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to some we seem like colder creatures, well,
we were warm until we went to hell.
— hourglass, the hush sound.
the umbrella academy — toronto, canada
three days earlier — 2019
He’s not going to jump.
Klaus tells himself this over and over with each step that carries him to the edge of the Academy roof.
He’s never been afraid of falling. He’s Klaus fucking Hargreeves, and if he’s going to die, it’s going to be on his own terms, not because he loses his balance on the roof of his childhood home.
He peers down at the street below him. It's empty and illuminated with the sick, washed out glow of an orange street lamp that flickers occasionally, struggling to stay on, and he watches the raindrops fall past him, splattering onto the concrete below. His eyes hook on the street lamp, watch as the light blinks on and off, sometimes burning brightly and other times only a low pulse and he exhales into the cold night air.
He’s not going to jump; but he can climb.
He props a foot up on the edge of the roof and hoists himself up. His arms spread wide for balance and he feels like he did in Vietnam for a moment, up on the mountains, looking down at his surroundings.
Below him the street lamp bursts, sending orange sparks flying, and a memory assaults Klaus before he can put up a defense to stop it. Him, only a few days after landing himself in Vietnam, sitting with Dave and two other soldiers outside, a small fire crackling between them. And then the alarm, blaring from outside the bunker.
“I would say you joined at a bad time,” Dave had told him, clapping him on the shoulder as they stood, already armed and on the alert. “But there’s never a good time to join the war, is there?”
Klaus shakes his head and the memory is torn away from him, leaving him nearly breathless, eyes burning as he stares down below.
The street lamp doesn’t come back on again.
You’ve got nothing anymore, a voice inside his head tells him, and Klaus flicks the ashes off his cigarette. Everything’s back to normal then.
“No,” he argues with the voice aloud, shaking his head.
“What?” It’s Ben, who’s been watching him silently up until now.
“I’m gonna get sober,” Klaus tells him, nodding resolutely. “For Dave. I’m gonna see him again.”
Ben raises an eyebrow at him. “You sure you’ll be able to do that? You haven’t exactly had the best luck with it before.”
“Pfft. How hard can it be?” Klaus asks, despite knowing exactly how hard it can be.
“Klaus, you overdosed just hours after you got released from rehab. How are you going to—”
“Ah.” He waves away Ben’s question, turning away from the edge of the roof and pulling out the tiny baggie of heroin he’d brought back with him from Vietnam. He holds the baggie up to Ben’s face and crushes it with his fist before shoving it back in his jeans pocket. “See, Ben? It means nothing to me.”
“But you just put it back in your pocket—”
“Yeah, but it’s useless now. I crushed it.”
Ben blinks at him. “Klaus, it’s already powder. You didn’t do anything—“
“Will you get off my back?” Klaus groans, dragging his hands down his face. “I’ll show you I can do this, Ben.”
It appears that he cannot, in fact, do this.
It takes him approximately thirteen hours to break his promise. The needle breaks through the already bruised skin of his arm and Klaus’s head rolls back, eyes slipping shut, liquid ecstasy coursing through his veins.
The guilt and regret come later, once he’s coming down from his high and staring up at the ceiling fan, watching the blades spin and spin and spin until it makes him dizzy.
He wonders if he’ll ever get stronger; he wonders if he’ll ever stop being a slave to his addictions.
Not tonight, he thinks, and the tourniquet is tightened around his bicep once more.
“It's always the thing you love most that will kill you,” a frail blonde woman at rehab had once said, sitting across the room from Klaus. “And you will always let it.”
a sầu valley — thừa thiên-huế, vietnam
six months earlier — 1968
In the darkness of the forest, Dave’s hand finds Klaus’s, and despite the scorching humidity of Vietnam, his skin is freezing cold to the touch. Klaus jumps at the contact, breath coming out in wheezing gasps. He’s panicking. He needs to stop panicking.
“It’s okay, you’re okay.” Dave’s voice is in his ear, and Klaus swallows, tries to answer, but only a strangled, choked sound escapes his mouth. “Breathe.”
He can’t believe he’s still alive. He can’t believe his heart is still operating and his brain hasn’t shut down yet and he’s still here, breathing and alive and mostly, he thinks, sane .
He shivers despite the fact that he's sweating. A pained whimper he forces himself to swallow builds in his throat, but he keeps going, following Dave. He almost died. They're all dead, most of the platoon. He and Dave had been just two of a handful of survivors in the area when the missiles came down. The whole thing was still a blur of explosions and yelling and Klaus just running, running until his lungs burned and his legs nearly failed him.
"Dave." Klaus’s feet stop, aching and bleeding, dirty water sloshing around in his boots. He almost falls to his knees. "Dave, wait."
He almost thought, for a few weeks there, that he’d gotten used to this — being thrust in the midst of war without so much as a warning. He almost thought he could do it.
Dave halts, one hand gripping his gun and the other curling around one of Klaus’s upper arms. "Klaus, come on. We're almost there.
"Please." His eyes are burning. He sees all of their pale, empty faces. He feels the cold seeping in, agonized screams echoing from all around. Klaus closes his eyes and shakes his head, hand coming up to block his ears despite knowing it won’t help, knowing that he’ll hear them no matter what. "Dave, please, just a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute.” Behind them, the crackling of gunfire echoes through the trees. Klaus can still feel the heat of the explosions against his back, and Dave slings his gun over his shoulder and hoists Klaus back to his feet.
The sweat pouring down his face obstructs his view of Dave, but rough hand on his biceps grips tight, as if to anchor him. “You’re alright. We gotta keep going, Klaus, you gotta fight through it.”
So Klaus does. He ignores the searing pain in his chest, lungs burning from smoke and ash and he nods, letting Dave lead them both through the forest, slashing through thickets and only stopping once they get to the tree line.
“After this,” Dave huffs, a bitter laugh on his tongue as he grasps at Klaus’s shoulders to pull him close, “we’re going to a nightclub and getting drunk, alright?”
God, Klaus couldn’t agree more.
a sầu valley — thừa thiên-huế, vietnam
one month earlier — 1968
The problem with Klaus is — he fell in love with Dave the way empty people like him always do. He filled himself to the brim and drowned in it , and he was happy.
Especially on the front lines, when all Klaus could focus on was the sharp crack of rifles and the smell of smoke and gunpowder, when every second was spent just surviving, surviving, surviving. It was hard in those moments to not cling onto Dave as if he was Klaus’s lifeline.
But Sir Reginald had always told him his life was going to be fraught with death.
At the time, Klaus had figured he’d been referring to his powers.
Kneeling over Dave’s body, blood from the wound in his chest seeping through Klaus’s fingers, he realizes the hard way that that’s not all Daddy Dearest meant.
the umbrella academy — toronto, canada
present day — 2019
It’s a Friday night and Klaus wishes he was still fucking high.
He’s slumped against the wall, placing all his weight on his right leg and gripping his left thigh as if it will help alleviate the burning pain radiating through him. He’s sure it’s broken, and although the initial adrenaline — paired with the drugs running through his veins earlier — had dulled the pain in his leg enough to where he could run away, Klaus had to kiss goodbye to that short blessing as soon he was sure he was out of sight.
He can’t help but laugh as he tips his head back against the brick wall. The last of his drugs is already making its way out of his system, along with the blood spilling past his busted lips and dripping onto the concrete beneath his feet. “Ah, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Beside him, Ben shakes his head. “What would Dave think, man?”
Dave.
The laugh dies on his tongue as Dave’s face floats in the forefront of his mind, smile slipping off his face. When he looks down, he stares with double-vision at his split knuckles, at the way his bone isn't too far away from sticking right out of his flesh.
Dave would be disappointed in him.
He had tried — oh, had he tried, so, so hard to be sober. Just days ago he’d swore that he’d brace himself against all the spirits if that meant seeing Dave again. Now, bloody and broken in a dark alley, he’s coming down, and he can’t help the now bitter, self-deprecating laugh that bubbles up in his chest.
Right up until the pain in his leg flares up.
In hindsight, he should’ve expected this. He’s made enough enemies in the streets through the years to have seen this coming, and it finally has.
What a delightful fucking milestone he’s hit.
“Klaus?”
Klaus freezes and, for a moment, almost forgets the dizzying pain at the sound of Diego’s gruff voice echoing through the alley. Leave it to that bastard to always show up at moments like this.
Gritting crimson-stained teeth, Klaus straightens up as much as he can and spreads his arms out, a bloody grin stretching across his face. “Diego! Come to join the party?”
“The fuck are you doing out here?” is how Diego responds as he approaches him, and then pauses momentarily to take in Klaus’s hazardous appearance. “Jesus, Klaus.”
“You should see the other guy,” Klaus retorts.
He shouldn’t see the other guy. In fact, the other guy looks significantly better than Klaus does, and is probably snorting the rest of Klaus’s coke at this very moment. And, fuck, his MDMA. He’d been excited to take that.
“Come on.”
Before Klaus can argue, Diego has his hand wrapped around his wrist, pulling him away from the wall. He yelps when all his weight settles on his other leg, nearly crumpling until Diego maneuvers Klaus’s arm up and around his shoulders, his own arm settling around Klaus’s waist.
They walk in silence towards the Academy. Klaus focuses on breathing through the pain. There’s sweat dripping down the side of his face, his stomach twisting and turning, the burning in his leg from the potential broken bone enough to make him actively try not to pass out.
But even so, he notices. While he may be a dumbass — Ben and Diego’s words, usually, not his — in pain, and coming down from his high, Klaus isn’t so blind that he can’t see the way Diego is gripping his knives tight in his fists, the leather of his gloves straining and groaning against his knuckles. It wouldn’t be necessarily alarming to Klaus, being that this is Diego, after all, except for the tense, grinding motion of his brother’s jaw, and the way he studies Klaus from the corner of his eye.
“Lady problems got you down?” Klaus inquires, a wicked smile pulling at the corner of his lips. “You look angry. Like, angrier than you normally do.”
Diego ignores him, spinning his knife between skillful fingers. It’s a few more minutes before he speaks, voice quieter than Klaus has ever heard it. “You know, Klaus, sometimes I think you’re trying to die.”
“If only I could,” Klaus sing-songs, the end of his sentence turning into a high pitched whine as Diego abruptly stops, jostling his injured leg.
“Don’t fucking say that again. Do you know what Mom would say to that if she heard you?” He scoffs, shaking his head, and Klaus notices the slight twitch in his brow. “She’s already lost Ben and Sir Reginald. And, contrary to popular belief, I also care about what happens to you, you idiot.”
Klaus barks out a laugh at that, but then Diego continues, stopping him in his tracks. “Is this about Dave?”
“Exsqueeze me?” His head whips up to look at his brother, eyebrows scrunched together.
“Don’t lie to me. You told me in the car that day that he was the only one you loved more than yourself. That was true, wasn’t it?” At Klaus’s nod, he asks, “You still want to see him?”
Klaus swallows past a dry throat, and for the millionth time tonight, he wishes he was still high. “Yeah.” It comes out as a heavy exhale, and he wonders if the sudden lightheadedness he feels is because of the blood loss, the come down, or the thought of seeing Dave again. “Yeah, I do.”
“Great, so get your ass sober in order to do it. Don’t achieve it by getting yourself killed, alright?”
He says nothing more after that. By the time they reach the Academy, Klaus is dizzy and quickly on his way towards giving up right there in front of the doors, Diego’s arm the only thing keeping him from crumbling onto his knees.
“Mom!” he hears Diego call out, Pogo rushing towards them as quick as he can with his cane. “It’s Klaus!”
“Oh no, now I’m going to be grounded,” Klaus jokes with a chuckle, and then promptly passes out.
When he wakes up a few hours later, Grace is hovering above him. He jolts in the bed, startled, as she stares at him with an unfaltering smile. “Good, you’re awake.”
Klaus’s head hits the back of the pillow again, eyes squeezed shut. He feels almost hungover, a dull ache in his leg and part of his face tingling as if it’d been injected with lidocaine. “Where’s Diego?” he asks, the words sounding slightly garbled, as if he has marbles in his mouth.
“He’s out looking for whoever kicked your ass,” is what Klaus gets in response, the answer coming not from Grace but from Ben, sitting next to his bed with an unimpressed look on his face.
“Oh, wow. For me?” Klaus says, and Ben rolls his eyes.
It doesn’t take him long to fall asleep again, after that.
The next morning, Klaus’s hand is shaking.
The world spins. His axis tilts. Somewhere nearby, a woman with a bullet wound in her head screams and begs at him.
Withdrawals have always been a bitch.
unknown nightclub — thừa thiên-huế, vietnam
five months earlier — 1968
The nightclub is loud and bright and full of people, just like the clubs back home.
Klaus loves it.
To be fair, he’d love any club back home, so long as he had access to all the drugs and alcohol he could get his hands on. The club in Vietnam is no different, and for the first time since arriving, Klaus lets himself have fun.
He’s coming out of the restroom, brushing the last vestiges of coke from under his nose as he stumbles back out onto the dancefloor, and that’s when he feels two large hands come to rest against his waist.
"You going to stand here and drink all alone?" a voice asks behind him, low and throaty, and the corners of Klaus’s lips quirk up into a smile. It’s Dave, his breath hot against the shell of Klaus’s ear.
“I’d rather be alone with you,” Klaus replies, words jumbling together slightly, his vision zeroing in on the way Dave is staring at him, eyes bloodshot and foggy with lust.
God, he’s going to drive Klaus insane.
The hands around his waist pull him back, and then he’s being guided away from the bar, past the dancefloor, and back towards the restrooms. They end up standing together in the shadows in the back of the club, partly hidden away from everyone else by a beaded curtain.
“What are you doing to me?” Dave whispers, his hand coming up to cup Klaus’s jaw, calloused fingertips brushing against his cheek. Klaus lets his eyes slip shut, leaning into the contact, until Dave’s hand moves to the back of his neck and pulls him forward.
And this—
This, kissing Dave, is better than any of the drugs Klaus has ever done.
“Wow,” he sighs once Dave pulls away, eyes wide and head spinning. Whether it's from the coke or alcohol, Klaus has no idea, but he has a sneaking suspicion that its neither. “Can we do that again?”
Dave laughs, and the sound settles in Klaus’s chest as a warm, fuzzy feeling that he’s never experienced before.
“We can do it as long as we want,” Dave answers, before leaning forward and doing just that.
the umbrella academy — toronto, canada
present day — 2019
Okay, so, maybe coming back from his time in Vietnam hadn’t exactly been the smoothest of transitions, but Klaus thinks he’s been doing just fine. Or at least, about as well as he had been before landing himself in the middle of a goddamn war, of all things.
But something’s changed, and since getting back, it’s no longer just the dead that’s haunting him.
There are moments, moments that have been coming more and more frequently, where Klaus does not even remember what it was like to not be a soldier. It’s almost silly, how he’s gotten so familiarized with being something he never was before so quickly, so easily, and he could almost laugh at himself.
But while he had only physically been in Vietnam for ten months, mentally it feels like he’ll be there for the rest of his life.
Klaus knows that Diego knows, of course, but that he doesn’t want to say anything about it; there’s nothing to say.
A few mugs and glasses dropped here and there, startling enough to make him flinch. The way he tosses and turns in bed, his nights no longer simply filled with the screams of the dead but with the jarring memory of war to go along with them. The nausea that churns in his stomach every time he pictures his hands, stained crimson with Dave’s blood. Outwardly and trying to convince Diego, he blames all this both on when he’s high and when he’s in withdrawal, on sleep deprivation, even on the weather.
But when the incidents increase in frequency, so does Diego’s worry, and it’s so strong that Klaus can almost feel it radiating off of him.
Tonight, it’s storming outside, and Klaus’s heart is pounding. The rational part of his brain, or what’s left of it, anyway, was more than happy to inform him that the crack of lightning outside sounded nothing like a gunshot. And yet, the noise had been so sudden and so sharp that he had automatically brought a hand to his chest to see if he'd been hit.
It’s only once he manages to calm down again that he feels Diego’s eyes on him.
“Cut it out!” he whines, spinning around in Sir Reginald’s fancy leather chair so that he can confront Diego face-to-face. Sure enough, his brother is standing just outside the study, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed, watching Klaus carefully. “I can’t even think when you’re watching me like that.”
“I can assure you, you not thinking isn’t because of me,” Diego rolls his eyes, pushing off the door frame and coming to lean against the desk instead. Klaus brushes away his remark with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“Yeah, whatever.”
Diego’s top lip curls up. “You look like shit.”
“I’m in withdrawal, you dick.” He feels like shit too, nauseous and exhausted, and he can’t stop sweating. God, he would kill for even some weed right now. “What are you doing? Did Luther send you up here?”
Diego almost looks offended at the suggestion, and Klaus purses his lips to keep a delighted smile from breaking through at look of disgust on his face. “Luther didn’t tell me to do anything. I’m making sure you’re alright.”
Klaus throws his feet onto the top of Sir Reginald’s desk, hands clasped behind his head, and Diego rolls his eyes. “Luther’s a bitch, you know I don’t take orders from him. I’m serious, Klaus. I’m just checking up on you.”
“Really?”
Diego scoffs, “Of course, you dumbass,” and Klaus’s eyebrows shoot up. “How are you doing? Since… you know. The other night.”
“Fabulous! My leg feels fantastic,” he answers, kicking said leg into the air. The action makes him involuntarily cry out in pain and Diego crosses his arms, but Klaus just plasters on a smile, speaking through gritted teeth. “See? Good as new.”
“Right,” Diego nods slowly.
There’s another crack of thunder outside. Klaus flinches, body going rigid, and he’s back in Vietnam, bloody and beaten and having just lost the love of his life. He sees his hands, coated in blood, pressed against Dave’s chest. Dave? Oh, no. No, no, no, no—
“You alright?”
He blinks, and when he looks down, his hands are fine. Shaking, but fine. Diego’s expression has morphed into one of concern rather than the exasperation it’d been just a few seconds ago. “Yeah, sorry.”
Diego studies him carefully before turning towards the door. “Get up, I want to show you something.”
Klaus does so gingerly, feeling Diego’s eyes still on him, hard and calculating. He flashes his brother a weak grin as he passes by, stepping out into the hall. Diego gets back in front of him, leading him down the hallway and towards his childhood bedroom. The boards creak as he steps inside, eyes landing immediately on the framed photograph lying on top of the bed.
The same framed photograph Klaus had been crying over in the veteran’s bar. “You—”
“I went in and stole it. Didn’t take much, considering I already beat the shit out of those dicks.”
The back of Klaus’s eyes burn. He reaches down with a trembling hand, fingertips brushing against Dave’s face over the thin glass covering the photo. “Dave.”
He is just as beautiful as he was that last day on the front lines.
Diego’s voice startles him; he’d almost forgotten his brother was there. “Listen, Klaus… I don’t know what you went through in Vietnam, but I know it’s fucked you up. I’d say even more so than the mausoleum. So don’t try to bullshit me anymore, okay?”
Klaus doesn’t look at him, eyes still fixated on the photograph. “Okay,” he agrees.
Once Diego leaves, Klaus breaks the glass with his fist and ignores the blood dripping from his knuckles in order to carefully rip the photograph, tearing out the rest of the platoon so that it’s only Klaus and Dave.
When he brings the photo up to his lips, a couple stray tears slide down his cheeks.
He doesn’t bother wiping them away this time.
The concrete of Ben’s statue is cold under Klaus’s palms, and he blows out a harsh breath. His body aches for drugs, his mind screaming for him to get one last hit, but he pushes through, clawing at his arms. “Why is this so hard?”
“You know you don’t have to talk to my statue,” Ben says, leaning up against the younger, bronze version of himself with his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m right here.”
Klaus answers this without looking up at him. “Yeah, well, your statue doesn’t tell me things I don’t want to hear,” he mutters.
Ben huffs, arms falling to his side and expression softening. “Dude, come on. You know that’s not what I’m—”
“I know, I know.” Klaus cuts him off, waving his hands wildly in the air as he sits in the dirt, shoulder resting against the base of Ben’s statue. He traces the words engraved into the plaque with his fingertips.
May the darkness within you find peace in the light.
His hand shakes as he lowers it in his lap. “It won’t be easy, Klaus,” Ben says. “But it’ll be worth it, okay?”
Klaus can only hope he’s right.
a sầu valley — thừa thiên-huế, vietnam
ten months earlier — 1968
“You ever wish you were free, Klaus?”
They’re lounging in their respective cots, and Dave barely looks up from his can when he asks the question, mouth full of cold beans.
Klaus blinks, shoveling canned food into his own mouth and trying to hold back a grimace. He’s been in Vietnam for three weeks now, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to this.
“Free of what?” he inquires when he swallows, glancing over at the other soldier.
Dave shrugs a broad shoulder. When he looks up at Klaus, their eyes lock, and Klaus has to look down into his can of food to avoid doing something fucking stupid, like blushing. “Free of anything,” Dave explains. “Free of… responsibility. Of addiction. Hell, free of sin, if that’s the kinda guy you are.”
“Yeah, actually, I’m agnostic,” Klaus cuts in bluntly. He stabs his fork into the can of cold vegetables and pulls a face. “Now if I had to choose, I'd want to be free of this food. I mean, really, it’s worse than the shit they serve at rehab—”
“Klaus,” Dave interrupts him, and that’s when Klaus realizes his question is serious.
“Oh.”
A tense silence settles between them, and Klaus thinks for a long time about his answer before he gives it. It’s been three days since he last got high, and there are already too many dead people fighting to be heard.
“Death,” he finally says, staring off solemnly. “I’d like to be free of death.”
Dave stares at him. Klaus looks away, reaching up to scratch the back of his now burning neck. “Well sorry to tell you this, pal,” Dave claps him on the shoulder, “but death comes with the job, unless… you didn’t forget that part, right? Did you hit your head up in the mountains?”
And that’s not what Klaus meant at all, but he lets it go anyways, scrambling up and shoving Dave back as the other soldier laughs at him. “Fuck you.”
“Oh, you’d like to, wouldn’t ya?” Dave teases, before going back to his food.
The subject is dropped and they don’t talk about it again after that, but the conversation sticks in Klaus’s mind for the rest of the night.
icarus theatre — toronto, canada
present day — 2019
It takes two weeks.
Two weeks of bracing through feverish chills, endless shaking and nausea, and too many agonizing headaches without enough aspirin. Two weeks of waiting, of begging, of losing hope and fighting through the urge to just give up and use again.
After the first week, he’d thrown his hands up and collapsed onto the couch beside Diego, burying his face into the pillows. “It’s not gonna happen.” He was sure of it, and if this was his punishment for being… well, himself, Klaus understood. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t complain about it. “What’s the point of getting clean if I’m not gonna see him again?”
Diego just shrugged, barely looking up. “Maybe you could get clean just to be clean, Klaus.”
Klaus lifted his face from the couch cushions with a grimace. “Why would I do that?”
So, yeah, maybe he was getting a bit antsy, and when another week passes without any pay-off, Klaus is ready to officially admit defeat and spend the rest of his numbered days on earth strung out and blissfully numb. Fucking sue him.
But then —
Vanya.
Klaus can’t help but wonder if it was always meant to end this way. Standing in the middle of the theatre with Vanya unconscious behind them and a giant, fiery moon rock heading right towards Earth, it just… well. It just makes fucking sense, Klaus thinks, for it to end this way. With them not saving the world. With them not winning.
“So much for saving the world,” he sighs, hand gripping the chain around his neck and pulling it out, Dave’s tags clinking together as he clutches them in his hands.
“If only Sir Reginald could see us now,” Diego scoffs from behind him. “The Umbrella Academy.”
This is it, Klaus thinks.
“Are those my dog tags?”
Klaus nearly falls off the orchestra stage in his shock. It is a fleeting but foreign emotion, a momentary downward spiral as his stomach seems to drop down so fast he can barely catch his breath, until he turns his head to come face-to-face with the one person he’s been waiting for since getting back from Vietnam.
Dave. Still in his uniform, helmet lopsided on his head, standing beside Ben’s ghost and smiling in a way that makes Klaus forget everything else going on around him. He clutches the dog tags tighter in his hand. “Yeah,” he nods, smiling. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Sorry I took so long,” Dave says, before looking up at the reddened sky. The moon rock is approaching faster now. Klaus can already feel the heat against his skin, and he wonders if he’s the only one of the seven who feels relieved.
And as the world ends in fire and chaos, coming down to smother the streets with ash, Klaus —
Klaus closes his eyes and realizes that finally, he is free.