Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

            Klaus tightened his grip on Luther and Diego and felt Ben’s hand clench harder on his shoulder. Five’s scream blotted out all other sound, the warping blue of his power eroding the world until all Klaus could see was rippling shades of neon sky. Pressure registered on his skin, first the warm presence of a humid day, then a force stronger than rain beating into his every pore, determined to condense him, burning with a cold fire. The blue flames swelled and Five wasn’t the only one screaming and Klaus felt as young and vulnerable as he had at thirteen years old, clinging to his family for dear life, unsure he’d be safe with them but terrified to be alone.

            Too abruptly, it all stopped.

            Hard, uneven ground replaced the stage. The walls winked into rubble. Night blazed into a hot, hazy day. Klaus broke contact with his brothers as a gust of air punched him back. He stumbled, almost fell, but twirled himself onto steady feet. Panting, wide-eyed, he looked up.

            Luther had fallen backwards, Vanya still safe in his arms. He struggled to his feet, expression horrified. Five was in a crumpled heap, unconscious, with Allison crawling over to check his pulse. Diego was on his other side, jaw tight.

            And the world was over.

            The Icarus Theatre was more than a ruin. There was no sign of the stage, seats barely recognisable under decades’ worth of dust and soaked to a dull, dreary brown. The closest thing to a wall was the upper circle angled at where the moon had been screaming towards them just moments before, propped up by the remains of the ticket booth and foyer.

            Klaus swallowed hard and turned around.

            “Ben?”

            “Five! Five, c’mon, wake up, bro.” Diego was half-patting, half-slapping Five’s cheek but he didn’t so much as stir. Allison took his arm and shook her head.

            “Where ... when are we?” Luther breathed, getting to his feet after depositing Vanya carefully on the ground. “I thought we were going ... back.”

            Klaus followed his gaze through the vanished roof. Low, heavy cloud pressed down on them, obscuring the broken moon and indifferent stars. The orange hue was streaked with feathers of red, the uppermost layers sleepy with encroaching twilight.

            A very familiar tingle swept along Klaus’s bare skin. The hovering presence of ghosts oozed from the stillness. Figures stole into the ruined theatre like swooping shadows. Some solid, others indistinct. All gruesome. Charred skin. Burnt hair. Missing limbs. Spilling guts. Caved-in skulls. The one thing each ghost shared was that awful, aching, lost yearning in their hollowed, miserable eyes. They watched the Hargreeves gather themselves with mild interest, some already bored and milling around aimlessly, still in the tatters of their fancy suits and flowing dresses.

            There were hundreds of them.

            Klaus looked away, clenching his jaw and hoping none of them noticed he could see them. Their presence itched into his skin like withdrawals, the unignorable pressure of a hand hovering just above his arms, his neck. He shivered. Ghosts hadn’t felt this strong since Vietnam.

            And the feeling kept growing as more and more ghosts faded into view. Impaled ghosts. Crushed ghosts. Kid ghosts.

            Klaus put his hands on his knees and retched. What little he had eaten spewed onto the carnage and he collapsed onto his knees, preferring this view than what lay a little higher.

            A pebble bounced off Klaus’s shoulder and he jumped, arms flailing in a laughable defence as he turned and fell onto his butt. Diego cast a concerned look his way.

            “What?”

            “You okay?”

            Not feeling it, Klaus forced a laugh. “Never better!” He held up a shaking thumbs up. When Diego raised his eyebrows at him, unconvinced, he just said, “I hate time travel.”

            Diego snorted. “Yeah, no shit.”

            Klaus glanced around the uncomfortably crowded room and wobbled to his feet, scanning face after awful face.

            “B-Ben’s not here,” he said slowly, frowning at the ghosts, forgetting to hide his attention. Several turned to him, interest piqued.

            “What?”

            “Ben’s gone?”

            “I thought you could bring him with us?”

            Heat pressed against Klaus’s eyes as he turned back to his living siblings, taking in their fear for the first time. “So did I.”

            Silence joined them for a long moment. Klaus was the one to break it, squirming in his own skin.

            “We need to get out of here, c’mon, let’s go outside, let’s –”

            “Go where?” Luther cut in, standing to his full height with that Number One bearing Klaus had learned to hate. “Five was right – this is the Apocalypse. Where are we supposed to go? He was meant to jump us back, not –”

            “Well sorry he disappointed you, Number One,” Diego snapped, stepping closer to Luther and glaring up at him. “But clearly jumping six people through time isn’t as easy as he thought!”

            “Diego, we’re trapped in the Apocalypse –!”

“I know that asshole, but there’s no point blaming Five – he’s passed out if you didn’t notice – you see, some powers actually take a toll –”

“Guys,” Klaus groaned, pressing his hands against his ears to stifle their bickering – and the shore of whispers rippling through the room. “Don’t fight, just –”

“Like you’d know anything about the toll powers take!” Luther spat, raising one fist as though to grab Diego’s shirt and lift him. “You don’t have a clue, all you do is aim well you – ow!”

Klaus giggled, then quickly cupped a hand to his mouth at Diego’s glare. Allison had slapped Luther with her notepad. Her glare had really levelled up, that was a real disappointed mom glare right there. And the way Luther cowered, god it was funny!

Allison righted her pad and wrote furiously while the boys waited in meek silence, both still shooting each other vengeful side-eye.

Arguing won’t help. Gotta work together.

“Exactly!” Klaus said with a clap, spinning around looking for Ben again. He had to be here, right? He’d made it to Vietnam he ... he had to be here. “So, first things first, we need to find Be –”

“What we need is Five,” Luther interjected, using his Leader Voice. Klaus’s shoulders slumped. “He’s the only one who knows this place, who can get us the hell out of here.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not exactly gonna help anyone right now, is he?” Diego shot back, pointing to Five’s unconscious figure.

Klaus followed his finger and was struck by how tiny Five looked, even for the thirteen-year-old he wasn’t. Something squirmed in his stomach and suddenly he wished Five wasn’t the time-jumper. He wished someone else could figure this out, fix everything so Five didn’t have to wake up again in the Apocalypse. The thought of opening his eyes and seeing that jungle, smelling gunpowder and burning flesh and napalm – Klaus shivered just imagining it. He picked his way over to Five and crouched down, reaching out for his little older brother’s hand. At least he wouldn’t wake up alone, right?

“I know that!” Luther was arguing. Still. “But we can’t just sit here, can we? No, we need to get somewhere safe, we need to regroup, come up with a plan.”

Allison raised a disbelieving eyebrow. Her expression very clearly doubted the existence of anywhere safe in the Apocalypse.

“I know where to go,” Diego said suddenly, eyes bright with an idea.

“You do?”

“Yeah, Luther, I do. Where did Five wait this thing out? Before his employers came to him?”

“Um,” Klaus drawled into the silence. “The mall?”

“The – no, Klaus, not the mall.”

Klaus raised both hands in sassy surrender. “Sor-ry, it’s where I’d spend the end of days. Free clothes for life.”

“The library! That’s where he went to figure out ... this.” Diego gestured to the lack of all things civil around them. “That must be where he, y’know, lived. With the mannequin.”

Luther and Allison exchanged one of their speaking glances. Klaus stood and shrugged.

“Sounds good to me. Reading’s more relaxing than a creepy haunted theatre.” He wished instantly he hadn’t said it – more ghostly eyes looked to him with interest, and none of them were Ben’s.

“Yeah, all right,” Luther said as Allison nodded decisively. “The library it is. You take Five, I’ve got Vanya.”

            When they eventually picked their way outside, Klaus threw up again. If the others noticed, they didn’t comment. They just walked on, through the hundreds upon hundreds of ghosts packed into the hellscape. Klaus followed close on Diego’s heels, not wanting to walk through any more dead than necessary.

            Night inched around them as they made their way past charred busses and hip-high weeds ripped from tarmac. Klaus whimpered to himself, feeling weak. The tingling had become painful pins and needles, stabbing along his skin and coiling, hot and prickly, in his gut. There was nowhere to look that wasn’t gory, miserable, lost, broken, dead. His siblings manoeuvred their way over fallen walls, under bent traffic lights, around the husks of cars. Klaus followed, looking at his feet and blinking hard to keep his vision clear. Even when he wasn’t looking at them he could feel them. They knew they were here. Most didn’t care but some weren’t taking kindly to the intrusion and were hissing, spitting insults and ire, furious that these six should live while they couldn’t. And when there were several hundred ghosts on this street alone, ‘some’ was one hell of a freaking lot. Klaus curled his arms around his chest for comfort, muttering to himself to try and block them out. He couldn’t take in the once-familiar streets turned nightmarish, couldn’t even register the sombre silence that was all his siblings could hear, save their scratching footsteps. Eventually, he covered his ears.

            Diego stopped abruptly in front of him and Klaus side-stepped to avoid a collision, dodging Five’s lolling feet as he turned. He looked up, flinched minutely at the man to Deigo’s right who was missing their entire right side, head included.

            Diego said something. Klaus relaxed his grip on his ears and raised his eyebrows in question.

            “You okay?” Diego repeated.

            Klaus nodded before he’d processed the question. He tried to smile at Diego’s disbelieving expression.

            “It’s just, y’know, a li’l crowded here,” he relented.

            Diego glanced around at the street he thought was completely empty. Completely silent.

            “Oh. Shit. Yeah. You gonna be okay?”

            Pretending Ben was there to say something bracing, Klaus straightened, fixed on his best smile, and nodded, letting his hands fall to his sides.

            “You kidding? Been training my whole life for this.”

            Diego gave him an odd look Klaus chose to interpret as confident and turned back, hitching Five up in his arms and moving to catch up with Luther and Allison. Wishing for Ben, Klaus followed, wincing as he passed through dead. He reached up for Dave’s dogtags and held them tight, sending his usual prayer of I miss you, I love you, to the only other ghost he wanted to see.

Chapter Text

            “It’s the-e-e end of the wo-orld,” Klaus sung to himself, under his breath. He stumbled on a ninja rock and righted himself. Took a deep breath. Sang on. “As we know it.”

            It’d be better if Five had jumped them to another city. The fact everything was familiar made the rubbled buildings and encroaching nature all the more, well, apocalyptic. He was trapped in some end-of-the-world movie, only there was none of that eerie stillness, no creepy sense of absence you get like at a rehab centre at three in the morning when the halls are bare and silent.

Klaus had always felt more comfortable in crowds. Something about the press of bodies made him feel normal; no one noticed if he spoke to someone who wasn’t there, and every body bumping into his reminded him he was alive. Or, that they weren't all dead, as a few particularly high nights had theorised.

But this crowd. Every time he accidentally touched one of them (which was every few seconds considering there were frickin’ millions) sent a static shock along his skin, making him jump and curl in on himself. He could barely see how fucked up the world was for all the dead wandering like zombie extras in a B-rated horror flick.

“He looks healthy –”

“– why does he get to live –”

“– should’ve been me –”

“– kill to feel again –”

“– maybe if I killed him I’d come back –”

“– Hell would be better than this purgatory –”

“– and there’s finally someone around to murder –”

“It’s the-e-e end of the wo-orld as we know it.” His voice sounded weak and shaky, even to himself. But he needed to hear something other than the whispers. He let his feet drag with every step just to hear the scratch of cheap bowling soles on concrete – a forbidden pleasure in which he’d normally revel. Frickin’ Luther. Frickin’ Diego. Let’s gather supplies, let’s split up, what a bunch of –

Ew. That guy’s chest was open. He must’ve been in surgery when the moon rock hit. Ew.

Gulping hard, Klaus kept his eyes low, the two cans of chopped fruit he’d found clutched tightly against his chest. It didn’t help that cloying ghost feeling rippling up and down his spine. Didn’t distract from the fact he was sorely outnumbered, alone, without a single friendly dead in sight –

Ugh, he needed Ben.

He paused and closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Reminded himself the dead couldn’t hurt him. (Didn’t work when he was thirteen and sure wasn’t working now but we are our routines, right?) Focused on his little brother. He could do this. If Ben made it to Vietnam he could make it to the end of times.

Okay. Focus. Focus. Don’t think of how gross this place smells or how dusty everything is, just think of Ben. Ben. Good ol’ Benny-boy. Bentacles. Bentacular. Benderoni. Mm, peperoni pizza, damn that’d be nice right about now. Or waffles! Oh, Ben loves – oh shit, yeah, Ben. Ben. Beeeeeeeeeeen.

            Klaus opened one eye, hoping.

            No black hoodie model. He slumped, moaning and rubbing one hand through his hair.

            “Be-he-hen,” he moaned, feeling tears well in his chest. “I need yooou, come on!”

            He could manifest the little emo but couldn’t conjure him? Who’s joke was this?

            His free hand found Dave’s tags and he held them tight, let the thin metal bite into his palm.

            “It’s the-e end of the wo-orld as we know it,” he mumbled, wishing he’d learned the verses. He couldn’t remember how it went. Except, “And I fee-ee-eel fine.”

            Except he didn’t. Not remotely. He was alone in a giant mausoleum and no amount of begging was gonna get him out of it. He was trapped with his family for who knew how long – forever, maybe. And as much as he loved them, how was he supposed to manage – how was he going to – what if he fell off the wagon? What if no drugs survived the moon landing? What if all those years of drugs and avoidance, of homelessness and prison, of rehab centres and busting out of custody – what if all that was for nothing? What if it was coming anyway? What if it was unavoidable?

            He’d always thought the ghosts would make him crazy. Pretended it didn’t matter, pretended to embrace the persona of Haley Joel Osment. Pretended it was funny he had to check with other people if what he was seeing was real or not. And with only his family around – they weren’t exactly the fix-it-with-love type and with Vanya’s powers? With all this? They weren’t gonna have time for their lunatic junkie brother finally falling off the rails. He was going to lose his mind to the ghosts and he was going to do it alone. Without Ben. And without Dave.

            He stopped. Let the cans clatter to the ground. Threw back his head, fists clenched to either side.

            “AND I FEEL FIIIIIINE!”

            Several ghosts looked up at him, pausing in their mindless shuffle to judge the mopey living shout their lies to the clouded sky.

            A tear raced down the side of his face to hide in his hair. The shout left him hollow. Frail. Sniffling, he picked the cans back up.

            At least there were no asylums to be locked into. That was something. Besides, maybe Five actually could get them out of here. Maybe this place wasn’t a death sentence for his sanity.

            The haze passing for sky was growing gloomier. With a sigh, Klaus turned back the way he had come – and started, dropping the cans on is feet.

            “Ben!”

            “Hey Klaus.”

            Klaus made the mistake of throwing his arms around his brother, flinching away as the static bit into him.

            “Oh-hoh I am so glad you’re back! Where’ve you been?”

            “I’m not sure,” Ben said slowly, glancing around. “Nowhere I guess. But I heard you shouting something just now and it kinda, I dunno, woke me up?” A beat as he turned to look behind him. “Is this really it? Everything?”

            “Yeah. Five wasn’t exaggerating.”

            Out of the corner of his eye Klaus saw more and more ghosts turn to watch him and Ben. Some shuffled closer. Anger fought confusion on every face.

            Ben finally noticed Klaus’s expression. “You okay?”

            “Me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m great. I’m great.”

            “Klaus.”

            Ben’s gaze was a challenge. One Klaus lost.

            “I mean, it’s a little overwhelming. There’s ... y’know, a lot of them.”

            “Can you feel them?”

            Klaus nodded, eying a woman with charred skin who was stepping closer, staring at him like he’d set her alight himself.

            “Can’t you banish them?”

            He looked back to Ben. “What now?”

            “Banish them. Surely if you can manifest me you can make them disappear?”

            Klaus was about to laugh at the ludicrousness of that idea, but then, conjuring Ben into the physical realm had been ridiculous up until a few days ago.

            “I mean, I can try?”

            “Then try.”

            Klaus spread his stance and closed his eyes, exhaling in a controlled gush. He tried to empty his mind and find that still surety he’d felt right before his hands had glowed in the theatre. It was slippery as a forgotten dream. He exaggerated his breathing, letting himself feel the air come and go, letting its rhythm draw him into the closest thing to inner quiet he had.

            He opened his eyes.

            “Oh.”

            “Yeah,” Ben sighed. “Guess you gotta work on that.”

            “If it’s even possible,” Klaus muttered, looking down at his feet to avoid the thousand eyes watching him with everything from polite curiosity to open hatred. “You’d think if it was it’d’ve come up when I was a kid. Y’know, before the drugs.” He shifted uncomfortably under Ben’s gaze. “We should, uh, get back to the others. Let them know you’re back. They, uh, they’ve been worried.”

            Ben snorted. “No they haven’t.”

            Klaus smiled humourlessly. “No, they haven’t.” He glanced over to Ben. “But I was.”

            Ben’s expression softened. “I know, Klaus. Me too.”

            Klaus bent to gather up the cans and lead the way back to the library’s skeleton, still taking a meandering, zigzag path to avoid the legion dead, still itching with ghostly energy, still afraid of how many kept appearing, how incessant their mutterings were. But not feeling quite so hopeless as before. If he did lose it, at least Ben would understand.

            At least he wasn’t alone.

Chapter Text

Claire was dead.

            No. Stop.

            Claire was dead.

            No!

            Deep breaths. They were going to fix this. Luther and Five would fix this. They would. Together. Once Five and Vanya woke up they’d figure out how to go back and stop this. And she could ask Klaus to conjure –

            No. That’d make it real. No, no. This was temporary. Temporary. She was still a mother. This didn’t change that. She would hold her baby in her arms again. In a few days – weeks, tops – she’d be back fighting for custody and laughing over how dramatic the whole thing seems compared to all this. It would be fine. She just had to make sure Five woke up.

            Speaking of.

            Allison leaned over to check his pulse again. Still steady, still strong. He’d stirred a few times a while ago. She turned back to Vanya, who ... hadn’t. But her heartbeat was steady too. Reliable.

            Allison put her head in her hands and focused on breathing past the ache in her throat – and the worse one in her heart. What had she been thinking? Firing a gun right by her sister’s ear. That could’ve deafened her. Caused permanent damage. Was it normal to be out cold this long? And what about her powers? Were they recharging while she was unconscious, like Five’s? How in the hell were they supposed to control them?

            Although, she thought, it’s not like there’s much more damage she could cause.

            With a sigh, Allison heaved herself upright. She shouldn’t’ve agreed to babysit. Klaus even offered to! She could be out working, doing something –

            That thought made her stomach shrivel. Ramshackle though it was, the library at least felt homey. Although that was mostly just Five’s handwritten nonsense scrawled over what remained of the walls. And the piles of books.

            But the mannequin was still creepy.

            Allison worked her notebook from her back pocket and flipped through the blank pages, counting. Fifty-four. Fifty-four chances to speak.

            She swallowed. Frowned. Grabbed her sharpie.

Okay, double that if she wrote small. Make one sheet for obvious, repeatable phrases. Yes. No. What are we going to do? Shut up. Yep, she’d be needing that one.

The sonic desolation gave way to the scratch of her marker, the glide of her finger over pages as she folded them down for easy reference. She hummed to herself, in her head, keeping her thoughts in line and her throat carefully still. Which is why it took her a moment to register the raspy slap of approaching footsteps.

She got to her feet, notebook clutched in one hand, marker held like a knife in the other. The footsteps inched closer, uneven, irregular. Allison took a step forward, putting herself between her siblings and the newcomer.

“Ow!”

Klaus stumbled into view, tripping over something and spinning on one foot with arms flailing to retain his balance. Allison relaxed, inwardly laughing at herself. It was the end of the world, who had she expected?

“Ta-da!” Klaus exclaimed as he set three cans on the ground. Allison raised an eyebrow at him. “What? What! It’s slim pickin’s out there, okay?”

She chuckled silently and gestured to the row of dusty cans lined behind one of the curving library walls.

“How’re the sleeping beauties?” he asked as he wound his way over.

Allison just shrugged, turning her gaze to Vanya and Five in turn. It’d been almost a day now. Once Luther and Diego got back they’d have to figure out a plan B if Five wasn’t going to come round.

“Hey I’ve got good news,” Klaus went on as he came back to sit cross-legged beside Five. “I found Ben!”

Allison shot him a quizzical look.

“Well, okay, I say ‘found’, he just kinda appeared – but yeah, weird thing, where did he go? Shouldn’t he’ve been there when we jumped? But anyway, he’s back now so the Umbrella Academy is at full strength!” He glanced to his two unconscious siblings. “Okay, full attendance anyway. Speaking of, did I ever tell you about that time I snuck out of the house and missed morning roll call? We were what, twelve? It was insane, so I’d already gotten a few li’l Mary Janes, and –”

Allison tuned him out after that. Honestly, what was it about Klaus that he couldn’t just sit in silence? Though, she had to admit, this particular silence wasn’t exactly comforting. There weren’t even any birds.

“Oh – hey! Five! Five Five Five!”

Allison jumped and followed Klaus’s flapping hands to see Five push himself groggily onto his elbows. With a low groan, he reached for his head.

“Did it work?” he mumbled, eyes barely open.

Klaus and Allison exchanged a loaded look.

“Weeeeeeeell technically yes.”

“What d’you mean ‘technically’?” Five snapped, sitting a little straighter, though Allison noticed he winced slightly and put a hand to his healing shrapnel wound.

Before either of them could speak – or in Allison’s case, write – Five looked around. Horror eroded his features as he took in the tall curved walls of Argyle Public Library, all decorated with his own feverish scrawl, to the piles of books he must’ve read a hundred times, to the mannequin sitting in a chair opposite the blackboard, staring indifferently into the clouds.

“No.” It was barely a whisper. “No. No no no no this can’t be right it can’t, I, I thought I had it right, I –”

He grabbed his hair in two tight fists and rocked forward, his voice a low, guttural growl that didn’t fit with a thirteen-year-old’s frame. Allison reached a comforting hand to his shoulder but he shook her off with an almost shout.

“No! I can’t be back here, I can’t, I can’t, I –”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Klaus whispered soothingly, shooting Allison a glance as he manoeuvred to sit closer. “It’s gonna be okay, Five, alright? We’re gonna get –”

“It’s not okay you idiot,” Five spat, hands flying to his lap as he scowled at Klaus. “I was trapped here for decades! I can’t get us out of here so don’t tell me everything’s gonna be fine!”

A very awkward pause oozed between them. Five was almost hyperventilating.

Not saying a word, Klaus shifted to sit by Five, his shoulder touching his quivering little older brother. Klaus laid his hand out on his lap, palm up to say HELLO to the sky. He didn’t move to touch Five, but the latter slowly, haltingly, rested his arm along his own thigh, just touching Klaus’s. Smiling slightly, Klaus pressed his arm into Five’s, increasing the contact to something grounded, solid. Allison watched in astonishment as Klaus, the fireball of energy, sat quietly and still in the middle of the Apocalypse. Slowly, his calm crept over Five until his breathing measured and he relaxed his battle-ready posture.

“I’m sorry,” he said when he had a hold of himself. “I didn’t mean to –”

“No apologies necessary dear brother,” Klaus said softly, with only a hint of his usual bravado. “I get it.”

Five looked up at Klaus and Allison saw some new understanding pass between them. She frowned at Klaus, not recognising the look in his eyes. There was something new there, something huge and dark that suddenly made him look years younger than he was. Vulnerable.

Five turned to her, his expression returned to the familiar smiling mask.

“Okay, so clearly the equations were off, I must’ve ...” He trailed off, spotting the mannequin. “Delores ...”

Moving stiffly, he got to his feet and staggered over to Delores, clutching his side. He reached out for her plastic cheek and mumbled something Allison didn’t catch. She exchanged a look with Klaus, whose eyes were filling with tears. She looked back to Five in time to see him turn his back on the mannequin.

“As I was saying,” he said, his voice notably less gruff than usual. He cleared his throat and straightened. “Clearly something was off with my calculation of the time dilation which sent us in the wrong direction. I meant to jump us back,” he muttered bitterly. “But we’re here so ... I assume Luther and Diego are here too?”

Allison nodded. Five turned to Klaus.

“And Ben?”

“Here and horny! I assume.”

“Vanya?”

Allison shrugged. Pointed to her and gave a thumbs up.

“Well. That’s something, I guess.”

Allison reached for her notebook and flipped to the most important question.

Can you get us out of here?

Five took a moment in answering. “I think so.”

Allison gave her head a little shake in an expression that very clearly said, what the fuck?

            Five waved a hand. “Just give me some time to think.”

            With that, he turned back to the walls of scientific gibberish, already muttering to himself with words that were either highly technical or completely made up.

            “I guess we just sit here then?”

            She turned to Klaus. Then glanced to the paltry pile of supplies they currently had to work with. With a sigh she shook her head and got up, gestured to the pile, then out to the wilderness.

            “Aw don’t leave!” Klaus moaned, “Ben wants to talk to you!” Allison hesitated. Klaus hissed at something to her right and returned pleading eyes on her. “C’mon, Allison, let’s talk! Remember we used to do each other’s nails? We used to have the chats!”

            Unbelievable. The world was over and he was worrying about his nails? With an extra sassy scoff, Allison turned on her heel and headed into the wastelands, determined to do something useful. Whatever their plan was they were gonna need food. And her bandage would need changing soon. There was work to do. Problems to solve.

            People to get back to.

Chapter Text

It was quiet as the moon. The dry breeze rattling through the deserted street was like his breath cycling through the oxygen reclaimer. It was brighter though, even with the oppressive cloud hiding the sun. And the view was decidedly worse.

            Luther heaved a fallen freezer back upright and ducked to search the cupboards it’d been concealing. Nothing edible. With a sigh, he straightened. Gave up on the bodega. Climbed back through the broken window.

            He’d been searching for more than two hours now and all he had to show for it were two cans of beans and one of pineapple slices. Not exactly a feast for six hungry heroes.

            Well, they weren’t heroes. Yet. But they would be. Just like when they were kids.

            First he just had to figure out how, and ‘find a decent meal’ was top of his list for today. Then get Five to wake up, somehow. Then he’d explain why they were here and then he’d do his Beautiful Mind bit and figure out a way to get them out of here. Safely. Then they’d just go back in time and stop all this from happening. It was simple really. Only five steps.

            He gave up the hunt for edibles and returned to the library, working on his composure. The Umbrella Academy mightn’t’ve needed a leader for the past seventeen years or so, but now they sure as hell did. And that was his job. His responsibility. They had to see him looking confident. Unafraid. Ready for the mission.

            Which was easier said than done.

            Diego and Klaus had beaten him back to base. Thankfully Five was awake, already writing equations and muttering to himself. The pile of supplies was woefully small, barely enough for two meals for the lot of them. They’d have to search further afield if they were gonna be here a while.

            Which Luther fervently hoped they weren’t.

            But still, pineapple slices were way better than desiccated moon food. So there was that, at least.

            “What are we –” he began but a cutting gesture and angry shush face from Allison silenced him. She pointed to Five and zipped her lips. “Oh. Yeah, okay, I’ll just, uh ...” He sat down beside Allison, casting a worried eye over Vanya. She looked okay, still pale, but, alive. Breathing.

            He tried not to notice how relieved that made him.

            A few awkwardly quiet minutes later, Five finally stepped back from the wall and faced his family.

            “I know what went wrong,” he declared, looking proud and irritated in equal measure. “In the chaos I forgot to invert the guidance matrix for retrograde travel and since my original time jump landed me the day the Apocalypse happened, we were basically launched into the next available time period. Like a pebble in a slingshot.”

            Four blank faces blinked up at him.

            “Soooo that means ...?” Klaus prompted, waving one hand on his wrist.

            Five rolled his eyes. “It means we’re in the year 2060. The Apocalypse is forty-one years old and it’s almost fall.”

            Luther frowned. “But how –”

            “Because you can’t co-exist with another version of yourself,” Five explained, exasperated. “There can never be two Luthers or two Diegos at the same time.”

            “But why?”

            Five heaved an aggrieved sigh. “If I told you, you wouldn’t understand the answer.” He waited a moment for the insult to sink in. “Now, we’ve arrived the day the Commission – my former employers – recruited me. We probably arrived the same hour I left. Well, younger me. Who was older.”

            Luther exchanged a perplexed glance with Diego.

            “So ... what does all that mean for us?”

            “It means,” Five sighed, “that we’re in trouble. The Commission are going to realise we’re here. It may take them some time – from our perspective – but believe me. They’ll figure out we came here. And we already know they’re not exactly on board with stragglers to their Timeline.”

            “Meaning?”

            “Meaning we need to figure out how to get the hell out of here.”

            Diego threw his hands up in exasperation. “Well I coulda told you that, Five. How are we getting out of here? That’s what I wanna know.”

            “I’m working on it,” Five sneered, that shit-eating grin of his distracting from the murder in his eyes. “It’s not that simple. Right now we need to get off the radar, buy ourselves more time.”

            “Off the radar?” Luther repeated, incredulous. “Five, it’s the end of the world! What radar do you think there is?”

            “The Commission’s,” Five clarified. “They’re gonna figure out we’re here and they’re gonna come for us. For me. After everything I’ve done they want me dead. And they’ll take all of you with me if you’re in the way. So we gotta get off the grid. Luckily,” he added with a spring in his tone, “I know a place.”

            They exchanged dubious glances.

            “But,” he continued, “it’s not close. We’re gonna have to take my cart, load up all the supplies we can on the way – I’ve pretty much cleaned out this area, I was jumping for food for years before the Handler found me – and we’ll need to keep moving. Far as I can tell the Commission only found me ‘cause I stayed here –” he gestured to the skeletal library. “Once I’ve had time to re-evaluate the parameters and recalculate the matrices, I can get us home. I think,” he added, then smiled his sweetest, least-assassiny smile.

            “Um,” Luther began, not sure where he was going but feeling he should contribute something.

            “What’re we supposed to do while you’re thinking?” Diego cut in. “Just wait around at the end of the world?”

            “Yes,” Five agreed.

            “Well,” Klaus sighed, rubbing his hands together and looking at each of his siblings in turn. “I guess we’ve finally got time for some family bonding, huh?”

            There was a very, very awkward pause. Luther glanced to Vanya, still out cold. He swallowed. How was he supposed to fix that?

            “Get some sleep,” Five announced. “We move at first light.”

            “Yeah,” Luther added, feeling a blush swell in his cheeks. “We’re gonna need our strength. But first thing’s first: who wants pineapple and who wants beans?”

Chapter Text

            You know what the real tragedy was? That Klaus was now moving, on foot, with his entire family – Luther pulling Vanya in the cart – and not a one of them, not even Ben, appreciated his whistling The Great Escape. Or The Bridge of Khazad Dum. These people did not understand his brilliance.

            Nor were they in a talking mood, meaning Klaus had to bear the full burden of drowning out the ghosts. Who were multiplying. The few hundred that had greeted him the day they arrived in this god forsaken mess had swelled to near a thousand. More kept appearing, shimmering into view like a bad mirage. The injuries started changing too, like they’d been further away from the collision. Charred skin was replaced with blunt force traumas, waxy blue lips of the suffocated, and bodies ripped apart by debris. It was confirming a theory Klaus had always hoped was just his pessimism being dramatic: the ghosts were attracted to him.

            Which meant there was no escaping them.

            Which meant he really just wanted to whistle something cheery and triumphant to drown out all the accusations and questions and general hate susurrating all around him like so many hissing snakes.

            He trotted up to walk by Five, who was trudging along with the air of a soldier whose entire platoon had been killed but was determined to get over enemy lines. Probably attached to a bomb.

            Klaus knew the feeling.

            “I ever tell you,” he began, careful to keep his tone cheery, “about the time I got locked in a closet during a drug raid and had to hang out with a bunch of mops for like a day? Coulda sworn those mops were talking to me.”

            Five sighed.

            “It was quite a trip,” Klaus went on, “and I never knew if I was actually hallucinating or if that closet was just packed with ghosts of janitors past, you know?”

            Nothing.

            “And this other time –”

            “I’m not in the mood, Klaus,” Five ground between gritted teeth.

            “Well, I just thought –”

            “Well don’t. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do and I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me to it.”

            Klaus’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, okay.”

            He let Five plod ahead and fell into step beside the cart, alongside Vanya’s sleeping form.

            Check that – Vanya’s stirring form.

            “Hey, hey guys!” Klaus called, eyes fixed on the little crease between his sister’s eyebrows. She let out a little hum, her head twitching to the side. “I think Vanya’s waking up!”

            Luther stopped. Exchanged a glance with Diego. Slowly lowered the cart. Allison was elbowing Klaus out of the way within moments, reaching down to take Vanya’s hand as she blinked her eyes open.

            “Hey Vanya!” Klaus cooed in his gentlest voice.

            Vanya looked from sibling to sibling, then to the smoky sky and derelict buildings, confusion morphing into fear as tears filled her eyes.

            Allison was mouthing it’s okay, it’s okay, but it didn’t quell the broken sob as Vanya curled in on herself, looking up at them in horror. Her breathing shallowed, coming hard and fast and five people simultaneously shushing her apparently didn’t help. Before Vanya could dissolve into tears, Allison had wrapped her in her arms, holding her head against her heart with her cheek resting on the top of Vanya’s head. She sobbed openly, clinging to Allison as the boys looked on. Klaus stepped forward and stroked Vanya’s hair, wishing he could think of something to say, but what could he possibly come up with that would make any difference?

            Diego stalked off a ways, shoulders tense and hands in fists. Luther stood there, an awkward protector, looking younger in his uncertainty. Five just watched Vanya cry, an odd, almost calculating expression nibbling his eyebrows.

            After a long, awkward while, Vanya regained herself. She pulled away from Allison and Klaus and looked around, gaze flat.

            “I did this?” she whispered, her voice strained and faint. She frowned, worked her jaw. Put a finger to her right ear and massaged it.

            “What did she say?” one ghost said loudly over Klaus’s shoulder.

            “She did this?

            “She killed us?”

            “You okay?” Klaus asked quickly, hoping to shut them up.

            “I – my ear, I –” she sniffed. “I can’t hear.”

            “At all?” Luther cut in, concern dripping from his tone in a way that was alien to Klaus.

            “No, I – I can hear you. A little.”

            Allison looked to Luther and made a gun with her fingers, her expression regretful.

            “Oh right – it was probably the gunshot. Don’t worry, that kind of thing is rarely permanent.”

            “Oh.” Vanya nodded slowly, gaze flicking back to the ruined landscape.

            “There’s no point feeling sorry for yourself,” Five said harshly. Vanya’s eyes snapped to him. “What’s done is done, and we’re going to undo it.” A pause. His expression softened. “You couldn’t control it.”

            “I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears swelling in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Five. I’m so sorry!”

            “I know you are. And we’ll fix it. Starting with teaching you how to control your powers.”

            Vanya nodded, resolute.

            “It’s true!” the ghosts whispered, voices growing louder with gathering fury.

            “She killed us!”

            “She caused this!”

            “Monster. MONSTER!”

            “You murdered my children!”

            “You stole my life from me!”

            Klaus swallowed, hands fidgeting. The ghosts were pressing in on them, all eyes on Vanya, and though Klaus would normally appreciate the lack of attention, the hatred in their gazes sent shivers up his spine. What if they somehow tapped into his power and manifested themselves? They might try to kill Vanya. He couldn’t let that happen.

            “It’s him! His sister!”

            “He let this happen!”

            “All of them did!”

            “They’re responsible!”

            “Murderers!”

            “It’s gonna be okay, Vanya,” Klaus said loudly, leaning down to hug her tightly. She seemed taken aback, but after a moment returned the hug, leaning into his shoulder and Klaus was struck by how small she was. “We’re gonna figure this out together – the Umbrella Academy saving the world!”

            “Thanks Klaus,” she sniffed.

            He held her tighter.

            “And I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear.

            She returned the pressure.

            “We need to move,” Five announced, already stepping away. Luther cleared his throat and Klaus straightened, stitching a jovial smile across his lips as he helped Vanya step out of the cart.

            “Onwards and upwards my fair gentiles!”

            Rolling his eyes, Five turned and lead the way through the desolation, the tiniest smirk lifting the corner of his mouth. The others followed suit, Klaus hesitating behind them. He turned to Ben.

            “Do you think they can do anything?”

            Ben hesitated, then shook his head. “One thing Dad always said: you control your power. No one else can.”

            Klaus snorted. “Tell that to Vanya.”

            Ben had no response to that. Eventually, he said, “Let’s just see what Five comes up with. We might be out of here before you’ve time to freak out.”

            Klaus tried another smile and nodded, finally starting after the others, trying not to feel the dead hoards around him.

            “Bit late for that, brother-mine.”

            “At least try and take care of yourself then. Eat something maybe?”

            Klaus waved a dismissive hand. “I’m not hungry, Benny-boy.” He gestured to the ghosts. “It’s not the most appetising apocalypse to be fair.”

            “Klaus.”

            “I know, I know, I’ll have a can of beans or something, okay? Chill.”

            Ben walked by his side in silence for a long moment.

            “They’re not going to hurt you, Klaus,” he said quietly. “They can’t.”

            Klaus clenched his jaw. “I know.”

            “Do you?”

            Klaus didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure anymore. That old childish fear that stalked his nightmares had never felt so rational, so real. He could feel the ghosts, like an itch in his mind, a hovering presence that danced like the impression of pricking syringes. Their anger crawled over him like spiders, wrapped like snakes around his limbs. They’d never felt quite this real before, not even that first rough night in Vietnam before Robbie had offered him some LSD.

            But Ben was probably right. This was mostly in Klaus’s head.

            He hoped.

Chapter Text

Days Post Apocalypse: 8

            He’d lost track of how many blisters were slowly gnawing through his feet. Stupid bowling shoes. And his ankle kept almost-twisting. Plus Five had cleaned out almost the whole area living in the library so food was still unreliable. Not that Klaus had much interest in eating. But Ben kept hounding him about it and Diego had started noticing so Klaus had made an effort. That he’d thrown up ten minutes later was irrelevant, he’d eaten the damn soup. And now they were back to walking. In bowling shoes. Klaus had spent entire nights walking the city – strolling these very streets – but navigating broken roads and toppled buildings in freaking bowling shoes while a thousand ghosts nattered away about how monstrous you and your family were was something short of enjoyable.

            “She should die for what she did.”

            “They all should.”

            “The gay one could help us.”

            “Selfish.”

            “Heartless.”

            “Doesn’t he care?”

            “Should kill him too.”

            Klaus tripped, arms snapping wide to steady himself. His stomach ached from more than hunger. Blood burned from more than withdrawals. He couldn’t even enjoy the fact that he’d been sober for an entire week. His biggest achievement since ... maybe ever.

            But he didn’t think he could really take credit. Does it count as staying sober if there aren’t any drugs, period?

            “She should bleed like I bled!”

            “They keep saying they’re going to fix this!”

            “They’re liars.”

            “Murderers!”

            “SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUP!” Klaus howled, making the others jump and look around. “And I hate these stupid shoes!” In a fit of rage Klaus bent over and wrenched the damn bowling shoes off and chucked them as far as his noodly arms could manage.

            Fuck, he was tired. He wasn’t sure what was keeping him upright anymore. Maybe just the fact that falling to the ground required effort.

            He was dimly aware of Diego coming back for him, his expression already impatient. The others had already resumed the march, Allison and Vanya doing their focus exercises.

            “You okay?” Ben asked quietly. Klaus glanced to him.

            “No, Ben, I’m not. I’m pissed and I’m fried and I’m sober. I want out of this shit.”

            “Yeah, well, that’s not really an option.”

            “Sure it is.”

            “Only if you want to break our deal.”

            Klaus shot Ben a steely glance. “Low blow.”

            “All’s fair in love and war, kiddo.”

            With a heaving sigh, Klaus put his head in his hands and wished the ghosts would just fuck off, just for a minute. Wished he’d been the one born without powers. Wished he could control them, like in the theatre. Wished, wished, wished.

            He let his hands flop back to his sides in time to take in two things: Diego, halfway to him, and a legless corpse crawling to his feet, one filthy hand outstretched for his leg. Klaus jerked away, revolted, but the ghost lunged closer – and grabbed his shin.

            “WHAT THE – AH!”

            “Klaus!” Diego’s shout harmonised with Ben’s as the ghost’s overlong fingernails scored through Klaus’s flesh, ripping blood into the air, trickling sluggishly down his ankle.

            Klaus wrenched his leg free, overbalanced, and fell backwards, hitting the ground hard enough to beat the air right out of him. The legless ghost crawled closer, three more looming over him to see if they could touch him too.

            “No, no, no, no, no, no!”

            He covered his face with his arms and waited for the pain.

            It didn’t come.

            “Klaus!”

            Hands pulled his arms apart and he yelped, kicking wildly.

            “Ouch! – Klaus, stop it you idiot it’s me!”

            “D-Diego?”

            “Who’d you think, dumbass?”

            Shaking, Klaus relaxed. The ghosts drew away. Diego pulled him to his feet, quick to notice how gingerly he held his weight.

            “What the hell happened to your leg?”

            “Oh I, uh –”

            He glanced to Ben, who nodded bracingly.

            “I cut it on some rebar.”

            Diego stooped to look at the bloody pant leg more closely, then scowled up at Klaus.

            “Rebar?”

            “Yeah. Yeah, rebar.”

            Diego straightened, considering him. “Well we should clean it. C’mon. What happened to your shoes?”

            He threw a dark look in the direction of the little traitors.

            “We had a disagreement.”

            “Okay,” Diego said slowly, clearly not interested in pulling on that thread. He hooked an arm under Klaus’s shoulders, leading him back to the group. Klaus hoped he couldn’t feel him shaking as badly as he was.

            “How you handling all this?” Diego asked suddenly.

            Klaus swallowed. “Oh, you know, well enough.”

            “It’s not easy.”

            “Yeah. I’d kill for some peace and quiet.”

            Diego stopped. Turned to Klaus.

            “‘Peace and quiet?’” he repeated, deadpan.

            Klaus nodded. Gestured to all the ghosts Diego couldn’t see.

            “Shit, right. I forgot.”

            “Lucky for you,” Klaus muttered.

            “And they’re loud?”

            “Extremely. Not to mention angry.”

            “Angry?”

            “At Vanya.”

            “Oh. Shit.”

            “Yep,” Klaus agreed, popping his lips on the p.

            “Sorry, man. And here the silence is creeping me out.” He hesitated, then tugged Klaus along. “There’s a lot of them, yeah?”

            “Oh, you know,” Klaus sighed. “Few thousand.”

            Diego’s eyebrows rose. “Shit.”

            “More come every day. I think they’re attracted to me, somehow.”

            “That sucks. And you’re sober?”

            “One week.”

            “Hey, congrats.”

            Klaus couldn’t quite bring himself to smile. “Yeah, I’m a real winner.” He made the mistake of putting his weight on his wounded leg and another surge of blood crept down his ankle and he hissed. Diego tightened his grip.

            “Easy, easy. Hold on.” He helped Klaus sit on a fallen traffic light. “I’m gonna get the first aid kit.”

            “‘Kit’ might be a bit grand a term,” Klaus muttered as Diego jogged off to the others, calling to them to wait. Ben sat down beside him, hood down, expression measured.

            “Well that was new,” he remarked mildly, as though commenting on a sale sign in one of the rundown windows.

            Klaus sniffed and swallowed the fear tickling his throat. “I thought you said that couldn’t happen.”

            Ben looked over at him but Klaus avoided his gaze. “It’s never happened before?”

            Klaus tried to smile. “C’mon Ben, you know you were my first.”

            “Ew, Klaus –”

            “The first ghost I’ve ever touched, jeez, get your mind out of the gutter, we’re brothers, dude.” The smile felt almost real for a moment.

            “Phrasing,” Ben chided. The mirth drained from his expression. He glanced to Klaus’s leg, watching the blood ooze sluggishly over his sock for a moment. “Maybe it’s because of the theatre.”

            Klaus looked at him. “How so?”

            Ben shrugged. “You levelled up. Manifested me. Clearly there’s some part of you that can corporealize ghosts. Maybe ...” he trailed off, looking out at the hoard of dead.

            Klaus felt the colour abandon his face. “You cannot be serious.”

            Ben shrugged again. “Does anything else make sense?”

            “No, but – come on, the ghosts can –” he glances around, lowering his voice to a tense whisper – “tap into my power?”

            Ben looked pointedly to Klaus’s shin. “I think the evidence speaks for itself, bro.”

            Klaus straightened on the traffic light and huffed a deep sigh.

            “Well that is extremely shit. How the fuck am I meant to keep them away from me? Ben, they’re gonna kill me, for real.”

            Ben shook his head, smiling. “Don’t be so dramatic, they’re not gonna –”

            Gravel crunched, announcing Diego’s return with the kid’s lunchbox that was their first aid kid. He knelt by Klaus’s injured leg and opened it. A glance to Klaus’s face stilled him, gauze held in one hand.

            “Klaus? You good?”

            Klaus slapped a smile on his face and tried to blink away the tears. One of them skipped free, landing on his cheek and trickling slowly over his jaw. He wiped it away hurriedly, sniffing loudly.

            “Yeah, yeah man I’m fine. Just, uh, just hurts.”

            Diego snorted, turning his attention to the wound. “Big baby.”

            “Yeah.” He glanced to Ben. “Yeah, I am.”

            Klaus watching Diego clean the three narrow cuts with an antiseptic wipe, determined not to see the ghosts pressing close around them. If they figured this out, if they knew –

            “Klaus.”

            He jumped, earning a curse from Diego. He looked to Ben.

“What?”

“What?” echoed Diego.

Klaus shook his head. “Talking to Ben.”

Diego glanced to the wrong side and blinked. “Oh. Right. Hey, Ben.”

“Knifenator.”

“He says hi.”

“Klaus, listen,” Ben cut in over Diego. “You own your power. Just, I dunno, keep yourself calm and you’ll be fine.”

Klaus snorted. “Calm,” he spat. “Yeah, why didn’t I think of that.”

Diego eyed him warily as he wrapped the gauze around his shin.

“I’m serious. But hey, Klaus, you’re not alone in this.”

Klaus ground his teeth in answer, a muscle feathering in his jaw.

“You’ve got me,” Ben pressed. “And it,” he added, gesturing to his torso. He grinned. “If the ghosts wanna get physical with you there’re gonna have to make it through me first.”

Klaus managed a small, genuine smile. “Thanks,” he muttered, just as Diego straightened up.

“You’re welcome,” he and Ben said in unison. Klaus huffed a low laugh.

“Here,” Diego said, throwing him the roll of gauze. “Change that in a while.”

Klaus slapped a salute. “Yessir!”

Diego rolled his eyes. “C’mon, tough guy. The others are waiting.”

With a dutiful nod, Klaus got to his feet and followed Diego back to the cart, limping heavily as he got used to the throbbing in his leg.

Chapter Text

Days Post Apocalypse: 12

            The goddamn highway was broken. The goddamn moon had ripped a giant goddamn chunk out of the goddamn lanes and they were goddamn stranded a mile from the last goddamn ramp.

            Klaus flung himself away from his family, leaving them to bicker over the best way to bridge the gap since apparently Five still wasn’t up to jumping all six of them after the time jump. Because Little Girl forbid anything in their goddamn lives be easy.

             His leg throbbed with every step, the unseen sun pounding down on him so he felt he was trapped in a desert, the husks of cars throwing heat back at him as he passed. Someone called his name and he raised a middle finger and kept trudging, not bothering to look back.

            “They’re worried, you know,” Ben said quietly.

            Klaus scoffed.

            “Well, Diego is. I am.”

            “Well whoop-dee-freakin’-do.”

            “Klaus, you can’t keep going on like this. You’re sick.”

            “No freaking duh!” he snapped, rounding on Ben. He gestured to the world around them. “Of course I’m sick! I’m sick of fucking ghosts! I’m sick of being afraid of every one of them. I’m sick of walking, I’m sick of my damn leg hurting, and I’m sure as hell sick of being sober!” He heaved a deep breath and ran an arm over the sweat on his forehead.

            Ben didn’t speak for a long, tense moment. When he did his voice was low and infuriatingly patient.

            “I know it’s hard, Klaus. But you’re sick, you’ve –”

            “Just shut it, Ben,” he snapped. The silence prickled with the harshness of his tone. He turned back to his spectral brother and sighed. “I’m sorry. I just – I really just want to be alone for a minute.”

            Ben glanced pointedly to the throng of ghosts around them, one sardonic eyebrow raised, but said nothing. With a shrug, he turned away.

            Guilt gnawed at Klaus’s heart, but he ignored it. Ben was a big boy, he’d get over it. He turned to look at his family, still arguing by the cliff of missing highway. Luther and Diego were facing off again, both gesturing angrily at the broken road while Allison was employing her new whispering skills with Vanya as they tried vainly to strategize with Five. Who was looking right at him.

            Klaus looked away quickly. Meeting his little older brother’s eyes had been a lot harder in recent days. More ghosts had arrived, all with neat little bullet holes in their heads, all mostly ignoring Klaus to stalk around the smallest Hargreeves, whispering. Always whispering. Something about the apocalypse made ghosts far more chatty than normal. Klaus suspected it had something to do with safety in numbers.

            He knew he shouldn’t be judging Five. Shouldn’t be avoiding him. After all, Klaus had killed more men than he could keep track of, in Vietnam, never mind growing up on Academy missions. But there was something different about Five’s dead. They were civilians, mostly, politicians and seemingly average shmucks someone somewhere had decided needing killing. In the war it was kill or be killed every second of every day. And you knew the people you were fighting knew what they were risking. What they were willing to sacrifice for their country. It joined both sides of the conflict, that allegiance to a home. Klaus had never felt that. But Dave had. He’d shown Klaus what true loyalty was. Shown him what was worth killing for.

            Five didn’t kill out of loyalty. Only out of a need to survive. Klaus couldn’t fault him that. He just wished his ghosts would quiet.

            Something caught his eye, flicking behind the broken skeleton of a van. He followed it, feet bringing him of their own accord, the deep throbbing in his right shin easing slightly. He laid a hand on the van’s rusted bones as he passed, pausing a moment to catch his breath. Little Girl, it was hot. The thing reappeared and Klaus flinched, half turning away. It was a child. Dead. Not his first by any means, but still. Poor thing couldn’t have been older than five.

            Klaus turned away, not wanting to look at the charred skin and crushed arm, but the child moved with him, keeping one ghostly hand on the van.

            “Buzz off, kid,” he muttered, taking another step away.

            “I want my mommy,” the little girl said.

            “Me too,” Klaus sighed, remembering Grace’s hugs. And her waffles. Her ever kind smile.

            “Please,” she whined, voice teary. “I need to find my mommy.”

            Klaus’s patience snapped and he whirled around, mouth open to cuss the little urchin under the ground. The words never came. Ice stole through his veins, creeping through his muscles, paralysing him. He swallowed.

            Her dark skin was wan, dusted wish dark grey ash. Most of her curly hair was eaten away by vicious burns covering half her scalp. Her right arm was horrendously broken, yellowed bone ripped free, and the right side of her chest was caved in.

            But her eyes. He knew those eyes.

            Ben popped into view beside him, summoned by Klaus’s jolt of horror.

            “Klaus what –” he cut himself short with a gasp. “Klaus! It’s –”

            “Claire,” he croaked, eyes wide. He fell to his knees before her, helpless to stare at her tiny, ruined face. How many times had he dreamed of meeting her? But never like this. Never this.

            “Uncle Klaus, where’s my mommy!”

            “Oh God,” Ben whispered somewhere above him, voice as horrified as Klaus felt. “Klaus, we’ve – you’ve got to tell her.”

            Klaus was shaking his head before Ben had finished the sentence.

            “No, no, no, we can’t, I can’t, I –”

            “Uncle Klaaauuus!”

            The air was condensing into something too hot to breathe, scorching his throat, burning his lungs. The ice was melting away, leaving him dizzy, disorientated, his vision warping madly. He pressed palms into the filth of the road, desperate for anything solid, but the asphalt was magma, searing into his skin and Claire, his little niece, was screaming for her mother, for her uncle Space Boy, for someone to pick her up and hold her because she couldn’t find her daddy and Klaus could feel his revulsion, his horror, his despair, boil up inside him like a rising tide and it was blistering, smothering, threatening to crush him under its weight. Ben was speaking, maybe shouting, but Klaus couldn’t make sense of the words. Claire was crying, wailing, and Klaus could feel her energy collide with his in the air, mixing together like noxious gases with the violent anticipation of napalm. Hands rained down on him, nails clawing at his flesh, fists beating into his sides, his back. Voices, far too many voices, screeched and shouted, anger given wings and daggers that pummelled into him, blunt and bruising. He curled himself into a ball and waited to die, a ragged scream ripping itself past his lips.

oOo

            “Diego, I can’t just chuck you over there,” Luther snapped, exasperation getting the better of him. “What we need is Five to –”

            “I told you,” Five cut in, “I only have a couple of mid-distance solo jumps left in me. Sorry it’s so inconvenient for you.”

            “Well what then,” Diego said, throwing his arms wide in defeat, “we just go around? It’ll take days!”

            Luther heaved a sigh and turned toward the gulf before them. Corpses of cars lay crumpled a few hundred feet below them, half buried in great slabs of road. How the hell were they supposed to get over there? Maybe he could just throw them all and jump himself. Probably break the cart though.

            Buying time before he had to come up with something plan-like, Luther turned to Five, hoping he’d jump in with something scientific that would get them out of this mess. Five was staring off into the distance with a delicate frown crimping his brows. Klaus’s name faded from the air and Luther followed his gaze to see him stepping around the end of a broken-down van, one middle finger raised. A twinge of worry flared in his gut but he brushed it away with a snort. Even the Apocalypse couldn’t change Klaus.

            “Okay,” he said bracingly, turning back to the others, “maybe if we –”

            A raw, aching scream obliterated the rest of his words and he whirled around, fists raising. He took an automatic step forward, putting himself between his siblings and the threat, still looking around for the source of the scream. It echoed into the pervasive silence, leaving all five Hargreeves tensed for battle.

            “Klaus,” Five muttered, running off toward the van. Luther caught up with him quickly, long legs outstripping him easily, so he was the first to see it.

            Klaus was writhing on the ground, jerking from unseen blows. The sight was so bizarre, Luther hesitated, bewildered. Then three thin red lines drew themselves over the exposed skin of Klaus’s arm and he screamed, flinching away as the blood beaded and trickled over his elbow. Before Luther could so much as gasp, Klaus howled Ben’s name, his balled fists glowing blue. Luther leapt backwards a split second before Ben flickered into view, the Horror already unleashed against the dozens of ghosts that were fading in an out of sight in a barely-there blue hue. The other ghosts ignored Ben, focusing their furies on Klaus until Ben swiped them away from him with two rippling tentacles. A host of undead surged towards Ben while another battalion washed over Klaus and Luther lunged forwards, fists flying uselessly through form after gory form. Not knowing what to do, Luther scooped Klaus into his arms just as one of the ghosts – a line-backer type with no head – levelled a vicious kick at Klaus’s skull. His neck snapped to the side and he went utterly limp in Luther’s arms as he straightened. The blue faded from the air but Luther caught a final glimpse of Ben, staring at him with fire in his eyes.

            “Help him, Luther,” he whispered as he vanished.

Chapter Text

Luther stood, frozen. Air sawed through him as dust reclaimed the scene, Klaus’s slight weight limp in his arms. Blood dripped on his bowling shoes.

            “What the hell was that?” Five appeared at his shoulder, a lock of hair falling over his forehead. He looked to Klaus, saw the bruises, the blood, the lax features.

            “I-I–” He tightened his grip on his whippet brother. Gave his head a shake. “I saw Ben.”

            “Me too.” Five turned to him. “What did he say?”

            The crunch of approaching feet drowned out his silence.

            “What the hell was that?” Diego panted. Colour drained from his face as he saw Klaus. “What happened?”

            Luther swallowed and turned away from the husk of the van, carrying Klaus carefully back to the cart. His brothers stayed by his side, questions firing like punches, but Luther couldn’t bring himself to answer. Ben’s face was still swimming behind his eyes, along with flashes of ruined bodies and furious expressions.

            Klaus had been seeing those all this time.

            He looked around, to the thick brown clouds obliterating the sky, the skeletal vehicles marking mass graves. The silence was oppressive, a physical pressure that neither ebbed nor breathed but was constantly pressing tingling fingers against their skin. Even the low moans of the wind couldn’t touch its immensity.

            But it hadn’t been silent for Klaus. How could he not have realised that? They were the only living people in the city – in the entire world – and his brother could see ghosts. How could he have been so blind? He tightened his grip on his little brother, shame clawing at his heart.

            Someone punched his shoulder. Luther started, looking around. His family was watching him expectantly. He laid Klaus gently down on the cart and reached for the first aid kit.

            “Luther!” Diego snapped. “Talk!”

            “I saw Ben,” he said again, his voice low. He didn’t look up as he rubbed an antiseptic wipe over the fingernail cuts on Klaus’s bicep. “He was fighting off other ghosts. Who were attacking Klaus.”

            A very different silence unfurled itself between them. Allison stepped up to Luther’s side, putting a hand on his until he looked at her. His shame sparkled in her eyes.

            “How,” Vanya said, voice soft and lilting with confusion, “how could they touch him?”

            “His powers,” Five said as though it was obvious. “In the theatre, he summoned Ben. He’s evolved. And this place,” he added darkly, gesturing contemptuously around them, “is gonna have a lot of spectral energy. I doubt Klaus knows how to control that kind of magnitude.”

            “Oh shit.” Luther glanced to Diego. “His leg. Klaus said he cut in on rebar but it looked wrong.” He elbowed Luther out of the way and peeled back Klaus’s ripped trouser leg, revealing a filthy burgundy bandage. Grimacing, he drew a knife from his harness and scored the bandage in two, drawing it back with a hiss.

            Three deep claw marks puckered the red skin. The wounds were dark and inflamed, clearly infected.

            “Damnit,” Diego sighed. “I told him to change it.”

            “I’m betting he was a little distracted,” Five commented coolly. He laid a dispassionate hand on Klaus’s forehead and nodded. “Fever. He needs medicine.”

            “Where are we gonna find that?” Vanya asked, brow creasing as she peered over Five’s shoulder. She gestured to the lattice of decaying highways. “We’re not exactly near a pharmacy, even if the meds were still usable.”

            A tap on his arm made Luther turn around. Allison beckoned him closer and he bent down so she could whisper in his ear. Her voice still wasn’t strong enough for volume.

            “What did he see? What happened?”

            He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess something must have triggered it, but what?” He turned to the others, directing his question to Five. “He’s been managing okay so far, if ghosts have really been around him this whole time. What changed?”

            Fine pursed his lips, pondering.

            “Maybe he just ran out of energy,” Diego suggested. He gestured to Klaus, worry flitting past his face. “That cut’s not been helping.”

            “What supplies do we have?” Vanya reached for the kit.

            “Not enough.”

            “Then what do we –”

            “There’s a bigger problem here,” Five cut in, the familiar scowl looking more etched in place than normal.

            “What?”

            “Klaus,” he hissed, pointing to him. “If he can’t handle the dead what’s to stop them from attacking us? As Luther demonstrated, we can’t fight back. They can hurt us, and we’d be powerless against them. Not to mention,” he added, speaking faster now, “Klaus isn’t gonna last long if the hundreds of thousands of ghosts around here decide they want him to join their ranks. I mean, even if it’s just those who died in the apocalypse, in this area, that’s got to be an army. How’s one guy – one junkie – supposed to fight that?”

            “He’s sober,” Diego said quietly, breaking the sudden silence.

            “What?”

            “Klaus. He’s been sober since before the –” he glanced to Vanya – “moon incident.”

            “Well that makes sense,” Five said slowly, turning away to pace. He let out a low, humourless chuckle. “I can’t believe I never considered this before. It makes so much sense, hell, it explains everything –”

            “Five,” Luther sighed. He glanced up at him, caught mid-thought. He nodded, waving a hand.

            “Right, right. People.” He rubbed his palms together. “What do we know about Klaus? All of us.”

            There was a chorus of non-commital grunts. Five rolled his eyes.

            “He’s an addict. A junkie. Now, I always assumed, from Vanya’s book and the little I remember of Klaus’s habits when we were kids, that it was just a way to deal with the shitstorm that was the Umbrella Academy.”

            “Wasn’t it?”

            Five cocked an eyebrow at Diego. “What if that’s not all it was?”

            “Where are you going with this, Five?” Luther shifted his weight, crossing his arms, brow furrowing.

            “What if the ghosts tried to hurt Klaus before today? Or if they were as gory and aggressive as Klaus used to say – doesn’t it make sense to drown them out? What if the drugs subdued his powers?” He turned to Diego. “Has he ever summoned Ben before the theatre?”

            Diego shook his head, mouth agape. “N-no, no, we – I never even believed he saw Ben. I figured he just wanted attention, an extra vote at family meetings.”

            Five shrugged. “Maybe he did. But if I’m right – if the drugs dial down his abilities to the point that the ghosts can’t engage with his energy, can’t manipulate him, then that explains what happened here. Increased spectral energy plus a lack of inhibitors. It makes sense.”

            They looked at each other, at a loss. Then Vanya spoke.

            “Are you saying that all of that –” she gestured to Klaus – “all the homelessness and debt and stealing and prison time, all of that, was just – just so he could avoid his powers?”

            Five shrugged. “Fits, doesn’t it?”

            Vanya’s expression pinched in disbelief and Luther wondered what it must feel like, to have always wanted powers and know one of the people you were so envious of would rather drown themselves in decades of misery than have what you so covet.

            “So what do we do?” Allison whispered, barely audible but still heard in the silence of their revelation.

            “It’s obvious. Klaus needs drugs.” Five nodded to his brother’s butchered leg. “Clean him up as best you can, I’ll be back soon.” In a wink of blue, he vanished.

            “Five –! Goddamnit!” Luther let his arms flop to his sides. “I hate when he does that!”

            Allison rubbed his arm and smiled up at him, a worried line bisecting her brows.

            Diego was the first to move, grabbing the first aid tin. “I got this,” he said quietly, turning to Klaus.

            “I’ll help,” Vanya offered, reaching for Klaus and pulling him into a sitting position so they could peel his waist jacket off, revealing stark bruises blossoming on his pale skin.

            Giving up any hope of advancing their trek, they set up camp by the highway cliff. Once he was bandaged up, Luther wrapped Klaus in his jacket. It was awkward, but it eased the uneasy pressure in his heart a bit.

            About an hour after darkness settled over them, Klaus woke up. He flinched away from Diego, who was sitting on the edge of the cart, scrambling away before his injuries caught up with him. They all started, jolted out of their respective reveries by the sudden movement, and it took a full minute for Klaus to quiet.

            “Klaus, hey,” Diego said softly, hands raised in peace. “You’re okay, buddy.”

            “Diego?”

He looked so young there, Luther felt a surge of protectiveness over him. They may be the same age but Klaus had always been his little brother and right then he sounded so lost and afraid, seemed so small, Luther would’ve fought off a whole battalion of undead.

But he couldn’t. So he slipped into his Number One voice and fixed Klaus with a no-nonesense stare.

“Klaus, we need to talk about what happened earlier.”

Klaus blinked dumbly at him for a few seconds. Then memory dawned and he shuddered, twitching in on himself. “No.”

“Yes. We need to know what happened. Is it withdrawal? Do you need –”

“I’m sober you asshole,” Klaus snapped, glaring up at him.

“So Diego said, I just meant –”

“What? Huh? What!”

“He meant are the ghosts strong enough to corporealize because you’re sober?” Diego supplied with all the tact of a sledgehammer. Klaus turned his glare on him instead.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? Could be that there’s like, a billion of them!”

“Do you have any idea what might have triggered it?” Vanya asked, her voice soft and kind in a way Luther didn’t know how to conjure. He envied her that.

Klaus’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click. He shook his head, looking down at his knees, but Luther caught the fleeting glance to Allison. The oppressive silence oozed between them for a long moment.

“Well we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Luther said matter-of-factly, the awkwardness of the situation getting to him. “So,” he continued, having no idea how to finish, “... so.”

Klaus shot him a sour look. “You think I enjoyed it, Big Bird? You think I’m eager to repeat the experience? Jeez,” he chuckled, looking away and curling in on himself.

“Well we don’t exactly want dead guys beating you up, Klaus,” Diego said casually, glancing up from playing with the tip of a knife. Klaus put a hand to his chest, looking mock-touched, then stuck his tongue out.

Another, more awkward pause.

“What did happen?” Vanya asked after a moment. Klaus looked up at her, expression haughty, but it melted away at the genuine concern in his sister’s face. Luther wondered how she could just turn it on and off like that. He wasn’t sure his face even did that anymore. He didn’t have a lot of compassion for anyone on the moon. Least of all himself.

Klaus looked down at his flaky nail polish and shrugged one shoulder.

“Dunno. Ben thinks the ghosts, that they can tap into my power somehow.”

Luther nodded. “Five figured the same.”

Klaus snorted. “Yeah, well, bully for him.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Allison managed, expression contorting in pain.

Klaus shivered. Shook his head. Then perked up, gazing at Allison as though she was made of gold. Which, well, she kind of was.

“Allison!” He shifted forward, wincing, hands outstretched. “Allison you – you can do it – you can fix me!”

They all looked to Allison. She paled, shaking her head.

“No no no,” Klaus continued, tone imploring, “you can rumour me to not care about the ghosts! Or even better – to not see them! Hell, rumour me to not have powers! Except for Ben,” he added quickly, glancing a foot past Diego. “I need to keep Ben.”

Luther followed his gaze, remembering the first thing he’d heard Ben say in seventeen years. God, he’d missed his voice.

Allison stepped forward and took Klaus’s hands. Hope shone from his eyes and it hurt to look at, knowing what was coming. Allison wouldn’t break her pledge. Not for anything.

“I can’t, Klaus,” she breathed. “Even if my powers worked, I –” she paused, swallowed. Tried again. “My rumours hurt people, Klaus. I don’t want to hurt you.”

            Luther looked away as the tears filled Klaus’s eyes. Memories of the ghosts he had seen rose unbidden behind his eyes. The missing limbs. Crushed chests. Faces contorted in rage, in raw hatred. He shuddered. Klaus was always so carefree, so happy. Was that just the drugs? Or the absence of those horrors? He made a lot more sense to Luther now. If he could see things like that all the time he’d be thrilled for any distraction. Maybe that’s why Klaus had always been such a high concentration of annoying.

            A flicker of blue interrupted Luther’s thoughts. He jumped, swearing, as Five stumbled into the cart.

            “Jesus, Five! Watch where you’re landing!”

            Five threw him a withering glare. “Sorry if my aim’s a little off, Luther, I’m still recovering and I just jumped like twenty miles!”

            “Is that my fault?”

            “Shut up, both of you,” Diego drawled, bored. “What’d you get, Five?”

            “Antibiotics,” he said, throwing a box at Klaus, who fumbled it. “And heroin,” he added, twiddling a syringe in his other hand. “Enough for a dozen shots, thanks to the good people at Western Memorial.” He frowned. “Don’t think it goes off.”

            Klaus’s eyes zeroed in on the syringe, and the small box of vials poking out of his pocket. Hunger consumed his gaze and he leaned forward slightly before snapping his head to the side and covering his head with his hands.

            “No! No, no, no, I’m sober, I’m – I’m –”

            “Listen, Klaus,” Five said casually, “the incident earlier today is serious. We’re all at risk if the dead get any ideas, not just you. And Ben can’t be expected to fight off the entire city’s population. Skilled though I’m sure he still is,” he added fairly. He took a step closer to the cart. “So we need to keep you sedated, Klaus, at least until we figure this out.”

            Klaus was shaking his head wildly, moaning a litany of no’s.

            “I can’t, please, I can’t, I need to see Dave, please, I-I made it twelve days, please, I need to find Dave, I –”

            “Who’s Dave?” Five asked, quirking his head to the side.

            Klaus just shook his head, reaching to clasp his dogtags. Five nodded, sighing in understanding.

            “Klaus,” he said quietly, “take it from me. Holding on to them only makes it worse.” He hesitated. “For both of you. Let him go.”

            He held out the syringe. Klaus jerked upwards and stared at it, rocking back and forth.

            “It’s okay, Klaus,” Five went on, taking another step closer. “It’s not gonna be like before. We’ll control it. Only give you what you need, when you need it. To manage the ghosts. Nothing more.” He leant down, trying to catch Klaus’s eye. “Pick your battles, vet. This doesn’t have to be one.”

            Klaus mumbled something Luther couldn’t make out. Klaus looked sharply to his left, past Diego, and he wondered what Ben was saying to him.

            “I don’t want to,” he whimpered, shaking his head again. “I-I don’t want him to be right.”

            “Who, Klaus?” Diego asked quietly.

            “Dad,” he groaned.

            Luther exchanged a confused glance with Allison.

            Five closed the distance between them, the readied syringe held out, his other hand offered, waiting. Klaus turned tortured eyes on him and Five smiled, kindly, Luther thought. Though it was hard to tell with him.

            None of them moved for a long time, save Klaus, who squirmed, never taking his eyes of the syringe, gleaming softly in their lantern light. No one spoke. Only Klaus’s strangled moaning broke the dep silence. Until, with a defeated sigh, he held out his arm, a tear slicing silver down his cheek.

            “You were always my greatest disappointment, Number Four,” Klaus said in an imitation of their father as Five pricked his skin. “You are weak.”

Chapter Text

            He could appreciate the irony. Almost. Forty-five years of wishing to be with his family again and now he was. He’d even saved them. Sort of. But sometime in the Commission years what was left of the thirteen-year-old boy he still looked like had died. Already weakened by years with no one but Delores for company, that naive little kid who thought he could jump through time like it was hopscotch had sobered. Grown up. Turned hard. And he may have saved his family, but it wasn’t much of a family to be saved. Even now, weeks with literally no one else for company, for distractions, they were still acting like strangers. Like this was an inconvenient training session, survival one-oh-one in one of Reginald’s simulations.

            The lack of distractions was wearing him down. The fever to stop the apocalypse had cooled, numbed by the familiarity of this godforsaken landscape. His mind was too free, the calculations to get home already formulated, the drought of his power the only delay. He had no problem to chew over until the next thing went wrong. And in the silence of his mind, his heart, usually kept muted in a cage, began to whisper.

            For the first time since he hadn’t assassinated Kennedy, his heart dared to remember. Not just the frustration and the anger, but the soft moments in between. Talking with Vanya into the quiet hours of the night. Trading books with Ben. Getting combat tips from Luther. The siblings he had lost for so long were not the people he was traveling with now. They had all died long ago. What was left was the trauma he had traded for isolation, years of undiluted, unchallenged Reginald. Losing Ben. The family fracturing, spitting off into strangers. Even reading Vanya’s book, he’d never truly understood, not deeply, what had happened to them all. But now, seeing how tension coiled below every syllable, decades of baggage tipped and ready to fall at the slightest touch, it was a miracle none of them had outright killed each other.

            They were kids, still. All of them. Just taller than he remembered. They didn’t get how privileged they were to not go through this world alone, to have others who understood the furnace that had forged them. But they didn’t get that. Luther was still Number One, desperately trying to make a dead man proud at his own expense. Diego was still rebelling against a force that was no longer there. Klaus ... Klaus was still Klaus.

            In those early years, when memories sustained him, before his life with Delores became more real than his time in the mansion, whenever Five needed to lift himself up, whenever he needed to hear laughter, even if it was his own, it was Klaus his thoughts turned to. His carefree attitude to everything their dad threw at them, his ability to get a rise out of anyone, anytime. His willingness to take a punch just to make someone crack a smile and forget, for half a second, how shit their lives were. With what he knew now, Five wanted to throttle his younger self for not seeing the pain that drove that happy-go-lucky façade. Maybe if he had paid attention, opened his eyes to the world outside his own head, his brother wouldn’t be high in a cart, pretending to play the violin with Vanya’s hair.

            And it worked because Vanya was giggling. Playing along when Klaus asked her if his fingering was right for a chord, actually guiding his fingers into place along the lock of hair he’d kidnapped. Vanya, who’d barely smiled since – well, ever – was openly laughing at her brother’s imitation of her. Allison and Diego were smiling too, the latter trying to hide his mirth as Klaus’s impersonation grew sassier. Even Five had to bite back a grin.

            How did he do that? High on drugs he didn’t want, still healing from being attacked by his personal worst nightmare, and he was making them laugh. A true superpower.

            Klaus finished his silent symphony with a flourish and let Vanya’s hair fall back to her shoulder. He slumped in the cart, throwing his arms wide and sighing theatrically.

            “I’m bored,” he announced. “I miss movies. And clubs. And oh, music.”

             Five chuckled. “Get used to it. Only record player I ever found is gathering dust back at the library.”

            Klaus turned tortured eyes on him. “You had one? And you left it?”

            “Unnecessary weight.”

            “Unnece – Five! Watch your mouth young man!”

            “This silence is getting to me,” Diego offered. “Wouldn’t say no to some tunes.”

            “Wish I had my violin,” Vanya sighed. Then looked around quickly and blushed. “Actually, nevermind.”

            They lapsed into the step-studded silence. They were far from the city now, still following the highway. Miles from any hint of food or medicine. Mostly, their supplies would hold. With one distressing exception.

            There were only three shots of heroine left. And Five still hadn’t come up with a way to keep Klaus safe once he sobered, assuming he didn’t have any complications from withdrawals, which, with an infected leg and broken ribs, wasn’t unlikely.

            And Five did not jump back in time, sacrifice his body, and destroy all trust with the Commission only to watch his brother die in this goddamn hellhole.

            Klaus started, flinching away from the rear of the cart with a yelp and Luther, pulling it, turned to see him clutching his head, covering his ears.

            “You okay?”

            “Does he need another dose?”

            Five stepped closer, pulling Klaus’s hand away. He whimpered.

            “They can’t touch you. Is Ben there?”

            Klaus looked over his shoulder and nodded.

            “He’ll protect you. Won’t you Ben?” he looked in the direction Klaus had indicated.

            “He says yeah,” Klaus mumbled.

            “Then you’ve nothing to worry about, do you?”

            Klaus pulled away, wrapping his arms around his middle.

            “I miss my music.”

            With nothing to say to that, Five turned away. They all missed a lot of things, didn’t mean –

            A whistled melody spun through the air, long cheery notes melding into each other and the sound was so alien, so unfamiliar amidst the desolation, Five stopped dead. Luther was whistling.

            “ At ten in the morning, I was laughing at something, at the airport terminal –”

            Check that, Luther was singing. Singing! In the apocalypse.

            “Luther what the fu –”

            He sang over him, voice booming with a hint of an accent that wasn’t his. “At nine in the evening, I was sitting, crying to you, over the phone!”

            Five exchanged an incredulous look with Vanya. “Is he serious?”
            “Well passing the border from a state to another, filled with people whom I couldn't help to relate to –”

            Klaus had pushed himself into a sitting position, eyes alight with a happiness that didn’t belong in the apocalypse. He joined in on the next lines, his voice warbling for a moment before settling into the tune.

            “And we stopped a while, at a roadside restaurant! Where the waitress was sitting outside smoking in her car –”

            Klaus reached over the side of the cart. “Diego, sing with me!”

            “Klaus, I’m not –”

            “Sing!”

            Looking trapped, Diego picked up the next line and Five blinked. He actually sounded decent.

            “She had that look of total fear in her eyes, and as we drove away from there she looked at me, and she smiled –”

            Vanya added her lilting soprano to the tune and even Allison was humming along – how did they all know this song? What was happening?

            “I keep – running around,
            “Trying to find the ground,
            “But my head is in the stars
            “And my feet are in the sky, well I’m –

            "Nobody's baby,
            "I'm everybody's girl.
            "I'm the queen of nothing,
            "I'm the ki-ing of the world!”

            Five stared at his siblings. They were dancing as they walked like this was some kind of field trip, like they didn’t have an entire Commission of temporal assassins and timekeepers searching the entire apocalypse for them, as if they had time to –

            “And once you asked me,

            “What was my biggest fear?
            “That things would always remain so unclear,
            “That one day I'd wake up,

            “All alone,
            “With a big family and emptiness deep in my bones –”

What was this song? This didn’t make sense! Luther was punching the air rhythmically, Diego doing some weird two-step thing and Allison was swaying as though at a night club, hips oscillating to the side with each exaggerated step and had they forgotten where they were?

Vanya swayed over and grabbed Five’s arm, trying to entice him to join in and he whipped his hand out of her grasp, scowling. Klaus gestured him closer and he shook his head. Did they really think he knew how to do this? Goof off like they were kids? Like when Reginald was out at some press conference or some shit and Luther would put on one of his records so loud it echoed through the house? The memory slammed into Five and his breath caught at the remembered connection, each of them in their own rooms, attending to their own studies, ignoring each other but bound by the music they all nodded along to until he was up on his bed, dancing as though on stage at some concert and for the first time in over fifty years, Five actually felt like a kid again.

            “Now I wasn't born for anything,” Luther howled, shouting more than singing at this point and Five found himself nodding his head in time to the beat.

“Wasn't born to say anything,” Vanya trilled, an octave above everyone else.
“Oh I'm just here now and soon I'll be gone,” Klaus threw his arms up with the final

word, looking utterly at peace.

            “I'm nobody's baby,
            “I'm everybody's girl.
            “I'm the queen of nothing,
            “I'm the ki-ing of the world!”

            Five’s fingers starting snapping to the beat of their own accord and it took him a second to realise the pull in his cheeks was a smile – a real one, not a smirk at someone’s stupidity. It was a weird feeling.

            “Now everyday there's a short intermission,
            “While I sleep they start dimming the lights,
            “But I've seen everything I ever want to see,
            “Screaming "Fire!"–” as one they all threw their arms in the air, suddenly in sync as they danced on “– in a theatre, people taking their seats!”

            “Watch it all go down like a stone in a stream,
            “If you fall for your reflection you will drown in a dream!”

When in all time’s tributaries did the Hargreeves learn to harmonise?

            “Tell me something real!
            “Tell me something true!
            “I just want to feel there's something left that I can do –”

They were all singing out now, a bubble of happy in a dismal world. Even Five was adding his voice – quietly – though he didn’t know the words.

            “But I'm no-body's baby,
            “I'm every-body's girl.
            “I'm the queen of nothing,
            “I'm the kii-IING o-of the wooorld!”

            Their voices rang into silence, leaving genuine smiles on their faces. Klaus clapped enthusiastically, whooping their talent.

            “That was excellent,” he trilled. “Now Bohemian Rhapsody!”

Chapter Text

Worry had settled over Ben like a new hoodie. Wherever Five had been leading them was still days away and at this stage it just felt like they were walking just to walk. Which didn’t help their meagre supplies. Or the fact that none of them had spent so much time around each other since before he died.

            Although that they were handling surprisingly well. There was even laughter sometimes, and not all because of Klaus.

            Ben’s gut tightened. Klaus was worse. He was sobering. They’d run out of vials two days ago, and the few pills Five had scrounged up weren’t doing enough to help him. He was irritable, sweating, exhausted. And Ben was spending more time with tentacles sweeping through the air than he ever had as a kid. It didn’t always work on the ghosts but it gave Klaus some semblance of solace. Which made it worth the disgust clawing up his spine.

            He had to admit, if you ignored all the shit making this the worst month of his death it was kinda nice just ... being a family. Joking around. Bonding. Obviously he was mostly an observer, but it was satisfying seeing Luther and Diego fall into a kind of grudging tolerance for each other, strategizing together and actually collaborating. Vanya was slowly coming back to herself, working with Five and Allison on moving blocks and other debris to work on her control – but only ever when Klaus was asleep, lest it bring on the dead’s corporeal rage.

            They’d settled for the night on a bridge over a river whose name Ben couldn’t remember and it was driving him crazy. Klaus was too busy mumbling to himself trying to ignore the shakes to be of help. Luther was bent low over their dwindling supply of flammables, stubbornly coaxing a flame into life.

            “Where’s Five?” Diego asked, looking up from his knives for the first time in an hour.

            Ben looked around. How long had Five been gone?

            Allison shrugged, looking worried.

            “Did he jump?” Luther’s tone was disbelieving. “He told us that was sure to attract the Commission if he did it too much that little –”

            “Maybe he just went to pee, ever think about that?” Klaus griped, glaring up from his makeshift thrown of a rock and a ratty blanket that was draped around him, making him look like a babushka.

            “Jeez, Klaus, chill.”

            Klaus snorted. “Oh yeah, I’ll just do that. So easy. Not like I’m in withdrawals you idiot!”

            There was a beat of silence as they exchanged glances. Klaus ran a hand over his face and sighed.

            “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I feel like crap and I want a bath.”

            “It’s alright, man,” Luther said softly. “We should get to a new town tomorrow. There might be something there that can help.”

            Klaus grunted, unconvinced.

            “Klaus?” Ben said, leaning on the side of the bridge. “Have you noticed how, uh, quiet it’s been lately?”

            Klaus peered up at him, eyes bloodshot and squinting.

            “Huh?”

            “What?” Vanya looked up at him.

            He waved a hand. “Ben.”

            “Oh.”

            “The ghosts,” Ben said, glancing to the oddly quiet twilight. There were only a few hundred around them, a fraction of their usual fan club.

            Klaus glanced around the bridge, eyes passing over the gore with practiced indifference. “So?”

            “So maybe Five was right. Maybe the drugs helped ... decouple you from them.”

            Klaus shrugged one shoulder. “Or maybe they got tired of Luther’s singing.”

            “Hey!”

            Klaus shot Number One a smile. “Nothing, brother dear.”

            Diego stood, stretching. “Okay. I’m gonna go look for Five. Little tyke’s probably gotten himself –”

            A flash of blue interrupted him, flaring starkly in the low light. Five fell, rolling forward and snapping to his feet with surprising grace. He was breathing heavily, his blazer hanging off one shoulder. Blood marred his temple.

            “What the hell Five?” Luther stood, stepping over his still unlit fire and coming to put a hand on Five’s shoulder, forcing him to focus. Ben moved a little closer. He looked dazed.

            “What’s going on?” Vanya said before Five could respond.

            “The Commission,” he panted. “They found me. They’re coming. We’ve got to be ready, they have –”

            The air warped and twisted behind them, peeling apart to reveal twelve men and women clad in outdated riot gear, red-tinted gas masks hiding their features.

            “– briefcases,” Five finished in a sigh. He turned to face the Commission, stepping forward so his family was behind him. “Umbrella Academy!” he shouted, not looking back at them. “Time to go to school.”

            A burly Commissioner raised his gun and Five blipped over to him in a wink of blue, grabbing the weapon and whacking it into the man’s face before whipping it into another. With a bass cry Luther and Diego ran forward, knives flashing. Vanya strengthened her stance, holding her hands out as she readied her powers. Allison ran to Klaus, pulling him up and away, behind the cart – but another wrinkle of time and space and twelve more goons stared down at them, blocking the other end of the bridge.

            Ben stayed near Klaus, watching his family slip into a decade of training. He smiled at the sight, hands in his pockets, as Luther grabbed a woman and threw her like she weighed no more than a marshmallow, giving Diego space to grab a knife from his harness and flip it into the head of a man lunging for Vanya, who was summoning the water from the river, raising it over the edges of the bridge in reverse rain, the droplets growing fatter, glistening as she gathered litres and litres of it in a shimmering wave of dusk-lit silver. With a grunt she flung her hands forward and the water reacted instantly, rushing after her fingers and crashing through the ranks of the Commission, knocking them off their feet. Behind her, Allison had left Klaus to attack the newcomers, legs flying and dealing punishing blows to anyone who got too close. Klaus was on his feet now too, unsteady, fists raised and glancing expectantly to Ben.

            “You feel like comin’ out to play, Bennie?”

            “Hell yeah!”

            Klaus bowed his head over his fists.

            Nothing happened.

            “Come on,” he growled, hands shaking.

            More nothing happened.

            “Klaus!” Ben reached out for him but of course he couldn’t connect – instead a goon’s fist slammed into Klaus’s jaw and he went sprawling. Ben stood over him, fury making the Horror seethe under his skin.

            Diego looked up from gathering blades from unmoving bodies and whipped one into Klaus’s attacker, buying him time to scramble to his feet.

            “I am not sober enough for this!” he wailed, throwing a brutal punch into the next Commissioner. “Or drunk enough!” He stooped and picked up the fallen woman’s gun, released the clip, checked the sight, switched it to manual and proceeded to mow down three goons with chilling accuracy.

            “Where the hell did you learn that?” Luther had time to shout over.

            “Vietnam, baby!” Klaus called back, a manic smile contorting his features. “This is how we do it in the jungle!” He twisted, aimed, and levelled four perfect headshots in less time than it took to breathe.

            Diego froze as the man he was about to punch crumpled. He stared back at Klaus.

            “Dude!”

            Klaus grinned, resting the gun on his shoulder – which was a mistake. Before Ben could articulate a warning another Commissioner, this one weirdly short, leaped up and cracked him on the back of the head. Klaus staggered, dropping the gun and clutching at his hair. He cried out, stumbling forward and Vanya turned, saw the Commissioner raise a blade, aiming for Klaus’s back, and she punched her hands forward, sending a shockwave right for them.

            Problem was, her aim still wasn’t great. The wave hit Klaus and he yelled, jerked up and before Ben had even processed the blue glow in his brother’s hands he felt that unique pins and needles score along his skin as he was rendered in blue light. Not wasting time he threw his chest out and unleashed the Horror, reaching for the remaining Commission goons and throwing them easily off the bridge or just ripping them in half to save time. It lasted maybe ninety seconds before Klaus fell to his knees and Ben’s connection to the tangible world evaporated. The last Commissioner, halfway over the bridge, fell, hit the guardrail with an audible crunch, and slipped off the side with a strangled yell that ended in a splash.

            The air was filled with their panting breaths, zinging with unquiet stillness.

            “What the hell,” Luther panted, hands on his knees, “was that?”

            Five wiped blood from the corner of his mouth.

            “That was what I’d been afraid of. I knew they’d find me. Just not when.”

            “Or how?” Diego challenged.

            “Or how.”

            “Well,” Luther said, straightening and looking around at the bodies. “We won. So there’s that.”

            Five laughed mirthlessly. “We didn’t win. This was just the first wave. Testing the waters. See what we’re capable of. There’ll be more. Lots more.”

            Allison waved her hands, letting them slap to her thighs in irritation.

            “What are we supposed to do?” she rasped, coming to stand by Luther.

            “Oh I’ve got a plan,” Five said, beaming a barracuda smile. He turned to point at Klaus. “You absorbed Vanya’s power.”

            Klaus squinted up at him, rubbing his forehead. “Yeah and it did not feel good.”

            “But you did it. Transferred it into Ben.”

            “Yeah, I know Five, I was there.”

            “How does that help us?” Vanya cut in, worrying her hands.

            Five moved through the bodies to pick up a black briefcase. Ben’s gaze shot to Klaus and he could almost see the thoughts forming in his head. If he could use that case again, he could go back. Save Dave.

            “It helps us,” he said slowly, holding up the case, “because now we have a free, unlimited temporal travel pass.” His grin widened. “And I know how to stop the Apocalypse.”

Chapter Text

            Diego slipped his last cleaned knife into his holster. The Commission goons were piled at one end of the bridge, the Hargreeves huddled at the other, grouped around the briefcase. It looked utterly unremarkable, but Diego supposed that was the point. Given the family he had he should be open to the idea this old-fashioned box held man-made time travel. Besides, Five was confident. And the little shit was usually right about these things.

“This is an insane idea,” Klaus said for the eighth time.

            “You can do it.” Luther patted his shoulder. Klaus glanced up at him. It was weird when he sounded so sincere.

            “I very seriously doubt that I can.”

            “C’mon Klaus,” Diego said cheerily. “You’re not telling me Ben isn’t psyched for this? Not to mention your powers have been getting stronger lately. You got this.”

            Klaus glared at him, unconvinced.

            “Much as I like the pep talk,” Five drawled, “we should be moving. Unless you want to extend your vacation in the apocalypse?”

            Everyone shuffled closer, grabbing on to each other as Five lifted the briefcase and thumbed in the date and time on the dials.

            “Is this gonna hurt as much as your jumps?” Diego asked, trying to sound cavalier.

            Five shot him a scowl. “No. It’s smoother. Regulated. My jumps are instinct and complicated equations. This thing takes care of all that. No intent to focus on, no nanosecond to specify.”

            “Oh. Good.”

            “Everyone clear on the plan?” Allison whispered.

            Everyone nodded.

            “Alright,” Five said, straightening. “Here we go. Stop the apocalypse. Take two.”

            “Second time’s a charm!”

            “Umbrella Academy at full strength!”

            “Suck it Reggie.”

            “Ready?” Five cut in. “One. Two. Three!”

            The briefcase opened, enveloping them in a compressing, suffocating blueness that burned like static. Diego closed his eyes, trying to keep his breath as he was squeezed through time and space. Something inside him jolted and he pitched forward, tightening his grip on Allison and Klaus as everything warped around them, twisting and curling and before he had time to wish it was over he felt solid ground greet his feet and he stumbled sideways, opening his eyes to see the Icarus Theatre.

            Vanya was right behind them, glowing white. Tendrils of milky power connected her to his old self, Luther, Klaus, and Five, who were aging before his eyes.

            Oh yeah. That’d hurt.

            There was a moment of stillness. Then the Hargreeves in the air spotted their newer selves and shock rippled across their faces. On their other side, Allison’s past self leapt forward, eyes wide in terror at seeing double, but her present self lunged for her, whispering furiously and grabbing the gun. Once in control she held it by past Vanya’s ear and fired.

            Diego watched his older self fall, and ran forward, tackling himself as Luther, Five, and Klaus did the same.

            “We have a plan!” one of the Fives roared. Diego assumed his Five. “Don’t fight!”

            The Luthers were already brawling, the old desperate to get to Vanya, the new adamantly refusing to give ground. Diego punched himself and whipped a knife from his harness, holding it to his old self’s throat.

            “We’ve got this,” he hissed. “We’re from the future.”

            He watched his eyes widen, confusion and fear morphing slowly to trust. He nodded once, and Diego withdrew the blade and pulled them both to their feet. As one, they turned to watch Vanya – his Vanya – come up behind her glowing self and catch her as she fainted, both Allisons helping to aim as, without a second to spare, the beam of power shot from her chest, ripping through the glass ceiling, the roof, the wall – and then Klaus.

            His Klaus.

            Diego’s gut lurched at the pain contorting his brother’s face but he held his ground. Blue glowed around his edges, his fists alight, and Ben materialised in shimmering blue. The other Klaus looked on in terror, stumbling back from the force of the light.

            Then more ghosts appeared. Dozens more. Vietnam soldiers. An old lady, a chubby man with glasses, a skinny guy with glasses – they flickered into being so quickly Diego didn’t know where to look. The beam was still scoring into Klaus, magnifying his glow and with each second the ghosts grew stronger, more solid looking.

            The beam ended. An explosion rippled out from Klaus, obliterating the other, erasing the second Luther, the other Diego, Allison, Five, the unconscious Vanya. Diego braced himself but was thrown back as easily as if he weighed nothing, landing hard on a chair that broke under him. It took his lungs a second to remember how to breathe. Everything was quiet. Far too quiet.

            He pulled himself to his feet and looked around.

            The theatre was far less empty than it had been a moment ago.

            And there was a seventh Hargreeves stumbling to his feet. Fully corporeal. Looking as alive as the day he died.

            “BEN!”

            Diego ran forward, Luther a step behind him, and half-hugged, half-tackled his sixteen-year-old brother. The rest of the family slammed into them and they were laughing, crying, mildly hyperventilating, jumping up and down because they did it! The moon was safe! They stopped the apocalypse! Ben was back!

            It was Five who broke the mood. He pulled away from the hug (which Diego assumed Allison had dragged him into) and stepped through the ex-ghosts, who were all staring at each other in confused wonder. He pushed them aside, moving to a throng of green standing in a circle.

            Only then did Diego notice who was missing. All joy evaporated from his chest as he followed Five through the soldiers.

            Klaus lay on his back, arms spread, his lax face still bearing the echo of pain. His skin was grey. Chest unmoving.

            He was dead.

            “N-no,” Ben stammered, and Diego’s heart twisted at the sound of the voice he had missed so much contorted into something so unlike itself. “No, no. Klaus. Klaus.”

            Vanya sobbed, covering her mouth with her hands, tears shining in her eyes. Allison drew her close, her own tears slipping free.

            “I thought you said it would work,” Diego mumbled.

            Five was slow in answering. “It did work.”

            “You didn’t say it would kill him!” he snapped back.

            “Because I didn’t think it would. I thought it might obliterate some ghosts, but ... I miscalculated.”

            There was a beat of silence as they all looked down at their dead brother.

            “I didn’t want this trade,” Ben whispered, voice thick with tears. “I didn’t want this.”

            Luther pushed past Diego. “I’m not giving up on him again.” He knelt by Klaus, tilting his head before placing both hands over his sternum and pressing down hard.

            “Luther,” Five said, sounding oddly small. “That won’t work. He ... the beam, it, it will have destroyed him. Inside. There’s,” he swallowed, “there’s nothing to save.”

            “I’m not giving up on him again,” Luther repeated, not looking up.

            “Me neither.” Diego knelt by Luther, bending down to force two rescue breaths past Klaus’s lips as he bucked under the force of Luther’s compressions.

            “I did this,” Vanya sobbed. “I did this.”

            “We did this,” Allison corrected firmly, her voice catching under the strain of volume. “We agreed to this plan. This is on all of us.”

            Ben fell to his knees on Klaus’s other side. He took his hand.

            “Klaus. Buddy. Come back.”

            He jerked under Luther’s weight, the movement limp and unnatural. His eyes remained closed.

            The soldiers murmured around them.

            “I’ve never seen him so still before.”

            “I wanted him to make it.”

            “He was one of the good ones.”

            “He saved my life.”

            “Rest in peace, Hargreeves.”

            “Thanks, kid.”

            One of the soldiers stepped forward, helmet in his hands, a bloodstain marring his uniform.

            “You must be Luther,” he said quietly.

Luther hesitated, watching him. Ben looked up and blinked.

“Dave.”

He smiled. “Hi Ben. It’s nice to meet you.” He looked down to Klaus, then back at each of them in turn. “It’s nice to meet all of you. Klaus told me so much about you.”

“You – you’re –?”

Dave turned brimming eyes on Luther. “Please don’t stop.”

Remembering himself, Luther pounded harder on Klaus’s chest. Diego bent and forced in another two breaths. How many minutes had it been? How long could you survive like this? How was he already cold?

When was the decision to give up out of their hands?

Dave reached forward, running the backs of his fingers down Klaus’s cheek. His hand moved to his neck, picking up the dogtags that pooled against the floor. He rubbed a thumb over them and Diego watched the tears breach his lashes.

“He kept them,” Dave whispered, voice choked.

Diego swallowed. “He loved you,” he said quietly. “More than anything.”

Dave met his gaze and what little composure he had crumbled. “He’s the most amazing person I ever met.”

“Five!” Luther snapped, voice too loud for the sanctity of the moment. “You need to jump us to a hospital! We can’t just – he can’t – we were supposed to win! For once! Just once.”

“Luther,” Five said slowly, “a hospital can’t help him.”

“Then the Commission!” Diego tried. “They have crazy tech, right? We can make a deal, try something!”

Five shook his head. “It won’t work.”

“We can’t just let him die!”

“It’s not up to us!”

“We just stopped the apocalypse we can’t save our brother?!”

“We go back! Let’s go back and change it!”

“We can’t! If we –”

The rumbling of footsteps cut Five off. They looked around. The ex-ghosts parted, shuffling closer in fear as men and women clad in black with red-eyed masks poured into the ruined theatre, dozens of them, running down the aisles, more appearing on the stage, surrounding them from every side, up in what remained of the balconies, hundreds of them.

Diego rose to his feet. Luther a moment behind them. They exchanged a loaded glance.

“For Klaus.”

The rippling click of a dozen old-fashioned rifles cocking crackled around them. Every Vietnam soldier stepped forward, widening the line of Hargreeves. Behind them, the rest of the once-ghosts shuffled forward, fists raised, some stooping to grab pieces of broken furniture or discarded weapons.

“For Klaus.”

Chapter Text

            Sir Reginald Hargreeves was a remarkable man. The kind of man to change history without the world ever knowing. He chose himself a destiny, at great personal risk, even giving his own life to ensure his success. He saved the world, using nothing but a briefcase and a monocle.

            Years as the Commission’s Handler should have set him up for a most agreeable retirement. He would have picked a timeline, found a job worth doing, and let the great decisions of time fall on younger heads.

            That had been the plan. Until he’d seen the updated Timeline.

            In 2020 the world would end. For over two-hundred years, nothing would happen as the Earth healed itself from the toxicity of humans. A small pocket were allowed to survive, tribes deep in the ancient forests of the world, families living in the highest of mountains. They would slowly expand from their humble territories and investigate the ruined cities left by those who had almost killed the world. Within a thousand years the tides had resettled, the Earth breathed again, and humanity was reset. Within ten thousand years all trace of humanity’s first attempt would be hidden by flora.

            Of course, for this to happen, almost everyone had to die. Uncharacteristically, Reginald Hargreeves took issue with this.

            So he changed it. Picked his time. Made sure it coincided with the birth of forty-three extraordinary children. Bought an old factory on a block that would one day all be his. Took the monocle he had spent decades developing into the single most valuable artefact on the planet.

            Acquiring the seven children was time-consuming, but not difficult. The monocle quickly gave him an idea of their future talents, but the whole affair was still a gamble. It wasn’t until they were four that he knew what he must do.

            It was Number Seven who showed him. She was difficult during her training, not paying attention, not focusing. Until she did. Breaking the wine glasses in abandon, but that is not what changed everything. Oh no.

            It was the monocle.

            It cracked.

            And not from the force of the child’s power – well, not directly. In the split second it took for Number Seven to unleash a raw wave of power, Sir Reginald’s monocle told him a story. It showed him a young woman with magnificent power in perfect control, fighting alongside her siblings as the Commission ended the world. They couldn’t fight such resources, such determination. Such political influence. It was might even his monocle could not contain.

            If the world ended the Commission’s way, there would be no future for humanity. Not one that mattered.

            The shock of pain as the monocle cracked was the inspiration. Sir Reginald saw in the fragmented glass, an alternate future. One wherein he controlled the bomb that would detonate the world. It was only a glimpse, the briefest flicker. But it was enough.

            That night, he planned. Plotted. Ran statistical analyses. Hypothesised on his children’s abilities, their potential as the monocle had shown him. By morning, he knew what to do.

            He would repress Number Seven’s powers, employing Number Three to bring the fiction into reality. This would create the bomb. All he needed was the fuse.

            That came some years later, in the form of a boy convinced he had powers. Reginald took one look at him and saw his future, the one he would choose if rejected by the family he so dearly wanted. It would fester an obsession in him. And he would attack the weakest member.

            Number Seven.

            The bomb was primed.

            But the work was not over.

            Number Five’s temperament was fortunately obstinate. It made the boy easy to manipulate. Deny him his perceived glory and he would rebel, jump through time, until time stopped. Given the bonds among the children, Reginald knew Number Five would find his way back in time to rally the troops, but there were more paths to pave.

            The unremarkable boy would need to know the secret of Number Seven in order to undo her. Reginald kept comprehensive notes. But to get them in the hands of his fuse he needed two things. He needed a child desperate enough to steal from him, and he needed to die.

            Number Four was the obvious choice. His powers lent themselves to an addictive personality, which, coupled with the level of training Reginald had been employing all the boy’s life, led to a young man with severe dependency issues and powers as hobbled as Number Seven’s. Which was exactly as it needed to be.

            The target would be simple. Reginald had divined the calculations when the children were still young, recalculating annually to ensure there was no error. The night, the event, the climate, it all had to be known. Right down to the violin he so dispassionately laid in the path of Number Seven.

            There were only two steps left. First, he needed Number One. If the moon was to become their doom then it must happen on Reginald’s terms. A beam of destructive power could obliterate it, send it screaming to earth in a chaos of random chunks and that would not do.

            So he sent the eager boy. Told him to take measurements, analyse, provide all necessary data to ensure the perfect equation. Had him perform seismic experiments specifically designed to exploit the moon’s natural fault lines and weaken them so that, on the final day of March, 2019, when Number Seven unleashed a lifetime of fermented power, the moon would oblige to split in two. A significant portion would crash into their planet, but the rest would be left to rule the tides.

            Number Two he used to spur Number One into a soldier willing to sacrifice all human contact for years. Number Three had already served her purpose but was still occasionally useful. Number Six was perhaps one of the most important. Reginald regretted orchestrating the boy’s death but one life was a paltry price to pay for the world. He could have given the boy more years, but the bond with Number Four was paramount. Best give them more time together.

            All that was left to do now, was die. Bring the scattered Academy back together so Number Five could give them their mission. Let them wander the Wastes together, let them see the potential of their powers. Let them return, as a unit, and fight. Let them put an end to the Commission, once and for all.

            His methods may be cruel. Extreme, even. But seven ruined childhoods were nothing compared to the seven billion lives that would suffer without him. Even his own life was worth less than that.

            Besides, they were never just kids. They were meant to save the world.

Chapter Text

Klaus opened his eyes, squinting. It was bright. Too bright for the theatre. He sat up, grimacing as his chest throbbed dully. Actually, all of him throbbed. And he was tired. Like he’d been up all week dancing and getting high. Had he? No. The theatre. Vanya. Moon-doom. Right.

            He looked around, taking in the colour-leeched trees and understood. A rarely felt peace settled in his chest. He was dead. Well. That was okay. He’d had a ... run.

            He stood, a little unsteadily, and inhaled deeply through his nose. The air smelled of spring and winter at the same time, an unfelt coldness sharpening the rounded scents of pine and pollen. It was oddly comforting. He didn’t remember that from last time.

            Leaves crunched underfoot as he meandered through the field, looking for the road. There was no shack this time. Only trees swaying gently in a breeze that didn’t reach him. Their lilting rustle was the only sound save his breaths and footfalls.

            Unease crept through him.  He wasn’t ... alone here, was he? That would – well, it would make sense if he was Downstairs, but, shouldn’t his powers get him some relief in death? Shouldn’t they bring him to Dave?

            “I told you it wasn’t time for you,” a haughty voice said behind him. He jumped, turning around to see the Little Girl in her sunhat, holding a skipping rope this time and no bike.

            “There you are! Hey, where is everyone?”

            The Little Girl didn’t answer, just tilted her head at him, eyes slightly narrowed.

            “I wondered if you’d pull it off.”

            “Pull what off?”

            “His plan.”

            “His – what?”

            The Little Girl smiled. “He’d been working on it for decades. And it all hinged on you. You and your little family.”

            Klaus stared at her. “When you say ‘him’ you don’t mean some old guy with a big long beard, do you?”

            The Little Girl rolled her eyes.

            “I haven’t taken that form in millennia but it’s all you cavemen ever want to see. And no. I don’t care enough about you to plan something so elaborate. I just set the cogs in motion.”

            “Oh, well, how nice of you,” Klaus muttered, looking around for the shack or the road or really anything to get out of this conversation.

            “Last time you were here,” she continued, “you met him. And he sent you back.”

            Klaus froze, hand halting massaging his aching chest. “You mean Reginald?”

            The Girl shrugged. “I’m not great with names.”

            Klaus gawped at her. “Are you saying my father arranged this whole apocalypse thing? No. No way, even he wasn’t that diabolical.”

            The Little Girl looked down at her skipping rope, running it idly through her hands.

            “He didn’t plan it. He planned the undoing of it. But does that matter now? You’re here. And it worked, since no one else is. Last time this place was packed.” She shuddered. “What a nightmare. I had to make space. Haven’t done that since the Beginning.”

            Klaus’s mind wasn’t up to this. Implications spun and crashed into each other in his head.

            “Last time? You – you remember?”

            She rolled her eyes again, levelling him with a look of pure disdain. “Time is mine. It bows to me not I to it.”

            Klaus blinked. “Right.”

            The ache in his chest intensified and he returned his hand to his sternum.

            “Why do I hurt so much? I didn’t hurt last time.”

            “It’s because they’re trying to save you. Your family.”

            A very warm, very unfamiliar feeling curled around Klaus’s heart.

            “They are?”

            The Girl hummed.

            “Can ... can I go back to them?”

            She looked up at him, eyes steely.

            “Do you want to? I’ll let you stay this time. If you choose.”

            Klaus hesitated. It hurt to leave his family right when they were finally starting to feel like one. But ... Dave was here, somewhere. All he’d wanted since he died was to be with him again. Could he really give that up for the hellscape that was life? For more withdrawals and addictions and arguments and overpriced cocktails and poverty?

            For his family?

            “I don’t have all eternity, here. What’s it gonna be?”

            Klaus looked at her, hesitating.

            Klaus bolted into a sitting position, gasping like he hadn’t breathed in a year. He swayed, put a hand out to steady himself. Put the other to his chest. Ow. He blinked up at the madness around him, eyes adjusting to the dimness of the Icarus Theatre. Bodies were running around, shouting, groaning, far more than he remembered there being. More of those red-eyed weirdos were here too, tons of them. Maybe a hundred. Guns flashed and knives twirled and Klaus spotted Diego wrenching a blade free of a masked eye socket, his face contorted in the kind of rage Klaus associated with stealing his aftershave.

            Another body staggered in front of Diego and Klaus stared. That was Zoya Popova. He blinked. Why was she –

            She punched a red-eye with a wild shout, shattering their mask.

             – corporeal?!

            He looked around again, paying attention to the faces not covered in black and red. That was the guy who’s hands were shredded. That was the one who’s wife got away. That one was Five’s – so was she –

            Klaus wasn’t sure if he was breathing or not. How were his ghosts here? They were touching people. And not in that ghostly, blue-haze way that Ben had, they were real. Alive.

            Holy shit.

            Speaking of Ben, a tentacle swept low over Klaus’s head and he ducked, head whipping around to his brother, his sixteen-year-old dead brother, alive and furiously crushing red-eyes with a bellowing shout that almost made Klaus feel sorry for the poor saps.

            Tears rushed into his eyes and the pain in his chest was eclipsed by a blisteringly bright feeling he didn’t know how to name and he scrambled to his feet, racing for Ben, ducking around fighters on the way.

            “BEN!”

            Ben turned to him, face contorted in rage – and stopped. Shock eroded his features, leaving wonder in its wake.

            “Klaus?”

            “You’re alive!”

            “You’re alive!”

            “Come here you little monster!” Klaus pulled Ben into an awkward, tentacly hug, squeezing his shoulders with all he had. God, he’d wanted to do this for so long.

            “How are you here?” Ben managed when they pulled apart, his appendages giving them a moment of privacy by sweeping around them and bowling anyone who got near off their feet.

            “Me? How are you here?”

            “I don’t know! I think it was you. You brought us back!”

            Klaus glanced around, stunned. A flash of green caught his eye and his heart leapt. That was Lieutenant Jeffries. His legs were back! He was back!

            “I don’t understand,” he mumbled, spying more and more familiar faces in the crowd, heart hammering in anticipation of seeing the face. But it couldn’t be that easy, surely. He couldn’t get that happy an ending. He couldn’t get them both.

            Behind him, Luther let out a great grunt and a red-eye went flying over their heads, screaming the whole way until they crumpled into silence in what remained of the upper circle. He spotted Ben, still in the chaos of the fight, and in the circle of his tentacles –

            “Klaus!”

            Klaus turned and beamed at his giant brother. “Hey Luthie!”

            Another red-eye swung a club at Luther and he ducked to avoid it, punching the woman so hard she collapsed in a heap. Nearby, Vanya jerked her chin and three black-clad figures were wrenched into the air. Klaus followed their flight and saw a soldier crack a neck and turn, looking for his next target. His eyes found Klaus and everything shattered.

            Dave.

            Klaus was running before he’d even decided to, pushing people out of the way and not pausing to see if they were friend or foe. Dave mirrored his frenzy, fighting towards him with an expression of painful joy and Klaus could feel it, the scabbed wounds along his heart were creaking open and at the same time a salve swept over them, sealing them with soothing warmth.

            The moment he fell into Dave’s arms was the best of his entire life. He was sobbing so hard he could barely say his name, just clung to him like he was life itself.

            “Klaus, Klaus, my love, baby, I’m here, I’ve got you. I love you so much.”

            Klaus could only nod, barely able to breathe. He pulled back to see those eyes that shone with love, that watery smile that was better than crack. He pulled Dave close and kissed him, pouring all his heartache and relief into the contact and he felt it returned in full on his lover’s lips.

            He was never going to let go of this man again. This. This was heaven.

            Vanya’s voice cut through the fighting, loud and clear and surely magnified by her powers.

            “HARGREEVES!” she bellowed. “DUCK!”

            Klaus broke apart from Dave, his eyes wide. He pulled them both to the ground, hitting it hard and covering Dave’s body with his own as a blast of white shocked above them, a single ripple of pure power that beat through anyone left standing, turning them to dust in an instant.

            Stillness settled over them. Slowly, Klaus looked up. The red-eyes were gone. Some of the ghosts, too, but most of them were slowly getting to their feet, looking dazed and confused. Some triumphant as they registered the fight was over.

            Dave pulled Klaus to his feet and wrapped an arm around his waist.

            “Klaus?!”

            A body slammed into them and Klaus’s breath was forced out in an oof.

            “Hey Diego,” he managed, patting his brother awkwardly on his shoulder.

            “I can’t believe you’re here,” he gasped.

Allison fell on him next, Luther supporting Vanya as they shuffled closer. Five had blood on his shirt but it wasn’t his. Ben was the last to join the hug, pinning Five into the embrace and Klaus could count on one hand how many times they’d done this and have plenty of fingers left to flip someone off. It was weird. But nice. It felt strange and familiar at the same time, being surrounded by everyone he loved, feeling their joy around him. He wasn’t sure he had the word for how it felt, this odd happiness that was burning inside him, erasing all hint of pain as they clung to each other, Dave’s hand held tightly in his own.

But he thought it felt like home.