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“It’s pointless. Absolutely pointless”
“No, it’s not.”
“Well, then name one reason that makes it useful.”
Life for Klaus is… strangely good at the moment. In fact, he dares say better than it has ever been (that’s not really saying a lot but still).
Yea, okay so sobriety is a major, MAJOR bitch. The ghost and nightmares are worse than ever (what even is sleep), keeping his secret is harder than he remembers, and he still has yet to contact Dave, but for the first time in his life he actually felt like him and his siblings were actually getting the whole family thing down.
Okay, so it wasn’t perfect, but for a group of people filled with whacky powers and daddy issues he thought they were doing pretty good. He’d even managed to get a better hold of making Ben corporeal, so he could join in the fun too.
It was oddly… domestic. Who knew the little misfits of The Umbrella Academy could even do domestic.
Like, right now their having a family day of go shopping. SHOPPING!
They’d decided to walk as a way to please Luther who was still displeased about being tricked out of training day earlier in the week (Klaus still wasn’t quite sure how him and Vanya had pulled that one off). Allison had even promised to buy him a new skirt.
Life was grand!
“That doesn’t make it useful!”
“Yes, it does!”
He thinks about making Ben corporeal now just, so his brother can throw in his two sense on whatever it is Diego and Luther are bickering about, but decides to wait. They’d all agreed to eat out after, and he figures Ben would be much happier to be visible then. He unfortunately doesn’t have the stamina yet to do more for Ben than that.
For that matter what are Diego and Luther bickering about. Maybe he co-
“Klaus, are you paying attention?”
“Of course, Benny my one true love. You know I’d never not pay attention to you.”
Ben snorts.
“You need to tell the others to go a different route.”
“And why pray tell would I do that?”
“The graveyard is this way.”
Oh, right … graveyards… graveyards are not very Klaus friendly.
“I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t. Just tell them Klaus. They’ll listen. They’ll understand.”
He shakes his head no. He doesn’t have the time to think of a decent lie, and like hell is he telling them the truth.
“It’ll be fine, Ben.”
Because it will. All he has to do is walk by, and pretend that a boat load of ghastly ghosts aren’t screaming at him from the other side of the fence. Easy.
“Famous last words, Klaus.”
“Bite me, Ben.”
He attempts to hyper focus on Diego and Luther. Their movements. Their voices. Nothing else, but them. It’s an exercise Ben taught him to do to help ignore the ghost. Ignore the ghost. Focus on something else. Focus on it’s sound. It’s movements.
He’s hoping that using Ben’s smarts against Ben’s smarts will somehow cancel the two of them out, because as he has found … Ben is typically right.
So, he needs to work extra hard to prove Ben wrong now.
He can do this.
Focus. Focus.
You can’t hear them. You can’t see them.
Just keep walking.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
They’re so loud. Louder and louder. They sense him.
No. Focus. Luther and Diego. Luther and Diego. What are they talking about? What?
This would be so much easier if he was born with an attention span.
Focus.
Screaming. Crying. Wailing. Sobbing.
It’s too much. It’s too much.
He reaches up. Grips tight at his hat. Squeezes and squeezes.
He needs to block the sound. He needs. He needs.
“Klaus!”
No.
“Klaus, stop! You’re hurting yourself!”
No stop.
Something touches his wrist and he swats at it.
“Fuck, ow! Klaus it’s me!”
Me? Who?
“What the hell is-”
“When did-”
“Grab his-”
“Klaus, it’s okay. Their trying to help!”
Ben?
“He’s bleeding!”
“Grab his-”
Another set up his hands grab at his wrist. These are firmer, larger, stronger. He knows these hands. They pry, pull. He whines.
No. No.
Another set joins them. Softer, smaller. They reach in under his hat. Under his claws and press.
Oh. Oh!
Their helping.
Their helping him.
Helping. Helping. Helping.
“Klaus!”
He lets go. Everything goes black.
---
He wakes up disoriented. Everything aching. His head, his throat, his tongue, his ears… his tail.
What the hell? He that he was done with this.
“Klaus you awake?”
Ben?
“Do you remember what happened?”
He grunts. Sniffs.
Why does it smell like blood, alley, and … Diego?
“Klaus?”
There’s a hand in his hair. Petting. Gentle. Nice.
“Is… is he purring?”
“Well, he is part cat.”
Yes. Yes.
Wait, what!?
He opens his eyes, moves, and oh bad idea. Bad, bad idea. The world tilts and he falls back against whatever it is he’s leaning against. The hand comes up to rub soothingly at one of his ears again. A heartbeat pounds loudly against in the other.
Oh. He’s leaning against Diego’s chest. Well… that explains the strong scent of… Diego…
“Di?”
Talking hurts. His throat and tongue burn.
“Hey Bud. You with us yet?”
He moves his hand a bit as a yes. It seems the lesser of all evils to show his awakeness…es.
He blinks open his eyes. Squints. The area around them is dim. Plain. Thank little girl God.
Where?
“We’re in an alleyway.”
Ben.
Ben moves into his line of vision. There’s concern in his eyes and a shaky look on his face.
“Why?”
“Because you freaked out man,” Ben sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I told you we should we should have avoided the cemetery, but you just always have to be a stubborn asshole, don’t you?”
“Part’em charm.”
Ben scoffs.
“You literally tried to claw your own ears off, Klaus. If Five hadn’t reacted as quickly as he did you probably would have too. It was bad man. I mean the right one’s not too bad, but you ripped right into the left one. Got you’re scalp pretty good too. Our siblings wanted to bring you home to patch you up but you were panicking too much, so they ducked into the first safe place they could fine. Once they got you calm enough Five sewed up your ear and scalp with the stuff from the medical kit Allison always carries on her. And well… now we’re here.”
“So, Fi knew?”
“Seems like it, yea. I mean they all do now, but it was a good thing he figured it out. God only knows how that would have gone down with none of them knowing… how much worse the damage you could have done to yourself could have been. You really scared me Klaus.”
He wants to say sorry, but he’s said sorry to Ben so many times at this point the word has loss it’s meaning.
“Ben done catching you up?”
Speak of the devil. He turns his head just enough to where Five is sitting crouched before him. A nice, pretty cat-like scratch decorating his right cheek.
Shit.
Five seems to notice him staring as he raises one of his hands and waves like it’s nothing. Dried blood coats the underside of his fingernails.
“Don’t worry about it. This is nothing. Just a miscalculation on my part. How are you though? Can you hear me okay?”
He gives him a thumbs up.
“Good, good. That means the damage is just outer. Anything hurt other than your ears?”
He points towards his throat, and then points down towards his tail. It feels weird pointing to it. Having all his… cat bits out in the open, but he doesn’t really have much of a choice and he’d prefer to have some answers over nothing.
“You’re throat? That’s probably from the screaming. You bit you’re tongue and lip pretty bad too, but not enough to need stitches. As for your uh… tail well… Luther stepped on it.”
“Sorry.”
He peeks up above Five to see Luther standing behind him looking sheepish. Next to him Allison stands keeping a firm hand on the elbow of a shaky looking Vanya.
“Klaus?”
He nuzzles against Diego’s chest to show that he’s listening. The hand petting him has stopped, and is now just resting lightly on the less problematic parts of his head. It feels almost… protective. Nice.
“Dad did this to you, didn’t he?” There’s an edge to his voice. Something predator and dangerous like.
He sighs.
“But when did he-”
“Why did he-”
“Now, isn’t the time to talk about this,” Five interrupts. “Let’s … we need to get home. We all need time to process this. Then we can talk.”
He looks Klaus right in the eye. The scratches on his cheek standing out like beacon against his pale skin.
“No more secrets.”
Right.
No more secrets.