Chapter Text
“No, don’t leave me! Please, please…don’t go.”
Ben sits at the foot of Klaus’s bed, his legs dangling over the lip of the top bunk. He’s given up on his book. Ben usually savours this quiet reading time, reliving the favourite novels he remembers losing himself in as a kid. But there’s no escaping into a good story when Klaus is weeping into his pillow, his face tense and twitching, his bedsheets drenched with withdrawal sweats.
The other addicts sharing the dormitory do not stir at his whimpering words. They’ve all learnt to sleep through screams and sobs and worse in this facility. Ben's always been aware that Klaus talks in his sleep, but he’s not sure he’s ever truly listened to his nocturnal babblings until now. He can’t ignore Klaus’s pleas when he knows they are most likely aimed at him.
Don’t leave. The only reason his junkie brother had checked himself into rehab that morning was because Ben had vowed to leave him if Klaus didn’t get help. He swore he would be gone forever. That he’d go into the light at last. It’d been a lie, of course. But a lie spoken with such Do-Not-Test-Me conviction that Klaus had immediately caved to his demands.
“Please, please…no, DAD, don’t leave me!”
Ben frowns at hearing Klaus cry out for their father. The man who Klaus could hardly wait to escape from, out the academy door the day he’d turned eighteen. Even though he’d had no job or accommodation to go to, no lifeboat to keep him afloat in the big cruel world, still Klaus hadn’t hesitated to leave. But in his feverish dreams he’s balling like a lost child.
The next moment, his body spasms and his eyes fly wide. Klaus lays gasping on his back, like a caught fish squirming on its hook and left suffocating in the air.
“I’m here,” says Ben. “I’m still here.”
He means this as a reassurance, but Klaus only grits his teeth, moaning low.
“Ugh...no late-night escape attempts for me then.”
Ben rolls his eyes. “Klaus, why would you want to be out in that city? You’re homeless and it’s January. It’s bad enough that I have to worry about you overdosing all year round, but last night you almost froze to death on that park bench.”
Ben has to force himself to add the ‘almost’. Because that’s a lie too. There was no almost about it. Klaus had frozen to death on that bench while Ben stood by helplessly and watched. He had watched his brother’s chest slowly cease its rise and fall. Listened as the chatter of his teeth grew quiet and the icy fog of his breath petered out to nothing. Ben couldn’t shake him awake. He couldn’t cover him with a blanket. He couldn’t try rubbing warmth back into those pale scrawny limbs. He just had to stand there watching him die.
Then as the sun rose, Ben had been pacing back and forth, waiting anxiously for Klaus’s ghost to join him, praying that his brother wouldn’t leave him to haunt the world alone. But Klaus’s spirit hadn’t shown up. Then when an old woman had shuffled by on her morning stroll and prodded the blue-lipped corpse with her walking cane, Klaus had sat bolt upright, gulping down air, his eyes wide and bulging out of his skull. Just as quickly he had smiled, given the old lady a wave, then gone to feed the ducks with her.
And Ben had been left as a brooding cloud of ghostly turmoil.
“You can’t do that to me again. I can’t watch you…”
“Oh, put down your pearls and quit being so dramatic, Benerino! I was fine. I’m cold blooded like a lizard, see. I could’ve danced around that park naked all night and not even caught a chill. It’ll take more than a little hypothermia to finish me off, pumpkin.”
“And yet you’re still shivering even now.”
Klaus pulls himself upright and presses his back to the wall, hugging his knees into his chest, as if struggling to hold his shaky spindly frame together.
“That’s not from the cold. Just my bad dreams. Bad memories even. They always come back to me the moment sobriety sets in.” He pushes out his lower lip and punches down on the mattress. “The ghosties will come for me next. You know they will! I’ve got to get out of this place and score before that happens. I’ve got to keep them away!”
“You’re not going anywhere. You can’t be out there on your own anymore.”
“I’m never alone for a second, thanks to you, Jiminy Fussbudget!”
“Klaus, I’m dead. I don’t count. I can’t check your pulse, I can’t perform CPR, I can’t call an ambulance…I can’t do anything. I can only watch.”
“Yeeeeeah, but I don’t really need any of that stuff. I’m a superhero, baby. All the grievous bodily harm that I might suffer in the pursuit of a good time – it’s nothing a little Aspirin and Pepto-Bismol won’t mend the morning after.” Klaus closes his eyes, laughing to himself. “Do you remember that one night I fell off the roof?”
Ben winces. How could he forget? It had happened only a few months before his own untimely demise. Klaus had got hold of some fake IDs and tried convincing Ben to sneak out to a college party with him. Ben had let Luther talk him out of it and later that night, they’d had a cop coming to their door telling them Klaus had fallen from a multi-story building, landing on a taxi cab far below. Ben had been distraught, expecting that his favourite brother would be coming back to them in a wheelchair, if not a body bag. But their father hadn’t seemed the least bit worried. And sure enough Klaus returned the next day with barely a scratch on him, grinning from ear to ear. At least until he’d been given laundry duty.
Ben has always wondered how Klaus survived that night. He’d never even considered that maybe he hadn’t. You’d think this revelation would be a weight off his mind. But it wasn’t. Ben sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Klaus he was immortal. If his crazy junkie brother had even an inkling of his invincibility, it’d only encourage him to self-destruct all the more. And Ben would be the one who had to witness it, over and over, who knew how many times.
“Yes, I remember you falling off that roof, Klaus! And that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’re a constant danger to yourself. So you need a caretaker, a living breathing one who can actually intervene and smack some sense into you. After you finish this program, you need to go ask one of the others to take you in.”
Klaus’s laughter just gets higher and shriller.
“Our dear estranged brothers and sisters? Which of them would have me? I’ve camped out on most of their sofas over the years and they all know by morning they’ll find me gone, on my way to the pawn shop with as many of their valuables as I can stuff down my pants.” Klaus turns to him and shrugs. “They aren’t going to fall for that again.”
“That’s why you have to get clean. Prove to them you can change.”
“Can I though?” He wrinkles up his nose. “I don’t think squeaky clean would be a good look for me. Heroin chic is just the right style for my bone structure. And besides, even if I wanted to reach out to what remains of our family – most of them aren’t around. Allison’s in Hollywood living the dream. Luther’s gone on a mission to the goddamn moon...”
“Diego,” Ben cuts in. “You could try Diego. He’s still in the city.”
“Yeah, busy being a vigilante with a skin-tight leather fetish. Which I could totally get behind if he didn’t take it all so seriously.” He raises a finger. “And before you say it, I’m not going to Vanya. Why should she help me? When have I ever done anything for her?”
Ben hesitates a moment before coming out with it.
“What about…father? What if you just went home?”
Klaus stares at him numbly, blinking in confusion.
“Wow, Benny boy. I think it might be your turn to piss into a cup so we can test whether you’re high.” He shakes his head. “Did you seriously just suggest I go back to dear old dad?”
“It’s a roof over your head, isn’t it? You’d have Grace and Pogo to look out for you. Dad won’t ask you for rent. And don’t pretend you won’t be billing the academy for your stay here –”
“I don’t want to see that old bastard again till he’s deep in his grave!”
“Really? Why are you crying for him in your sleep then?”
Klaus flinches, like Ben has just slapped him. He averts his eyes.
“Never you mind. That…that was just a dream.”
Ben narrows his stare. “A dream? Don’t you mean a memory?”
“Right again, brother mine! Would you like a prize?”
Ben catches the knife sharp edge to Klaus’s tone and knows not to push him. Because yes, Ben knows where Klaus goes in his worst dreams. They all knew about the nights Klaus got taken from his bed and driven out to the mausoleum for extra training. Ben was in the room just across the hall. He would hear Klaus pleading with their father, begging to be allowed to stay home. Ben would hear Pogo saying ‘Come along, Master Klaus’ and Grace promising to make him waffles for breakfast, if he could just be brave and go with his father for the night. Ben would hear the tears in Klaus's voice and his reluctant footfalls on the floor as their father marched him away.
Ben remembers one of these nights Five had blinked into his bedroom, cracking his knuckles, his eyes fierce with purpose. Five had said to him – ‘We should do something. We should get out there and stop this. Stop him. The two of us together, we could take the old man down. Make sure he never does this to our brother again.’
It hurts to remember. Because Ben had wanted to. With all his heart he’d wanted to. But he didn’t have Five’s nerve and Five didn’t fancy the odds without Ben’s tentacles. So they never did it. They never tried to help Klaus. Ben had gone back to bed and let Klaus get taken every time.
The only thing Ben can do is try to get Klaus the help he needs now.
“I tell you something,” says Klaus. “Lizard blood or no…I always woke up cold after those nights. Cold as the tomb he locked me inside of. I remember the old man always had a heart monitor at the ready just to be sure that I was back in the land of the living. Be certain the ghosts hadn’t taken me away with them to the other side.”
Ben’s eyes widen with a creeping realization. A chilling epiphany over what his father’s experiments with Klaus had really been about. When they were kids, Luther and Diego had both insisted that Klaus was a ‘Fraidy cat’ and he needed to get over his fear of ghosts so he could be some use on their missions. But it wasn’t just the undead that their father had been subjecting Klaus to in that crypt. It’d been death itself.
As someone who knows what it is to die young, this shakes Ben to his core. Klaus had only been eight years old the first time they’d heard him begging in the hall. That’s how old he must’ve been when their father first trained him in dying.
“I…I’m sorry,” Ben blurts out. “I’m sorry I never stopped him.”
Klaus turns to look at him, his brow crinkling into a frown.
“What could you have done? We were just kids.” His eyes drift down to Ben’s lap and the book propped against his knees. “Aww, Peter Pan. Mom read that one to us when we were little.” He looks up, giving Ben a cloying smile. “Would you read me to sleep?”
Ben smiles back. “Sure. So long as you’ll promise to wake up in the morning.”
“Yeah,” Klaus sighs. “For some weird reason, I always do.”