Chapter Text
Five was in a foul mood.
Most people would be glad to find their aches and pains whisked away by a witch, their wrinkles smoothed away and the colour returned to their hair.
Most people, but not Five.
No, Five was furious.
You see, Five quite liked being old. He'd earned it. He was headed towards retirement, and had plans to enjoy a quieter life with his beloved wife and two daughters, stepping back from running the shop and just keeping the books.
He had not planned to spend his Tuesday afternoon stomping and cursing his way up the lanes, and onto the hills that sat between Market Chipping and the Waste. And he had most certainly not planned to search for a most ridiculous moving castle, all while wearing the little tweed suit and baker boy cap from the shop mannequin because it was all that fit, with newspaper stuffed into the toes of his boots.
"Goddamnit!"
No, Five was not impressed to be an adolescent again.
The farmers he passed on the lane gave him a wide berth, perhaps due to the thunder in his face, perhaps due to the curses he muttered about the Witch under his breath, and when he paused to right a scarecrow left abandoned in the hedgerow, he cursed them too, for passing him by.
"No respect these days, none!" he muttered, straightening the poor fellows shirt collar, and leaving him resting against the hedgerow for his owner to find. "Shame on them, leaving a perfectly good scarecrow to rot, when there is life in you yet, my friend!"
By the time he reached the hilltops, it was evening, with darkness beginning to settle and cold wind blowing. "How hard can it be to find a ridiculous moving castle anyway," he asked himself tiredly, having finally worn his anger out. But there was no castle to be seen, and he continued to walk, peering through the gloom to try and spot the smoke that always billowed from its chimney's.
"Certainly I'll hear it coming, a big gallumping thing like that," he grumbled, thinking back to the glimpses he had caught of the castle as it looked over Market Chipping. "Give that awful Wizard a mouthful too, when I see him."
The Wizard, it had been said in hushed whispers, was a monster. When the castle had first appeared several weeks before, nobody had really heard of him. But the stories soon spread. Young ladies, and even young men, unmarried and fair-looking ensnared by his wickedness and led to their ruin.
Five had spent many evenings escorting the young girls that worked in the shop back to their homes safely. Few walked alone in Market Chipping anymore, and the young ladies avoided being caught out after dark.
But Five was cursed and even he, as unmagical as they came, knew curses didn't just break themselves. He'd need a powerful wizard (or another witch) for that, and unfortunately the more powerful type able to break curses were in rather short supply, leaving him with few options.
Just as he was about to stop and consider finding a hollow to spend the night out of the wind, he heard it. A great wheezing and puffing noise, just over the brow of the hill, and getting closer.
Five all but ran towards the sound, ignoring how his boots slipped in muddy puddles, until he crested the hill and stared down in amazement at the castle on the slope below.
"Stop!" he shrieked, nearly throwing himself down the slope after it in his haste. "Stop right there!" And it did, the castle paused with a gusty sigh and deep rumble, until Five had approached the door. The moment he stepped up onto the doorstep it lurched, setting off across the hills again and leaving Five clung to the railing for balance.
The door was not particularly grand, Five thought. In fact, it was positively bland, the sort of plain wooden door one would keep on a potting shed, not a castle. Still, the door handle worked, and the hinges were smooth when he let himself in, and the latch engaged with a satisfying click as he shut it behind himself.
The room inside was dark, illuminated only by the low fire in the hearth. As Five stepped further into the room he frowned at the strange assortment of furniture - an old table that looked able to seat eight taking up the length of the room, and behind that what looked like a butcher's counter, except instead of cuts of meat the shelves held an odd assortment of jars, plants, powders and parchment rolls. A skull sat on the table, in front of a black cauldron with what looked like a ladies feather boa half stuffed inside.
"How odd," Five said, eyeing the skull warily as he made his way to the armchair by the fire. Near everything wore a coat of dust, although some looked thicker than others. He picked up a log from the stack along with a poker, and gave the ashes of the fire a good stir before adding the log and watching the flames creep up. "What a dump!"
He removed his tweed jacket, and placed it folded over the arm of the chair before he sat down, for the first time appreciating the smoothness of his hips as he lifted one foot to rest on the opposite knee. The warmth of the fire washed over him and he sighed, sinking back into the plush cushion and staring into the fire.
"It would be a round face, with those two bright sparks for eyes and darker flames on top for some hair," he mused aloud. "Those longer flickers could be arms, but you have many of them my friend. All the better to burn the logs, I suppose."
“Burn the logs, conduct the magic… I do all the work around here!” the fire retorted, and Five jumped, staring as the little purple flames near the bottom moved around just like a pair of lips. “More hot water Ben, I need a bath to relax. Move the castle around the hills Ben, I’d like to visit the town!” it, or rather, Ben, continued, with such a whine to it’s voice that it was clear to Five that the flames must be imitating somebody.
“A talking fireplace,” Five said flatly, after regaining his composure. “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”
“I’m not a fireplace!” it cried indignantly, sending sparks flying up the chimney. “I’m a fire demon! And I’m a good one at that. You should be kinder to me, under the curse you are. I’m probably your only hope.”
“Surely the Wizard will be able to help me.”
“Ha! Klaus rarely looks past the end of his own nose. He wouldn’t notice your curse for weeks, and even then he’d have to be bored. No, I’m definitely your best chance.”
Five tilted his head to the side and regarded the fire demon. “And what’s in it for you then? Breaking my curse, I mean.”
“I’m bound to this hearth by contract. I can’t move from this spot. I can’t leave, I can’t see the world or talk to anybody who isn’t in the castle, and even then the few visitors we get don’t usually see me,” the fire moaned. “What about you? Your curse seems alright, most people would be delighted to be 40 years younger.”
“I have a wife, who I love very much. We’ve grown old together, and I want to carry on growing even older together.”
“Then how about a bargain,” Ben said, his flaming face leaning out of the hearth to stare at Five intently. “You break my contract, and I’ll break your curse.”
“Deal. Now, how do I break your contract?”
——————————-
If Klaus was honest with himself (and generally Klaus tried not to be), this wouldn’t be the first time he had dragged himself out of his soft, cosy, piled-high-with-pillows, unquestionably-the-best-in-any-world bed and had quickly found himself fumbling through his morning routine with an unexpected (and inexplicable) new guest in his home.
He had yet to determine if it was Ben’s fault (plausible, but hard to prove), his own fault (unlikely, he absolutely never blacked out or got so sleep-deprived he couldn’t remember his actions later, or made joking offers to more-or-less strangers who then took him up on his half-hearted promises), or if it was the fault of the universe at large (this was where he’d put his money, if he was a betting man, because the vast, unknowable workings of the universe were supposed to be mysterious and leave people fumbling to keep up; and also Klaus was a firm believer in his own significance, so it seemed perfectly believable that some mysterious force with the power of the cosmos would be out to get him, specifically).
All this to say: when Klaus stumbled into the front room to discover not one, but two tiny stringbean boys gathered around the crackling hearth with an assortment of cooking implements and looking very much like they were about to go to war, he paused in the doorway only long enough to ensure they were two distinct individuals, rather than a cloning spell gone wrong (or possibly a result of early-morning blurred vision). Once he was certain that he wasn’t seeing double, and was reasonably sure Elliott-please-remember-his-name-Klaus-you’ll-make-him-cry-again-if-you-keep-making-up-nicknames-on-the-spot-to-cover-for-your-terrible-memory hadn’t spontaneously developed the ability to duplicate himself, he drew his favorite fur-lined silk robe around himself and continued into the room with the confidence of someone who definitely knew what was going on in his own home.
“Ben, I’m going to want a bath after breakfast, make sure there’s hot water when you’re done cooking,” he said loftily, drifting past the little ones on his way to the kettle. He raised his voice over top of Ben’s mumbling to continue, “And remember I like my bacon extra crispy!”
There, now that he seemed completely unconcerned with the stranger in their midst and like he had full control over this situation, Klaus turned around with studied casualness to survey their newest Lost Boy. His observations:
1. The boy was at least head-and-shoulders shorter than Klaus, but thin as a weed with awkward elbows and knobby knees.
2. The boy was wearing a finely-tailored suit that would have been stuffy on an adult, but looked absolutely adorable on this baby-faced preteen who was attempting to scowl Klaus’s fireplace into submission.
3. The boy appeared to have arrived in Klaus’s home and immediately entrenched himself as top dog, likely through sheer stubbornness if his staring contest with Ben and Elliott’s nervous-but-attentive hovering was anything to go by.
Well, Klaus certainly wasn’t going to fight him over the privilege. He abhorred confrontations, and as long as they set some ground rules early on while Klaus still had the illusion of seniority, he was perfectly happy to graciously welcome their newest member to the household and bestow some responsibilities onto those young shoulders.
“I’m afraid the title of chef is already taken by our talented fire scamp, there; are you the new housekeeper?” Klaus prompted, stirring a thick glob of honey into his morning tea. He tried not to grimace at the slightly-burnt aftertaste and tried to maintain a calm and politely curious expression; this kid was definitely not allowed to be in charge of tea making if this was the fruits of his labour.
“You need one,” the kid muttered under his breath, before dumping a heap of scrambled eggs onto the plate Elliott was holding ready. “But no, I’m here to be your new bookkeeper. From what I can tell, the state of your ledgers would be intolerable - if you actually kept any.”
“Oh.” Klaus took another sip of tea to buy himself some time to hide his bewilderment, momentarily forgetting how awful it tasted. He set his cup down on an unclaimed corner of space on the table and cleared his throat. “Well I thought you’d appreciate the chance to create your own system for that. I’m sure you have that well in hand.”
He certainly didn’t remember hiring a bookkeeper, but that did sound like the kind of official position a man running three separate shops in two different municipalities might need in order to keep their things in order. Maybe the local governments just assigned those kinds of things to make sure the correct taxes were getting paid…?
Nodding agreeably, Klaus accepted a plate of scrambled eggs and extra-crispy bacon and started to shove things around on the table so that there was room to sit down and eat. “Elliott would you get another stool from the closet for, uh -”
“Five,” the kid interrupted, slapping his own plate down at the head of the table and settling into Klaus’s favourite chair. “It’s Five, and I’ve already got a chair.”
Klaus smiled brightly at Five and sank onto the stool Elliott had just retrieved with a wide-eyed, anxious look between Klaus and the interloper, but didn’t protest. He could be a gracious host, Ben, stop giving him that look. “Well after my bath, let me know if there’s anything you need in order to get started on things! Elliott’s been handling some of the inventory and fiddly little numbers involved in our prices, but I’m more than happy to help!”
Besides, the kid looked like he wouldn’t have hesitated to weaponise those elbows.