too compassionate. Like now, she was waiting in his silence, giving him space to speak if he chose to. Where had she learned that? The Umbrella kids didn’t do compassion, or empathy, not to each other. There was too much ... Reginald between them.

            “I guess they somehow knew about dear Daddy’s private training,” he said in a rush, looking at his nails and inwardly hoping Allison had brought nail polish ‘cause dear lord these didn’t look like his nails but they were better than seeing Vanya’s reaction.

            There was a beat of silence. “I ... mentioned that in my book.”

            “I know.”

            “But I never knew what he did  –”

            “I know, I know, no one did. That bitch with the great hair just figured it out somehow – remember Five said something about them knowing everything they need to?”

            “He was pretty vague about it.”

            “Yeah, well.” He heaved a sigh and dragged his gaze up to meet hers. His smile didn’t feel convincing. “Somehow they figured out Dad used to lock me in a mausoleum and that I hated it more than everything else they tried. So that’s why a tomb.”

            And there it was. The shock, the pity. The guilt. The averted gaze that comes with knowing a truth you don’t know how to deal with, how to change for.

            “It’s alright, Vanie,” he said bracingly, reaching for the smiley energy he usually kept so close. It was painfully elusive today. “As long as you never let Luther lock me up in a graveyard there’s nothing to worry about.”

            “He wouldn’t,” she said softly, still not able to meet his eye.

            “I know,” he lied. None of them knew what any of them would do. None of them knew each other. A pang flurried through his heart and on its heels a desire to change. Before Vanya could say whatever was gathering on her tongue he blurted out, “I think it’s time we played the Newlywed Game.”

            “I – the what?”

            “The Newlywed Game!” Excitement built painlessly in his chest. “We should play it, all of us! I can translate for Ben – we can finally get to know the real stuff about each other, like what Diego’s favourite colour is because between you and me I don’t think it’s black. He strikes me as a pink kinda guy. Plus I doubt Luther’s favourite film is anything other than Legally Blonde – and, and, Allison? There’s no way her fave drink is wine, I mean, I remember her chuffing can after can of Dr Pepper as a kid and once a Pepper Girl always a Pepper Girl.”

            Vanya giggled and Klaus’s world brightened. He still had his superpower.

            “Yeah, we should do that,” she said, her tone lighter, along with her gaze. “I’ll go tell them to get up here. You want anything else?”

            No. Just my family pleasie.

            “I kinda want a Dr Pepper now.”

            She giggled again and Klaus’s smile grew. “You got it.”

            She slipped through the door, her footsteps fading into echoes and Klaus let himself sink into the musty pillows. Exhaustion wrapped around him like a blanket but he didn’t mind. His family would be here soon and they’d block all the ghosts with their presence. They’d drown out the voices of the people he had killed and stop the Handler’s prickling gaze.

            He hummed to himself as he waited, needing to hear something kinder than the whispers, than the silence in between them. Ben whistled along to his tune and Klaus smiled. It was good to have the real Ben back.

            With a sigh, he sank a little further into the bed, figuring if he dozed off the others could just wake him. Who knew how long it would take Vanya to convince Five to come play with them, like they were actually little kids again? The thought of Five’s face when confronted with the prospect of sharing through fun made Klaus chuckle and he held on to the image, soothing himself with the knowledge that his family was alive. He still had them, and even better, they weren’t all his. Unlike Ben. Doubly unlike Dave. But then, Dave was his in a way that made his heart glow, warm and safe.

            “What’re you smiling about, babe?” came a soft voice like a cleansing wind.

            Klaus snapped his eyes open and looked to the side of the bed. His heart faltered in its march, falling over itself in its haste to leap for joy. A real, slow smile eroded the fear still marking his face.

            “Dave!”