Umbrella Academy fic: Changing All the Scenery (10/20)
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
PART THIRTEEN
PART FOURTEEN
PART FIFTEEN
PART SIXTEEN
PART SEVENTEEN
PART EIGHTEEN
PART NINETEEN
PART TWENTY
TEN
Okay, so, true story.
Klaus doesn’t actually remember everything that has happened in the last month.
In fact, if he’s being honest -- and Klaus tries to be honest, sometimes, maybe, now -- he doesn’t even remember if it’s been a month. He’s simply aware of some passage of time, and it seems significant based on the amount his facial hair has grown. He looks a little like a vagrant.
A little more like a vagrant.
Fine, technically, he is a vagrant, but you know what he means.
Klaus has let time slip away from him.
No, no, no. That’s not it, not really. Is it? Klaus has willfully thrown time away from him. He’s looked at time as a non-essential element, really. What is time? What are minutes? What is the function of hours? Why does it matter to distinguish one day from the next? They’re all shit, all empty, pointless days without Dave.
At least, this is what he thinks until he passes out sober.
You ask, how can one pass out sober?
Klaus is talented like that. He is. Also, it’s like, a thing. Superheroes are super and all that, but they’re not infinitely powerful. Like, they all have their limits, and some of those limits manifest in more dramatic ways. That’s why Vanya can’t use her powers when her emotions are haywire. That’s presumably why the sibling who must not be named got stuck in the future.
Shit, why didn’t he just stay there?
Klaus is getting off the point.
The point.
What is the point?
The point is that Klaus passes out sober because he’s spent all his energy, and he wakes up tired and achy with a dry mouth on a bed he vaguely recognizes but wishes that he didn’t. There is a half-smoked joint on the chair next to the bed, and traces of crack that he’s missed are scattered nearby.
As he sits here and contemplates that, he thinks about how long he’s been here. This line of thought leads him in circles and thus brings him to the conclusion that he has no clue how much time has passed.
He rubs his face wearily, trying unsuccessfully to wet his lips. His tongue is like sandpaper, and nothing works. There’s a part of him that thinks he’s thinking far too much. There’s half a joint there, and he’s worked harder for less crack, and really, who the hell wants to remember how much time has passed anyway? Forgetting is easier. Forgetting is better, and Klaus is way too sober for any of this.
He hesitates, however.
This isn’t a room he knows but it’s familiar. He knows the place is a mess because he knows he’s been living mostly as a vagrant in a crack den, but somehow, the state of the room doesn’t seem right. The plaster, which was peeling before, is all but gone in certain portions of the ceiling. He finds some of it in his hair. The windows have been busted out, and rain is coming through. The wall is dented to the framing, and the door frame has been broken.
Fights happen in places like this, but that much damage? To the ceiling?
Klaus chews his lip.
He passed out sober. He doesn’t know how much time has passed. It’s almost like he used his powers and used them so much that it wore him out and he lost control and oh, shit--
He blinks and wonders if anything he’s remembering is real.
Five.
Five was here.
Five was here?
Klaus feels his chest clench and he stretches his sweaty palms. His throat is tight, and he shakes his head, pressing his palm to his eyes and squeezing them shut.
Why was Five here?
Why did Klaus use his powers?
Why can’t he remember anything?
Because he’s been trying to forget, of course. And that’s what he should be doing now. The plan had been good. It’d been working. Forgetting, forgetting, forgetting.
He hesitates, looking at the drugs on the chair.
Five had been here.
Klaus’ powers were spent.
The room is a disaster with all evidence pointing to a fight.
Not a fight.
A one-sided beating.
Klaus isn’t sure it matters. He’s not sure it changes anything. If something happened to Five, then isn’t that probably his own fault? Shouldn’t Five be culpable for at least some of his actions? All the shit Five’s done, can’t he have some accountability? Isn’t there something called justice? Karma? Anything?
Fisting his fingers, Klaus pounds in frustration on the threadbare mattress. He hates Five, he hates Five, he hates Five.
So why is he suddenly worried about Five?
Not worried. Five can handle himself, but Klaus is concerned. Appropriately concerned. Concerned with detachment.
Concern can be fixed one of two ways.
The first way involves drugs. Lots of drugs. Endless rounds of drugs punctuated only by periods of gorging on any food that happens to be in the area. Preferably pancakes. Or waffles. But mostly pancakes.
The second way involves figuring out the truth. It’s cumbersome and tedious and it makes you talk to people and face issues like an actual adult. To be fair, it can also involve pancakes. If he wants, it could involve lots of pancakes.
Klaus has a choice to make, doesn’t he?
Why does it seem like such an important choice?
Vexed, Klaus tries to think of fifteen reasons to stay here on this bed and to take the drugs. He tries to think of another thirty reasons to forget all of this ever happened, once and for all.
That’s all compelling, but there’s a problem. The problem, as best Klaus can tell, is that he’s already made the choice.
Shakily, he gets to his feet. Grasping at the dog tags around his neck, he finds his balance. Still, he has to brace himself on the chair for a moment, but he pushes forward to the door. When he gets there, he looks back at the gaping hole in the ceiling and doesn’t think about how it’s about the size of a 13 year old boy.
Instead, Klaus thinks about how it’s finally time for him to go home.
-o-
Choices aside, the practical reality is a little harder to navigate. Klaus is now becoming painfully aware that he is, in fact, really, really sober. He’s sober to the point that he knows he’s sober, and that’s typically the point when he really doesn’t want to be sober.
Every step he walks, out the bedroom, down the stairs, is a step he wishes he was taking back up to the drugs. Hell, he sees drugs everywhere in the house. The person passed out on the stairs has some in her hand. The pair in the living room has a whole bunch spilled all over the table. If he can trace the smell right -- and he can, he really can -- someone else is making something new in the basement.
All Klaus has to do is stay and he’ll forget everything.
It’s counterintuitive, then, that he actually makes it outside.
He stands on the stoop for awhile, contemplating how he got here. It takes him a minute to realize that it’s raining and that he’s actually getting quite wet. It’s only then that he notices that he is, at least, wearing clothes, which is a plus. He’s not sure why he’s wearing shoes, but it seems like a fortuitous touch.
The air is fresh, which is a weird sort of thing. He looks back at the house, confused again as to how long he’d been there. The world outside seems hardly changed for his absence, but he feels out of synch with it still. Out of time.
It makes his heart skip a beat when he thinks about time. It feels like Dave died yesterday, but it’s been decades. He wonders how long it’s been for Five since he was in Vietnam, how three lives could intersect at a single point so tragically with reverberations across all of time and space.
He’s not going to cry right now, so Klaus turns away. He starts down the steps, taking them one at a time as he uses the decrepit railing to steady himself. On the sidewalk, he looks up and down to try to get his bearings. It doesn’t do him much good; he doesn’t know exactly where he is.
Fortunately, he thinks, it doesn’t actually matter. If he’s going to be sober -- and that’s apparently a thing for him right now -- he just can’t be here.
Thus decided, he turns down the street and starts to walk.
-o-
He walks for several blocks before it stops raining. Several more and he’s finally in a part of town where real people actually live and work. It’s a change he notices mostly by the number of people who gawk at him. There’s a young mother who literally hides her son’s eyes, like Klaus is some kind of abomination.
He does look a little gnarly, to be fair. He’s not showered in, well, he’s not sure how long -- though he thinks the rain may have helped with the smell. It did not, however, help him look remotely presentable, and he knows his hair is shaggy and he’s got something resembling a scruffy beard. He’s lost weight, too, not that he’d been particularly beefy to start with. Even from his vantage point, he looks painfully thin, and that’s when he realizes that the ache in his stomach is not merely withdrawal.
No, Klaus is hungry.
Hungry is a normal part of being a person, but Klaus doesn’t know where he is. At a loss, he digs into his pockets, hoping to find his wallet. Why he’s hoping this is not clear; it’s not like he has any money left, and he tries to remember if he has access to his bank account but having a bank account is such a novel concept to him that he just can’t recall.
However, as he digs through his pockets, he’s surprised to find a wad of bills, neatly folded, tucked into his front pocket. He worries for a moment that he’s turned himself into a drug dealer unwittingly, but that’s a ridiculous notion. If he had made money selling drugs, he would have spent all the money on drugs.
No, this, this seems like an escape plan.
Klaus doesn’t remember making said escape plan, but here he is. Sober with cash to burn. True, his siblings would have come to get him if he called -- even collect -- but it seems nicer this way. To do it himself.
A choice.
What is it about choices today?
Klaus can’t remember. It feels like he should remember.
There’s an easy choice to make, though.
With money in his hand and a diner on the corner, it’s time to get pancakes.
-o-
It’s so weird, interacting with people. Like actually interacting with them. Talking to them. He knows he’s talked to people over the last month, but there’s no way for him to know which conversations were real and which ones weren’t. And the tidbits he does remember are not ones he thinks he wants to remember. Did he really have a conversation about waxing with chocolate pudding?
At any rate, it’s nice to exchange pleasantries with people who aren’t high from time to time. When they smile, it looks normal. They talk about normal things. It’s quaint. That’s what it is. It’s quaint.
Klaus sits, sipping his orange juice and looking around the restaurant at all the normal people doing normal people things. It’s not entirely clear to him what day of the week it is -- too quiet for a weekend, he thinks, or this is a very bad little diner -- but the people still seem happy to be here. There’s a guy reading a newspaper in the corner. There’s a pair of women, gossiping over a pot of coffee. A family with a pair of young kids is trying, unsuccessfully, to clean up syrup from the tabletop.
This going so well that he isn’t even surprised when Ben shows up, sitting across from him. Despite himself -- and the fact that he’s in a public place -- Klaus grins. “So I am sober! I thought so!”
Ben does not look nearly as delighted as Klaus feels. “Do you realize how long it’s been?”
Klaus makes an apologetic face and lowers his voice. “Honestly, I don’t,” he says. “I’m guessing a month?”
“And then some,” Ben tells him flatly.
Klaus wrinkles his nose, hiding behind his juice as he talks. “I’ve always been sort of perplexed by that, how ghosts tell time,” he says. “Like, when I’m not conjuring you, don’t you just blink out of existence?”
“That’s not how it works,” Ben says with a sigh. He’s getting less amused by the second. “I’ve told you that.”
“Yeah, and I wasn’t listening,” Klaus says. He puts the juice down and shrugs. “Or, you know, I forgot.” He leans closer to Ben with a conspiratorial air. “Did you see the amount of drugs I did?”
“No, because you refused to conjure me,” Ben replies tersely. “I haven’t seen anything since you confronted Five.”
Klaus smile falls and his posture slips. He looks back down at his drink. “Right, fun times,” he mutters.
“So?” Ben pushes when Klaus doesn’t elaborate. “What happened?”
“How is it you can tell time but don’t know what happened?” Klaus asks, giving Ben a critical glance.
Ben rolls his eyes. “Klaus.”
“Okay, okay,” Klaus says again, a little under his breath. “We had a confrontation. It didn’t go well.”
Ben’s eyebrows are raised. “Didn’t go well?”
“I may have tried to kill him, like, a little bit,” Klaus admits, letting his gaze wander around the room, anywhere but at Ben.
“You what?” Ben exclaims, and he’s being loud, so it’s a good thing he’s a ghost.
All the same, Klaus shushes him and lowers his own voice in response. “He admitted to it, killing Dave,” he whispers. “He admitted it without regrets, acted like it was what he had to do.”
“So you tried to kill him?” Ben asks, just shy of incredulity now. He shakes his head. “And then you what? Went on a bender?”
At this, Klaus laughs. “It was the bender to end all benders,” he says. “I mean, I think. I actually don’t remember.”
The man with the newspaper gives Klaus a cursory glance over the top of his paper. Klaus smiles his prettiest smile and waves back with the grace of a beauty queen.
Ben is still at something of a loss. “So what changed? I mean, you’re sober now.”
“I’m also super hungry,” Klaus says. “I mean, I had good drugs, but the food wasn’t the best. And you know, honestly, I can’t remember if the drugs were good. That was kind of the point to not remember.”
Ben sits back at this and he thinks for a moment. “And you didn’t get picked up by the cops?”
“What? No!” Klaus says, offended. The fact that this is how it’s played out half a dozen times in the past is not the point.
The mother of the family is giving Klaus nervous looks now. Klaus blows her a kiss.
“So, what?” Ben presses. “You overdosed?”
Klaus lets his jaw drop. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you’re here, getting breakfast, sober,” Ben says. “I know you, Klaus. It’s not an easy thing to make you get sober when you’re that far into it.”
Klaus groans in a sufficiently melodramatic fashion. “I just woke up and felt like I needed to be sober. I had money in my pocket and a clear head so I figured why not? I decided to go home.”
Ben is growing increasingly skeptical. The ladies at the table laugh loudly. “There had to be something to change your mind,” he says, shaking his head. “It had to be something big.”
“Oh, please,” Klaus says. “I just did it.”
“Yeah, and I know you,” Ben says, almost insistent now. “You don’t just do that.”
Klaus sits back with a scoff. “You think I can’t. You think I can’t choose to get sober all on my own.”
“I think you can, but I think you don’t,” Ben says. “There’s always some external impetus. You’re in jail; you’re in rehab; you’re at war; you want to conjure someone--”
This conversation is getting less fun. Klaus is sulking a little now, looking longingly at the kitchen, wondering if his damn pancakes are almost done. “What do you know?” he says sullenly. “Maybe I missed you? My supportive brother.”
It’s a slight, but Ben doesn’t seem affected by it. “What about Five?”
Klaus makes a face. “What about Five?”
“Is he why you’re doing this?”
“Uh, Five’s not why I do anything,” Klaus tells him. “I don’t give a shit about anything that bastard does or says.”
“You have to talk to him,” Ben says, sounding increasingly convinced.
And Klaus is increasingly annoyed. “Five has nothing to do with this,” he says, and he’s the one insisting now.
“Five has everything to do with this,” Ben counters.
“Yeah, because he’s a soulless, murdering asshole,” Klaus says, his fingers fisting tight now as he sits forward and hisses the words. “This has everything to do with him and every one of his selfish, short sighted choices!”
It’s not his voice, which is still at an enraged whispers. It’s the way that his orange juice is levitating off the table. Klaus realizes only then that his powers are starting to surge again, and he has to flex his fingers to release the pressure. He breathes out, letting the power abate. He sits back, a little shocked, as the juice settles back onto the table, still jostling.
Ben watches him for a moment, waiting until the juice has come to a complete stop. “Yeah,” he says sarcastically. “Nothing happened at all.”
Klaus slumps back, unable to deny it this time. “I told you, I don’t know,” he says crossly. He can practically smell the pancakes now, but it doesn’t do anything to lift his spirits anymore. “I took a lot of drugs. A lot of them.”
“And this power surge?” Ben asks keenly.
“Is just a knee jerk reaction when I think of our psychopath little brother,” Klaus mutters.
Ben crosses his arms over his chest, seemingly vexed. “You really haven’t forgiven him yet?”
Klaus takes the glass of orange juice and sips. “Why would I? Do we have to review what he did?”
“But surely you asked why,” Ben says.
“Uh, because he’s an asshole?”
“It was, what, orders?” Ben asks.
Klaus rolls his eyes. “That’s what he said, yes.”
“So, there you go,” Ben says, gesturing as if he’s proved some kind of point.
He’s proved nothing. Klaus shakes his head. “Yeah, that whole following orders thing doesn’t fly. I mean, that’s the defense Nazis used, so, you know--”
Ben is already shaking his head, like this is an irrelevant point. “But you know why Five joined the Commission. You know what he went through.”
The family is paying their check by now. The man is reading the sports section.
“So?” Klaus asks, fiddling with the little packets of jelly on the table.
“So,” Ben says, sitting forward emphatically now. “Imagine what it was like for him. Imagine what you would do if you were by yourself at the end of the world. It wasn’t just days or months, Klaus. It was decades. All by himself. Struggling to survive.”
“Oh, he wasn’t alone,” Klaus says. “He had Delores.”
“Uh, yeah,” Ben says. “He fell in love with a mannequin. He wasn’t exactly in a good place mentally by the time the Handler offered him a way out.”
“Oh, boo hoo,” Klaus says. He flicks a jelly packet, watching it move sluggishly across the table. “I’m supposed to feel sorry for him now, is that it?”
He feels like this is good, sound rhetorical point. When Klaus has this conversation in his head, he always wins with this point.
Ben is not nearly as cooperative as Klaus’ subconscious.
Ghosts are so overrated.
“No,” Ben says. “But you’re supposed to understand that the choice the Handler gave him wasn’t a choice at all. Thirty years, Klaus. You can’t blame him for that.”
“No,” Klaus says. “But I can blame him for being an actual murderer who murders innocent people.”
Ben sighs, deflating slightly. “If he didn’t follow those orders, he never could have gotten back. What would you think of that? If we never got Five back?”
“Then Dave would be alive,” Klaus says.
“And you never would have met him,” Ben says, matter of fact. “Time is a mess. You can’t change one thing and not expect everything else to change. Five’s not perfect, but you can’t separate out his actions. Family is an zero-sum game.”
Klaus glowers, and he’s still glowering when the waitress brings his pancakes. He’s glowering so much that she looks deeply uncomfortable when she asks if he would like some warm maple syrup with that. He’s glowering so much that he doesn’t even manage to tell her that yes, he does love warm maple syrup.
Instead he glowers until she walks away.
Glowering still, he stares at his pancakes.
He looks up and glowers at Ben.
And not because Ben’s right, for the record. Ben is most definitely not right. What Ben is, however, is really, really annoying.
Like the most annoying person to have ever lived. Or died. Whatever.
“You’re stupid,” he mutters, picking up his fork.
“You’re the one being stupid,” Ben says. “You’re going to regret this mess with Five.”
Klaus cuts into his pancakes with a pout. “I keep hoping he regrets it.”
“I’m serious!”
Klaus folds a piece of pancake over and spears it. “I am, too. Would an apology kill him?”
The words make him flinch, and he’s not sure why. He hears the question he’s not asking, the one he’s been trying not to ask since this whole thing started. It’s not whether or not an apology would kill him; it’s whether or not the lack of one would.
But Klaus wouldn’t really kill Five.
He pauses, thinking about the hole in the ceiling.
“If he came to you now, right now,” Ben says, “what would you do?”
Klaus hesitates, pancake poised on the fork, halfway to his mouth. Somewhere, in his mind, he can see Five. He’s standing in the room, that shitty, rundown room with peeling wallpaper and the smell of urine in the floorboards. He’s standing there, coming to offer Klaus a choice. It’s pragmatic, the way Five likes it. He offers exile and death. Not for Klaus, to be clear. For himself.
He’s asking Klaus to determine the proper punishment for his actions.
Klaus’ fingers tingle. He sees his plate shake and he swallows. He has to blink furiously, breathing through his nose.
“I don’t know,” he lies, shoving the pancake in his mouth. He barely tastes it as he forces himself to swallow. “I just know I need to go home.”
-o-
So, Klaus is sober and now he is also well fed. All in all, this seems like a good start to the day.
Well, he can’t actually remember the start of the day, but it’s a good start for...something. Klaus isn’t about to be picky about things at this point. Instead, he follows through on his plan to go home. With Ben around, he at least knows what direction to go in.
“And how were you going to get home if I didn’t show up?” Ben asks as they start up the street in the opposite direction Klaus had initially been heading.
“Oh, please,” Klaus says. “Conjuring the dead is always part of the plan. I literally can think of no other reason why I would possibly care to be sober.”
“So, living a meaningful and productive life and reconciling with your family mean nothing?” Ben asks.
“Pish posh,” Klaus says, waving his hand dismissively through the air. “I’m starting small. Not doing drugs for a full day -- working on it. Emotional maturity and coping with my issues -- that comes much, much later.”
Ben keeps pace, which is easy, since he’s a ghost and ghosts can apparently do whatever the hell they want. “You know none of that is true.”
“If I have learned anything in my long, colorful life, it’s to aim low,” Klaus tells him with a perfunctory smile. “Life has enough disappointments. There’s no need to make more.”
-o-
Klaus has managed to affect an air of casual indifference. In fact, walking down the street, you might even mistake him for jaunty. He’s got a good reparate with Ben, and he’s feeling almost optimistic by the time he gets home.
And why not?
It’s not like him being a drug addict is new or something. He’s been on drugs since he was a teenager; his siblings know this about him. And they know that relapses happen. Well, they should know, as Klaus has made relapsing his most common pastime.
Now, that’s not to say Klaus is proud of it. He’s not, for the record. But shame is a funny thing, and Klaus finds that he no longer has the patience for it. His dad -- the bastard -- had always tried to shame him into shaping up. Klaus had tried to let it work for awhile, but it was too tiresome.
Besides, shame is a misplaced emotion. Why should Klaus feel guilty about being overwhelmed by his problems? His problems are, after all, really overwhelming. Only someone like Reginald Hargreeves would expect a child to cope well seeing dead people all the time. His siblings weren’t like that. Sure, they don’t like when he does drugs, and they might get exasperated with him from time to time, but they get it. They all have their hang ups. Allison is in therapy to get her daughter back. Diego runs around with a mask and was once wanted for murder. Luther literally spent four years on the moon! They’re all messed up.
They will take him back. Klaus knows this without question. He has no doubts about it.
So why is he nervous?
Why does he almost feel the incessant urge to turn back?
A half block away, he comes to a stop. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea, after all,” he says, brow furrowing. “I mean, maybe I’m not ready.”
Ben turns on him. “No, you came this far--”
“And for what?” Klaus asks. “I don’t need them--”
Ben gives him a loot.
“I don’t!” Klaus insists.
“And what wouldn’t you go back?” Ben says, turning the question around.
Klaus scoffs but is slow in coming up with an answer.
“Go back and do more drugs?” Ben asks knowingly. “Since that works so well for you.”
“Well, it works while I’m doing it,” Klaus says. “I don’t remember anything when I’m high.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s working.”
“Of course it does!”
“Klaus.”
“Ben!”
Ben stares him down. Harder. He’s almost intimidating. “Don’t make me drag you back in there.”
Almost intimidating. Klaus gives him a quizzical look back. “You do remember that the only way you can do anything is if I let you.”
This is a very compelling point, if Klaus does say so himself. The problem is that his family is rarely compelled to do anything normal or rational. Just because Ben is dead, it doesn’t mean he’s immune.
“You know you have to go back,” Ben says flatly.
Klaus groans, throwing his head back to look beseechingly at the sky.
The sky doesn’t answer.
It’s not like he expected it to, but it would have been nice.
He looks back down. “Fine,” he says. “But I’m not going to make things right with Five.”
Ben holds up his hands. “If you say so.”
Klaus does.
He marches on toward the house wishing like hell it mattered.
-o-
The problem is this: memories are like ghosts. They’re there; they’re always there, even when you don’t want to see them. You can run from them, you can hide them, you can ignore them, but you can’t really forget them. They haunt you, lingering in the back of your mind, tickling your subconscious.
Klaus has been haunted by ghosts his entire life, so he would know.
He really would know.
-o-
It’s funny how easy it is, walking up the front steps. The front door is, of all things, unlocked. Klaus walks right on in, plain as day, simple as that.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been away.
It feels like long enough.
It also feels like no time at all.
“Well, shit,” he murmurs to himself as he crosses the threshold. “I’m back.”
-o-
He knows exactly where he’s going since he did grow up in this house, but he doesn’t actually know where he’s going at all. Does he go to his room like nothing has happened? Does he check in with Pogo because that’s something he used to do when he was a kid? Does he go to the kitchen and see if there’s something to eat since his stomach still feels like it could consume something after those pancakes? Or does he find his siblings?
Fortunately, he doesn’t have to choose for this one. He makes it to the living room when Allison is crossing in from the other side. They stand opposite each other, frozen in shock for a moment, before Allison’s face is flooded with relieved.
“Oh, thank God,” she says, crossing over to him in a rush. She gathers him up quickly, enveloping him in a hug before he even has a chance to protest. He’s still gobsmacked as she pulls back, cupping his cheeks in her hands. “You’re okay. We’ve been so worried about you. Where have you been?”
“Oh you know,” Klaus says, backing up slightly to break her hold. “Around.”
She eyes him up and down, more critically this time. Klaus is sober, but he knows he barely looks it. “Are you--”
“Clean?” Klaus provides for her.
She meets his gaze, not contradicting him.
“Yes,” he says. “I mean, more or less. Clean enough that I can see Ben at any rate.”
She doesn’t seem overly reassured, but she sighs anyway. “You’ve been gone nearly five weeks.”
So his estimate of a month isn’t that far off.
“We looked for you everywhere--”
Not everywhere, but Klaus hasn’t come to be petty. “To be fair, I wasn’t looking to be found.”
She draws in another breath, flattening her lips. “I’m sorry how it went down. When I rumored you--”
“It had to be done, I get it,” Klaus says.
It still seems to distress her. “We were so worried,” she says. She seems to correct herself. Clarify, maybe. “I was so worried.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says, and he feels a little embarrassed now. It’s not shame for what he’s done, but he doesn’t like to think of putting them out. He likes his choices to be his choices. He’s not sure about the way consequences are interrelated these days. It’s complicated. “I just...needed some time.”
She nods, giving him a faint smile. “Well, I’m just glad you’re back.” She pauses, glancing behind him. “You’re...alone?”
“Well, Benny’s here,” Klaus says, nodding to his side. “Not quite corporeal yet, but in a few days.”
Allison still seems to be searching. “Just Ben?”
“Well, who else?” Klaus asks. He laughs. “I mean, everyone else is here, right?”
Allison hesitates again.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Klaus asks.
“You’ve been gone a long time--”
“Allison--”
“Okay, okay,” she says. “Just. Give me a few minutes.”
He grabs at her arm to stop her. “Is something wrong?”
When she looks back, she can’t quite smile wide enough. “We’ll talk about it,” she says, and Allison’s a good actress by all accounts, but she’s not nearly good enough. “I promise.”
-o-
Klaus has lost a month, so he shouldn’t complain about the way time drags. But it does drag. Like, it really drags. Sitting there, in the living room, the minutes feel like an eternity. He feels like he may have died and been resurrected in the amount of time it takes for Allison to round up the family.
He perks up as the file in one by one. They all look relieved to see him, but Klaus becomes increasingly convinced that their relief has been tempered somehow. Why, Klaus doesn’t know, but it’s starting to make him anxious.
He could use something to take the edge off right about now, but apparently he has chosen to be sober or something. He wishes he could remember that choice, but he is sitting here, after all. That has to count for something.
Klaus just isn’t sure what.
He still feels like he’s forgetting something. Something important.
His siblings exchange anxious glances of their own before Luther finally seems to remember that he is Number One. “We’re really glad you’re back,” he says, and it does sound like he means it. “We haven’t stopped looking for you.”
It’s not quite a resounding sentiment. In fact, it falls a little flat. Allison’s smile is forced, and Diego scratches the back of his head. Vanya’s sitting by herself in a chair and her face looks splotchy, like she’s been crying.
“Right,” Klaus says. “Well, I wasn’t ready to come home yet.”
“What changed your mind?” Diego asks. He looks like he’s bracing himself. He’s got one hand on a knife, even if he’s trying not to show it.
“Uh, I don’t know,” Klaus says. “Woke up today. It felt like time.”
This is the truth. Or the truth as much as Klaus knows it.
Luther’s smile looks almost pained now. Vanya is legitimately.
“Look, am I missing something here?” Klaus asks, cocking his head.
Luther looks around like he has no idea what Klaus is saying. Allison wets her lips, letting her smile falter entirely. “You’ve been gone a long time, Klaus.”
Vanya stifles a cry rather unsuccessfully.
“Oh, come on,” Klaus says, gesturing to Vanya. “Something is clearly wrong.”
He looks at them again, growing vaguely desperate this time. Diego is back to scratching the back of his neck, and Luther looks like he’s constipated. Allison’s expression is so twisted up that it looks physically painful.
Ben looks back at him, like he’s waiting for Klaus to figure it out.
Klaus looks at his siblings again. Luther and Diego and Allison and Vanya and…
“Wait,” Klaus says. He sits up a little straighter. “Where’s Five?”
Vanya all but sobs this time, and Allison closes her eyes. Diego purses his lips, fingers tapping the hilt of his knife anxiously. It’s Luther who swallows. It’s Luther who looks at him. It’s Luther who says, “Five’s gone, Klaus. Five’s gone.”
-o-
The thing is, Klaus is supposed to be shocked. This is news to him since he hasn’t been back in five weeks. He hasn’t even been sober in five weeks. So of course Five’s disappearance is a total shock to him.
Except is it?
Why isn’t it?
What is Klaus missing?
What does Klaus know?
And why does he think he doesn’t know?
He shakes his head, trying to ground his thoughts. Maybe he’s misunderstood. “Five’s gone?” he repeats. “Like, out to get coffee? Maybe out for a casual afternoon murder?”
“No,” Luther says. “He’s gone. He left this morning and he hasn’t been back. We found a note in his room. A note that explains….”
Luther trails off.
Klaus waits. “That explains what?”
It’s Diego who manages to finish. “That explains he wasn’t coming back. Ever.”
Diego says it with a note of finality. It carries more than a hint of accusation.
Allison, shifting forward empathetically, moves to intervene. “We don’t blame you.”
Klaus is still too dumbfounded to even know what that means. “But where was Five going?”
“The note said he was coming to find you,” Allison says, and she looks uncertain now.
Klaus knows the feeling pretty damn well. “But why would he want to find me?”
“To bring you back!” Vanya interjects. She takes a ragged breath and sloppily wipes her nose. “That was all he’d thought about for weeks since you left. He wanted to bring you back home. No matter what. He spent his time doing calculations, running probabilities, all of it. To figure out what would make you come home.”
It doesn’t seem likely that Vanya is lying. It’s just that Klaus can’t imagine a context in which she’s actually telling the truth. The words she’s saying don’t make sense. None it makes any sense.
Slowly, Klaus shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Honestly, we don’t really get it either,” Luther says with a small wince. “We were gearing up to come find you just now.”
“But wait,” Klaus says. He knits his brows together, feeling like this is a conversation that should be had when he’s much more sober than this. It’s possible he’d never be sober enough for this. “When was this? When did it all happen exactly?”
“Today,” Diego says. Diego is the type who gets angry when he’s worried. He also gets angry when he’s angry so sometimes it’s hard to tell. “Five left today.”
“You’re saying Five came to see me today?” Klaus attempts to clarify, for all the good it’s going to do him at this point. “Like today today?”
Allison responds by becoming increasingly sympathetic. “It couldn’t have been more than six hours ago, but we can’t be sure. Five snuck out without telling us,” she explains. “You really didn’t see him?”
That’s clearly the questions she’s been wanting to ask since he walked in the front door. They’d all been pinning their hopes on that. They had thought that finding one would bring them the other. It’s not that they’re not happy to see him, it’s that they didn’t expect him to be alone.
Which is crazy, of course. And just naive. Klaus coming back with Five? Why would Klaus ever come back with Five? Why would Klaus do anything with Five?
Why is everything about Five anyway? Like, literally. All of time and space seems to be about that diminuitive murder robot and Klaus doesn’t understand why.
For all that he’s forgotten, Klaus remembers quite viscerally why he left to get interminably high in the first place. That’s insightful maybe but not very helpful. “I really….don’t remember,” he confesses. “I mean, I’ve taken a lot of drugs and drunk a lot of alcohol over the last month. I mean, a lot. So a lot of things, they’re just hazy.”
“But today,” Vanya says and she sounds a little like she’s begging. “He came to find you today.”
“And I only remember the last two hours,” Klaus says, because he’d like to forget Five but he hates to see Vanya like this. “I remember waking up and thinking it was time to go. I got up, left the house, ate something and walked home. I mean, I can’t rule out that I saw him before that -- I’ve seen a lot of things, okay? But I don’t remember.”
“Try, Klaus,” Luther implores him. “Try to remember.”
Klaus is obliging; he really is. His mind trips back to the diner where he paid for lunch with neatly folded bills. He spins a line of thought to the room where he woke up, the kid-sized hole in the plaster ceiling. Five’s voice in the back of his head, nagging on him to make a choice already, just make a choice.
“You came back for a reason,” Diego says. His hand is practically wrapped around the hilt. It’s not menacing, but it is Diego, so it’s kind of all the same. “Why did you come back today if not for Five?”
That’s logic, of course. Logic has never been Klaus particularly favorite thing. He finds it overrated, if he’s honest. A lot of things are overrated. Like family, sobriety--
No, he shakes his head.
Logic is not overrated. It’s unpleasant. Like family, sobriety.
But necessary?
Is it necessary?
Is it necessary to conclude that Five came to see him this morning? Is it necessary to realize that Five came and offered him a choice? A choice to let Five go or to kill him? A choice that invariably meant Klaus could come home alone?
His breathing catches.
That’s not an assumption. That’s not theory.
It’s memory.
Klaus remembers.
He looks at his siblings, their hopeful, desperate faces. And he gapes. “Five was there,” he says, almost like he can’t believe it himself. Almost like he doesn’t want to believe it.
Vanya clutches at one of the throw pillows. “He was? You do remember?”
“I think so,” Klaus says, even as his voice falters. “I mean, I think he was there.”
“So where is he now?” Luther asks.
Klaus looks at his brother. He looks at all of his siblings and swallows. “He left,” he says.
“But why would he leave?” Allison asks in what amounts to utter confusion. “Why would he leave without you? Why wouldn’t he come back?”
Exile or death, Klaus remembers. Make the choice; you get to make the choice.
“Well,” he hedges, and he has to flatten out his fingers to keep his anxiety from spiking. “It’s possible that I may have tried to kill him first.”
“You what?” Diego asks. Vanya physically recoils. Luther assumes a defensive stance, and Allison appears vaguely sick.
“I didn’t, though,” he says, as if to reassure them. “I mean, I think we have a confrontation, I threw him around and I passed out. But he was gone when I woke up. I swear he was. That’s why I thought it was a dream.”
“You dream of killing people often?” Allison asks with just a hint of skepticism.
“Only Five,” Klaus says in his defense. “And Dad, but you know how that is.”
“You said you think,” Vanya says, her voice thin and brittle. “You aren’t sure? You don’t know one hundred percent?”
“I’ve been on heavy drugs, okay?” Klaus says and he gives a small, breathless laugh. “Most of the shit I’ve seen this past month hasn’t been real.”
“Then how do you know?” Diego asks.
Klaus shrugs, feeling smaller by the minute. “It’s just a sense, I don’t know,” he says. “And I mean, circumstantial evidence. The room where I was staying was a mess when I woke up. Everything was broken, not like it normally was. And I just felt this overwhelming emotions, you know? Like I had to come home. I had to come home right now. But I didn’t know why.”
“Probably because he came and told you,” Allison concludes for him. “He gave you the impetus to finally make the change.”
Klaus balks a little. He’s reeling, but he’s not quite ready to play this game where Five’s the good guy. When he is categorically not.
“And you attacked him,” Diego says with a scoff. He rolls his eyes. “Again.”
So it’s possible that Klaus isn’t exactly the good guy either, but he’s still the victim here. “I wasn’t in my right mind,” Klaus says. “I mean, I must have been a little sober to use my powers, but you can’t shake drugs like that quickly. And are we forgetting what Five did? Are we forgetting the little part about murder?”
“Of course not,” Luther says. He sighs, implicitly trying to defuse the situation. “And no one remembered that more than Five. That’s why it mattered so much to him to bring you home.”
Klaus is only just sober, but it’s just enough it seems. They have a special kind of a family, after all. The kind that makes murder something that can possibly be overlooked. It’s easier when you don’t know the person being killed, of course. Klaus had lovingly referred to Five as their little psychopath for months, implicitly acknowledging that Five had killed many, many people he didn’t know.
He knows Dave, though.
The others don’t.
To them, Dave’s just another name. Another faceless name. A series of letters scribbled on Five’s wall as he calculates the cost of selling your soul to save the world.
“You really don’t remember?” Allison asks.
“You have no idea where he went?” Diego prods.
Vanya sniffles. “Can you at least remember if he’s okay?”
“I don’t know,” Klaus says again. He says it again and again and again. He wets his lips, shakes his head. “I really just don’t remember.”
Klaus left to forget.
He hates that he has to remember in order to really come back.
Is family worth it?
It seems like Klaus is going to find out.
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
PART THIRTEEN
PART FOURTEEN
PART FIFTEEN
PART SIXTEEN
PART SEVENTEEN
PART EIGHTEEN
PART NINETEEN
PART TWENTY
TEN
Okay, so, true story.
Klaus doesn’t actually remember everything that has happened in the last month.
In fact, if he’s being honest -- and Klaus tries to be honest, sometimes, maybe, now -- he doesn’t even remember if it’s been a month. He’s simply aware of some passage of time, and it seems significant based on the amount his facial hair has grown. He looks a little like a vagrant.
A little more like a vagrant.
Fine, technically, he is a vagrant, but you know what he means.
Klaus has let time slip away from him.
No, no, no. That’s not it, not really. Is it? Klaus has willfully thrown time away from him. He’s looked at time as a non-essential element, really. What is time? What are minutes? What is the function of hours? Why does it matter to distinguish one day from the next? They’re all shit, all empty, pointless days without Dave.
At least, this is what he thinks until he passes out sober.
You ask, how can one pass out sober?
Klaus is talented like that. He is. Also, it’s like, a thing. Superheroes are super and all that, but they’re not infinitely powerful. Like, they all have their limits, and some of those limits manifest in more dramatic ways. That’s why Vanya can’t use her powers when her emotions are haywire. That’s presumably why the sibling who must not be named got stuck in the future.
Shit, why didn’t he just stay there?
Klaus is getting off the point.
The point.
What is the point?
The point is that Klaus passes out sober because he’s spent all his energy, and he wakes up tired and achy with a dry mouth on a bed he vaguely recognizes but wishes that he didn’t. There is a half-smoked joint on the chair next to the bed, and traces of crack that he’s missed are scattered nearby.
As he sits here and contemplates that, he thinks about how long he’s been here. This line of thought leads him in circles and thus brings him to the conclusion that he has no clue how much time has passed.
He rubs his face wearily, trying unsuccessfully to wet his lips. His tongue is like sandpaper, and nothing works. There’s a part of him that thinks he’s thinking far too much. There’s half a joint there, and he’s worked harder for less crack, and really, who the hell wants to remember how much time has passed anyway? Forgetting is easier. Forgetting is better, and Klaus is way too sober for any of this.
He hesitates, however.
This isn’t a room he knows but it’s familiar. He knows the place is a mess because he knows he’s been living mostly as a vagrant in a crack den, but somehow, the state of the room doesn’t seem right. The plaster, which was peeling before, is all but gone in certain portions of the ceiling. He finds some of it in his hair. The windows have been busted out, and rain is coming through. The wall is dented to the framing, and the door frame has been broken.
Fights happen in places like this, but that much damage? To the ceiling?
Klaus chews his lip.
He passed out sober. He doesn’t know how much time has passed. It’s almost like he used his powers and used them so much that it wore him out and he lost control and oh, shit--
He blinks and wonders if anything he’s remembering is real.
Five.
Five was here.
Five was here?
Klaus feels his chest clench and he stretches his sweaty palms. His throat is tight, and he shakes his head, pressing his palm to his eyes and squeezing them shut.
Why was Five here?
Why did Klaus use his powers?
Why can’t he remember anything?
Because he’s been trying to forget, of course. And that’s what he should be doing now. The plan had been good. It’d been working. Forgetting, forgetting, forgetting.
He hesitates, looking at the drugs on the chair.
Five had been here.
Klaus’ powers were spent.
The room is a disaster with all evidence pointing to a fight.
Not a fight.
A one-sided beating.
Klaus isn’t sure it matters. He’s not sure it changes anything. If something happened to Five, then isn’t that probably his own fault? Shouldn’t Five be culpable for at least some of his actions? All the shit Five’s done, can’t he have some accountability? Isn’t there something called justice? Karma? Anything?
Fisting his fingers, Klaus pounds in frustration on the threadbare mattress. He hates Five, he hates Five, he hates Five.
So why is he suddenly worried about Five?
Not worried. Five can handle himself, but Klaus is concerned. Appropriately concerned. Concerned with detachment.
Concern can be fixed one of two ways.
The first way involves drugs. Lots of drugs. Endless rounds of drugs punctuated only by periods of gorging on any food that happens to be in the area. Preferably pancakes. Or waffles. But mostly pancakes.
The second way involves figuring out the truth. It’s cumbersome and tedious and it makes you talk to people and face issues like an actual adult. To be fair, it can also involve pancakes. If he wants, it could involve lots of pancakes.
Klaus has a choice to make, doesn’t he?
Why does it seem like such an important choice?
Vexed, Klaus tries to think of fifteen reasons to stay here on this bed and to take the drugs. He tries to think of another thirty reasons to forget all of this ever happened, once and for all.
That’s all compelling, but there’s a problem. The problem, as best Klaus can tell, is that he’s already made the choice.
Shakily, he gets to his feet. Grasping at the dog tags around his neck, he finds his balance. Still, he has to brace himself on the chair for a moment, but he pushes forward to the door. When he gets there, he looks back at the gaping hole in the ceiling and doesn’t think about how it’s about the size of a 13 year old boy.
Instead, Klaus thinks about how it’s finally time for him to go home.
-o-
Choices aside, the practical reality is a little harder to navigate. Klaus is now becoming painfully aware that he is, in fact, really, really sober. He’s sober to the point that he knows he’s sober, and that’s typically the point when he really doesn’t want to be sober.
Every step he walks, out the bedroom, down the stairs, is a step he wishes he was taking back up to the drugs. Hell, he sees drugs everywhere in the house. The person passed out on the stairs has some in her hand. The pair in the living room has a whole bunch spilled all over the table. If he can trace the smell right -- and he can, he really can -- someone else is making something new in the basement.
All Klaus has to do is stay and he’ll forget everything.
It’s counterintuitive, then, that he actually makes it outside.
He stands on the stoop for awhile, contemplating how he got here. It takes him a minute to realize that it’s raining and that he’s actually getting quite wet. It’s only then that he notices that he is, at least, wearing clothes, which is a plus. He’s not sure why he’s wearing shoes, but it seems like a fortuitous touch.
The air is fresh, which is a weird sort of thing. He looks back at the house, confused again as to how long he’d been there. The world outside seems hardly changed for his absence, but he feels out of synch with it still. Out of time.
It makes his heart skip a beat when he thinks about time. It feels like Dave died yesterday, but it’s been decades. He wonders how long it’s been for Five since he was in Vietnam, how three lives could intersect at a single point so tragically with reverberations across all of time and space.
He’s not going to cry right now, so Klaus turns away. He starts down the steps, taking them one at a time as he uses the decrepit railing to steady himself. On the sidewalk, he looks up and down to try to get his bearings. It doesn’t do him much good; he doesn’t know exactly where he is.
Fortunately, he thinks, it doesn’t actually matter. If he’s going to be sober -- and that’s apparently a thing for him right now -- he just can’t be here.
Thus decided, he turns down the street and starts to walk.
-o-
He walks for several blocks before it stops raining. Several more and he’s finally in a part of town where real people actually live and work. It’s a change he notices mostly by the number of people who gawk at him. There’s a young mother who literally hides her son’s eyes, like Klaus is some kind of abomination.
He does look a little gnarly, to be fair. He’s not showered in, well, he’s not sure how long -- though he thinks the rain may have helped with the smell. It did not, however, help him look remotely presentable, and he knows his hair is shaggy and he’s got something resembling a scruffy beard. He’s lost weight, too, not that he’d been particularly beefy to start with. Even from his vantage point, he looks painfully thin, and that’s when he realizes that the ache in his stomach is not merely withdrawal.
No, Klaus is hungry.
Hungry is a normal part of being a person, but Klaus doesn’t know where he is. At a loss, he digs into his pockets, hoping to find his wallet. Why he’s hoping this is not clear; it’s not like he has any money left, and he tries to remember if he has access to his bank account but having a bank account is such a novel concept to him that he just can’t recall.
However, as he digs through his pockets, he’s surprised to find a wad of bills, neatly folded, tucked into his front pocket. He worries for a moment that he’s turned himself into a drug dealer unwittingly, but that’s a ridiculous notion. If he had made money selling drugs, he would have spent all the money on drugs.
No, this, this seems like an escape plan.
Klaus doesn’t remember making said escape plan, but here he is. Sober with cash to burn. True, his siblings would have come to get him if he called -- even collect -- but it seems nicer this way. To do it himself.
A choice.
What is it about choices today?
Klaus can’t remember. It feels like he should remember.
There’s an easy choice to make, though.
With money in his hand and a diner on the corner, it’s time to get pancakes.
-o-
It’s so weird, interacting with people. Like actually interacting with them. Talking to them. He knows he’s talked to people over the last month, but there’s no way for him to know which conversations were real and which ones weren’t. And the tidbits he does remember are not ones he thinks he wants to remember. Did he really have a conversation about waxing with chocolate pudding?
At any rate, it’s nice to exchange pleasantries with people who aren’t high from time to time. When they smile, it looks normal. They talk about normal things. It’s quaint. That’s what it is. It’s quaint.
Klaus sits, sipping his orange juice and looking around the restaurant at all the normal people doing normal people things. It’s not entirely clear to him what day of the week it is -- too quiet for a weekend, he thinks, or this is a very bad little diner -- but the people still seem happy to be here. There’s a guy reading a newspaper in the corner. There’s a pair of women, gossiping over a pot of coffee. A family with a pair of young kids is trying, unsuccessfully, to clean up syrup from the tabletop.
This going so well that he isn’t even surprised when Ben shows up, sitting across from him. Despite himself -- and the fact that he’s in a public place -- Klaus grins. “So I am sober! I thought so!”
Ben does not look nearly as delighted as Klaus feels. “Do you realize how long it’s been?”
Klaus makes an apologetic face and lowers his voice. “Honestly, I don’t,” he says. “I’m guessing a month?”
“And then some,” Ben tells him flatly.
Klaus wrinkles his nose, hiding behind his juice as he talks. “I’ve always been sort of perplexed by that, how ghosts tell time,” he says. “Like, when I’m not conjuring you, don’t you just blink out of existence?”
“That’s not how it works,” Ben says with a sigh. He’s getting less amused by the second. “I’ve told you that.”
“Yeah, and I wasn’t listening,” Klaus says. He puts the juice down and shrugs. “Or, you know, I forgot.” He leans closer to Ben with a conspiratorial air. “Did you see the amount of drugs I did?”
“No, because you refused to conjure me,” Ben replies tersely. “I haven’t seen anything since you confronted Five.”
Klaus smile falls and his posture slips. He looks back down at his drink. “Right, fun times,” he mutters.
“So?” Ben pushes when Klaus doesn’t elaborate. “What happened?”
“How is it you can tell time but don’t know what happened?” Klaus asks, giving Ben a critical glance.
Ben rolls his eyes. “Klaus.”
“Okay, okay,” Klaus says again, a little under his breath. “We had a confrontation. It didn’t go well.”
Ben’s eyebrows are raised. “Didn’t go well?”
“I may have tried to kill him, like, a little bit,” Klaus admits, letting his gaze wander around the room, anywhere but at Ben.
“You what?” Ben exclaims, and he’s being loud, so it’s a good thing he’s a ghost.
All the same, Klaus shushes him and lowers his own voice in response. “He admitted to it, killing Dave,” he whispers. “He admitted it without regrets, acted like it was what he had to do.”
“So you tried to kill him?” Ben asks, just shy of incredulity now. He shakes his head. “And then you what? Went on a bender?”
At this, Klaus laughs. “It was the bender to end all benders,” he says. “I mean, I think. I actually don’t remember.”
The man with the newspaper gives Klaus a cursory glance over the top of his paper. Klaus smiles his prettiest smile and waves back with the grace of a beauty queen.
Ben is still at something of a loss. “So what changed? I mean, you’re sober now.”
“I’m also super hungry,” Klaus says. “I mean, I had good drugs, but the food wasn’t the best. And you know, honestly, I can’t remember if the drugs were good. That was kind of the point to not remember.”
Ben sits back at this and he thinks for a moment. “And you didn’t get picked up by the cops?”
“What? No!” Klaus says, offended. The fact that this is how it’s played out half a dozen times in the past is not the point.
The mother of the family is giving Klaus nervous looks now. Klaus blows her a kiss.
“So, what?” Ben presses. “You overdosed?”
Klaus lets his jaw drop. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you’re here, getting breakfast, sober,” Ben says. “I know you, Klaus. It’s not an easy thing to make you get sober when you’re that far into it.”
Klaus groans in a sufficiently melodramatic fashion. “I just woke up and felt like I needed to be sober. I had money in my pocket and a clear head so I figured why not? I decided to go home.”
Ben is growing increasingly skeptical. The ladies at the table laugh loudly. “There had to be something to change your mind,” he says, shaking his head. “It had to be something big.”
“Oh, please,” Klaus says. “I just did it.”
“Yeah, and I know you,” Ben says, almost insistent now. “You don’t just do that.”
Klaus sits back with a scoff. “You think I can’t. You think I can’t choose to get sober all on my own.”
“I think you can, but I think you don’t,” Ben says. “There’s always some external impetus. You’re in jail; you’re in rehab; you’re at war; you want to conjure someone--”
This conversation is getting less fun. Klaus is sulking a little now, looking longingly at the kitchen, wondering if his damn pancakes are almost done. “What do you know?” he says sullenly. “Maybe I missed you? My supportive brother.”
It’s a slight, but Ben doesn’t seem affected by it. “What about Five?”
Klaus makes a face. “What about Five?”
“Is he why you’re doing this?”
“Uh, Five’s not why I do anything,” Klaus tells him. “I don’t give a shit about anything that bastard does or says.”
“You have to talk to him,” Ben says, sounding increasingly convinced.
And Klaus is increasingly annoyed. “Five has nothing to do with this,” he says, and he’s the one insisting now.
“Five has everything to do with this,” Ben counters.
“Yeah, because he’s a soulless, murdering asshole,” Klaus says, his fingers fisting tight now as he sits forward and hisses the words. “This has everything to do with him and every one of his selfish, short sighted choices!”
It’s not his voice, which is still at an enraged whispers. It’s the way that his orange juice is levitating off the table. Klaus realizes only then that his powers are starting to surge again, and he has to flex his fingers to release the pressure. He breathes out, letting the power abate. He sits back, a little shocked, as the juice settles back onto the table, still jostling.
Ben watches him for a moment, waiting until the juice has come to a complete stop. “Yeah,” he says sarcastically. “Nothing happened at all.”
Klaus slumps back, unable to deny it this time. “I told you, I don’t know,” he says crossly. He can practically smell the pancakes now, but it doesn’t do anything to lift his spirits anymore. “I took a lot of drugs. A lot of them.”
“And this power surge?” Ben asks keenly.
“Is just a knee jerk reaction when I think of our psychopath little brother,” Klaus mutters.
Ben crosses his arms over his chest, seemingly vexed. “You really haven’t forgiven him yet?”
Klaus takes the glass of orange juice and sips. “Why would I? Do we have to review what he did?”
“But surely you asked why,” Ben says.
“Uh, because he’s an asshole?”
“It was, what, orders?” Ben asks.
Klaus rolls his eyes. “That’s what he said, yes.”
“So, there you go,” Ben says, gesturing as if he’s proved some kind of point.
He’s proved nothing. Klaus shakes his head. “Yeah, that whole following orders thing doesn’t fly. I mean, that’s the defense Nazis used, so, you know--”
Ben is already shaking his head, like this is an irrelevant point. “But you know why Five joined the Commission. You know what he went through.”
The family is paying their check by now. The man is reading the sports section.
“So?” Klaus asks, fiddling with the little packets of jelly on the table.
“So,” Ben says, sitting forward emphatically now. “Imagine what it was like for him. Imagine what you would do if you were by yourself at the end of the world. It wasn’t just days or months, Klaus. It was decades. All by himself. Struggling to survive.”
“Oh, he wasn’t alone,” Klaus says. “He had Delores.”
“Uh, yeah,” Ben says. “He fell in love with a mannequin. He wasn’t exactly in a good place mentally by the time the Handler offered him a way out.”
“Oh, boo hoo,” Klaus says. He flicks a jelly packet, watching it move sluggishly across the table. “I’m supposed to feel sorry for him now, is that it?”
He feels like this is good, sound rhetorical point. When Klaus has this conversation in his head, he always wins with this point.
Ben is not nearly as cooperative as Klaus’ subconscious.
Ghosts are so overrated.
“No,” Ben says. “But you’re supposed to understand that the choice the Handler gave him wasn’t a choice at all. Thirty years, Klaus. You can’t blame him for that.”
“No,” Klaus says. “But I can blame him for being an actual murderer who murders innocent people.”
Ben sighs, deflating slightly. “If he didn’t follow those orders, he never could have gotten back. What would you think of that? If we never got Five back?”
“Then Dave would be alive,” Klaus says.
“And you never would have met him,” Ben says, matter of fact. “Time is a mess. You can’t change one thing and not expect everything else to change. Five’s not perfect, but you can’t separate out his actions. Family is an zero-sum game.”
Klaus glowers, and he’s still glowering when the waitress brings his pancakes. He’s glowering so much that she looks deeply uncomfortable when she asks if he would like some warm maple syrup with that. He’s glowering so much that he doesn’t even manage to tell her that yes, he does love warm maple syrup.
Instead he glowers until she walks away.
Glowering still, he stares at his pancakes.
He looks up and glowers at Ben.
And not because Ben’s right, for the record. Ben is most definitely not right. What Ben is, however, is really, really annoying.
Like the most annoying person to have ever lived. Or died. Whatever.
“You’re stupid,” he mutters, picking up his fork.
“You’re the one being stupid,” Ben says. “You’re going to regret this mess with Five.”
Klaus cuts into his pancakes with a pout. “I keep hoping he regrets it.”
“I’m serious!”
Klaus folds a piece of pancake over and spears it. “I am, too. Would an apology kill him?”
The words make him flinch, and he’s not sure why. He hears the question he’s not asking, the one he’s been trying not to ask since this whole thing started. It’s not whether or not an apology would kill him; it’s whether or not the lack of one would.
But Klaus wouldn’t really kill Five.
He pauses, thinking about the hole in the ceiling.
“If he came to you now, right now,” Ben says, “what would you do?”
Klaus hesitates, pancake poised on the fork, halfway to his mouth. Somewhere, in his mind, he can see Five. He’s standing in the room, that shitty, rundown room with peeling wallpaper and the smell of urine in the floorboards. He’s standing there, coming to offer Klaus a choice. It’s pragmatic, the way Five likes it. He offers exile and death. Not for Klaus, to be clear. For himself.
He’s asking Klaus to determine the proper punishment for his actions.
Klaus’ fingers tingle. He sees his plate shake and he swallows. He has to blink furiously, breathing through his nose.
“I don’t know,” he lies, shoving the pancake in his mouth. He barely tastes it as he forces himself to swallow. “I just know I need to go home.”
-o-
So, Klaus is sober and now he is also well fed. All in all, this seems like a good start to the day.
Well, he can’t actually remember the start of the day, but it’s a good start for...something. Klaus isn’t about to be picky about things at this point. Instead, he follows through on his plan to go home. With Ben around, he at least knows what direction to go in.
“And how were you going to get home if I didn’t show up?” Ben asks as they start up the street in the opposite direction Klaus had initially been heading.
“Oh, please,” Klaus says. “Conjuring the dead is always part of the plan. I literally can think of no other reason why I would possibly care to be sober.”
“So, living a meaningful and productive life and reconciling with your family mean nothing?” Ben asks.
“Pish posh,” Klaus says, waving his hand dismissively through the air. “I’m starting small. Not doing drugs for a full day -- working on it. Emotional maturity and coping with my issues -- that comes much, much later.”
Ben keeps pace, which is easy, since he’s a ghost and ghosts can apparently do whatever the hell they want. “You know none of that is true.”
“If I have learned anything in my long, colorful life, it’s to aim low,” Klaus tells him with a perfunctory smile. “Life has enough disappointments. There’s no need to make more.”
-o-
Klaus has managed to affect an air of casual indifference. In fact, walking down the street, you might even mistake him for jaunty. He’s got a good reparate with Ben, and he’s feeling almost optimistic by the time he gets home.
And why not?
It’s not like him being a drug addict is new or something. He’s been on drugs since he was a teenager; his siblings know this about him. And they know that relapses happen. Well, they should know, as Klaus has made relapsing his most common pastime.
Now, that’s not to say Klaus is proud of it. He’s not, for the record. But shame is a funny thing, and Klaus finds that he no longer has the patience for it. His dad -- the bastard -- had always tried to shame him into shaping up. Klaus had tried to let it work for awhile, but it was too tiresome.
Besides, shame is a misplaced emotion. Why should Klaus feel guilty about being overwhelmed by his problems? His problems are, after all, really overwhelming. Only someone like Reginald Hargreeves would expect a child to cope well seeing dead people all the time. His siblings weren’t like that. Sure, they don’t like when he does drugs, and they might get exasperated with him from time to time, but they get it. They all have their hang ups. Allison is in therapy to get her daughter back. Diego runs around with a mask and was once wanted for murder. Luther literally spent four years on the moon! They’re all messed up.
They will take him back. Klaus knows this without question. He has no doubts about it.
So why is he nervous?
Why does he almost feel the incessant urge to turn back?
A half block away, he comes to a stop. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea, after all,” he says, brow furrowing. “I mean, maybe I’m not ready.”
Ben turns on him. “No, you came this far--”
“And for what?” Klaus asks. “I don’t need them--”
Ben gives him a loot.
“I don’t!” Klaus insists.
“And what wouldn’t you go back?” Ben says, turning the question around.
Klaus scoffs but is slow in coming up with an answer.
“Go back and do more drugs?” Ben asks knowingly. “Since that works so well for you.”
“Well, it works while I’m doing it,” Klaus says. “I don’t remember anything when I’m high.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s working.”
“Of course it does!”
“Klaus.”
“Ben!”
Ben stares him down. Harder. He’s almost intimidating. “Don’t make me drag you back in there.”
Almost intimidating. Klaus gives him a quizzical look back. “You do remember that the only way you can do anything is if I let you.”
This is a very compelling point, if Klaus does say so himself. The problem is that his family is rarely compelled to do anything normal or rational. Just because Ben is dead, it doesn’t mean he’s immune.
“You know you have to go back,” Ben says flatly.
Klaus groans, throwing his head back to look beseechingly at the sky.
The sky doesn’t answer.
It’s not like he expected it to, but it would have been nice.
He looks back down. “Fine,” he says. “But I’m not going to make things right with Five.”
Ben holds up his hands. “If you say so.”
Klaus does.
He marches on toward the house wishing like hell it mattered.
-o-
The problem is this: memories are like ghosts. They’re there; they’re always there, even when you don’t want to see them. You can run from them, you can hide them, you can ignore them, but you can’t really forget them. They haunt you, lingering in the back of your mind, tickling your subconscious.
Klaus has been haunted by ghosts his entire life, so he would know.
He really would know.
-o-
It’s funny how easy it is, walking up the front steps. The front door is, of all things, unlocked. Klaus walks right on in, plain as day, simple as that.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been away.
It feels like long enough.
It also feels like no time at all.
“Well, shit,” he murmurs to himself as he crosses the threshold. “I’m back.”
-o-
He knows exactly where he’s going since he did grow up in this house, but he doesn’t actually know where he’s going at all. Does he go to his room like nothing has happened? Does he check in with Pogo because that’s something he used to do when he was a kid? Does he go to the kitchen and see if there’s something to eat since his stomach still feels like it could consume something after those pancakes? Or does he find his siblings?
Fortunately, he doesn’t have to choose for this one. He makes it to the living room when Allison is crossing in from the other side. They stand opposite each other, frozen in shock for a moment, before Allison’s face is flooded with relieved.
“Oh, thank God,” she says, crossing over to him in a rush. She gathers him up quickly, enveloping him in a hug before he even has a chance to protest. He’s still gobsmacked as she pulls back, cupping his cheeks in her hands. “You’re okay. We’ve been so worried about you. Where have you been?”
“Oh you know,” Klaus says, backing up slightly to break her hold. “Around.”
She eyes him up and down, more critically this time. Klaus is sober, but he knows he barely looks it. “Are you--”
“Clean?” Klaus provides for her.
She meets his gaze, not contradicting him.
“Yes,” he says. “I mean, more or less. Clean enough that I can see Ben at any rate.”
She doesn’t seem overly reassured, but she sighs anyway. “You’ve been gone nearly five weeks.”
So his estimate of a month isn’t that far off.
“We looked for you everywhere--”
Not everywhere, but Klaus hasn’t come to be petty. “To be fair, I wasn’t looking to be found.”
She draws in another breath, flattening her lips. “I’m sorry how it went down. When I rumored you--”
“It had to be done, I get it,” Klaus says.
It still seems to distress her. “We were so worried,” she says. She seems to correct herself. Clarify, maybe. “I was so worried.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says, and he feels a little embarrassed now. It’s not shame for what he’s done, but he doesn’t like to think of putting them out. He likes his choices to be his choices. He’s not sure about the way consequences are interrelated these days. It’s complicated. “I just...needed some time.”
She nods, giving him a faint smile. “Well, I’m just glad you’re back.” She pauses, glancing behind him. “You’re...alone?”
“Well, Benny’s here,” Klaus says, nodding to his side. “Not quite corporeal yet, but in a few days.”
Allison still seems to be searching. “Just Ben?”
“Well, who else?” Klaus asks. He laughs. “I mean, everyone else is here, right?”
Allison hesitates again.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Klaus asks.
“You’ve been gone a long time--”
“Allison--”
“Okay, okay,” she says. “Just. Give me a few minutes.”
He grabs at her arm to stop her. “Is something wrong?”
When she looks back, she can’t quite smile wide enough. “We’ll talk about it,” she says, and Allison’s a good actress by all accounts, but she’s not nearly good enough. “I promise.”
-o-
Klaus has lost a month, so he shouldn’t complain about the way time drags. But it does drag. Like, it really drags. Sitting there, in the living room, the minutes feel like an eternity. He feels like he may have died and been resurrected in the amount of time it takes for Allison to round up the family.
He perks up as the file in one by one. They all look relieved to see him, but Klaus becomes increasingly convinced that their relief has been tempered somehow. Why, Klaus doesn’t know, but it’s starting to make him anxious.
He could use something to take the edge off right about now, but apparently he has chosen to be sober or something. He wishes he could remember that choice, but he is sitting here, after all. That has to count for something.
Klaus just isn’t sure what.
He still feels like he’s forgetting something. Something important.
His siblings exchange anxious glances of their own before Luther finally seems to remember that he is Number One. “We’re really glad you’re back,” he says, and it does sound like he means it. “We haven’t stopped looking for you.”
It’s not quite a resounding sentiment. In fact, it falls a little flat. Allison’s smile is forced, and Diego scratches the back of his head. Vanya’s sitting by herself in a chair and her face looks splotchy, like she’s been crying.
“Right,” Klaus says. “Well, I wasn’t ready to come home yet.”
“What changed your mind?” Diego asks. He looks like he’s bracing himself. He’s got one hand on a knife, even if he’s trying not to show it.
“Uh, I don’t know,” Klaus says. “Woke up today. It felt like time.”
This is the truth. Or the truth as much as Klaus knows it.
Luther’s smile looks almost pained now. Vanya is legitimately.
“Look, am I missing something here?” Klaus asks, cocking his head.
Luther looks around like he has no idea what Klaus is saying. Allison wets her lips, letting her smile falter entirely. “You’ve been gone a long time, Klaus.”
Vanya stifles a cry rather unsuccessfully.
“Oh, come on,” Klaus says, gesturing to Vanya. “Something is clearly wrong.”
He looks at them again, growing vaguely desperate this time. Diego is back to scratching the back of his neck, and Luther looks like he’s constipated. Allison’s expression is so twisted up that it looks physically painful.
Ben looks back at him, like he’s waiting for Klaus to figure it out.
Klaus looks at his siblings again. Luther and Diego and Allison and Vanya and…
“Wait,” Klaus says. He sits up a little straighter. “Where’s Five?”
Vanya all but sobs this time, and Allison closes her eyes. Diego purses his lips, fingers tapping the hilt of his knife anxiously. It’s Luther who swallows. It’s Luther who looks at him. It’s Luther who says, “Five’s gone, Klaus. Five’s gone.”
-o-
The thing is, Klaus is supposed to be shocked. This is news to him since he hasn’t been back in five weeks. He hasn’t even been sober in five weeks. So of course Five’s disappearance is a total shock to him.
Except is it?
Why isn’t it?
What is Klaus missing?
What does Klaus know?
And why does he think he doesn’t know?
He shakes his head, trying to ground his thoughts. Maybe he’s misunderstood. “Five’s gone?” he repeats. “Like, out to get coffee? Maybe out for a casual afternoon murder?”
“No,” Luther says. “He’s gone. He left this morning and he hasn’t been back. We found a note in his room. A note that explains….”
Luther trails off.
Klaus waits. “That explains what?”
It’s Diego who manages to finish. “That explains he wasn’t coming back. Ever.”
Diego says it with a note of finality. It carries more than a hint of accusation.
Allison, shifting forward empathetically, moves to intervene. “We don’t blame you.”
Klaus is still too dumbfounded to even know what that means. “But where was Five going?”
“The note said he was coming to find you,” Allison says, and she looks uncertain now.
Klaus knows the feeling pretty damn well. “But why would he want to find me?”
“To bring you back!” Vanya interjects. She takes a ragged breath and sloppily wipes her nose. “That was all he’d thought about for weeks since you left. He wanted to bring you back home. No matter what. He spent his time doing calculations, running probabilities, all of it. To figure out what would make you come home.”
It doesn’t seem likely that Vanya is lying. It’s just that Klaus can’t imagine a context in which she’s actually telling the truth. The words she’s saying don’t make sense. None it makes any sense.
Slowly, Klaus shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Honestly, we don’t really get it either,” Luther says with a small wince. “We were gearing up to come find you just now.”
“But wait,” Klaus says. He knits his brows together, feeling like this is a conversation that should be had when he’s much more sober than this. It’s possible he’d never be sober enough for this. “When was this? When did it all happen exactly?”
“Today,” Diego says. Diego is the type who gets angry when he’s worried. He also gets angry when he’s angry so sometimes it’s hard to tell. “Five left today.”
“You’re saying Five came to see me today?” Klaus attempts to clarify, for all the good it’s going to do him at this point. “Like today today?”
Allison responds by becoming increasingly sympathetic. “It couldn’t have been more than six hours ago, but we can’t be sure. Five snuck out without telling us,” she explains. “You really didn’t see him?”
That’s clearly the questions she’s been wanting to ask since he walked in the front door. They’d all been pinning their hopes on that. They had thought that finding one would bring them the other. It’s not that they’re not happy to see him, it’s that they didn’t expect him to be alone.
Which is crazy, of course. And just naive. Klaus coming back with Five? Why would Klaus ever come back with Five? Why would Klaus do anything with Five?
Why is everything about Five anyway? Like, literally. All of time and space seems to be about that diminuitive murder robot and Klaus doesn’t understand why.
For all that he’s forgotten, Klaus remembers quite viscerally why he left to get interminably high in the first place. That’s insightful maybe but not very helpful. “I really….don’t remember,” he confesses. “I mean, I’ve taken a lot of drugs and drunk a lot of alcohol over the last month. I mean, a lot. So a lot of things, they’re just hazy.”
“But today,” Vanya says and she sounds a little like she’s begging. “He came to find you today.”
“And I only remember the last two hours,” Klaus says, because he’d like to forget Five but he hates to see Vanya like this. “I remember waking up and thinking it was time to go. I got up, left the house, ate something and walked home. I mean, I can’t rule out that I saw him before that -- I’ve seen a lot of things, okay? But I don’t remember.”
“Try, Klaus,” Luther implores him. “Try to remember.”
Klaus is obliging; he really is. His mind trips back to the diner where he paid for lunch with neatly folded bills. He spins a line of thought to the room where he woke up, the kid-sized hole in the plaster ceiling. Five’s voice in the back of his head, nagging on him to make a choice already, just make a choice.
“You came back for a reason,” Diego says. His hand is practically wrapped around the hilt. It’s not menacing, but it is Diego, so it’s kind of all the same. “Why did you come back today if not for Five?”
That’s logic, of course. Logic has never been Klaus particularly favorite thing. He finds it overrated, if he’s honest. A lot of things are overrated. Like family, sobriety--
No, he shakes his head.
Logic is not overrated. It’s unpleasant. Like family, sobriety.
But necessary?
Is it necessary?
Is it necessary to conclude that Five came to see him this morning? Is it necessary to realize that Five came and offered him a choice? A choice to let Five go or to kill him? A choice that invariably meant Klaus could come home alone?
His breathing catches.
That’s not an assumption. That’s not theory.
It’s memory.
Klaus remembers.
He looks at his siblings, their hopeful, desperate faces. And he gapes. “Five was there,” he says, almost like he can’t believe it himself. Almost like he doesn’t want to believe it.
Vanya clutches at one of the throw pillows. “He was? You do remember?”
“I think so,” Klaus says, even as his voice falters. “I mean, I think he was there.”
“So where is he now?” Luther asks.
Klaus looks at his brother. He looks at all of his siblings and swallows. “He left,” he says.
“But why would he leave?” Allison asks in what amounts to utter confusion. “Why would he leave without you? Why wouldn’t he come back?”
Exile or death, Klaus remembers. Make the choice; you get to make the choice.
“Well,” he hedges, and he has to flatten out his fingers to keep his anxiety from spiking. “It’s possible that I may have tried to kill him first.”
“You what?” Diego asks. Vanya physically recoils. Luther assumes a defensive stance, and Allison appears vaguely sick.
“I didn’t, though,” he says, as if to reassure them. “I mean, I think we have a confrontation, I threw him around and I passed out. But he was gone when I woke up. I swear he was. That’s why I thought it was a dream.”
“You dream of killing people often?” Allison asks with just a hint of skepticism.
“Only Five,” Klaus says in his defense. “And Dad, but you know how that is.”
“You said you think,” Vanya says, her voice thin and brittle. “You aren’t sure? You don’t know one hundred percent?”
“I’ve been on heavy drugs, okay?” Klaus says and he gives a small, breathless laugh. “Most of the shit I’ve seen this past month hasn’t been real.”
“Then how do you know?” Diego asks.
Klaus shrugs, feeling smaller by the minute. “It’s just a sense, I don’t know,” he says. “And I mean, circumstantial evidence. The room where I was staying was a mess when I woke up. Everything was broken, not like it normally was. And I just felt this overwhelming emotions, you know? Like I had to come home. I had to come home right now. But I didn’t know why.”
“Probably because he came and told you,” Allison concludes for him. “He gave you the impetus to finally make the change.”
Klaus balks a little. He’s reeling, but he’s not quite ready to play this game where Five’s the good guy. When he is categorically not.
“And you attacked him,” Diego says with a scoff. He rolls his eyes. “Again.”
So it’s possible that Klaus isn’t exactly the good guy either, but he’s still the victim here. “I wasn’t in my right mind,” Klaus says. “I mean, I must have been a little sober to use my powers, but you can’t shake drugs like that quickly. And are we forgetting what Five did? Are we forgetting the little part about murder?”
“Of course not,” Luther says. He sighs, implicitly trying to defuse the situation. “And no one remembered that more than Five. That’s why it mattered so much to him to bring you home.”
Klaus is only just sober, but it’s just enough it seems. They have a special kind of a family, after all. The kind that makes murder something that can possibly be overlooked. It’s easier when you don’t know the person being killed, of course. Klaus had lovingly referred to Five as their little psychopath for months, implicitly acknowledging that Five had killed many, many people he didn’t know.
He knows Dave, though.
The others don’t.
To them, Dave’s just another name. Another faceless name. A series of letters scribbled on Five’s wall as he calculates the cost of selling your soul to save the world.
“You really don’t remember?” Allison asks.
“You have no idea where he went?” Diego prods.
Vanya sniffles. “Can you at least remember if he’s okay?”
“I don’t know,” Klaus says again. He says it again and again and again. He wets his lips, shakes his head. “I really just don’t remember.”
Klaus left to forget.
He hates that he has to remember in order to really come back.
Is family worth it?
It seems like Klaus is going to find out.