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Sometimes Klaus feels like he's the background character in his own life, which is ironic because the ghosts flock to him as if he were placed beneath a glistening, intense spotlight. And maybe that's just it, maybe he's under a spotlight but the entire stage is covered and he's only a small line in the story that's being told. He can't think of a time where he felt any different, and he's found himself in many diverse stories. Still in the background, twirling in his skirt or screaming at the clawing, infectious dead. A minor distraction from the main character.
The main character is hard to pinpoint, because it's not as if he would be the best judge. The obvious answer would be Allison, the movie star, the one that shone on stage and the tabloids equally, but Klaus knows better, knows the whispers and lies that enhance what was hardly there in the first place. Not to say Allison didn't possess a certain star quality herself, but well, anyone could point out the obvious theatricality of Klaus in comparison to her.
For forever, or at least, for a couple of years when he was a little kid, Klaus thought maybe it was Luther, because he was the leader of the little band of tots that was the Umbrella Academy, and Klaus hadn't experienced much in his tiny life besides training and being ranked by capability. Luther, however, lacks a particular quality that all leading ladies need, and that's any charisma at all. To be fair, Klaus knows there's only so much you can do with a body morphed into a ghost's vague memory of a gorilla, but he thinks it's really a shame that Luther never indulged, was never allowed to indulge.
His teen years left him to believe that the central character and theme and the writer was one Reginald Hargreeves, and Klaus spent more than enough time slamming together any sort of high he could find to erase that concept from his mind. The idea that his life was only relevant because of the existence of dear old daddy made, and makes, his skin crawl, and he thinks he'd rather try his luck with ghosthood than stick around to find himself in a story filled only with how his life impacted Sir. And really, it's probably such a miniscule portion, so much so that Klaus would put money on him being just a footnote, just a little paragraph beneath all the obedient kids that says "problem child" all over it.
There were a brief two seconds once, after Klaus had almost OD'd in his room on a combination of pills that made him both nauseous and seeing stars, that he considered Diego to be the leading role. He peeled his dry, crusty eyes open and was met with brown eyes, and there was that trigger in his mind that said "this is it, this is the story, kicking off" but then his inebriated mind slammed it's way back in and he immediately recoiled from the thought, sputtering through his bone-dry mouth and flailing his limbs as if they hadn't been entirely limp moments before. His immediate denial of the idea was confirmed when Diego also swung back and let out a girly scream that left Klaus in tears. If nothing else, Diego had the vocal power to be the lead.
There were only three people who he has seriously considered throughout his life. The ones before had been brief and fleeting, like his mind just wanted to entertain itself with the idea before flinging his thoughts into uncharted territory. They all still seemed like secondary characters though, with lines and personalities and existences in whatever show his mind had concocted to explain his existence. There wasn't even a real show going on, which was a real shame, because if he's going to put energy into something, he prefers if there's an entertaining aspect of it all. Life likes denying him the simple pleasures, though.
Ben Hargreeves was the first serious contender starting from the moment his brother appeared in Klaus' line of sight a week after his death. He'd just gotten out of the shower and Ben was just there, as if he'd never left, and it almost felt normal except Klaus knows the dead have an aura, cold and scared, and Ben exuded it so strongly it could even be mistaken as confidence. It kind of felt like a sick joke to Klaus at the time, who had begged for Ben to manifest, spending time high and sober pleading to the Earth or void or wherever the decision is made that lets people just leave their souls on the Earth like common trash. But still, Ben was there, finally, and he never left, clinging onto Klaus like a tether, as if he didn't have better things to do besides watch as Klaus gets his fix in whatever dubious way needed and sleeps both on other junkies' ratty couches or on the rain slick streets tucked behind some dumpster. To an outsider, it would seem like Ben was the sidekick, the one left behind in the both metaphorical and literal shadow of his brother. But really, it was the opposite, Klaus was the one lurking behind Ben, indebted and inebriated and all the ways to say that Ben was unequivocally better than all of Klaus and his brothers and sister, because for some reason left unspoken probably because Klaus wasn't worthy, he stayed.
And there was nothing to compare to that, to the way that, no matter what, Ben was there. Klaus has died, tripped so hard he couldn't see past his neon pink fingernail, time travelled to fucking 'Nam, and yet Ben was always there when he got back. It was like a god damn Christmas miracle every time. And that's what main characters are; constants. They also have redeemable qualities, which, out of all the Hargreeves siblings, Ben clearly has the most of, beating out Viktor by at least four points. And anyways, main characters had to do at least one good deed to get the sweet sympathy from the audience, and Ben had done plenty, pitied Klaus so many times that Klaus really thinks he should have started charging (not that he would have paid, and not that Ben would have stopped if he didn't, but regardless).
The second serious consideration was a last minute addition to the list, but a massive one at that. David Katz had immediately checked off one of the most important characteristics of a leading man: being unbelievably, mouth-wateringly hot. The charm rolled off the man in waves, in a very 'I'd impress your mother and save at least twenty puppies in the process but I could also lay claim to you in hundreds of very different ways', which Klaus knows he's a sucker for in more ways than one. And at first that's why he doesn't leave Vietnam, doesn't escape the hellscape that is double the screaming and double the violent injuries he sees on a daily basis, but the other reasons Dave could be the most important character sneak up on Klaus and rob him blind of any way of escaping the hold this man has on his soul.
It starts simple at first, with knees touching in the back of the truck and kindness shown in extra food and drinks getting passed Klaus' way. And then suddenly it's all-encompassing, it's in the very air he breathes, Dave, Dave, Dave. The man smiles and worms his way into the cracks of Klaus' carefully built personality, the same one he's kept since he smoked a joint for the first time and decided bitter wasn't really his style anyways. Suddenly his childhood and powers and absolute anarchy of a brain is out there for Dave to turn over in his beautiful little head, and instead of reacting like a rational person or like anyone Klaus had ever met while he was on molly and thought it was so funny when people recoiled in response, Dave just smiles and accepts, and responds in kind, tells him of an alcoholic father and an absent mother, an accidental coming out that resulted in a military camp or two to pair with some nasty shiners. And he doesn't say it makes them better or worse, he just lets it be, lets the past exist and the current exist as if they're two separate entities and not horrible beings too intertwined to intervene. But Klaus doesn't say that, just lets it settle in his stomach and lays down and tries not to let his newest leading character imbed himself too much in his squishy heart.
Of course, Dave does, thoroughly and entirely, which is why it feels like a section of Klaus' self is ripped inch by inch away the moment he sees Dave's glassy eyes. The eyes that had laughed at every shitty joke Klaus made, reassured him across the bunker when the gunfire made itself a little too known, cried for him when he saw the dead soldiers (boys) with their heads blown out hours before their deaths were made known. It feels as if pages are being ripped out of whatever story he's apart of, and he just has to lay there and let it happen, let whatever important details about plot and personality be shredded and drowned and burned. And as much as he hopes Dave exists somewhere happy and will never, ever end up like the disfigured masses he sees of ghosts that never leave their anger and trauma behind (Klaus fears sometimes that that's exactly where he will end up), it's that much more painful when he can't conjure up his source of light with his shaky hands and crooked smile and jangling dog tags. Because it feels like a personal failure for the first time since he was twelve and got dragged into the grasps of the seemingly desolate mausoleum, as if he missed this role as a somewhat important character. It's enough to make him want to get high again but he doesn't, grasps at the edges of sanity and claws his way back in because this, this is the one thing he'll succeed at for Dave even if it kills him. Because Dave was his own personal main character and the legacy he left exists in the storybook that Klaus' mind has been writing since day one.
The third contender only emerged while his mouth was wrapped around a guy, trying to buy his way into a place to sleep during a fucking blizzard, a little too sober for the taste of salt and the guilt that hung in the back of his mind like a heavy veil. He thinks, as a joke, about what if the leading role was filled by God, what if they were all the pathetic cast that tripped over their feet to meet the demands of the ultimate actor. He's died before this first moment, twice, in which a little girl glides over on her perfectly monochrome bike and speaks in such a deadpan voice about what a fuck up he is that it's hard for him not to burst out into hysterical giggles. And when he's left out in an alleyway, literally freezing to death, he giggles again, with a tinge of hysteria coating the sound. The girl is never impressed, and what kinda God would be, when he's the only medium or necromantic or whatever the role is that he fits that acts as if the line between living and dead is something to be easily discarded. Really, to him, there's never been a line anyways, but who is he to argue with a God?
He hadn't meant to dwell on the concept of God for so long but then it stuck, because then why else would she have given some random kids the ability to be freaks, why else would she have initiated the freaking apocalypse. Prime time reality TV, that's why. And Klaus thinks he's got it figured out until he learns there's far too much free will involved and really God just wants to see something good happen to these poor creatures. Which, while the bystander mentality God has doesn't exactly point to central character, Klaus thinks it's actually a valid method of viewing it all. God doesn't get any more impressed when he dies by getting his head bashed in for being a little too gender non-conforming or when he slips too far into the tub after drifting off, but Klaus treats the idea with a little more tenderness, and his giggles are less depreciative and more like he's laughing at their mutual joke. Except she isn't laughing too. He chooses his battles carefully with her.
All in all, this still leaves Klaus without an answer, and instead he keeps the lingering feeling that he's always shifted to left. He keeps cycling ideas through his head, like maybe he doesn't even know the person who could be considered the main character, because his brain is newly sober and it really likes hanging onto ideas that leave him breathless in a negative way most days. He mentions his thought process to Ben once and receives a dismissive gaze in return, so he assumes it must be an exercise in futility or whatever five says when Klaus tries to get him hooked on tea, mostly camomile. He doesn't think the two are comparable really, and he's learning that sober him doesn't find his usual comparisons as convincing as he used to. And it's ironic, really, that he's known that the antagonist was drugs and angry ghosts in this little book he's got going in his head all along, but he just can't pinpoint what the fuck a protagonist looks like. He doesn't think he ever will. Maybe there's never been a protagonist and they're all just a mutual group bounded together under one plotline, one that involves crazy criminals, spaceships in ordinary landmarks, and a comic book format that only serves to exaggerate who they are. A part of him laughs, and another part of him finds that almost unbearably exhausting.
Eventually, because everyone and his therapist keeps telling him he needs to work on his self esteem, he hesitantly places himself in the category of 'main character' along with the many he's considered before, and unexpectedly, it feels as if something shifts into place. It's a gradual process, like the gravitational pull of two people looking at each other from across the bunker, or the pull of human brother and ghost brother, or the pull of acceptance and familiarity and a place in the world that had denied him that right for the longest time. But it feels right, and it's him. And maybe that's what he's been searching for the whole time.