Archive of Our Own

“For afterwards a man who has suffered
much and wandered much has pleasure out of his sorrows.”

~Homer, The Odyssey

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2019, Timeline #2

On the ride back from the graveyard, Reginald lets Klaus sit up front with him. For a long time, they go by without speaking. Klaus traces the colors of the lights as they pass by, peering into the depth of the darkness when they drive past parks unlit by streetlamps. There are fewer people out than there were before.

After a few breaths, Klaus feels Reginald’s hand come over and clasp his shoulder – unlike all the times his father had done so to steer him away from trouble and further disappointment, his hold is soft. He raises his hand and gently taps down on the top of Klaus’s bloodied jacket, once, twice. His hand goes back to the steering wheel, and Klaus can feel its absence burn on his skin.

He’d thought that if all existence was pulverized in a blinding wave of celestial light, he might feel a bit more bothered about it. At the very least, he’d thought he would feel a bit more crowded – but none of the disappeared people have shown their ghostly faces to Klaus yet. Marcus didn’t show up knocking on Klaus’s deathly doorstep demanding justice or a family reunion, so he hadn’t stopped to think that maybe he had passed onto the next plane. He’d told Viktor so much, when he’d asked, softly, like an afterthought.

Maybe all the disappeared people were experiencing what he knew how to experience now. Not a passing, not an ending, just a sort of waking. A new way of existing, like everything beforehand just hadn’t fit right until now.

Klaus closes his eyes and remembers the last bus. How the other side had been warm, and finally full of color. He’d stood long enough under the sun to get his tan, and when he’d nodded at the little girl, she’d seemed almost unbothered.

“Klaus?”

His father had never once called him by his name. Reginald had written it down. Klaus had found his number and name scribbled nearly interchangeably in the various notes he’d discovered and barely skimmed through in Dad’s office before throwing them into the fire. But while the cold bastard was still alive, he had never offered Klaus that respect. He doubts he did for any of them.

He blinks open his eyes, his forehead resting on the trembling passenger side window. Reginald is bouncing his gaze from the road to Klaus and back again.

“You rang?”

“We’re nearly to the hotel,” Reginald says, and Klaus notices the increasing frequency of neon. Many of the storefront lights are out, though, with no one to man them. “I have some trepidation regarding the other children. Many of them may not wish to see me.”

“Hey, hey, don’t worry about that,” Klaus flicks the air away with his goodbye palm. “Look, sure, you’re not everyone’s Dad of the Year, but they’ll listen to me. Maybe. You helped me, and that’s got to count for something, right?”

Reginald huffs under his breath, and Klaus turns to look out the window again.

“You gave me something my other stupid dad never could. My whole life, I’ve been chasing this, this thing, this feeling, and he knew what it was, but he never showed me, the bastard. I thought it was the drugs, but it wasn’t. It was this feeling, this peace, you know? I never thought I’d find it. Hell, I bet everyone else didn’t think so either.”

Klaus takes a long breath, looking out on how the trees line the park and the alleys open up into nothing, like a doorway. “But it’s here! Finally, the claw on the claw machine has gripped around the best goddamn prize in the box, the one you’re always eyeing in the corner, and it didn’t drop out in midair! It actually slid down the chute and you can touch it with your bare hands! And you gave that to me. They’ll see it, they’ll understand.”

The car is silent for a long moment. They pass by a particularly large and bright sign, and the head rush reminds Klaus of when he opens his eyes on the other side.

Reginald huffs again, shaking his head. “You are a strange individual, Klaus.”

Something acrid mixes in with the happiness, turning the world just slightly off kilter, but Klaus swallows it down. He hasn’t felt this good since before the funeral, years ago in the first timeline when he was so high he couldn’t remember the goddamn year. He’s not about to let anything ruin that – not the vague wrongness of being alone in the car with Dad, not Allison acting distant and not speaking to anyone with any kindness, not the end of the world – again. This is it – this is his reason. It didn’t matter. Not anything.

“Aw, Dad,” Klaus swoons, holding his hands to his chest, and swallowing spit. “Love you too.”

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1996, Timeline #1

For a lack of names, identified only by their numbers and their powers, they all arbitrarily pick their favorite colors early on. The second half of roll call more or less gets their favorite color assigned to them after One, Two, and Three declare theirs. Seven doesn’t even get to choose, since he’s not with them when Five lays out seven different toy trains on the carpet during free time for reference. Four tries not to be too disappointed when Three takes the purple train and decides that yellow is a perfectly good color. It’s not like anyone else would have taken it, anyway. Five takes orange and Six green. Six argues that there should be an indigo train, as there are seven colors in a rainbow, but after everyone picks, all that’s left for Seven is a lonely white wooden block.

“I don’t want to play with trains,” Three complains, sitting upright on the living room’s musty carpet. “What game are we supposed to play in fifteen minutes?”

“We don’t even have a track,” One points out. He and Three make eye contact, and Three ducks her head.

“There’s loads we can do,” Five rolls his eyes. “Trains are feats of engineering. They’re also used as great analogies – remember what Pogo was telling us during our philosophy lesson this morning?”

“Pass,” Four moans.

“Look.” Five grits his teeth. “Ever since Two decided that it was a good idea to send One’s model plane into oncoming traffic, we don’t have all that much to work with. All I’m saying is that you could use your imagination.”

“Come on,” Two scoffs. “That ‘traffic’ was obviously a criminal trying to make a getaway.”

“Children,” A voice echoes from the doorway, and they all turn around quickly. Realizing it’s their father, they all jump up into standing. Reginald almost never comes to get them for training, letting Pogo herd them around and watching from a distance if he comes at all.

“Dad,” Three says, and smiles. Reginald’s face doesn’t change.

“It’s time for training,” Reginald announces, and Two bristles.

“We still have ten minutes,” He mumbles to Six.

“Yes sir,” One stoops down and grabs all of their trains, dumping them into the basket they came in. “What are we doing this afternoon?”

“You and your siblings will be completing sparring practice with Pogo,” Reginald regards him. “Number Four, you will be coming with me.”

The air stills. “Again?” One asks. “Four’s trained with you the past three days.”

It’s a mistake. Reginald’s visage becomes even cooler, and he takes a step toward them. “And he will continue to train until I say so. Do I make myself clear?”

Five frowns. “What One means is that Four should be getting as much sparring practice in as he can, and someone else should go. He needs all the help he can get, and his powers –”

“Enough,” Reginald snaps, and they all go quiet. “Number Four, with me. The rest of you, to the dojo. Free time is over.”

No one moves for a long minute until Four steps out from the group, first timid steps becoming longer strides as he nears their father. Reginald puts a hand on Four’s back and leads him out of the room. Four takes a look back, making eye contact with One and sticking out his tongue.

“Why does he get special treatment?” Three asks, venom in her tone, but Reginald doesn’t respond. They walk away from the rest of them, until Four can’t hear their hushed, judgmental comments anymore.

Reginald doesn’t speak until they’re in the hallway upstairs, walking toward one of the rooms near his office. They never train in his office, never step inside any further than lingering in the doorway at spare hopeful bedtimes. Reginald walks into a room empty save for two chairs and a table and closes the door behind them.

“Do not ruminate on the remarks of your siblings, Number Four,” Reginald says, pulling out his chair and sitting down in it. Four scrambles to copy him, struggling to find a comfortable position for his legs. At seven years old, he’s hitting his first major growth spurt, and his coordination is all over the place. It’s no wonder the rest of them laugh at him during obstacle training. “Your abilities are of much a different realm than their own. Consequently, your powers require a different approach for training.”

Four knows his abilities are special, however terrifying they can be, but hearing it makes the space behind his chest swell with warmth. He smiles up at Dad, waiting expectantly. Reginald doesn’t return the expression, but Four can swear that his eyes soften.

“Now,” Reginald pulls a stack of photographs out of his jacket pocket, cutting off the words building in Four’s mouth. He knows it’s best not to speak until Reginald asks him a question, but sometimes it’s just so hard to keep it in. The pictures are spread before him on the table, three depictions of the same older woman in black and white. “We will begin where we left off yesterday, conjuring spirits from photographic recognition. Today, I want you to search for this woman. I believe you are ready.”

“Yes, sir.” Four straightens up, peering over at the photographs. The ghosts he tries to ignore during the light of the day begin to come through and line the walls. Four tries not to shiver. At night, when he’s alone in his room and the ghosts cast a glow that lights the walls, he feels panicked and haunted. At least during the day, the sunshine coming through the windows casts through their forms and reminds him what they are. He looks among them and frowns. Many of the people Dad has asked him to conjure and report on have been from nearby in the city and easy to find. On first glance, he does not see the woman from the photos at all.

Four closes his eyes, balling his hands into fists and concentrating. It’s hard for him to hold his attention, sometimes, but he tries really hard when he’s with Dad. The past few days have been really good – he’s been able to find all the people Dad was looking for, even the bank robber that was really scary with the misshaped head, and he wants to keep pleasing his father.

It feels like a few minutes go by, but when Four opens his eyes he knows more time than that has passed. Reginald is regarding him with scrutiny, and Four feels the warmth that had spread throughout his chest deflate quickly.

“Well, Number Four?” Reginald asks harshly. “Is the spirit present?”

Four swallows. “Well, no. She hasn’t shown up yet. Is she from the city?”

“Your gifts should enable you to locate a spirit regardless of their original geography, Number Four!” Reginald barks, and Four backs up further into the chair. “Try again!”

Four slams his eyes shut, fists trembling, but when he opens his eyes the woman hasn’t appeared. More ghosts crowd the room, making the hair on his arms stick straight up with discomfort. Reginald raises an eyebrow at him, and Four shakes his head.

“Again!” He demands, and Four shakes out his hands. When he tries once more, a splitting pain slices through his head and he gasps aloud, cradling his forehead with his hands. Reginald stands sharply, the chair scratching back, and Four resists the urge to cry.

“Where is she, Number Four?” Reginald asks, slamming a hand down on the table and making him jump. “Her spirit exists out there! If it is not on the earthly plane, you should be able to reach into the void and bring her forward! Again!”

Four shivers, hiding his head in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” He chokes out. “I can’t find her. I’m sorry, Dad.”

Reginald pauses, staring at him. A long minute goes by, Four trying to hold himself tight enough to stop any trembling, before Reginald straightens up. He tugs on his vest, straightening his monocle, and lets out a sharp breath.

“Go fetch some water, Number Four.” Four looks up at his father. His face has softened back from the cruel expression he was wearing just before, but behind his eyes is still a cold blankness. Four tries to remember how he had felt when Dad had called his name out of all of them, how it felt to be special. It takes a moment, harder to find than before, but he cradles the feeling against himself, unwilling to let it go. “We will take a ten-minute break, and then try again.”

Four nods, staring at the pictures on the table. He waits for Reginald to say something more, or maybe even put his hand on Four’s shoulder like he sometimes does when he strains his powers too much. That doesn’t happen. A few beats pass before Reginald makes an impatient sound under his breath, his grip on the back of his chair tightening.

“Well, then?” He spits out, and Four flinches. “Go!”

Four launches out of the chair, skidding it slightly against the hardwood before walking briskly out of the room and toward the kitchen for water. In the distance, he can his siblings sparring each other with Pogo as their sensei. All at once, Four longs to be with them, and also seethes with pride that for once in his life, Dad is paying attention to him alone instead.

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2019, Timeline #2

After the whole messy business with the spear gun, he’d been a bit preoccupied, you know, with the whole being mad at the little girl and the scenery change and all that. It was all very distracting and all-encompassing of his entire spirit. Apparently, he sticks around long enough without being verbally berated by his dead father to uncover some deeply repressed truths – and then he sees his mom! – which is, really, a good enough excuse to be a little emotionally overwhelmed. So he forgets.

But the second time (or, rather, the 57^th time), he spends some time looking. He visits the mountains, goes back to the ocean, the tugging feeling in his chest mindfully building to a crushing crescendo until he wakes up in the trunk of his not-Dad’s car. He thinks it’s unfair, really. He’s felt this pull for his entire life, unable to satiate it until now, until this, and it only wipes away for so long in the tepid stillness of the void until he feels it again pulling him back toward life.

Honestly, he’s not sure he wants to go back there. It’s quiet in the void, and peaceful, except for the lingering glare from the little girl as she passes him by now and again. The tugging feels like hunger, once you get past actually being hungry – like how he’d feel after not eating for four days in order to afford some higher priority necessities. He’d love, just for longer than ten minutes, to not feel empty and hollowed out.

Maybe, if he could find Ben wandering around the sand dunes or under the fallen branches of a film noir sycamore tree, nagging at him to eat some fucking trail mix, he’d feel a little more fulfilled.

But then he gets busy, and his otherworldly, expanding-in-technicolor searching time gets cut down considerably when he’s trying his damnedest to catapult himself back onto the hot, sticky pavement outside the city where Reginald is waiting. Somewhere, in between number 72 and 84, something clicks in his brain, and he stops looking.

It’s amazing, when that happens, when all the clouds form a shape and he just gets it. It never makes it any less sad.

Dad always used to give him this spiel about him being able to have a greater sight, or whatever the fuck. Last he checked he had a regular twenty-twenty, because they all did, came with the superhero gigs and divine destiny or whatever. Ben used to agree with Dad, too, which pissed him off. Said that Klaus had the ability to see things other people couldn’t (duh) that weren’t just the ghosts (less duh). He’d then follow it up by saying Klaus walked around with blinders on like an idiot ruining his own life, but Klaus took the original compliment.

He guesses there was some truth in both statements. You never really can see anything until you’re ready to see it. For the clouds to form, to understand.

After his first epiphany, he also figures out that time moves in drawn out ways in the void, like waiting for butter to melt in the microwave. He gets pretty good at balancing trying to get back as fast as he can with waiting for the rubber band of void time to snap.

He also gets pretty good at finding company.

“Why don’t you go find your stupid brother and quit bothering me?” Alphonso sneers without turning around from his place on the couch. It’s facing a large television set placed at the rooftop edge of an extremely tall building. Klaus swears he can taste atmosphere. A bird nearly collides with his head. “You know, the Ben you all kept weeping over, or whatever.”

“Oh, you know,” Klaus says airily, wandering around the edge of the crappy futon and tracing the fabric with his hands. It looks like it’s been mauled by several woodland animals. Heaven, his ass. “I thought maybe we could bond. One Four to another.”

“No thanks. Leave now, please.”

“And I can’t find Ben here, just so you know.” Klaus continues over him, physically deflating. “Because of this whole pesky paradox. If Ben was adopted but we weren’t, and we were never born, then Ben never died. He grows up with less inhibitions, becomes even more of an asshole, and has a delightful sense of fashion! But he never shows up here. More’s the pity. My conscience really is gone.”

Alphonso turns to regard him, blinking slowly. The downward curve of his mouth is more frown than sagging skin, which is saying something. “You all give me a fucking headache.”

“Yeah, well, looking at your pretty face doesn’t exactly soothe my soul either,” Klaus waves a hand at him, dismissing the insult. “What’s worse is that as much as I want to, I can’t go and find Dave here either. All he remembers in this timeline is a blindingly attractive but slightly deranged hottie from the sixties that he accosted on behalf of his homophobic uncle, and the man he was when he died was never in love with me. Ben would say it would only hurt, and I should have listened to him the first time around.”

Alphonso’s face screws up. “Who the fuck is Dave?”

“Where’s your Four-Six combo dream team, anyway?” Klaus asks, folding his torso over the back of the couch. He reaches out an arm and slowly takes a handful of chips out of a plastic bowl. Alphonso gives him a dirty look and moves it to his other side. “You know, the gross goth one, with the spit? Miss Serpentina? I never got her name.”

“Her name is Jayme,” Alphonso growls. “And I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.”

Klaus hums thoughtfully, wandering around to the front side of the couch and sitting down next to Alphonso, who sighs and puts his chin in his hand. It makes a weird squelching sound that Alphonso seems unfazed by but gives Klaus the heebie jeebies. He would know. He’s a heebie jeebies kind of guy.

“Look,” Alphonso says, turning to regard Klaus fully. “If this is like, a thing, a no do-overs, game-over kind of deal? And you’re able to do whatever you want? Let me know if you find her.”

“Well, whatever I want is kind of a stretch,” Klaus kicks his feet up on the wooden coffee table, folding his hands behind his head. Some bird poops about twenty feet above them and it splatters near his shoes. “Think less fast pass at the amusement park and more stealing the key ring from the security guard at 10pm.”

“Come on, man,” Alphonso says, exacerbated. “She’s my best friend.”

“Yeah, I gathered. You died practically holding hands, it was kind of cute.” Klaus moves his feet away from the bird shit and straightens up, unable to stay still. “I really thought you two would stick around for a little ghost action, but no dice. I can’t promise anything, but next time I take a vacation I’ll look around some creepy attics or sand pits for her.”

Klaus stands, walking over to where the television is perched on the edge of the roof. He looks down at how the drop dissolves into nothing, like the whole world is here in the sky with surprisingly temperate weather and little wind.

“Oh, and hey,” Alphonso speaks again, mouth around a fistful of chips. “If you see Ben again –”

Something stirs in Klaus’s stomach, and suddenly this isn’t as fun anymore.

“Aw,” Klaus cuts him off, giving himself a hug. “That’s my cue.”

Alphonso balks at him, confused, but Klaus has already stepped up to the edge, turning around to give him a wink. “Hey, wait –”

Before, traveling through the void had felt like walking in the dark with a rope tied around his chest, pulling him back when he least expected it. Now, looking at Alphonso with a mix of pity and vindication stirring within his heart, thinking of what’s waiting for him on the other side, Klaus smiles. He’s learned now, how to reach blindly, to find the rope. Has learned how to take it in his hands, and tug on it first.

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1997 – 2005, Timeline #1

The mausoleum leaves him shattered. Before, he was able to get through most of the trainings Dad asked him to do with the ghosts and cry himself to sleep with fear and guilt whenever he couldn’t. The mausoleum, though, is different. It’s a cornerstone. It’s a before and an after. Every night he sits on his bed wedged up against the corner, imagining the walls turning to slab, remembering how he yelled and screamed, cried and begged. How Dad didn’t come. How he had, finally, just to turn around and lock him in again. Left him behind, with nothing to look at but the ghosts tearing the world apart.

After the mausoleum, he wakes up with his breath harsh in his throat every night, his limbs flailing and knocking over his lamp onto the floor, sending glasses of water shattering against the hardwood. He screams his voice raw enough that Reginald finally, after years of nightmares, soundproofs his room, and Grace has to give him cough medicine just to be able to speak.

In the weeks after the mausoleum, the cough medicine is the only thing that makes the world stop ending. It makes the gaping hole in the middle of his chest stop thrumming, the tears stop springing, the ghosts stop screaming.

Then it stops working as well, and Klaus finds himself behind Dad’s bar at two in the morning, siphoning whiskey into an empty pickle jar he stole out of the recycling three days prior. He sits with his coveted prize in the corner of his bed, the mattress starting to dip down from the habit, and drinks until his hands stop shaking.

The missions help at first, somewhat. It helps to have a role to play, even if he’s not front and center like Luther or Diego or Five. Allison and Klaus are the designated camera fodder because they have bright smiles and symmetrical face structures, and people love screaming their names. In the daytime, he gets all the attention in the world, posing for pictures and even getting slightly approving looks from Reginald when he plays bait or calls lookout successfully. But then the night comes, and Klaus lives in wait and fear that Dad is going to call for him to go to the cemetery again. Every night, Klaus flinches when Dad looks at him during dinner. He doesn’t call his name.

Klaus hates himself for it, is beginning to hate Reginald for it. And at the same time, he’s also monumentally, horrifyingly relieved.

Grace finds his whiskey stash and Dad flushes it down the toilet, making him watch. He makes Pogo give him an educational lecture on underage drinking. The fact that he doesn’t bring it up again and doesn’t bring his siblings in to witness his punishment causes his skin to itch. That night, he takes a decorative plate off of a table in one of the extra rooms and smashes it, wrapped up in a pillowcase against the floor. He pours the pieces into the pickle jar and leaves it on top of the bar. Reginald doesn’t say a word.

Even when he tries, Klaus can’t seem to piss off Dad enough to get him to notice. His brothers are far better at it. So much better, that when Diego pins blades into Dad’s favorite taxidermized ram he gets all his knives taken away and Dad makes him recite a public apology in front of all of them during dinner.

He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, but it never comes. Dad never drags him back to the mausoleum, kicking and screaming. Never sits him down in front of everyone to repent for telling a series of lies to get the others to do his chores for him. When he gets caught sneaking out to a high school party with kids much older than him, Grace simply leads him to Dad’s office, where he stands in the doorway and twists with disgust as Dad tells him what a disappointment he is. Klaus smokes the weed he got from the party without opening the window, and then sets his homework on fire in the wastebasket. Luther groans that he smells like smoke the next day, but besides that no one says anything.

Then Five decides to pull the biggest fuck you in all of history and disappear before they’ve even finished their mashed potatoes. Dad acts cool in the moment, but Klaus knows. He knows in the way he pushes back his chair and stalks upstairs to his office afterwards, ordering everyone to evening training, that he’s pissed – pissed in a way he never was when Klaus literally pissed in one of the houseplants on a dare. He says Five’s name in a way he never said Four’s, not even when he used to call him for individual training.

Dad hasn’t called for him in some time. Klaus is beginning to think that it’s because he’s reached the end of his rope, the bottom of the well. There’s no hidden weapon lying underneath his fear, no useful tactic to save the world from baddies – just dead people no one else can see, as angry as he is, and maybe as afraid. When Dad calls him useless for the first time, after he blows a live interview because he was high and disgraces the Academy or whatever, that confirms it.

When Five disappears, Klaus counts the hours, estimating the amount of time he was in the mausoleum for. The rest of his siblings become concerned for his whereabouts four hours sooner than Klaus came home. Klaus puts his blunt out on Dad’s placemat.

Klaus sneaks back home from a party to find Diego sitting in his window. Wordlessly, Klaus passes Diego what’s left of the joint he’d been smoking. He takes a drag and then hands it back quickly. Diego has always had a rebellious streak ten miles wide, but never for the same reasons. Diego pulls from the joints Klaus brings home, but he doesn’t get anything out of it. He doesn’t enjoy it the way Klaus does.

Diego’s joy comes from provoking their father, whereas to Klaus nowadays it feels more like a chore, like something he has to do just to get noticed, to scratch the itch, to get through the day. Every day is a test to see who will crack first, him or their Dad. They’re both failing.

“Dude, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you,” Diego complains one night when they’re sixteen and tucked away in Mom’s luggage room, prying open paint cans with Diego’s knives. Klaus dips a shredded piece of old uniform into an open can of Laguna Blue and holds it up to his face, inhaling deeply. His last growth spurt really had been good for something.

“Other than all the usual ways?” Last week, Ben had found Klaus hanging upside down in one of the shower stalls. He had gotten stuck getting into the position, thinking it would be really funny if someone found him like that. It hadn’t been all that funny.

“Yeah,” Diego says, taking the rag from him and dipping it in again. “The things you let Hargreeves say to you, man, it’s like you don’t have ears.”

Diego had started calling Dad by their surname this year, like they all didn’t share it.

“Oh, who cares what the old bastard has to say?” Klaus huffs out a breath. “He just doesn’t know how to have any fun and is pissed I figured it out all on my own. Some things you just can’t learn in school, Diego, and one of those things is the beauty of the night sky with some oxy and a little calypso.”

“That’s another thing,” Diego points out, holding the rag up to his nose. When he takes it away, a small streak of blue remains on the ridges of one nostril. Amateur. “Other than you never making any fucking sense. You’re always apologizing for the shit he does.”

“I am not apologizing,” Klaus says, jerking the rag back into his hands. “What do I have to apologize for?”

Diego gives him a look. Klaus resolves that he will not let his brother ruin his high.

“Fine,” Diego rolls his eyes. “Justifying, whatever. Like you always used to do when we were kids. It was like you were pretending he was this good person, or a real Dad, or something. He’s not. He’s a shit person, and you don’t deserve that shit.”

Guilt swirls in his gut. He thinks about the days when they’d sit in the extra room with two chairs and a table, when Dad would call his name out of everyone all in a line. It had felt like Klaus was a detective and they were solving crimes together, back when they had been sure Klaus would grow up able to do more than be haunted. Diego hadn’t been there, hadn’t felt that feeling. Not in the same way. Diego was still a superhero.

Klaus hums under his breath, a simple note.

“He’s the worst,” Klaus muses, inhaling in the fumes again. “But he’s still our Dad.”

When he passes the rag back to Diego, it’s clear that the conversation is over. Diego groans quietly, and then lets Klaus change the subject to something more fun.

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2001, Timeline #1

They sit in the car on their way to missions in the same why they line up for the press: in numerical order. Diego and Five both seethe at being forced to sit in the middle, but Five is more successful with his efforts to maximize personal space. While Luther just pushes Diego back, Klaus and Ben make do with cramming themselves up against the doors in the back of the car, more often than not just wishing that Reginald would roll down the windows.

They tend to stink by the time they make their return trip – especially Ben, who has a perpetual queasy look on his face. Klaus is more or less used to it by now, but he knows Five debates just teleporting himself straight home every car ride.

“Bet you five dollars I get asked the first interview question,” Klaus leans over and whispers in Five’s ear. He doesn’t like to think about the missions right before they happen, instead opting to daydream about the fun parts that happen after. Five palms his face and pushes him away.

“You don’t have five dollars,” Five says. “And if you did, that’s a stupid bet.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Klaus concedes. “Allison always gets asked the first question.”

This is their sixth major mission as the Umbrella Academy, and in every press opportunity after the action ends Allison gets fawned over. They’re all sure that it’s because she’s the only girl, but Klaus seems to be the only one that gets jealous about it.

Five stares off to the side, and then huffs out a breath, looking back at Klaus with a smirk. “Five dollars that I take down the first robber, though.”

Klaus returns a grin. Diego turns and looks back at them, eyebrows furrowed. Klaus mulls over his options. Sure, Five is the fastest, but Diego has the range.

He sticks out a hand and Five shakes it. “I’ll take that action.”

Diego scoffs under his breath, turning back around, and Klaus cuffs him on the back of the head. Of all his siblings, Diego and Five are the least likely to back away from a challenge, which is how Klaus gets his main source of entertainment. It’s also precisely how he’d cheered the two of them on while chugging milk until Five had teleported to the upstairs bathroom to puke, but not before Diego had yakked into the kitchen sink.

Five wins the bet. He normally does.

Their mission is yet another robbery, although this time it’s in a fancy art museum downtown. They don’t spend a lot of their education learning about art, but Reginald had briefed them all as quickly as possible about the most valuable portraits and sculptures with a printed-out packet so that they could ensure no hooligan left with one. Klaus wishes they spent more time on art in class. He had lingered on a page of a beautiful painting of a woman floating in a pool of water until Five had ripped the packet out of his hands.

The plan is much like all their other missions they’ve completed so far; Klaus’s job alternates between being lookout, scout, or bait depending on who the bad guys are. He’s not a particular fan of any of his roles, but Reginald has made it very clear what his skillsets are good for and what he can’t do. He knows he’s not like everyone else and can’t send a grown man flying into next Tuesday with a flick of the wrist.

At least acting as scout and playing bait have an element of espionage to them that he enjoys. At the art museum, he, Ben, and Five are sent to the western wing to protect a more expensive showcase of pottery while the other three confront the baddies in the main hall. The room the sculptures are in is a bit too small to let the Horror loose in without some serious collateral damage, so Klaus and Five are ordered to draw out the robbers to the bigger hallway where Ben can go wild.

Ben, to his credit, does not look jazzed about going wild.

They’re in the sculpture room for all of twenty seconds before one of the robbers turns and opens fire on them (before Klaus can even turn on his cute little kid charm! The audacity!). Klaus tucks and rolls out of the way behind a sculpture mount and Five blinks behind the robber, using the momentum from his jump to snap the man’s neck. The robber’s finger is still latched on the trigger, and he sends a spray of bullets flying as he crumples to the ground. Several sculptures shatter into pieces and a few of the other robbers are shot in the crossfire. Klaus pokes his head out from behind a Grecian bust.

“Ooh,” Klaus taunts. “Dad’s gonna be mad.”

Five gestures to the dead body, and then to his wrist where a watch would be if he owned one. “Five dollars.”

Five blinks out of the way before another robber can grab at him, evidently showing a tad more restraint toward murdering children. Klaus runs back toward the door, throwing it open and gesturing widely.

“Hey, guys! Maybe the real priceless art was the friends we made along the way!” Klaus shouts, and then ducks as someone throws a broken piece of marble at him. Five appears behind him and yanks the back of his uniform through the door, pulling him around and down as someone else decides to shoot at them again.

“Think you could get any better at making friends?” Five teases.

“I’m lovable and complicated,” Klaus fires back.

They run down toward the end of the hallway, which opens to a large balcony that overlooks a stairwell which descends in an open plan all the way to the bottom floor. There’s an elaborate tapestry on the wall just beyond the railing and another exhibit they can duck into when Ben lets the Horror loose. The robbers, predictably, follow them out, even though there’s one man that lags behind the rest, carrying an oversized vase on his back. Klaus feels for him – it looks heavy, and the man is sweating profusely.

“Hey, dickwads!” Five yells. “Over here!”

Ben comes out from the doorway he had been hiding in and Klaus scrambles to take his place. He isn’t fast enough for the trigger-happy robbers though, who start firing rounds that erupt the tiles at his feet. Ben holds up his hands but a piece of fragmented tile flies through the air and slices across his cheek, eliciting a cry. Five snarls and blinks into the robber’s ranks, throwing punches.

Klaus turns to check on Ben and maybe get the hell out of Dodge before Ben’s friends come a-flying, but he’s interrupted by one of the robbers running at him and trying to hit him with the butt of his gun. Klaus stumbles backwards, his back hitting the balcony. He dodges another blow and ducks low, snaking his shoulder under and in between the man’s legs. His training kicks in, and Klaus moves automatically. He reaches up and grabs the man’s shirt, pulling him further over Klaus’s back and making him drop his gun. Klaus staggers his stance and pushes upward with all his might, thankful that the man is slight of frame as he pushes him up and over the railing.

He gapes as the man topples down toward the bottom floor, surprised that the move had worked, let alone worked that well. He turns to share his mixture of incredulousness and conflicted pride with his brothers, but both Ben and Five are engaged with a robber of their own. Five dispatches his and blinks over to help Ben, yelling at him to unleash the Horror. Another goon quickly replaces the one that Klaus flipped, not wasting any time, and sinking a right hook right into Klaus’s jaw.

This one is much larger than the last and knows how to punch. Recoiling, Klaus holds onto the railing, but the robber grabs the front of his uniform with two hands before he can recover. Moving with his momentum, the robber pulls Klaus’s frame, spinning in a circle. Klaus panics, unable to secure his footing, and is helpless as the man picks him up off his feet and completes the circle, throwing him over the balcony. Klaus follows a similar trajectory to the guy he threw over, but his foot catches the rail, and he flounders.

The wall is only a few feet away from the railing, and Klaus reaches out blindly for the tapestry that dangles from the ceiling. His fingers momentarily find purchase and his legs kick out at the wall. He has enough time to turn his head, meeting Ben and Five’s masked eyes in shock before the tapestry seems to remember that it wasn’t designed to hold human weight and drops with him three stories to the floor below.

Klaus loses some time, the sounds of the fight fading away, but when he opens his eyes he sees Five’s face above him, face set in a steely frown. He thinks that maybe Five had been saying his name.

He licks his lips, kicking out where his legs are entangled with the massive tapestry. Behind Five he sees Ben on the stairs, once again absolutely covered in blood and still looking nauseous.

“Did we win?” Klaus asks.

Somehow, Five’s frown becomes even deeper.

“You’re an idiot,” Five says in lieu of answering. “Somehow you missed the stairs entirely. I tried to help, but we couldn’t get down here quick enough.”

“That’s okay,” Klaus says. “You were busy.”

“You’re lucky you’re alive,” Five snaps at him. “I thought you weren’t breathing.”

“The tapestry must have broken my fall,” Klaus trails a hand along the smooth fabric. He tries to pick up his head and blinks against the pain in the back of his skull. He lets his eyes fall over a few feet to his side and sees the body of the robber he’d tossed over. Klaus grimaces. The tapestry had definitely not broken that guy’s fall. “Art really is essential for survival.”

Five scrutinizes him, still frowning, but then stands and helps Klaus up. Ben steps forward to help but keeps a few feet away like he always does in the wake of unleashing the Horror.

“Are you okay?” Ben asks when he sees Klaus wince.

“Never been better,” Klaus winks. “That was a wonderful little adventure, but I definitely broke a couple ribs so I’m ready to call it a night.”

“Same,” Ben mutters.

Five blinks out of sight for a moment and then comes back, half helping Klaus and half pushing him forward.

“The others are done,” Five reports. “All the robbers are either dead or have been arrested, so we can go.”

“Did we get any arrests?” Klaus asks. Five doesn’t say anything and Ben lowers his gaze to the ground, so he supposes that answers his question.

Outside the museum, Klaus shakes off the residual pain and basks in the glory with the rest of them, disquieted by the death but happy to have been an actionable part of the operation. Five’s distant, skeptical look is washed away as Klaus jokes with him and beams at the crowd of photographers. He rests an elbow on Five’s shoulder; when no one is looking, Klaus slips a five-dollar bill into his uniform pocket. Five smirks up at him, and lets Klaus lean on him for a record total of twenty seconds before shoving him off, broken ribs be damned.

Back at the Academy, Five and Luther go with Reginald to give the mission briefing. Klaus passes the front room later, where he spots Reginald standing with Pogo in front of the bar. He freezes as Reginald turns and catches his eye, but Reginald simply stares at him for a moment before nodding slightly and turning back to his drink.

Nowadays, it’s about as much approval as Klaus can hope to get.

.

2007, Timeline #1

Klaus is giggling to himself in the middle of his room at 2pm. He’s alone, which is why he’s laughing – he’s never alone. Even now, in the blissful silence of a drug-induced soul journey, in the middle of a practically empty mansion, he’s not really by himself. Ben is standing near his window, arms crossed over his chest as he stares at Klaus, unimpressed. There should be another word, Klaus decides. Something special just for him – not alone, but alone-and-Ben.

This makes Klaus laugh even more, bending over and bracing a hand on his desk as he wheezes. Ben quirks an eyebrow.

“Having fun there?” Ben asks. Klaus smiles at him.

“Oh, yeah,” Klaus gestures to the room and how it’s spinning very slowly, the wallpaper blooming. He’s not sure how long he’s been here, but he doesn’t care. “This is a blast. You gotta try it, man.”

“I’ll pass,” Ben says. “For obvious reasons. What did you take, again?”

“Shrooms, I think,” Klaus looks up at the ceiling. “That or acid. I don’t remember taking it, but it feels like one of the two. Room’s all spinny. It’s okay, Donny gave them to me. I trust Donny.”

“You trust everyone,” Ben mutters, which is just wrong, but Klaus doesn’t move to correct him. “Come on, let’s go get something to eat.”

Klaus looks at his closed door, mood darkening rapidly with being told what to do. It’s like the wallpaper stops expanding outward, pausing and retracting into itself, making the room smaller. Klaus snarls under his breath, hands going to his head.

“Hey,” Ben says, stepping away from the wall. He goes to touch Klaus’s arm before stopping, because he can’t. “You need to eat something.”

“Shut up,” Klaus whines, bending over on himself. The silence he had been reveling in is now stifling. No one is home – not even Dad, who left to go on some business trip. He took Luther and Pogo with him, but he doesn’t ever consider Klaus. Hell, Klaus wouldn’t either. What would he do on a business trip? Tell some douchebag CEO that Mommy’s sorry?

He’d be lying, anyway, but that could be fun. That is, if Luther didn’t catch him.

Luther’s been catching him in a lot of lies, recently.

Ben opens his mouth to speak again, but then thinks better of it and sits down on the bed, waiting for Klaus to get a grip. Fat chance.

He can’t even hear Mom downstairs. Klaus rakes a hand over his scalp, humming a tune under his breath. Something he likes to dance to. He wants to go dancing. He doesn’t want to be here, with the small walls and the door closed. He doesn’t want to be here.

Diego is gone. Allison is gone, face plastered on magazines. Five is gone, Ben is here but he’s gone. Viktor is gone, rooms empty.

Klaus straightens up, turning and opening the door. Ben follows him, calling his name, but Klaus doesn’t stop. He walks down to the entry to the courtyard, to a cupboard where Grace keeps her gardening supplies. He grabs what he came for and walks back up to his room, singing the same song out loud, slightly off pitch. Ben tries to grab him, but his hands go right through Klaus’s shoulder. Klaus stands right where he was before, staring at the walls as they try to eat themselves whole, make the room smaller, trap him inside.

Klaus continues humming and swings the hammer right into the drywall between his room and Viktor’s. He brings his arm back and swings again, imagining he’s some kind of baseball player hitting home runs. Once he makes a hole big enough to stick his arm through, he starts laughing again, happy that his mood is back up. The room is no longer trying to trap him. They can’t try to leave him here, anymore.

Ben keeps saying his name, but Klaus doesn’t stop until there’s at least a dozen large holes in the wall, making it look like the rooms are separated by Swiss cheese. Viktor barely ever decorated his room, Klaus notices. He could do way better.

He deposits the hammer on the floor and opens the window, not even bothering with the door. He drops down to the fire escape with a smile on his face. Ben stays, staring at the wall, until Klaus calls his name, and he follows his brother down the alleyway and onto the street.

.

2019, Timeline #2

He knows he’s not exactly known to be the idea guy, or the smart guy, or anything. And sure, he somewhat intentionally scrambled his brains for the better part of his life and only vaguely remembers choice aspects of his childhood, but he remembers some things. Plus, he’s pretty sure he has at least as many street smarts as Diego does. Avoiding fights that escalate to stabbings and biting off peoples’ ears is a skill – a different skill, but one that he can claim to sometimes possess.

The thing about losing his Jiminy Cricket to the great beyond and then functionally erasing him from existence is that Klaus realizes that he doesn’t have a ton of original thoughts. He could have guessed that, maybe, with how often he used to copy Allison’s homework or tune into the grumblings of less murderous ghosts when he took Reginald’s history tests, but he likes to give himself some credit. He’s spent so long with his ghost conscience by his side that now it sort of feels like he has two streams of thought in his brain – the smart ideas are Ben’s, and the chaotic ones are his. Luckily for him, he usually manages to find a compromise between the two.

And in the few seconds that stretch into an hour and change in his mind, staring at that damn buffalo in the damn hotel room, Klaus can swear that he can feel his two brain cells collide.

They never received any soothing bedtime stories when they were kids, but Reginald did tell them tales. He usually wove them into metaphors and parables in between lessons and training drills, or in a particularly scathing analogy when he was shaming them for their mission performances, but it was enough to put together a picture.

A long-haired figure emerges from the space of the horizon, wearing white buckskin.

Five had asked Dad, once, why they had to read Homer and other texts, but they never had a mythological focus in any of their lessons. Klaus had agreed with him at the time (he thought Apollo sounded sexy), but Reginald had shut it down, saying that their studies were better suited elsewhere. He’d also said that things would become clearer as they grew older, but he always was a cryptic asshole.

But then Five had disappeared, and he’d stopped saying much of any of that at all.

Klaus had always been of the opinion that once Five was gone, it was game over for the Academy. Dad had pushed him, trying to get him to find Five in the void; and then when Klaus failed, he pulled away, and that was that. He went through the motions because they all did, because they had to. Then Ben had died, and any pretense of pretending for him had gone out the window.

Now, though, in this new reality, in this new try, it felt different. Knowing that their dad was gone, the real version that forced him into the mausoleum and made Ben cry at dinner when his stomach hurt too badly to finish, made the world shift. Sure, his version of Ben was gone, but wasn’t that for the better? Klaus had been awful to him during Ben’s entire undead existence, and here he had a family that hadn’t let him die at all.

Klaus felt lighter, clearer here, in the hotel. The pull in the space behind his sternum was back, stronger than ever, even – but while it was annoying and distracting like Ben’s ghost hand trying to flick his ear, it wasn’t painful like he remembered it being when he was young.

And they beckoned for the fool and gave him what he most desired – to life a lifetime, to die and decay.

Some nights, when he snuck out of the Academy, he didn’t even go anywhere. He would climb his way up to the roof and sit on the edge near the observatory, looking out at the western corners of the city. Once he smoked to get rid of the loiterers in his peripheral vision, it was peaceful, sometimes. He knew that Ben or Diego would be downstairs, waiting a certain amount of time before giving up on him and going to bed. He was okay with being alone. Allison had told him once, in embarrassed whispers, about Reginald catching her and Luther up on the roof. If Dad or Pogo knew he was ever up there, no one said anything.

Klaus would sit there, undisturbed, staring at the skyline until the dawning sun showed its face over the edges of the buildings.

The people learned of the seven sacred rites to set the world through rebirth.

As he stares at the buffalo on the wall of the suite, he sees the changing of the city sky – from bright fluorescent lights staining the clouds to the soft pink of sunrise. He swears that the buffalo’s fur changes from white to black, to yellow, to red, right before his eyes. Just as the fur glistens white again, the puzzle pieces starting to click together, he looks deeply into the buffalo’s dark eyes and sees his own reflection staring back at him.

Then the spear goes straight through his chest.

.

2005, Timeline #1

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Klaus groans from where he’s perched laying upside down off the edge of his bed, eyes skimming the scribbled lines on his bedroom wall, trying to make the upside-down phrases make sense in his brain. Sometimes he does this, trying to come back to the things ghosts used to moan at him in the middle of the night like some cop coming back to a cold case. It’s not quite working, now, what with the edible he ate an hour ago, but he’s trying. There’s this carved out feeling in his chest, this need, and he thinks maybe if he can make sense of this, he can make it go away.

He flips right side up on the bed, catching himself on the duvet as the world spins.

“I’m sixteen, dear sister,” He drawls, smiling up at Allison, who’s standing with her arms crossed over her chest in the doorway. “Several things are wrong with me. Including my outfit.”

Allison gives him a once over. He’s stripped down to just his uniform trousers and his undershirt, with his tie knotted around his head and one sock on his left foot. He can’t quite remember where the other one ended up.

Allison sniffs the air and makes a face.

“Besides the obvious,” She says. “First, last week you skipped a mission. A mission, Klaus.”

“My expertise wasn’t needed,” Klaus shrugs. “Even Dad knew that. Bet you barely missed me.”

Allison frowns. “That’s not the point.”

“You don’t get it,” Klaus says, widening his eyes dramatically and making his voice tremble. “The ghosts told me I couldn’t be on that mission. If I had gone, something terrible would have happened! I was taking one for the team – you, you should thank me.”

Allison blinks at him confusedly before groaning under her breath, obviously deducing that he’s spinning a thick web of bullshit.

“The ghosts told you. Sure. But now you don’t even show up to the Teen Vogue interview? For what?” She gestures to his room. “To sit here, staring at nothing?”

“It’s my favorite activity,” Klaus says. “And I’m very good at it.”

“You know none of them are as good at the magazine interviews,” Allison complains. “Diego clams up and Luther gets so stiff. Dad made Ben go with me. It was so awkward.”

“Hey, now, Ben has a pretty good sense of humor,” Klaus points out. “Once you get past all the grumbling and doom and gloom.”

“It used to be you and me, Klaus,” Allison says, taking a step further into the room. “I don’t get it. You used to love it, and I know you still love the attention. When will you quit blowing everything off – blowing me off?”

Anger twists in Klaus’s stomach. “As soon as you wake up and realize there are other things that can make you feel good than adoring fans.”

“What, like drugs?”

“Yes!” Klaus throws his hands up. “And sweet, sweet American freedom. Manifest destiny, baby. We’re gonna get out of here one day, and maybe then you won’t have to try so hard all the time to get people to like you!”

“God,” Allison snorts in disbelief, bringing her hand up to her face. “You sound just like Diego now.”

“Exactly.” Klaus leans back, thinking his back will hit the wall, but instead he falls onto the bed, misjudging the distance.

Allison looks down on him. Where there used to be fondness is now laced with disgust.

“That wasn’t a compliment,” She snarls. “What you two don’t get, Klaus, is that there’s something called growing up. It’s where you do what you need to in order to set yourself up for the day that you’re eighteen years old and you can make decisions for yourself, so that you make the right ones.”

“Yes, yes,” Klaus rolls his eyes. “I can make my own decisions now, thank you. And my decision is to do whatever the hell I want, when I want, and not do whatever it is you or Luther or Dad tell me to do.”

Allison stares at him, the muscles in her jaw working. She blinks at him a few times and then turns away.

“You used to be so different,” She mumbles, and Klaus sits up again.

“What was that?” Klaus asks, and Allison shakes her head. “Use your big girl words, Allison –”

Allison whirls back toward him, eyes blazing. “No, we are not doing this. You can lie and be cruel and dismissive all you want, but that doesn’t make you mature, Klaus. And neither does pumping your body full of whatever you can find and thinking Dad won’t notice. It’s not funny anymore. You used to care about things, about us, and now –”

She turns again toward the door, retreating halfway before pausing. “Don’t ask me for any favors. If you want people to take you seriously, you’re going to have to do what Dad says and start pulling your weight.”

Allison grabs the door handle to his room and slams it shut, the sound echoing. Klaus stares at the closed door for a few moments before bringing his palms up to his face, ringing his eye sockets and pressing in. The weed isn’t enough. The argument did nothing to distract him, and the ghosts are still here, still wandering in and staying in his peripheral vision, making the hair on his arms stand on end. He shakes out his hands and presses them into his eyes again.

“I don’t care,” He groans, rocking forward and back slightly on the edge of the bed. “I don’t care. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.”

No one’s going to come for him. No one comes for him, anymore, unless he’s done something heinous and they want their own sick sense of retribution. Last week, he’d snuck out and pawned one of Diego’s knives. He doesn’t know why, just knows that now Diego isn’t talking to him. He still has the money stuffed in the pocket of one of his blazers, just burning a hole in the fabric each time he thinks about it.

“I don’t care.”

He has the get rid of the money, somehow. That will make it better. He’ll go out after bedtime and buy some vodka from one of the college kids down the road. His flask is running empty, anyway, and he can’t siphon any more from Dad yet after last time. Luther will beat his ass – will beat his ass anyway when he shows up late to training with the flask in his pocket.

“I don’t care.”

Ben will give him a disapproving look but won’t say anything. None of them will say anything. They’ll just sigh, won’t walk to him. They’ll just accept it, because this is a thing that he does, this is who he is now to them. He’ll tell Allison he didn’t mean what he said and she won’t believe him. He’ll tell Diego he’s sorry for the knife and he won’t forgive him, won’t even acknowledge him, and he’s right to because he did it on purpose and he’d fucking do it again –

The sun has set beyond the building, the alleyway obscuring any light coming through from the orange sky. His room is dim in low light, nearly dark, and Klaus slides his hands from his eyes to his hair, gripping it tightly. He grabs his tie in a fistful and forces his head one way and then back, scratching at his ears. It’s getting dark, and the weed isn’t enough. It isn’t enough, and there are more ghosts now, there are always more, and the door is closed, the hallway lights aren’t even on and it isn’t enough, it’s dark now, it’s too dark now, and cold, please –

Klaus stands abruptly, sending something that was on his bed crashing to the floor. He stumbles to his desk, scattering more things onto the floor, and haphazardly pulls open a drawer. It’s full of notes and drawings, crude and not good like Ben’s, but the same as the words on the walls, he was trying and he’s done with that now and he doesn’t care.

He pulls a lighter out of his pocket and fumbles with it in his hands, touching one of the pages to the flame and putting it back in the drawer to let the others catch. The rudimentary doodles warp in the orange light, and the action of destroying them makes the weight lift a little off his chest. He retreats back to his bed, wedging himself in the corner, staring at the fire. It lights up the room, makes the writing on the wall stand out like the shadows on faces around a campfire.

The image makes him smile. Convincing himself that there’s nothing to worry about, that there’s nothing to care about makes him laugh. He hears the faint sound of footsteps near his door; when they don’t stop, don’t even waver, he just laughs some more.

The fire grows a little taller. Klaus doesn’t wonder if anyone will come if it grows any higher, if it will set off an alarm, if people will complain. He just stares as the ghosts grow dimmer in the firelight, and watches it grow.

.

1968, Timeline #1

The flashbang is enough to send him onto his stomach, one arm curled under his chest and his ears ringing. The world goes white for a moment, the tinnitus building to a tidal wave. For a moment, Klaus can’t hear anything at all, the world tepid and blank around him, until the ringing is replaced again by the sounds of gunshots and men’s boots in the wet mud. When he blinks his eyes open, staring at the parapet in front of him, bodies have moved. People are yelling, men retreating.

There’s still a familiar form next to him, though.

“That was a close one, huh Dave?” Klaus laughs, prying his arm from underneath him and shaking it out. It’s funny how it could go numb in so short of a time. War does that, he thinks – does things to your body. Does things to your heart.

He reaches out for Dave’s shoulder, shaking, but he doesn’t move. There’s blood pooling beneath them, soaking into the earth.

“Dave?”

.

2003, Timeline #1

They apprehend a shooter that ducks into a convenience store and tries to hide by wedging himself between the Slurpee machine and the wall. Well, Luther apprehends him. Klaus mostly sprints after him since he was standing next to the entrance to the park the shooting had happened in when the perp bolted, and then watches while Luther reaches in the crawlspace and drags the guy out kicking and screaming. He dropped his gun somewhere along the way, so it’s not like he’s much of a threat – but between Klaus and the cosmos, he’s got a bit of an entourage.

Not that anyone’s asking.

Luther manhandles the shooter’s hands behind his back, and Klaus offers him one of the zip ties he keeps in his pockets on missions. Luther accepts it, securing the hold, but then sends Klaus a glare withering enough that he nearly takes a step back. Even through the domino mask, it’s pretty impressive.

“What?” Klaus asks. “We got him. Go team.”

Luther lets out an annoyed breath. “Why didn’t you stop him from leaving the park? You were right there, Four.”

Because he was distracting himself from looking at the aforementioned entourage by thinking about the aspect of sneaking out and finding a party when it was all over. Sue him.

“I tried!” Klaus says, pointing at the perp. “He’s fast!”

“I am pretty fast,” The perp says.

“Shut up,” Luther snaps. “Look, Four, if you’re going to be the lookout, you actually have to look out for the bad guys. You’re better than that, and I’m sick of doing all your work for you.”

Luther shoulders past him, pushing the criminal forward toward the door. The convenience store owner holds the door open for Number One, thanking him profusely. The shooter turns his head as he passes Klaus, shrugging in a what can you do gesture. Klaus flips him off.

You’re better than that.

In Luther’s words – hell, in his face, Klaus sees their dad, and it makes him break out in a sweat of guilt and hate. He reaches out to the aisle shelves beside him, skimming with his eyes and dancing over boxes with his fingertips; without bothering to hide anything, he grabs three boxes of Sudafed and stuffs them haphazardly in his uniform. He waits for someone to say something, but the convenience store clerk isn’t even looking at him, and Luther doesn’t turn around.

Klaus sighs, kicking over a cardboard cutout of a personified Slurpee, and follows Luther out the door.

.

???, Timeline #Hargreeves

Getting their powers back is a bit of a mindfuck. It’s surprisingly exciting, given that Klaus has been actively trying to drink and dope himself out of his own reality for the majority of his lifetime.

He definitely didn’t miss the ghosts – they still yell and bother him too much, and what people don’t seem to understand is there’s a reason he once rammed the hood of the Academy car into a lamppost when they were all learning to drive, and that’s because it is sometimes very easy to mistake a dearly departed for some random jaywalking asshole. Klaus hasn’t missed his perception of the population being more than double than that of a normal passerby. He definitely has not been yearning for the sights and smells of grandpa and the neighbor who died while on the toilet.

The other perk, though. He doesn’t use it a lot, doesn’t do it on purpose because Five would lecture him into next week, the little Mama Bear, but he’s glad that it’s back. He’s been walking around Reginald’s green earth like he’s a fragile little doll, acutely aware of his mortality in a way he wasn’t even before he found out about his party trick. It’s been exhausting. Dealing with his siblings, too, once they all rounded themselves back up again, has been exhausting. He misses the void in a deep, visceral way, like he imagines corporate golfers miss Florida, or something. All he’s saying is it’s nice to walk into a dangerous situation and know that his two options are winning or taking some paid time off.

The first new time he dies, taking a bullet to the gut by jumping in front of Lila, he doesn’t come back for nearly ten minutes, which freaks everybody out. What can he say, it’s been a minute – he’s a bit rusty. He absolutely does not hear Reginald’s voice in his head telling him he should have been faster. He doesn’t.

After the second time (pushed through a stair railing, impaled on some rebar), he starts to get the hang of it again.

And it’s so easy, after all this time – running away from himself, finding his purpose, having it taken away. Both of his worlds are vibrant in color and leaving one for the other feels as simple as stepping through the doorway, if the doorway had spikes. The ghosts confuse him, blending in with the living or standing out starkly, and there’s an ever-present ache in his bones that wasn’t there before, but he thinks now that he wouldn’t trade it. It’s probably different for his siblings, having been able to live without the dangerous effects of their powers. Klaus’s powers aren’t dangerous to anyone but himself, and he always comes back.

Plus, he thinks, his powers are more of an understanding than a doing. Once you see Florida, you can’t help but wonder how the time is passing there, or if you’ll ever see the beach again. Once you know it exists and is real, you’ll always kind of want to go back again. Even if it is Florida.

He follows Diego and Viktor out to some alleyway to meet some dudes that are supposed to give them some information on how to find Reginald, since he’s been particularly evil and elusive. Klaus isn’t sure how to feel, hasn’t been able to wrap his head around it. Mostly, he’s just been putting one foot in front of the other, trying to keep everyone alive, if not cooperative. He’s not usually invited to fun excursions like this, but he’s mostly just stopped asking and started tagging along anyway. No one has told him to stay home or stay out of it like they used to, and Klaus isn’t sure how he feels about that, either.

Usually he would have Ben to work through complicated emotions and stuff like that with him against his will, and he’d be snarky or ignore him but think about it later. Now all his emotions just rattle around in his head without anywhere to land, and the last time he’d trusted those he’d been pushed backwards – again – into hell.

“Stay behind me,” Diego orders, which he absolutely does not do. What begins as an honest an open bout of conversation sours very quickly, mostly because Klaus wouldn’t necessarily categorize Diego as a friendly person. Then one of the dudes pulls a gun, and Diego pulls his knives, and it all goes downhill pretty quickly without them having learned much of anything. Viktor blasts one of them backward, running forward and trying to wrestle his gun out of his grasp, but then the dude kicks out Viktor’s knee and he stumbles, still shaky from having just gotten his powers back. The guy shakes out his arm and levels the gun, aiming at Viktor’s head. Diego’s busy with the other guy, and well, Klaus does what he does best – he steps in front of a deadly projectile.

The visit is lovely.

When he comes back, half waking and half dreaming, Diego’s got an arm around Viktor, whose knee has most definitely been fucked up by the way he’s standing. They’re backing away slowly toward the entryway to the alley, obviously reluctant to leave Klaus behind, which is nice. Both of the traitorous goons have their backs to Klaus, because what’s the point of having a party trick if everyone knows about it?

Klaus rolls onto his knees, palm digging into the gravel. One of the guys is still verbally sparring with Diego. Klaus doesn’t know what he’s saying, because his thoughts are bouncing around in his brain like a loose rubber band ball and frankly, he doesn’t care.

He stands up, not making much noise. The guy arguing with his siblings pulls his gun again, shouting out demands. Klaus’s ears are ringing. He feels like he’s back in the jungle, where the heat held them down and bodies were bodies. Klaus steps forward, about to raise his hands to do something, anything, but he’s interrupted by the sound of knives sinking into flesh. The gun in the goon’s hand fires, the shot going wild. Klaus’s eyes slam shut, and he instinctively covers his hands with his ears for a moment before letting them drop to his sides.

He stares at the bodies as they settle on the ground. Two of Diego’s knives sit firmly in the hollows of each of their throats, making their heads seem nearly separate from their bodies. For a moment he thinks they’re going to linger and become ghosts, but they don’t. Something from within their bodies shifts, a weird transient light Klaus can’t actually see but rather just perceives flickering before dying out. Klaus is thankful. He didn’t really want to answer to either of their ghosts.

Klaus makes brief eye contact with each of his siblings before looking down at the corpses again. Viktor looks paler than usual, staring at how the blood is trickling from the corpses’ necks onto the pavement. Diego has his face scrunched up, but his fist is clenching and unclenching in a pattern Klaus recognizes from when Diego would dispatch criminals during Academy missions. Klaus studies the bodies some more, expecting to feel shocked or affronted by the death. He doesn’t.

Growing up, he’d been terrified of the deadlier aspect of their missions, certain that death led to nothing but more ghosts and fear. After Vietnam, where they’d been surrounded by the most horrifying ends he could imagine, Klaus had told himself that he wouldn’t tolerate death without reason ever again. It wasn’t worth the pain. Now, watching the blood spread toward the sewer drain, the men’s eyes wide open, he can only think of the void and how the landscape stretches, time passing without expectation. He thinks of Ben, finally passing on.

The bodies are still. Klaus tries to imagine where they might go, and who they might find. He feels envious and shifts away from the emotion with discomfort and shame.

“What was that?” Viktor spits out, gesturing to the corpses. “We’re not supposed to kill anybody!”

“Five said not to kill anybody,” Diego clarifies, stepping forward and prying his knives out of the bodies, wiping the blood on his pant leg. “And Five isn’t here. They were going to kill us.”

“They did kill me,” Klaus tries to joke, but it falls flat with the way Diego and Viktor look at him.

“Exactly,” Diego says. “You gotta cut that shit out.”

“What shit?” Klaus asks. “I saved your bacon!”

“I would have been fine,” Viktor says, frustrated.

“This whole putting yourself in harm’s way for no reason thing?” Diego points the hilt of one of the knives in Klaus’s direction in emphasis. “It’s gotta stop. We all just got our powers back – what if it doesn’t work one time, huh? What are you going to do then?”

Klaus rubs a hand at his chest absently, frowning when it comes away bloody. Viktor stares at him with furrowed eyebrows, and Diego’s face is stormy. Klaus thinks of the ocean and can’t find it in himself to answer honestly.

.

2006 – 2013, Timeline #1

Klaus isn’t completely sure he would have left, if it hadn’t been for Ben kicking the bucket.

A bed’s a bed, even if it’s in an impossibly large patchwork mansion with only your impossibly strong brother with a superiority complex and your impossibly suffocating dad that hates your guts to keep you company, plus or minus a robot and a chimp. He knows he used to talk a big game about leaving and never coming back, but it’s a little hard to change cities without a car or any real monetary funds to speak of. Despite what everyone obviously thinks of him, Klaus would consider himself to be realistically pragmatic, if not a little romantic. His hopes and dreams don’t really expand past the city limits.

He calls his lifestyle living paycheck to paycheck. Ben has a lot of other names for it.

On the scale of ouch to silent treatment, “crack whore” is probably somewhere in the middle, mostly because it’s not entirely inaccurate.

He knows, though, that an alive Ben would have had more reservations about leaving – he would at least have had a real plan. But he doesn’t have an alive Ben, he has a dead one, and the dead one didn’t have a bag to pack or hands to dial the phone with. He did, however, have eyes and ears to see the Umbrella Academy completely and quite embarrassingly fall apart. And also, a big fat mouth to say a lot about it.

No one believes Klaus about Ben, surprise surprise. It starts with Klaus being earnest and ends with him being arguably the highest he’s ever been, laughing his ass off in a way that scales upward from bewildered to hysterical when Ben doesn’t disappear in front of his eyes. He makes increasingly cruel and bitter remarks until Diego pins him up against a wall, holding a knife so close to his neck that blood drips down and stains his uniform.

Diego leaves in the middle of the night while Klaus is up on the roof, for once not watching the sunrise but lying on the edge, one arm flung over his eyes and the other grinding down his knuckles into the rough stone of the rooftop. Diego doesn’t say goodbye, but then again, he doesn’t say anything to anyone. After a particularly bad blowout with their father, one day Diego’s there and the next he’s not. Klaus doesn’t see him for three years. When Klaus (well, mostly Ben) sees him next, it’s during a drug raid where Diego is a third rider, in the beginning of his days at the police academy. Klaus is overdosing with another girl in one of the bathrooms – Diego’s the one to yell for the paramedics, convinced Klaus isn’t breathing. He goes to visit Klaus in the hospital the next day, but he’s checked himself out AMA in the early morning.

The next time he sees Diego is when they’re 24 and Klaus knocks on his front door.

Diego opens the door and stares blankly at him for a few moments. He does a double take back into his own house (which is fair – it’s much nicer than he would expect Diego to be living in) and fixes his gaze on Klaus again, looking him up and down.

“How did you find me?” Is his first question, which Klaus thinks is a little rude (Ben had snooped around the precinct Diego worked at, they’ve had a running knowledge for a few years now as an emergency bail-out). He could have asked something like what are you doing here so late, Klaus? or Oh, hey, it’s been a while, brother of mine.

“Oh, you know,” Klaus says, waving a hand at him in dismissal. “I have my ways.”

“Freeloader,” Ben mutters. Klaus makes a blah, blah, blah gesture with his left hand, his goodbye tattoo opening and closing on his palm.

Diego snatches Klaus’s hand out of the air and opens it, peering at his tattoos. Loser is simply behind the curve – Klaus has had these babies for years, now.

His brother has the audacity for the next words out of his mouth to be “what the fuck happened to you?”

Realistically, Klaus knows it’s probably because of all the blood that’s on his shirt, honestly pretty crusty since Klaus walked all the way here from the alleyway, but it stings, nonetheless. He’s more than his appearance, okay?

“My dance partner got a little rough and rowdy,” Klaus says, jerking his hands out of Diego’s hold. He doesn’t like the way Diego scrutinizes him when he says that, like he’s got any idea at all what Klaus does with his once and precious life. “I’m fine. Just need a place to crash. I’m like the princess and the pea – not just anything will do.”

Diego crosses his arms. “Last I checked, you could pass out in garbage and call it a vacation.”

Klaus swallows the bitterness lingering in the back of his mouth, plasters on a smile. “Yeah, well, a good ole fight will make you a bit sensitive, am I right? C’mon, let me in. We’ll have a sleepover, just like when we were lil tykes, and never got to have any sleepovers. Popcorn, movies, I’ll even paint your nails if you ask nicely.”

Diego just looks at him for a moment and then steps forward, gently pulling his shirt apart to look at the blood. Klaus tries to wave him off, but Diego’s grip is strong until he evidently is satisfied that Klaus isn’t going to keel over in front of him.

“I’m telling you,” Klaus whines. “You should have seen the other guy.”

“He should have,” Ben mutters. “So he can point him out in a lineup.”

“I’d be the one pointing him out in a lineup, dummy,” Klaus says, and Diego frowns, letting go of his shirt.

“Look,” Diego says, clenching his jaw. “I’d let you stay, but I can’t.”

“Why not?” Klaus asks, trying to peer over Diego into the house. Diego frowns even more and tries to block his line of sight. “Got someone special in there?”

“No,” Diego says quickly, and then rubs his forehead. “Yes. Kind of.”

“Kind of,” Klaus repeats.

“We just moved in, and we don’t even have a couch.” Diego continues, which Klaus knows is a lie. Ben said that Diego’s been living here for nearly a year now.

“The floor is fine,” Klaus says absently, contradicting himself. “Just put me anywhere, I won’t even make a peep.”

“I can’t,” Diego says again. He at least has the decency to look slightly conflicted, seeing as Klaus is beginning to sag against one of the porch’s pillars in fatigue. Ben has his mouth closed tightly, staring at Diego with an unreadable expression. “I’ll. I – wait here.”

Diego turns and retreats into the house. Klaus turns and shrugs, which makes Ben’s face become even more stoic and flat.

Diego comes back out the front door, dragging it nearly closed behind him so Klaus can’t look inside. He digs his wallet out of his back pocket (jeans, can you believe it?) and takes out a few bills, handing them out toward Klaus’s chest.

“Go get yourself a hotel, dude,” Diego forces out. “Clean yourself up.”

Klaus blinks down at the money, his brain taking a minute to catch up. He takes it gingerly in his right hand, which is still a little bloody, and then just continues looking at it. He didn’t really think this far in advance. Ben had told him to go to Diego’s – that Diego would let him crash for the night and then they could try again tomorrow. Diego not letting him stay wasn’t something that he had accounted for. Looking over at Ben’s stormy face, Klaus can tell it wasn’t something he had accounted for either.

Diego wasn’t at the Academy as long as Klaus was. He didn’t see Allison up and leave for California for a part no one knew how she got, let alone auditioned for; he didn’t watch as Luther tried to unpack her bags in the middle of the atrium, and Allison rumored him not to follow her. Diego wasn’t at the table when one day Viktor just didn’t come down and Pogo had to inform them that he had left for college. Where, Klaus didn’t know, because no one ever told him.

Diego didn’t watch everyone leave without saying goodbye to him, because he wasn’t there. He didn’t sit in his room day after day, listening to Ben nag at him to leave before Klaus was dead, too – just for him to nag him for every choice he’s made since he left. He didn’t sit at breakfast with Luther every day while he looked at Klaus like he was just waiting for him to leave, too. Diego left abruptly, in the middle of the night. Klaus just stayed out longer and longer until he eventually just never went back, and no one said a goddamn thing.

Klaus looks up at Diego, and then down to the money in his hand again, not really knowing where to put it. His pants don’t really have any pockets.

Ben scoffs, looking away. “This is pathetic.”

Klaus resists the urge to reach out and try to scratch Ben, or himself, with his broken nails. He swallows, and smiles at the money, tucking it into the waistline of his pants.

“Thanks, Diego,” Klaus breathes, tilting his head slightly and bringing his palms up to his blood-crusted chest. “Can I at least get a hug? Don’t worry, we’ll keep it very masculine.”

Diego huffs out a sigh, rolling his eyes. He reaches out an arm and pulls Klaus into a quick embrace, squeezing him tightly. He nearly pushes him away when he pulls back, cuffing him lightly on the shoulder.

“Take care of yourself, Klaus,” Diego orders, one hand on his doorknob. Klaus realizes now, at the end of their encounter, that Diego never turned the porch lights on.

“Aye, aye, captain,” Klaus waves his hand in a pseudo-salute, backing away toward the sidewalk and nearly tripping on the actual lawn that Diego has. By the time he reaches the road, Diego’s already inside with the door closed shut.

“Bye, Diego,” Ben mutters, following closely behind Klaus as he stumbles his way back toward the middle of town. He knows they’re not going to a hotel – Klaus will find a park or another alley with a fire escape to curl up in. In the morning, he’ll go off and use the money to get ahold of whatever dealer has the best score. And Ben will watch, and swallow his anger, because he’s the one that told Klaus to leave in the first place.

After a few steps, Klaus shakes out his whole body and starts lightly skipping, humming a tune like he wasn’t just turned away by one of his only remaining brothers. Ben turns around to look back at the house and watches for a few precious seconds.

Inside, Diego turns over in bed and stares at the wall. He won’t realize until the morning that he traded a feeling of guilt for the rest of the cash that was in his wallet, waltzing away with Klaus down under flickering streetlights.

.

1998, Timeline #1

“Dad?” Klaus peeks his head around the corner of the doorway, looking into the infirmary with trepidation. Grace isn’t inside; the room is clean and tidy save for the cot in the middle of the room, and his father sitting in a chair beside it, scratching shorthand into his notebook. Dad hasn’t talked to him for weeks – hasn’t called for special training, hasn’t even looked him in the eyes at dinner. The others are starting to notice, too. They’re noticing the way Klaus’s hands have begun to shake in roll call as Reginald simply passes him by. Two days ago, he hadn’t even called for Number Four at all – just skipped right over him from Three to Five.

Luther says that he must have done something to make Dad angry, that it’s his fault and that he needs to try harder. All Klaus can think of is the mausoleum, and how he had cried, acted like a coward. Dad had said he was disappointed, but he hadn’t seemed angry. Klaus knows what Reginald is like when he is angry. But lately it has just been the silent treatment, and it’s driving Klaus insane.

Reginald doesn’t look up from his seat when Klaus calls out, so he takes a few small steps inside the room, wringing his hands. “Pogo said you wanted to see me?”

Dad doesn’t look up, just points at the rigid infirmary cot. “Sit, Number Four.”

With or without Dad’s gaze, Klaus feels very small. “Yes, sir.”

He hops up delicately onto the cot, swinging his legs around and lying very still. A few moments pass before Reginald places his notebook to the side, bringing forward an IV with a tray of equipment. Before Klaus can open his mouth to ask what’s going on, Reginald grabs his wrist and twists the underside of his arm up toward the air.

“Pogo tells me that you have been feeling under the weather, Number Four.” Dad states it with such conviction that for a moment Klaus’s head spins, cataloging his body and trying to remember what has been ailing him.

He frowns. “No, sir. I’m fine – I can train, I’m okay.”

“If you are trying to be brave, Number Four, that is a futile gesture,” Reginald ties a rubber band around Klaus’s upper arm, making him flinch; he probes at the veins in Klaus’s elbows, humming lowly when he seems satisfied. “It is not fortuitous to lie about your wellbeing. It will only become a further liability for your siblings.”

Klaus feels like there’s a weight on his chest. “I don’t – what? I’m not lying.”

“You will remain here for the afternoon to be properly medicated,” Reginald continues as though he hadn’t heard Klaus speak. “And monitored to ensure that you are not contagious. Your siblings will be alerted that you will miss training to recover.”

Reginald uncaps an IV needle and sticks it into Klaus’s brachial vein with practiced ease, twisting the valves and connecting it to the IV pole. Klaus looks on as Reginald grabs a syringe, rising to insert it into the saline bag.

“Wait,” Klaus blurts out. He squeezes his eyes shut for a beat, already regretting it. “What – did I do something wrong, Dad? Is this some punishment for the mausoleum? Like, extra laps or laundry duty, or something?”

Reginald pauses in his action, looking down for the first time to meet Klaus’s eyes. Klaus’s hands are trembling again, itching for something, and he hates it. He tries to make them stop, grabbing one hand with the other.

“No, Number Four,” Reginald says, and the weight on Klaus’s chest lifts just a little lighter. “I am simply trying to make you your best.”

Klaus smiles despite himself, but Reginald has already turned back to the IV bag, inserting the syringe and emptying it of its contents. He places the syringe into a sharps container and sits back down in the seat, taking his notebook back into his hands. Klaus stares at the IV bag for a moment, then at his arm, then at his Dad – but then the world gets fuzzy for a moment, and his eyes squeeze shut with disorientation. He feels the back of his head thunk against the cot without any pillow to catch it. He tries to ask for Dad, but he doesn’t think his mouth moves; instead, his eyes open again to the slowly twirling fan on the ceiling, his heart both perturbed and soothed by the steady sound of Reginald’s pen scratching on the paper.

Things draw out for a long time in no time at all. Klaus opens his eyes, blinking languidly at the newly developed shadows on the wall and wondering when he closed them. He looks to ask for a glass of water from Reginald, but the chair is empty, and Klaus watches his back walk calmly and purposefully out the infirmary door.

He turns. Perched delicately on the side table, left behind, are two tiny circular pills laid out on a napkin. Klaus looks from the pills to the empty doorway and back again. After a moment of stillness, he slips the pills into his pocket.

.

???, Timeline #Hargreeves

“I’m worried about you,” Luther says, which may be a first. It catches Klaus off guard where he’s standing in front of a bookcase, wiping off dust with the tip of his finger.

He turns to look at Luther, who’s standing near the sofa, and – his head swims for a moment, discerning exactly where they are. There is no sand creeping in underneath the futon. There is no pizza box on the coffee table, left open.

He blinks.

“Why? I’m fit as a fiddle,” Klaus says, not giving Luther a chance to answer. “If anything, I’m worried about you – for good reason, even if you’re all skinny now.”

Luther frowns. They still haven’t found Sloane. Haven’t found Allison. Haven’t found – anyone, really.

And as concerned as he may be, Klaus finds he doesn’t even really mind. He thinks he could have spent eternity in that desert with his brother, watching television and eating shitty pizza. Even if it was Luther. He would have stayed.

Staring at him in this room, Klaus sometimes wonders if he actually ever left. The pull is gone, but Klaus doesn’t exactly feel at peace. It feels incomplete, laden with detached curiosity. Klaus has to remind himself that it’s because his powers are gone. Following that curiosity would probably just make Luther upset.

He and Luther stare at each other for a long time, like they used to do when they were the only two left at the breakfast table. They’ve both run out of anger, now. Klaus’s hand hasn’t left the bookshelf, his skin just sitting in the dust.

Luther sighs. “How about we go for a walk?”

Klaus stares at him for a moment longer, and then smiles. He follows Luther out the door, not bothering to put on his shoes.

.

???, Timeline #Hargreeves

He’s in front of a mirror, later, trimming his facial hair and tracing the lines of his face. He used to do this often, back when they all thought they were hot shit and before Klaus left the mansion without as much as a compact in his pocket. When he was high, making sure he looked good was more of a whenever he could be so lucky kind of deal. Now, he has all the time in the world.

Suddenly, he’s filled with shame and rage. He bends over, placing his forearms on either side of the sink and gripping the porcelain tight. He doesn’t look up in the mirror again, instead focusing on the curls of his hair as they fall past his eyes, as though reaching for the drain. He sees another version of himself, perhaps one quicker to act than he is to speak – he sees him lash out, breaking the mirror, doing something with the shards. He sees him making eye contact with himself in the distorted reflection.

Klaus doesn’t move. He breathes, riding out the moment in silence. He turns, conscious of the time he’s been in the bathroom with the door closed. He doesn’t look in the mirror again, but he hears the voice all the same, following him as he opens the door and walks out into the hallway.

You’re more trouble than you’re worth.

.