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“Honestly, Luther, I just wanted to visit my beloved family! Is that so bad?” Klaus whines.
“Oh, is that all?” Luther says, keeping a firm hand on Klaus’ shoulder as he steers him out of the mansion.
“Okay, maybe a bath, too, but you of all people must know how hard it is to find a decent-sized tub! I’ve got legs for days, and I’d rather not spend a week individually washing each toe in a tub the size of a teacup.” His faux fur boots slide on the checkered tile, the tread too worn down to offer any resistance.
“So Dad’s best silver, that was what, an afterthought?”
Klaus goes boneless, defeated.
“C’mon, man, it’s not like anybody was using it!”
Luther redoubles his grip, dragging Klaus along by his bare upper arm.
“Ow! Careful! You’re gonna squeeze my arm off, and then I’m gonna bleed all over the floor and Mom will have to clean it up, you really want to make her mop up my blood? And you know how Dad feels about nasty, messy children, he could never stand it when we got sick…”
Luther closes his eyes and sighs through his nose, trying to keep his cool. He opens the door.
“Wait wait wait! I left my walkman!”
Luther gently pries his fingers off the doorframe and throws him out, slamming the door behind him.
A moment later, the door opens again, just long enough for Luther to toss his coat out after him, the CD player falling out of a pocket and clattering to the sidewalk.
Ben watches with disinterest from his spot on the snowy stoop.
“So, that was a bust. What now?”
Groaning, Klaus curls up on the sidewalk, pulling his coat around him like a duvet. He’d like to just lie here for a while and stew in his misery. His ass feels like it’s broken. Klaus doesn’t have nearly enough padding on his bones to get tossed onto the pavement as often as he does.
“C’mon, Klaus, get up. You can’t stay here, it’s cold, go to the library or something.”
He grumbles, but concedes, stretching and levering himself into a sitting position.
“Klaus.”
He rolls his neck from side to side and scrubs snow out of his hair. He’ll get up in his own damn time, Ben.
“Klaus,” Ben sounds urgent, but he’s not the one with a bruised tailbone. “ Klaus .”
“God, fine, don’t get your panties in a twist!” He stands up, shrugging his coat on, patting the pockets to check that all his personal effects are accounted for.
“Klaus,” he repeats, and Klaus finally glances up at him. Ben’s staring at something behind him, looking, ironically, like he’s just seen a ghost. He points, and Klaus follows his finger to a small figure tramping down the street, poorly dressed for the weather in shorts and knee socks. The kid turns, peeking over his shoulder to make sure he’s not being followed, and Klaus gets a glimpse of his shocked face.
“Five?” he whispers, staggering a few steps forward, slipping a little on the icy sidewalk.
Five looks around, eyes huge like he’s seeing everything for the first time. He doesn’t stop walking.
Klaus starts running.
“Five?” he shouts, and Ben is right there with him, not bothering to duck around pedestrians who shudder as he runs through them.
Five doesn’t hear them. He glances back once more, the ghost of a smile on his young face -- why is he still so young -- and he speeds up, fists glowing as he rips a hole in thin air and vanishes.
“Five? Five!” They skid to a stop where he last was, Klaus bent over, gasping for air. Ben doesn’t bother to pretend to be winded. That used to bother him, but he’s had six years to get used to it. He swings his head from side to side, then dashes off to look in the next alley.
“Five! C’mon, Klaus, he can’t have gone far, his range’s not that big. Five!”
Klaus hauls himself back into motion, and the two of them search the city until he collapses, exhausted, at a bus stop on the far side of town. The sun is setting, what little light they’d had fading fast. His fingers are pink and numb, and his breath scrapes out like something vital in his throat has been replaced with a cheese grater.
Ben paces back and forth, hands clenched tight around his stomach. He’d only gotten more frantic with each dead end they found, each empty street, and he can feel the Horror’s answering frenzy like a phantom pain.
“We’re not gonna find him like this,” Klaus croaks. They’ve been yelling for hours, and it shows.
“We can’t just leave him, Klaus! He’s here! He’s somewhere nearby and he’s a kid and he’s been alone for a decade!”
“Whoa, whoa, wait, what?” He sits up from where he’d been reclining on the bench. “Show your work, there, bro.”
“What do you mean, ‘what’? Clearly something happened, he died and he’s been a ghost, alone, for ten years. I spent four months on my own when we had that big fight last year, and I almost lost it. We need to find him, now, and pray he’s still sane.”
“Five’s not dead, though.”
“What?”
“Five’s not dead. I refuse to believe that as a possibility.”
“Then how is he thirteen, huh? If he’s alive and well out there somewhere, he’d be twenty-three, like you. I doubt he’d still be wearing his uniform if he had any other choice.”
“He was arguing with Dad about time travel before he left, clearly he worked it out.”
“Klaus, ghosts are real. I’m literally right in front of you. We have no evidence that Five could have time travelled, he’d never even tried before he left. You remember when he tried to fly?”
Klaus laughs, and winces. “Ooh, that was rough. How many jumps did he get in before he landed?”
“Two.” Ben grimaces and sits beside him on the bench.
“Man, his leg was fucked up.”
“Mm, not nearly as spectacular as your somersault down the stairs. I’ll never forget that stupid look on his face though.”
“He was so surprised!” Klaus laughs. “Like, no, buddy! Jumping off the roof is not a good idea, even when you can teleport!”
“How I was the first one to die, I’ll never know.”
“So you admit it?”
“What?”
“That he could still be alive.”
“I don’t know, Klaus! Obviously I want him to be alive, but when do any of us ever get what we want? If we find him, and he’s a ghost, well, at least we’ll know.”
“You say ‘at least’ like you don’t want to add an eternal tween to our merry band of misfits.”
“Oh shit, oh no...” Ben’s horror soon devolves into giggles.
“Poor little guy, he’s going through puberty, permanently. At least you started shaving before you keeled over.”
They spend a few minutes laughing at the misfortune of their little brother’s tragic death, because if they don’t laugh, they’ll cry, and they’re too damn tired for that.
Klaus sprawls across the bench, rubbing at his eyes, smearing makeup everywhere.
“God, no offense, but I’m so glad I’m not a teenager anymore. They’re the worst,” Klaus says, “present company excluded, of course.”
Ben stops pretending to be inconvenienced by his brother’s giant feet in his nonexistent lap and sticks his hand through Klaus’ face.
“Hey! What the hell?”
“I’m way more mature than you.”
“Clearly,” mutters Klaus, through a mouthful of ghost. He’s going to have the worst sinus headache after this.
“You do not get to lump me in with those cretins. I may be theoretically sixteen, but I am a grownass man.”
“Sure you are, kiddo.”
“Fuck you, Klaus.”
“Hey, you too, buddy!” he replies, cheerfully flipping Ben the bird.
They’re quiet for a while, Klaus settling in to sleep as Ben stares at the snow piled up on the side of the street, already gray and slushy from all the cars passing by. Yellow light from street lights and headlights scatters across its surface like miniature galaxies. He looks up, but it’s too cloudy to see any real stars tonight.
“Hey, you should get somewhere warm. I think it’s gonna snow more tonight.”
Klaus groans “It’s too late, all the shelters have probably been full since noon.”
“You could call Diego. Or Vanya.”
“I could get kicked out of two family homes in less than 24 hours! That’s a new record, baby! Woohoo!” He does a horizontal can-can, which is much more innocent than it sounds.
“Or, you could get some help with Five.” An idea was crystallizing in Ben’s head. “You think he’s alive? Fine. That street’s lined with stores, and you know Dad’s got cameras out the wazoo. One of them must’ve caught something.”
“Ben, you genius, that’s fantastic! You’re also an idiot for not coming up with this idea before we spent literal hours running across town, but would we really be related if you weren’t at least a little bit of a moron?”
“We’re not related, and it’s not like you came up with anything either!”
Klaus shrugs and unfolds like shitty paper blinds, stumbling around as he loudly cracks every vertebra in his back. There are some things about watching Klaus get old that make Ben glad he died young.
“Ugh, let’s go, I think I saw a restaurant back there that might have a payphone.”