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When he was 15 years old, Jason died. It wasn’t painless, it wasn’t in his sleep, and it wasn’t an accident. It was a flash of fire and noise and agony and then it was darkness.
When he was 15 years old, Jason woke up. Not from his sleep, but from his death. His eyes snapped open when he thought they never would again, but he was somewhere else. All he could see was green light, and his eyes stung and his body ached and he was covered in fabric.
Jason was terrified. He clawed his way to the surface of some kind of liquid and gasped and coughed and spit the stuff from his lungs. He was at the bottom of a pit and the silhouettes of strangers stood above him.
The last thing he’d known was pain, the last person he’d seen had been hitting him with a crowbar until he felt things crack and bleed and he couldn’t even crawl. The fear was still there, pulsing through his veins, along with a new anger, and he needed to get away, escape, be safe. With aching fingers he dragged himself up the sides of the pit, sheer rock cliffs that tore at his nails and made his fingertips bleed. But he was free.
It was going to be okay.
Maybe.
When they were 17 years old, Klaus and Ben died. Their only comfort was each other, even as one tore them both apart. It was blood and tears and light fading from eyes and then it was a grayscale world.
When he was 17 years old, Klaus woke up in a dark box. The world was reduced to the walls trapping him in, and he screamed and pounded and scratched until blood dripped from his hands and dried on his face. No one heard him, no one came for him.
He let his arms drop and closed his eyes and sobbed. Cold desperation and resignment warred in his chest and his body still hurt from where the Horror had ripped through him like he was nothing more than an origami boy.
There was nothing to tell him how long he was down there, it could have been hours or it could have been days. Klaus ran out of air again and again, passing out and somehow waking up in an endless cycle. Finally, finally, someone broke him free. It was dark outside of the box (the coffin) so he wasn’t sure who it was until they spoke.
Ben. It was Ben, who also should have been dead. Ben, his brother, who killed him and then saved him from a much worse fate.
Who, apparently, was only alive as long as the sun was down and the light was gone. In the day, he was a ghost. At least Klaus would still be able to see him then.
He let Klaus lean on him as they slowly walked away from their graves in the courtyard of the house that would haunt their nightmares more surely than the ghosts haunted them both now.
One had a foot in the land of the living and one in the domain of the dead, and the other had both feet in both worlds.
Rain that seemed to only be near the mansion plastered their hair to their heads and their clothes to their skin.
They were safe, in a way.
They had each other.
Things were okay.
Sort of.
Klaus woke up gasping for air, as he so often did now. Ben glanced at him sympathetically from where he sat on someone’s deck watching the sun set. “Nightmares again?”
His brother shook his head, curling his knees to his chest and resting his head on top of them. “New dream,” he said, out of breath still.
“But it’s not a nightmare?” Klaus nodded, his curly hair bouncing. “Well, that’s good at least.”
For a minute he was quiet, letting himself slow his breathing until it was easier to talk. “It was some, some kid, right? And he’s wearing a domino mask, like ours, but his uniform, or costume, more like, it was so weird. Really bright, red and yellow. Anyways, someone - I didn’t see who - was kicking the shit out of him, beating him with a - a crowbar, too. And then the person left, and the boy’s just there, on the ground, mostly unconscious and with blood all over him. So the kid tries to walk away but he can’t stand so he crawls, but before he can get away a bomb goes off and he dies. Then he’s coming out of this weird green glowing pool thing, and he’s alive again.” Klaus paused to throw a piece of gravel at the wall of the building next to him. “Pretty weird. Especially since it’s not someone I know.”
Ben jumped down from the deck painlessly, wanting to get to the ground before he became solid again. It was easier like that. “Kind of sounds like a nightmare to me. Are you sure you don’t know him? Maybe it’s just someone we’ve met before on the streets, and you forgot about?”
“Not scary enough to be a nightmare. And I know that I’ve never seen him before, for sure,” Klaus said.
Just then, the sun fully set, and Ben felt gravity grabbing hold of him again. His clothes settled on his now-real skin, his bones shifted as they held his weight, his lungs filled with air that rushed past his lips and chilled his tongue.
No matter that it’d been a year since he half-died, it still felt so weird to be alive again. Nice, though.
“Ok, so, is there a reason you told me?” Ben said, immediately regretting the way he’d chosen his words. “I mean, I don’t mind, you just seem kind of… worried, maybe, or concerned about it. You don’t usually talk about your dreams,” he quickly clarified.
Klaus shrugged and dusted off his torn jeans as he stood up. “I dunno. It just felt really… real. Not like a normal dream, or a regular nightmare, but like it was actually happening.” A shiver shook his stick-thin body, though it wasn’t very cold.
Ben nodded at him and stretched, letting feeling rush back through his arms and to his fingers and palms. He wasn’t really sure whether his heartbeat during the day, when he was unable to interact with anyone or anything but Klaus, actually counted towards blood flow during the night. It always felt like pins and needles right after the sun went down, so maybe not. The rules of the transformation didn’t really make sense to either of them, and neither understood it.
Honestly, Ben was just glad that he wasn’t dead all the time. He could see the ghosts, now, and while they had no interest in him they were still scary… and sad. Klaus couldn’t see them most of the time, and Ben had to keep the visions of people long dead to himself. His brother didn’t know he could see them all the time, and Ben planned to keep it that way.
Sometimes, he felt like they were two of the brothers in a fairytale he’d read once. Each of them had been cursed to be a swan by day and a boy by night, and after years of work their sister was able to save them.
Except for one, left with a wing for an arm forever.
(One difference, of course, was that no one could or would save Ben and Klaus.)
Klaus had an arm in the world of ghosts, never able to live his life like anyone else. Stuck with something that kept him always chasing a high and an escape, but with only one wing, he couldn’t fly. Stuck on the ground, but longing for a sky that he wouldn’t be able to reach no matter how hard he tried.
Damaged by something he couldn’t change.
Ben, on the other hand, lived only in the night. By day he was insubstantial as the air that he breathed now, as invisible as the space between stars. A void in place of a boy.
At night, he could live in a flurry of movement and lights and places as he tried to keep Klaus safe and followed him into spots he’d never go otherwise.
Sometimes, one of them would get hurt, too hurt, stop breathing and bleeding and lie still on the ground.
But it was never long before they woke up again, with only the phantom pain and the memory as proof it ever happened at all.
What was there to do but keep moving forward?
For the first few months, Jason had been alone. He jumped at shadows and flinched at movements and heard nothing but the sound of his footsteps and his ears ringing loudly. He wasn’t sure what was going on, where he was, what had happened. There was no one to ask, so he accepted it.
Finally, finally, he was back in Gotham, but he didn’t know why he’d come here. There were a lot of things he didn’t know anymore.
There was nothing in this city for him but painful reminders of what he’d lost.
Or at least that’s what he thought.
Because after he’d… left, there was another Robin. It stung a little that he was replaced so fast but that was in the past now.
In the present, he had Tim. It was pretty clear that Jason’s death hadn’t taught Bruce anything because when he found Tim he was in a horrible state. He barely talked and wouldn’t let himself be anywhere in the open. He hid in the shadows and never smiled.
It was months before he pieced together enough to somewhat understand what had happened to the younger boy.
He’d been stolen by the Joker, and for a month he’d been with him. He’d tried to escape but he couldn’t, and then he was tortured until he couldn’t string two words together. By the time he’d been rescued, Tim had lost his mind.
Instead of helping him, Bruce sent him to a friend to fix him. And once he was somewhat recovered, he refused to let him be Robin again (which Jason did sort of agree with) even though that was all he wanted.
Jason had found him wandering around the city in the middle of the night and quickly realized who he was. Now he took care of them both, but that was okay. He’d do what his little brother needed him to.
Right now, what he didn’t need was for Jason to make him worry over nothing. So Jason didn’t tell him about the strange dreams he’d been having: two dark-haired boys torn apart by a monster, one of them waking up in a coffin and the other waking up as a ghost.
Every night for weeks they’d been all he dreamed about, though the ending was different each time. Last night’s had shown them in an alley in the middle of the night, talking in hushed voices that he couldn’t understand.
Something about them made him uneasy. They were too real. Wherever he was, Jason felt that he could sense what direction they were in. They didn’t even exist, so why did he feel like they did?
Then again, it wasn’t like he and Tim had a real place to live. Maybe the other boys could help them. If it were just Jason, he wouldn’t, but Tim deserved a stable life. He wasn’t even 14 yet.
So he called softly to the smaller boy to wake him up. If this were someone else, it would probably be faster if he talked louder or shook him but Tim would freak out. The fear had seeped into his bones during his weeks of captivity.
Finally, Tim’s eyes opened and he sat up and stretched. The two of them slept on an old mattress beneath a bridge, tucked into a hidden corner. Jason had known it was there from his time living on the streets before and had stolen a few blankets to keep them both warm.
“Morning, Tim,” Jason said. “So we’re gonna go on a trip, kay?”
Tim yawned. “Where to?”
Jason hesitated. How could he explain the situation? “Just around. There’s someone I’m trying to find. We might have to leave the city, is that okay?”
The younger boy nodded and got to his feet. Jason did the same, and they stuffed the blankets into their backpacks and set off in a direction that Jason only knew by the compass in his mind.
It wasn’t long before they ran into trouble. Jason took care of it quickly and without mercy. It felt good to let out some of his ever-overflowing anger on someone who deserved it.
“How do you think Diego’s doing?”
It was nearly morning and people were just starting to get up, while Klaus was getting ready to go to sleep. Ben’s words made him pause.
“I mean, he’s the only one left now. Of the even numbers squad, I mean. Plus, to him, we’re not just gone, we’re dead,” Ben continued.
“Chances are he’s left by now, Ben. You know that I always thought he’d be the first one out. But I guess that was us,” Klaus said with a melancholy note to his voice. “He’s out there, making himself a life, probably still doing that hero shit but without Dad to control him. And, y’know, I say good for him! Stick it to the old man!” By the last sentence, he was smiling. Yeah, Diego was gonna be okay. It wasn’t like Klaus was very important or useful anyways. They’d all told him a hundred times that he was nothing but an annoyance. Most likely, the rest of them were relieved he was gone. They would miss Ben, though.
Probably he was selfish for not telling his siblings that Ben was fine, sort of. Each of his family had said at one time or another that he was just selfish, looking for attention, an annoyance and a hindrance. Which, honestly, Klaus couldn’t argue with. He knew what he was like, he knew that.
Maybe he was better off dead. Or as close as he got. He was better off with his family thinking he was dead at least.
Did the boy from his dreams have family who had missed him before he came back to life? Was he alone, struggling to understand why he was still alive and with no one to help him? Did anyone care about him?
He’d been ignoring it, but somewhere deep in his mind was a sort of sixth, or really seventh, sense that told him where the not-dead boy was. It had been getting stronger lately. There was a powerful urge to set off walking towards him but Klaus was pretty good at resisting urges that wouldn’t get him something he wanted.
At this point he was sure the kid was real.
“Do you think the rest of them are doing alright?” Ben said. Huh? What did he mean? Ohh, right, they’d been having a conversation… them must mean their siblings.
“Yeah, I’m sure they’re fine. They’ve all probably left by now, honestly, except maybe Luther. I hope Vanya got into that music school she wanted…”
Ben smiled a little. “I mean, she’s really good, so I don’t see how they could turn her down.”
“What if like, she got an offer from an even better music school, cause y’know they heard about how great she is, and she has to choose between the two? And she has to decide if she wants to go to the one she’s always wanted to go to, right, or the even better one?” Klaus said pensively.
“Klaus, how would they even know she exists if she didn’t apply? She’s not like, famous,” Ben said with a bemused expression.
“They’d use their magic find-a-musician powers! We can’t be the only miracle babies left alive, right?” Just then, the sun came up and flooded their alleyway with light. Ben didn’t cast a shadow. “Or, not alive I guess.” Klaus laughed at his own joke while Ben gave him an affectionate glare. “But yeah, I mean it was like 50 of them born or something, right? I looked it up at the library that one time. Took forever to find a newspaper from 1989, cause there weren’t really any articles about it after that.” He squinted. “Kind of weird, actually. Do you think Dad tried to cover it up a little?”
“Or people just weren’t interested in the babies anymore,” Ben replied with one eyebrow raised.
“I guess. My theory’s cooler, though. Not the point. What if - hear me out, here - what if one of them has the power of finding the best musicians in the world, so they’re working at a music college? Yeah?”
“That’s a really dumb power. And oddly specific.”
“Ok, but Diego’s is that he can make stuff he throws hit whatever he wants. That’s really specific, too. And it doesn’t seem super useful until you give him knives.”
Ben laughed. “I guess. I don’t think musician-finding would be very useful in a fight though.”
“Maybe that’s why Dad didn’t adopt them!” Klaus clapped his hands to his face exaggeratedly, opening his eyes and mouth wide. “I’ve uncovered his secret!”
The sun shone over their city, and Klaus’s laughter echoed in the streets.
They’d been walking for days, hitchhiking and riding buses when they could, and the pull only got stronger. Jason was starting to feel antsy, tapping his feet and pacing whenever they were stopped. Tim looked a little worried but didn’t say anything about it.
He was almost certain now that the mysterious boys were in The City. Apparently at some point it had an actual name but everyone just called it The City at this point. From his dreams they’d looked like they were in a bigger city, and he and Tim were definitely headed in the right direction to go there. Plus, the feeling that tugged him towards them was getting so intense that he couldn’t imagine it getting more so.
They were there now, but it was getting harder to pinpoint their location because there were so many blocks that he had to walk around and it off-put his sense of direction.
“Where?” Tim whispered to him, his eyes darting nervously from person to person as he clung close to Jason. In situations like this he had a hard time talking, but Jason could understand what he meant well enough.
“I’m not sure yet. We’re trying to find someone, and they’re somewhere in this city, so it won’t be too long. Don’t worry.”
Tim nodded and bit his lip.
They walked and walked, the sun bouncing off bright metal and hurting Jason’s eyes. It wasn’t hot, at least. Jason hated heat, now, not warmth but heat. Apparently, getting blown up by a fiery bomb would do that to you. Who knew.
The pull was getting almost unbearable. Maybe the other boys felt the same way, maybe they knew he was coming closer. Were they scared? They’d looked terrified when they died in his dreams. The fear had stuck to him and Tim, so maybe it was the same for the strangers.
It was just a couple more minutes of walking when Jason found them, almost physically jerked to the side by the strange sense.
In an alley, on the ground under a ratty blanket, was one of the boys. The one with the curly hair. The other one must be here, too, because he’d seen him come back but as a ghost. Why was he sleeping in the day, though?
Tim tapped his shoulder, and Jason turned to him. “Is this the guy we were looking for?” he said, slightly louder now that they were out of the crowds.
Jason grinned at him, then quickly remembering how he felt about smiles dropped the expression. “Yep, this is him.”
“...Should we go wake him up?”
“Yeah, I’ll go do that.”
Before Jason got close enough to touch him (and he knew, knew, knew that the pull would go away as soon as he touched the clearly-older boy) the curly-haired boy sat up heaving for breath and immediately got into a fighting position. He was obviously trained, if he was able to be ready so soon after waking up.
When he saw Jason, though, he relaxed. “Well, hello, strange boy from my dreams!” He paused for a moment, making a face. “That sounds weirdly romantic. Uh, yeah, I don’t mean it like that. Welcome to our humble abode!” He gestured grandly with a sweeping of his arms to the alley around them. “Oh, and who’s the little guy?”
Tim stepped behind Jason like a scared toddler but of course Jason couldn’t begrudge him that. “This is my little brother. Tim. If you hurt him I’ll kill you.”
The boy laughed hysterically (which would only make Tim more scared, and though the guy had no way of knowing that, it pissed Jason off and he kind of wanted to hit him) before gasping out, “You can try! I’ll just pop up like a, like a… what’s it called, Ben? The monkey that springs out of the box?” He paused as if waiting for a reply before continuing, “Yeah, a jack-in-the-box. I don’t plan on hurting anyone if they don’t hurt me, so you don’t have to worry anyways. You’re immortal too, though, right? So you’d know you can’t kill me.”
Oh, god. Jason hadn’t expected for the guy to actually be immortal, he figured it was a one-time thing for him as well. If this boy attacked him or Tim, there’d be no real way to save himself or his brother.
“Aaaanyways, what’s your name?”
Jason cautiously responded, “Jason. Uh, Jason Todd. What about you?”
“Legally? The name’s zero-zero-point-zero-Four. But everyone calls me Klaus. Klaus Hargreeves. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He did some kind of weird little bow before coming closer and reaching out a hand for Jason to shake. He carefully lifted his own, and their fingers barely touched before-
- the pull -
SNAPPED -
- like a rubber band, and Jason and Klaus both fell over.
“Wow! That was sure something. Feels kinda good, though, huh? Were you feeling the weird 7th - er, 6th - sense, too?” The invisible boy, Ben, must’ve said something because Klaus responded to no one with, “Oh, yeah, forgot to mention! I was feeling this crazy tug to go towards Jason, and it got like really strong when he was getting closer. Wild, huh? It’s gone now though.”
Tim was glancing back and forth between Jason and Klaus with the most confused expression Jason had ever seen on him. “What the hell is happening?”
Klaus’s hands flew up to his face. “Young man! Watch your fucking language! We don’t say H - E - double-hockey-sticks around here!”
Tim gave the closest he ever came to a smile, and Klaus looked vaguely concerned. “Are you good, dude? You look like you’re about to cry.”
Jason jumped in with, “No, he just doesn’t smile. That’s his happy face.”
Jason braced himself for questions but they didn’t come. Klaus just shrugged and said, “Okay. See, Ben, my jokes aren’t that bad!” He was quiet for a moment before clapping a hand to his chest as if he’d been stabbed. “Oh, my dearest, dearest brother! How could you? Oh, betrayal! Betrayal and death!” He dramatically fell the rest of the way down so that he was spread-eagled on the pavement. Tim looked even more confused than he did a moment ago.
“Is he… hallucinating? Or is Ben an, an imaginary friend, kind of?”
Oh shit. This explanation was gonna sound insane. “Uhh, no, Ben is actually his dead ghost brother.”
Tim scrunched up his face. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s dead! Dead as a doornail, haha, sucker!” He stuck out his tongue in what was apparently the direction of Ben. “But only half the time. When the sun’s down he’s alive. It’s really weird, don’t think too hard about it.”
Well, that was news to Jason. Fuck, he was really being thrown into the deep end here. He’d thought he knew everything he needed to know before finding them, but with one alive half the time and the other immortal… they were much more dangerous than he’d expected. Plus, Klaus was clearly trained in combat.
“How did that happen? How do you half-die?” Tim said. He was looking a little closer to his old self in his curiosity, but well, Jason hadn’t really known his old self. Just from newspaper clippings and stuff on TV.
“Ah, well… you see, we didn’t actually half-die? We both died, at the same time. But I got uh… buried, and I don’t know how long I was down there…” He looked a little spacey and disturbed talking about what’d happened to him, and honestly, Jason felt the same. He jumped when Klaus clapped his hands loudly. “Anyways! Then Benny-boy here dug me out and we blew that popsicle stand! Pretty nice, actually, I mean Dad isn’t gonna come looking for us if he thinks we’re dead.”
So Tim and I aren’t the only ones here with shitty dads. Can they say that they’ve had two shitty dads, though? Agh, that was a weird thing to think, Jason, trauma isn’t a contest.
“Anyways, we don’t wanna make it all about ourselves. What about you guys? What’re your stories?”
Jason started at the beginning. Somehow, he thought that this guy (these guys?) weren’t going to be weird about the whole ‘Robin’ thing.
As soon as night fell, Ben felt himself become solid and real again. If he hadn’t been able to tell just by the sensation, the gasps of surprise from Jason and Tim would have told him he was visible.
“Hey, guys. I’m Ben,” he said with a little wave and a tiny smile. Jason had explained that wide, open-mouthed smiles that showed teeth tended to make Tim nervous and uncomfortable - not always, and it was better around people he knew well, but usually.
“You- you’re - you’re actually real?” Tim sputtered. He quickly became more cheerful and looked truly delighted. “That’s so neat!”
I wouldn’t say that… “Yeah, I’m real,” Ben said with a small laugh.
Klaus had been more and more quiet as the day wore on, and Ben was pretty sure he knew why. The ghosts were starting to swarm him somewhat, and it was grating on Ben’s nerves too. They needed to get Klaus some drugs (and God did Ben understand why now, and he was okay with Klaus doing it as long as it wasn’t more than he needed) but that wouldn’t be great to do in front of their… guests? Can you call it guests if none of you even have a home?
“So, wait, how can Klaus talk to you during the day?” Tim said.
“Oh, did we not mention that? Uh, we’re from the Umbrella Academy,” Ben said while carefully keeping his voice controlled and calm.
Tim’s eyes widened and he looked like someone had just given him several cheesecakes. “Really?” he breathed.
“Yep! I’m the Seance, and Benerino over here is the Horror,” Klaus said fake-cheerfully.
“That’s - uh, uh, good to meet you…” Tim looked like he could barely contain his excitement while Jason looked fondly exasperated. “You’re my heroes! When I was little I would get all your newspaper clippings and hang them up and you guys are the reason that I became Robin! Oh my god, this is the best day of my life!” he burst out in a rush, his face turning bright red.
So many times, Ben had heard someone say that he was their hero. Whenever that happened, the deep pit of guilt in his stomach got heavier. He wasn’t a hero, he was a monster. He’d killed his own brother . How could anyone think he was a good person?
Not that Jason and Tim knew he was the one who’d killed both Klaus and himself. And he didn’t plan on letting them know.
Plus, fucking hell, wasn’t being Robin how Tim had gotten so… damaged? That made Ben feel even worse. He and his siblings, by being actual child soldiers, had made more kids become child soldiers because they wanted to.
But he put on a facade, acted as if he were glad to hear that. “Wow! Well, you know, it’s been really cool to meet you too. I mean, who thought I’d ever meet Robin, right?”
Tim buried his face in his hands, and as soon as he wasn’t looking anymore Ben let his sadness and fatigue show on his face and in his body language again. He knew Jason would understand, he was much more disillusioned than the younger boy.
Klaus, Ben, and Jason. So much in common, yet all so different. Jason, especially. Ben could see that he had so much fury. He held himself tensely and glared at everything, and somehow he could just feel it coming off him in waves. Klaus and himself, on the other hand, had for the most part let go of their resentment. It was too tiring for Ben to be mad all the time, and he wasn’t sure that Klaus had ever been very angry.
They were all killers, they had all died. They had each been made into a weapon when they were still young, and the aftershocks of that still shook them. But where Ben pushed down his hurt and anger, hiding it away until it exploded, Klaus turned it inwards. He blamed everything on himself, and hid his pain from those who wanted to help him. And Jason let his rage build and build until he took it out on someone who in his eyes deserved it.
And yet, despite their differences, the three of them understood each other as they sat together in the night.