Umbrella Academy fic: Changing All the Scenery (12/20)
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
TWELVE
Klaus has been home for five days.
Five whole days!
He’s been living in the mansion, he’s been eating regular meals. He takes daily showers and has even taken up knitting again. And he hasn’t touched drugs -- not once -- in that whole time.
Which means, Klaus has not only been home for five days.
He’s also been sober for five days.
Each day feels a little better than the last.
Which is, of course, why each day feels a lot worse than the last.
Because, as it turns out, the more sober Klaus gets, the more aware he is of what he’s done. He’s more aware of how he’s frittered away a month of his time. He’s aware of how he’s put his training back by months. He’s aware of how much he’s put his siblings through with worry. And he’s aware, whether he wants to be or not, that maybe he’d been a little harsh in his treatment of Five.
Not really, of course. Five’s a killer. Like, he’s the killer. Five killed Dave and couldn’t even muster up a sincere apology. Klaus is under no obligation to forgive that. He’s under no obligation to ever talk to Five again.
But the thought of his brother, alone out there--
Well, yeah, it makes Klaus thinks.
Because Klaus has been home five days.
Which means that Five has been gone for five days, too.
-o-
It’s not Klaus’ fault.
This isn’t just Klaus’ conclusion. It’s everyone’s.
Allison takes him out shopping and they try on clothes together. She smiles but she doesn’t look happy. “Don’t worry,” she says when Klaus asks. “None of this is your fault. Okay? I mean it. Five makes his choices; I know he’d choose to be accountable for them.”
Luther sits with Klaus for lunch sometimes, and they eat cold cut sandwiches and talk while Mom hums and does the dishes. When Luther can’t quite keep up the small talk, he admits, “It’s just hard. I thought we’d find him by now. But I mean, that’s nothing to do with you. You don’t have to worry. We’re just glad you’re home, Klaus. Back where you belong.”
Diego starts to train with him, little by little, being slow and surprisingly patient. He’s distracted, though. You can tell. He chews his lip when he thinks Klaus isn’t looking. “Dude, you have every right to hate the little bastard,” he says when Klaus figures out what’s wrong. He shrugs. “I just can’t help it if I’m worried about him. Bastard or not, he’s still my brother. I want to make sure he’s okay. But that’s not on you, okay? You focus on you.”
Vanya has the hardest time pulling it off, but she tries. She really does, and it hurts Klaus to watch her. When she thinks about Five, she gets misty eyed. She does her best not to cry, but Klaus can tell she wants to. “I just miss him. I know what he did was horrible -- it’s just -- you can’t excuse it. I know that. I just miss him. It’s not you, though, Klaus. What Five did to you--” she says, but she can never finish. She smiles when she wants to cry. “I just miss him.”
It’s not Klaus fault.
He just wishes that made him feel better.
-o-
Maybe he just needs to get back to normal.
That’s what he decides, after another week has passed.
He gets his energy levels back up; he hits the training harder. He starts falling into routines again, living his life as best he can. He thinks if he can get stronger, then he’ll get better.
Klaus has a good habit, however, of being wrong.
-o-
It’s been two weeks and Klaus can’t sleep. He wakes up from nightmares on a regular basis, and he’s jumpy and fidgety. He’d like to blame the ghosts, but they seem to be evading him for now. Maybe they can sense his grief, and so they stay away.
Because Klaus is grieving.
And that could be it, couldn’t it? Klaus needs to grieve. It’s not like he grieved properly the first time around, and with all that went on, it’d been deferred in an unhealthy way. Five’s revelation -- his secret identity suddenly revealed -- had exposed that.
Grief can mess you up. Klaus knows that. He sees people tied up with grief for all eternity. You have to make peace to move on. You have to let go.
With this in mind, Klaus plans a trip to Dave’s grave. When he gets there, he sobs like a baby, clutching at the grass and crying until his lungs seize up and he wants to die. He remembers the day it happened. He remembers the sound of the gunfire and the mud against his fatigues. Dave’s blood hot on his hands as he called for a medic who would never get there fast enough.
He’d cut and run, then. He’d taken the briefcase and left.
It’s been months since he last saw Dave.
Yet Dave’s been buried here for decades.
“I miss you,” Klaus tells him, studying the words on his headstone like it means something, like it provides some insight he hasn’t learned yet. “I miss you.”
He thinks of another life, one where they both came back from Vietnam. One where they rented a crappy flat and told people they were partners with a wink and a nod, letting them parse out the rest. Klaus would be an artist, but a bad one, and Dave would work a steady job to make the ends meet. But Klaus would make Dave laugh, and Dave would make staying in one place worth it.
In 2019, they would have grown old together.
It’s another life Klaus will never know. Because it’s 2019, and he’s young and alive while Dave is dead and buried. Five pulled the trigger, and Klaus knows this. But sitting there, he wonders why it matters.
He wonders why any of it matters.
-o-
On the train going home, Ben appears next to him.
“Did you find it?”
“I found the grave,” Klaus intones back, slumped in his seat.
“I mean closure,” Ben says. “You went to find closure.”
Klaus sighs. “What do you think?”
“I think none of this is your fault,” Ben replies.
Klaus turns and makes a face as he looks at him. “Of course none of this is my fault. What the hell does blame have to do with it anyway?”
Ben raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know,” he says knowingly. “What does blame have to do with it anyway?”
-o-
At home, Klaus locks himself in his room and sits on his bed. His siblings are around; they’re doing research, even if they’re trying not to show it. They don’t want Klaus to know that they’re still looking for Five. They don’t want him to know that they’re worried. They’re scared shitless.
They’re trying to be nice, because they care about Klaus. They understand that this is hard and this is weird and that none of this is fair. They agree with Ben, the bastard, that none of this is his fault. No one is pretending that Klaus owes Five anything, least of all his forgiveness.
He’s not sure why, sitting there in a locked room, that he is so damn frustrated by it.
Klaus doesn’t have to do anything, he doesn’t even have to care, so why is he sitting here, caring so much?
Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? That’s why Klaus can’t find closure. Because he cares. He cares, okay?
At first blush, he cares about Dave. And of course he cares about Dave.
But.
It’s more than that.
He closes his eyes and tries not to think about it. He tries so hard and it doesn’t do a bit of good because here it is: Klaus cares about Five.
Now, don’t get Klaus wrong. He hates Five right now. He hates him, hates him, hates him, and he thinks Five’s a horrible person who deserves to have terrible things happen to him. Five is callous and cold when he chooses to be, and he has determined himself to be above normal human morality. There is something damnable in him, something irredeemable. Klaus doubts that things will ever be the same between them.
However, even that sentiment implies the disconnect he’s been grappling with ever since he came home and sobered up. It implies a future. It implies a future for Five. For Klaus and Five. It implies together.
He opens his eyes, forehead creased. They’re messed up, the Hargreeves. They’ve been thrown together against their will and forged bonds out of utter necessity. They have every reason to cut and run, but every time they try, they all know what’s missing. Klaus didn’t stay high for all those years just because he wanted to drown out the voices of the dead. He wanted to drown out of the voices of his living. He could never have been sober and been away from them. It never would have worked.
For all that Reginald Hargreeves was an unremitting bastard, he did more than make a team of superheroes. In fact, that might have been Reginald’s greatest frustration. That his little team of intrepid superpowered children never saw themselves as a team, but a family. There was sentiment inherent to their relationship that made them impossible to function as the well oiled unit Reginald had envisioned.
And here they are.
Here they are.
Diego can throw knives at Luther and they fight crime together ten minutes later. Allison rumors Vanya into the lie of a lifetime, Vanya tries to murder her, and somehow they’re still a shining example of loving sisters. Ben’s dead, and they all still look out for him because of course they do. Klaus is a drug addict who has stole from them, disappeared on a whim and manipulated them to his own gain and they have welcomed him back without hesitation.
So Five is a mass murderer who accidentally killed the man Klaus loves on purpose?
It certainly seems like it should matter, but somehow it doesn’t.
It does, but it doesn’t.
If that makes sense.
It doesn’t make sense.
None of this makes sense.
Especially the part where Klaus can’t forgive Five for any of this.
And he’s going to find him anyway.
-o-
If this is the way it’s going to be, then Klaus decides what the hell. He might as well face that.
Sneaking out of his bedroom is not so much a choice as a habit, though he has to admit, he doesn’t much want to talk about what he’s about to do. It’s a simple enough task -- to find Five -- but there’s also absolutely nothing simple about it. His siblings will want to help, they’ll want to know why.
Klaus, undoubtedly, could use the help.
But explaining why?
Shit, he barely even knows why.
This will surely be easier if he handles it himself.
Of course, there is still one small problem.
Ben is waiting for him on the fire escape.
“You aren’t going to tell them?” he asks like he already knows.
He does already know. Klaus huffs and moves by him, careful not to go through him in an effort to be polite. Even dead people deserve personal space. “What? I’m doing the right thing for once, right? This is what you want? For me to be the bigger person and find the little psycho?”
Ben is unamused, and he shows up when Klaus makes it to the alleyway behind the mansion. “If it’s the right thing, then why are you doing it in secret?”
“Because I don’t want to talk about it,” he mutters. “Is that so weird?”
“Maybe,” Ben says, starting to keep pace with him.
Klaus rolls his eyes, coming to a stop just short of the street. “It’s not weird,” he says, glaring at his long deceased brother. “It’s normal, in fact. Super normal. Because I know this is what they want, and fine, I want them to be happy, too, but I’m not doing this for them.”
Ben regards him cautiously. “And you’re not doing it for Five.”
“I’m doing it for me,” Klaus says, holding out his arms. “Guess that still makes me the self involved one, hm?”
Ben’s expression softens. He seems to smile. “Nah.”
Klaus snorts. “Nah?”
“That makes you the mature one,” he says. “Maybe you are growing up.”
Klaus rolls his eyes again, brushing past him. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
Ben falls in step again. Klaus makes it halfway down the block before he stops short and turns back to Ben. “This isn’t going to work.”
Ben’s expression is one of momentary panic. “What? You changed your mind?”
“No, not about Five,” he says, and he’s thoughtful about this. He chews the inside of his lip. “About you. You being with me. It’s not going to work.”
Ben looks curious now; cautious.
Klaus shrugs one shoulder. “I told you it’s not about them,” he says. “It’s also not about you.”
For a small moment, Ben almost looks offended. But he takes a breath. Then, he nods. “You’ll come back, right?”
“I’ll come back,” Klaus promises. He lifts his mouth into a smile. “And who knows? I may not even be alone.”
-o-
Ben is dead, but he’s still a pretty cool brother. He gets what Klaus is saying with minimal explanation, and he goes on his merry way. Well, it’s hard to say if anything a dead person does is merry, but Ben does not put up a fight. Klaus wonders absently if Ben can follow him without being made visible, but that’s not something they’ve talked about, and Klaus prefers to assume his brother is genuine.
And if he’s not, Klaus figures it’s best not to know.
He’s got enough problems reconciling with one brother. He doesn’t need to create issues with another.
Which brings Klaus to the current problem.
He’s all set on finding Five, but he’s not entirely sure how to actually find Five. He’s made his decisions and he’s given his grand justifications, and two blocks later, he’s not sure what the hell he expects to happen. He doesn’t know where Five is, and he doesn’t have any substantial leads as to where his brother might have gone. All Klaus has is some meager conviction and no practical means to act on it.
He wonders if this is what Five felt like when he set out a month ago. Undoubtedly, Five had calculations and probabilities. Klaus, on the other hand, has a long history of losing things. He usually loses things because he’s too high to remember where he put things, but that could still be a useful tactic. In those cases, he would go to the last place he remembered having the item and look for clues from there. It didn’t always work -- or often work -- but it seems methodical enough.
And really, he’s got nothing else to go on.
Fortunately, he knows the last place he saw Five.
He doesn’t remember it, necessarily, but he’s come to accept that Five’s the one who came to find him in the crack house. The Five-shaped hole in the ceiling? Had not been a coincidence.
Sure, there are probably easier ways to do this.
Klaus just has no idea what they might possibly be.
-o-
The first task is to find the house. This is easier said than done. Klaus is painfully sober these days, and he doesn’t remember the circuitous route that took him to the house in the first place. He has vague memories of his journey home, and he pieces his path together through landmarks he can recall. When he reaches the diner, he is confident that he is on the right track. A few blocks later, in the scummiest part of the city, he’s there.
It looks worse than he remembers. That’s saying something. It looked pretty bad before. Sobriety really does put things in perspective.
He ventures up the stoop and hesitates before knocking. It’s a fruitless gesture; he knows no one will answer. He also knows it won’t be locked. He lets himself inside and cautiously toes his way in.
Once he crosses the threshold, he has a moment of doubt.
He is, after all, a barely recovering addict.
And this, most demonstrably, is a crack house.
Coming here, in that regard, is not the smartest decision he’s ever made. But that’s what you do for family, damn it. Even when you hate them.
Tiptoeing inside, he’s not actually sure what he’s looking for at this point. There is no way that Five is actually still here. Is it possible that someone here had seen him before? Yes. But it’s not likely that said person would remember even if they had. Such is the nature of drug addicts.
Easing his way through, Klaus circumvents most of the rooms and moves cautiously upstairs. He spots a few people he vaguely thinks he might know, but two of them are passed out and the other one is clearly preoccupied with other, more enjoyable pastimes. On the second floor, Klaus comes to the room he’d stayed in. He knows because the door is still off its hinges and the frame is mangled.
Stepping over the cluttered entryway, he peers inside. To his surprise, it’s still vacant. In fact, there are still drugs on the chair next to the stripped bed. It seems possible that no one has realized that he hasn’t been back in a month. Drug addicts could be exceedingly polite.
They could also be so high that they forget that certain rooms exist.
Either way, Klaus finds the room in the same state as before. He walks through it, passing by the drugs and walking to the far wall. He touches some of the damaged drywall and looks up. The power in his fingers tingles, and he swallows it back. There’s no doubt, then. Five was here, and Klaus did attack him.
Given the extent of the damage, Klaus knows that it’s likely Five had struggle his way out of here. Clearly, Five had been mobile by the time Klaus woke up, but Five’s not impervious to injury. The force of the impact on the wall and ceiling would leave a scrawny little body like his in a compromised state. No doubt, Five felt compelled to leave promptly after their altercation, but there’s also no doubt to Klaus that the little asshole wouldn’t have made it too far.
Suppressing a shudder, Klaus hurries his way back out of the room and takes the stairs two at a time. He almost trips over the threshold on the way out, and it’s not until he’s back on the street that he realizes that he’s close to tears. In fact, his chest is tight; his emotions are singing. He has to close his eyes, breath through his nose, in a feeble attempt to regain control of his emotion.
It works, but only to a minimal degree. He opens his eyes again, not sure if he feels resolved, exactly. But he knows he’s come this far.
Looking up and down the street, he tries to think like Five. This is not his first choice, naturally, but it seems prudent for the current situation. It’s not about thinking like a killer; it’s about thinking logically.
Logically, Five came to bring Klaus home. Five had understood that Klaus didn’t want to come home if Five was there, which meant that Five was looking to not come home.
This is a simplistic take on things, but it holds some weight. More than that, given Five’s likely injuries, Five wouldn’t be going for distance as he left a month ago. He would be simply looking to go in the opposite direction.
Klaus looks up and down the street again and reorients himself. He deduces the way home and then turns in the opposite direction. As he starts down the street, he hesitates a few times. If you’re injured and looking to get away without putting as much effort out, you wouldn’t probably go in a straight line. You would take back roads, make frequent turns.
It’s a haphazard approach, and Klaus knows it, but he’s come this far, so he’s really got nothing else to lose. Besides, it feels right to him. Not right. It feels like Five.
Klaus has to trust that.
He has to trust himself.
It’s a novel concept, but he’s working with it for now.
A few more turns, and Klaus pauses. It’s been several blocks now, and he thinks about that hole in the ceiling. He thinks about a 13 year old with a concussion. Five’s got an unfair advantage, looking like a kid, but Klaus can’t help it. He’s such a skinny damn kid that it’s hard to picture him holding a gun and shooting Dave dead.
It’s also hard to imagine him making it very far with a concussion.
This place is far enough to be safe from Klaus following him.
It’s also far enough to leave an injured kid winded.
Suddenly certain, Klaus turns down the alley. He wanders down it, and then wanders back. He’s not sure what he’s looking for; it’s not like Five’s going to be there, waiting for him in some alleyway. It’s not like he’s going to find a message written on the wall, an apology spelled out in blood with a convenient phone number to call.
This is stupid, Klaus realizes.
There’s no way in hell he’s going to find Five like this.
Fiddling anxiously with the dog tags around his neck, he turns back down to exit the alley when he hears a whoosh.
He stops and frowns.
“Five?” he asks as he turns around.
A woman is standing there, bright red lips and a trimmed trenchcoat with a tie around the waist. She’s holding a briefcase as she smiles. “Not quite,” she says. “But since you’re looking for him, why don’t I help you out?”
Klaus is about to politely decline, but before he can demur, someone comes at him from behind. He sees the woman wave at him as something comes down hard on the back of his head and his knees crumple.
As he passes out, he thinks, well, that could have gone worse.
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
TWELVE
Klaus has been home for five days.
Five whole days!
He’s been living in the mansion, he’s been eating regular meals. He takes daily showers and has even taken up knitting again. And he hasn’t touched drugs -- not once -- in that whole time.
Which means, Klaus has not only been home for five days.
He’s also been sober for five days.
Each day feels a little better than the last.
Which is, of course, why each day feels a lot worse than the last.
Because, as it turns out, the more sober Klaus gets, the more aware he is of what he’s done. He’s more aware of how he’s frittered away a month of his time. He’s aware of how he’s put his training back by months. He’s aware of how much he’s put his siblings through with worry. And he’s aware, whether he wants to be or not, that maybe he’d been a little harsh in his treatment of Five.
Not really, of course. Five’s a killer. Like, he’s the killer. Five killed Dave and couldn’t even muster up a sincere apology. Klaus is under no obligation to forgive that. He’s under no obligation to ever talk to Five again.
But the thought of his brother, alone out there--
Well, yeah, it makes Klaus thinks.
Because Klaus has been home five days.
Which means that Five has been gone for five days, too.
-o-
It’s not Klaus’ fault.
This isn’t just Klaus’ conclusion. It’s everyone’s.
Allison takes him out shopping and they try on clothes together. She smiles but she doesn’t look happy. “Don’t worry,” she says when Klaus asks. “None of this is your fault. Okay? I mean it. Five makes his choices; I know he’d choose to be accountable for them.”
Luther sits with Klaus for lunch sometimes, and they eat cold cut sandwiches and talk while Mom hums and does the dishes. When Luther can’t quite keep up the small talk, he admits, “It’s just hard. I thought we’d find him by now. But I mean, that’s nothing to do with you. You don’t have to worry. We’re just glad you’re home, Klaus. Back where you belong.”
Diego starts to train with him, little by little, being slow and surprisingly patient. He’s distracted, though. You can tell. He chews his lip when he thinks Klaus isn’t looking. “Dude, you have every right to hate the little bastard,” he says when Klaus figures out what’s wrong. He shrugs. “I just can’t help it if I’m worried about him. Bastard or not, he’s still my brother. I want to make sure he’s okay. But that’s not on you, okay? You focus on you.”
Vanya has the hardest time pulling it off, but she tries. She really does, and it hurts Klaus to watch her. When she thinks about Five, she gets misty eyed. She does her best not to cry, but Klaus can tell she wants to. “I just miss him. I know what he did was horrible -- it’s just -- you can’t excuse it. I know that. I just miss him. It’s not you, though, Klaus. What Five did to you--” she says, but she can never finish. She smiles when she wants to cry. “I just miss him.”
It’s not Klaus fault.
He just wishes that made him feel better.
-o-
Maybe he just needs to get back to normal.
That’s what he decides, after another week has passed.
He gets his energy levels back up; he hits the training harder. He starts falling into routines again, living his life as best he can. He thinks if he can get stronger, then he’ll get better.
Klaus has a good habit, however, of being wrong.
-o-
It’s been two weeks and Klaus can’t sleep. He wakes up from nightmares on a regular basis, and he’s jumpy and fidgety. He’d like to blame the ghosts, but they seem to be evading him for now. Maybe they can sense his grief, and so they stay away.
Because Klaus is grieving.
And that could be it, couldn’t it? Klaus needs to grieve. It’s not like he grieved properly the first time around, and with all that went on, it’d been deferred in an unhealthy way. Five’s revelation -- his secret identity suddenly revealed -- had exposed that.
Grief can mess you up. Klaus knows that. He sees people tied up with grief for all eternity. You have to make peace to move on. You have to let go.
With this in mind, Klaus plans a trip to Dave’s grave. When he gets there, he sobs like a baby, clutching at the grass and crying until his lungs seize up and he wants to die. He remembers the day it happened. He remembers the sound of the gunfire and the mud against his fatigues. Dave’s blood hot on his hands as he called for a medic who would never get there fast enough.
He’d cut and run, then. He’d taken the briefcase and left.
It’s been months since he last saw Dave.
Yet Dave’s been buried here for decades.
“I miss you,” Klaus tells him, studying the words on his headstone like it means something, like it provides some insight he hasn’t learned yet. “I miss you.”
He thinks of another life, one where they both came back from Vietnam. One where they rented a crappy flat and told people they were partners with a wink and a nod, letting them parse out the rest. Klaus would be an artist, but a bad one, and Dave would work a steady job to make the ends meet. But Klaus would make Dave laugh, and Dave would make staying in one place worth it.
In 2019, they would have grown old together.
It’s another life Klaus will never know. Because it’s 2019, and he’s young and alive while Dave is dead and buried. Five pulled the trigger, and Klaus knows this. But sitting there, he wonders why it matters.
He wonders why any of it matters.
-o-
On the train going home, Ben appears next to him.
“Did you find it?”
“I found the grave,” Klaus intones back, slumped in his seat.
“I mean closure,” Ben says. “You went to find closure.”
Klaus sighs. “What do you think?”
“I think none of this is your fault,” Ben replies.
Klaus turns and makes a face as he looks at him. “Of course none of this is my fault. What the hell does blame have to do with it anyway?”
Ben raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know,” he says knowingly. “What does blame have to do with it anyway?”
-o-
At home, Klaus locks himself in his room and sits on his bed. His siblings are around; they’re doing research, even if they’re trying not to show it. They don’t want Klaus to know that they’re still looking for Five. They don’t want him to know that they’re worried. They’re scared shitless.
They’re trying to be nice, because they care about Klaus. They understand that this is hard and this is weird and that none of this is fair. They agree with Ben, the bastard, that none of this is his fault. No one is pretending that Klaus owes Five anything, least of all his forgiveness.
He’s not sure why, sitting there in a locked room, that he is so damn frustrated by it.
Klaus doesn’t have to do anything, he doesn’t even have to care, so why is he sitting here, caring so much?
Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? That’s why Klaus can’t find closure. Because he cares. He cares, okay?
At first blush, he cares about Dave. And of course he cares about Dave.
But.
It’s more than that.
He closes his eyes and tries not to think about it. He tries so hard and it doesn’t do a bit of good because here it is: Klaus cares about Five.
Now, don’t get Klaus wrong. He hates Five right now. He hates him, hates him, hates him, and he thinks Five’s a horrible person who deserves to have terrible things happen to him. Five is callous and cold when he chooses to be, and he has determined himself to be above normal human morality. There is something damnable in him, something irredeemable. Klaus doubts that things will ever be the same between them.
However, even that sentiment implies the disconnect he’s been grappling with ever since he came home and sobered up. It implies a future. It implies a future for Five. For Klaus and Five. It implies together.
He opens his eyes, forehead creased. They’re messed up, the Hargreeves. They’ve been thrown together against their will and forged bonds out of utter necessity. They have every reason to cut and run, but every time they try, they all know what’s missing. Klaus didn’t stay high for all those years just because he wanted to drown out the voices of the dead. He wanted to drown out of the voices of his living. He could never have been sober and been away from them. It never would have worked.
For all that Reginald Hargreeves was an unremitting bastard, he did more than make a team of superheroes. In fact, that might have been Reginald’s greatest frustration. That his little team of intrepid superpowered children never saw themselves as a team, but a family. There was sentiment inherent to their relationship that made them impossible to function as the well oiled unit Reginald had envisioned.
And here they are.
Here they are.
Diego can throw knives at Luther and they fight crime together ten minutes later. Allison rumors Vanya into the lie of a lifetime, Vanya tries to murder her, and somehow they’re still a shining example of loving sisters. Ben’s dead, and they all still look out for him because of course they do. Klaus is a drug addict who has stole from them, disappeared on a whim and manipulated them to his own gain and they have welcomed him back without hesitation.
So Five is a mass murderer who accidentally killed the man Klaus loves on purpose?
It certainly seems like it should matter, but somehow it doesn’t.
It does, but it doesn’t.
If that makes sense.
It doesn’t make sense.
None of this makes sense.
Especially the part where Klaus can’t forgive Five for any of this.
And he’s going to find him anyway.
-o-
If this is the way it’s going to be, then Klaus decides what the hell. He might as well face that.
Sneaking out of his bedroom is not so much a choice as a habit, though he has to admit, he doesn’t much want to talk about what he’s about to do. It’s a simple enough task -- to find Five -- but there’s also absolutely nothing simple about it. His siblings will want to help, they’ll want to know why.
Klaus, undoubtedly, could use the help.
But explaining why?
Shit, he barely even knows why.
This will surely be easier if he handles it himself.
Of course, there is still one small problem.
Ben is waiting for him on the fire escape.
“You aren’t going to tell them?” he asks like he already knows.
He does already know. Klaus huffs and moves by him, careful not to go through him in an effort to be polite. Even dead people deserve personal space. “What? I’m doing the right thing for once, right? This is what you want? For me to be the bigger person and find the little psycho?”
Ben is unamused, and he shows up when Klaus makes it to the alleyway behind the mansion. “If it’s the right thing, then why are you doing it in secret?”
“Because I don’t want to talk about it,” he mutters. “Is that so weird?”
“Maybe,” Ben says, starting to keep pace with him.
Klaus rolls his eyes, coming to a stop just short of the street. “It’s not weird,” he says, glaring at his long deceased brother. “It’s normal, in fact. Super normal. Because I know this is what they want, and fine, I want them to be happy, too, but I’m not doing this for them.”
Ben regards him cautiously. “And you’re not doing it for Five.”
“I’m doing it for me,” Klaus says, holding out his arms. “Guess that still makes me the self involved one, hm?”
Ben’s expression softens. He seems to smile. “Nah.”
Klaus snorts. “Nah?”
“That makes you the mature one,” he says. “Maybe you are growing up.”
Klaus rolls his eyes again, brushing past him. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
Ben falls in step again. Klaus makes it halfway down the block before he stops short and turns back to Ben. “This isn’t going to work.”
Ben’s expression is one of momentary panic. “What? You changed your mind?”
“No, not about Five,” he says, and he’s thoughtful about this. He chews the inside of his lip. “About you. You being with me. It’s not going to work.”
Ben looks curious now; cautious.
Klaus shrugs one shoulder. “I told you it’s not about them,” he says. “It’s also not about you.”
For a small moment, Ben almost looks offended. But he takes a breath. Then, he nods. “You’ll come back, right?”
“I’ll come back,” Klaus promises. He lifts his mouth into a smile. “And who knows? I may not even be alone.”
-o-
Ben is dead, but he’s still a pretty cool brother. He gets what Klaus is saying with minimal explanation, and he goes on his merry way. Well, it’s hard to say if anything a dead person does is merry, but Ben does not put up a fight. Klaus wonders absently if Ben can follow him without being made visible, but that’s not something they’ve talked about, and Klaus prefers to assume his brother is genuine.
And if he’s not, Klaus figures it’s best not to know.
He’s got enough problems reconciling with one brother. He doesn’t need to create issues with another.
Which brings Klaus to the current problem.
He’s all set on finding Five, but he’s not entirely sure how to actually find Five. He’s made his decisions and he’s given his grand justifications, and two blocks later, he’s not sure what the hell he expects to happen. He doesn’t know where Five is, and he doesn’t have any substantial leads as to where his brother might have gone. All Klaus has is some meager conviction and no practical means to act on it.
He wonders if this is what Five felt like when he set out a month ago. Undoubtedly, Five had calculations and probabilities. Klaus, on the other hand, has a long history of losing things. He usually loses things because he’s too high to remember where he put things, but that could still be a useful tactic. In those cases, he would go to the last place he remembered having the item and look for clues from there. It didn’t always work -- or often work -- but it seems methodical enough.
And really, he’s got nothing else to go on.
Fortunately, he knows the last place he saw Five.
He doesn’t remember it, necessarily, but he’s come to accept that Five’s the one who came to find him in the crack house. The Five-shaped hole in the ceiling? Had not been a coincidence.
Sure, there are probably easier ways to do this.
Klaus just has no idea what they might possibly be.
-o-
The first task is to find the house. This is easier said than done. Klaus is painfully sober these days, and he doesn’t remember the circuitous route that took him to the house in the first place. He has vague memories of his journey home, and he pieces his path together through landmarks he can recall. When he reaches the diner, he is confident that he is on the right track. A few blocks later, in the scummiest part of the city, he’s there.
It looks worse than he remembers. That’s saying something. It looked pretty bad before. Sobriety really does put things in perspective.
He ventures up the stoop and hesitates before knocking. It’s a fruitless gesture; he knows no one will answer. He also knows it won’t be locked. He lets himself inside and cautiously toes his way in.
Once he crosses the threshold, he has a moment of doubt.
He is, after all, a barely recovering addict.
And this, most demonstrably, is a crack house.
Coming here, in that regard, is not the smartest decision he’s ever made. But that’s what you do for family, damn it. Even when you hate them.
Tiptoeing inside, he’s not actually sure what he’s looking for at this point. There is no way that Five is actually still here. Is it possible that someone here had seen him before? Yes. But it’s not likely that said person would remember even if they had. Such is the nature of drug addicts.
Easing his way through, Klaus circumvents most of the rooms and moves cautiously upstairs. He spots a few people he vaguely thinks he might know, but two of them are passed out and the other one is clearly preoccupied with other, more enjoyable pastimes. On the second floor, Klaus comes to the room he’d stayed in. He knows because the door is still off its hinges and the frame is mangled.
Stepping over the cluttered entryway, he peers inside. To his surprise, it’s still vacant. In fact, there are still drugs on the chair next to the stripped bed. It seems possible that no one has realized that he hasn’t been back in a month. Drug addicts could be exceedingly polite.
They could also be so high that they forget that certain rooms exist.
Either way, Klaus finds the room in the same state as before. He walks through it, passing by the drugs and walking to the far wall. He touches some of the damaged drywall and looks up. The power in his fingers tingles, and he swallows it back. There’s no doubt, then. Five was here, and Klaus did attack him.
Given the extent of the damage, Klaus knows that it’s likely Five had struggle his way out of here. Clearly, Five had been mobile by the time Klaus woke up, but Five’s not impervious to injury. The force of the impact on the wall and ceiling would leave a scrawny little body like his in a compromised state. No doubt, Five felt compelled to leave promptly after their altercation, but there’s also no doubt to Klaus that the little asshole wouldn’t have made it too far.
Suppressing a shudder, Klaus hurries his way back out of the room and takes the stairs two at a time. He almost trips over the threshold on the way out, and it’s not until he’s back on the street that he realizes that he’s close to tears. In fact, his chest is tight; his emotions are singing. He has to close his eyes, breath through his nose, in a feeble attempt to regain control of his emotion.
It works, but only to a minimal degree. He opens his eyes again, not sure if he feels resolved, exactly. But he knows he’s come this far.
Looking up and down the street, he tries to think like Five. This is not his first choice, naturally, but it seems prudent for the current situation. It’s not about thinking like a killer; it’s about thinking logically.
Logically, Five came to bring Klaus home. Five had understood that Klaus didn’t want to come home if Five was there, which meant that Five was looking to not come home.
This is a simplistic take on things, but it holds some weight. More than that, given Five’s likely injuries, Five wouldn’t be going for distance as he left a month ago. He would be simply looking to go in the opposite direction.
Klaus looks up and down the street again and reorients himself. He deduces the way home and then turns in the opposite direction. As he starts down the street, he hesitates a few times. If you’re injured and looking to get away without putting as much effort out, you wouldn’t probably go in a straight line. You would take back roads, make frequent turns.
It’s a haphazard approach, and Klaus knows it, but he’s come this far, so he’s really got nothing else to lose. Besides, it feels right to him. Not right. It feels like Five.
Klaus has to trust that.
He has to trust himself.
It’s a novel concept, but he’s working with it for now.
A few more turns, and Klaus pauses. It’s been several blocks now, and he thinks about that hole in the ceiling. He thinks about a 13 year old with a concussion. Five’s got an unfair advantage, looking like a kid, but Klaus can’t help it. He’s such a skinny damn kid that it’s hard to picture him holding a gun and shooting Dave dead.
It’s also hard to imagine him making it very far with a concussion.
This place is far enough to be safe from Klaus following him.
It’s also far enough to leave an injured kid winded.
Suddenly certain, Klaus turns down the alley. He wanders down it, and then wanders back. He’s not sure what he’s looking for; it’s not like Five’s going to be there, waiting for him in some alleyway. It’s not like he’s going to find a message written on the wall, an apology spelled out in blood with a convenient phone number to call.
This is stupid, Klaus realizes.
There’s no way in hell he’s going to find Five like this.
Fiddling anxiously with the dog tags around his neck, he turns back down to exit the alley when he hears a whoosh.
He stops and frowns.
“Five?” he asks as he turns around.
A woman is standing there, bright red lips and a trimmed trenchcoat with a tie around the waist. She’s holding a briefcase as she smiles. “Not quite,” she says. “But since you’re looking for him, why don’t I help you out?”
Klaus is about to politely decline, but before he can demur, someone comes at him from behind. He sees the woman wave at him as something comes down hard on the back of his head and his knees crumple.
As he passes out, he thinks, well, that could have gone worse.