Umbrella Academy fic: Changing All the Scenery (15/20)
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
FIFTEEN
It’s not a cell anymore.
That’s not really a consolation, but it is what it is.
Five is weak, discouraged, moderately traumatized, but he’s still, at his core, a pragmatist. He likes to think that will be an asset to him, but at this point, he’s not sure it matters. Whether he accepts his reality or denies it, he expects his fate will be much the same. Some people believe that facing your inevitable demise with dignity matters. Five knows from experience that it does not.
To be clear, that’s what this is.
This is his inevitable demise.
He has no delusions otherwise. He is also quite confident that this end will be neither swift nor painless. In fact, he suspects that his decline will be protracted expertly in order to be exploited as efficiently and completely impossible.
He was kept in isolation in order to prepare Klaus for his decision. No such decision is going to be put in front of him. He knows now that he has served his primary objective. If he is no longer to be kept in a cell, then he has a more utilitarian use to the Commission now.
Therefore, it is no surprise when the two guards drag him into something that resembles a medical laboratory. It is clinical and pristine, but it is not barren. There is equipment, monitors, people working in white lab coats. Conveniently, there is also an examination bed.
It has metal, chain link cuffs for his arms and legs.
Somehow, he doubts these are the kinds of doctors that prescribe to the Hippocratic oath.
That’s just as well, Five decides as he is forced onto the bed and his arms and legs are strapped down and locked roughly into place. Klaus should have just made the decision to kill him back in 2019 and spared them all the trouble.
-o-
No one tells him anything.
Not that there seems to be much to tell. It’s all very sinister and ominous and wholly uncreative. Five is well past feeling anything resembling dread. His own fate seems rather mundane at this point. So when the Handler finally shows up, looking horribly smug, Five asks the one question that matters, “Where’s Klaus?”
Annoyingly, this question only pleases her more. She’s practically beaming. “Don’t you have it figured out yet?”
Five is too tired to play her game. He sighs. “I know you’re setting him up,” he says. “I just don’t know why.”
She shrugs, feigning a malicious innocence. “Setting him up? But I’m only telling him the truth -- one thing you’ve never managed to do easily, if I may say.”
He shakes his head as best as he is able in the restraints that have him locked to the table. “Oh, please,” he says. “I never lied about anything.”
“But you also didn’t admit it,” the Handler says, raising her hand keenly. “Lies by omission, I think it’s called.”
“I didn’t even know I did it,” Five shoots back. “I still can’t even confirm it myself.”
“See, even now, denial,” the Handler says, shaking her head in disapproval. “Is it really any wonder that Klaus can’t trust you?”
“Because you’re so much better?” Five says. “You’re manipulating him. Why?”
“Oh, we’re all working the situation to our advantage, aren’t we?” she asks, arching her eyebrows. “Do you honestly mean to tell me that you never considered the possibility of your actions before now? That you never thought twice about all those times you pulled the trigger? You could have killed one of their fathers, mothers, grandfathers -- one small slip, one little bullet, and you could have erased everyone you cared about. Are you telling me that you never ran those odds?”
“Of course I did,” Five snaps. “But I had to suspect that the Commission’s sense of temporal mechanism would require no targets be related to their assassin team or it’d all be very self defeating.”
She seems to grant him that. “But Dave wasn’t like that,” she says, musing now. “You never thought it was ironic? You and Klaus in Vietnam? The same year?”
Five grits his teeth together and squirms despite himself. It’s one thing to be spread like a pinned butterfly. It’s another thing when his own hubris is being point out to him, plain as day. It’s another still when he knows he doesn’t have any defense whatsoever.
He swallows it back. “When I found out where he’d gone, of course it gave me pause,” he says. “I ran a lot of numbers that day. Most of them were about leveraging the situation to contact the Commission. But some of it was about the odds of my path intersecting with Klaus in the past.”
“And you didn’t tell him?” she asks, blinking her eyes knowingly. “You didn’t think to share your war stories?”
“It was all speculation,” Five says.
“But the numbers -- they were suggestive,” the Handler assumes.
Now, Five realizes scathingly, he’s blushing. “And inconclusive,” he says. “I wasn’t going to hurt him based on probabilities.”
The Handler clucks her tongue, crossing her arms across her chest. “Understandable, I suppose,” she says. Then, she mocks sympathy. “Though it might have prevents this.”
She nods to the laboratory around them with a hint of insincere commiseration.
He’s done with this. He’s done with explanations and numbers and probabilities and rationales. He follows her gaze with a shrug of his own. “Well, maybe this is the natural consequence of my action,” he says. “What I deserve.”
This time, when she tsks her tongue, she almost sounds sincere. “Aw, pity. Fatalism doesn’t suit you, Five.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure being the hero suits me either,” Five quips. He narrows his eyes, the facade faltering. “Do you still think you can win?”
Her own facades don’t falter, but they harden into the familiar mask Five knows too well. “History is always rewriting itself,” she says. “It’s a truly fascinating thing that I’ve learned on the job. Humans write these history books, these quaint little history books, and they never realize how inpermanent they are. They barely finish on before they have to start making changes.”
“I thought some things were fixed points, so to speak,” Five reminds her.
She brightens. “So they are,” she says. “Key moments that must be preserved at all costs. The Hindenburg. JFK’s assassination.”
Her smile looks positively delighted.
“The apocalypse,” she says. “Nothing is a given anymore”
It’s a long roundabout plan, complicated and layered and contingent on endless factors. Just so the Commission could get right back to where it started with the end of the world.
All of Five’s hard work and effort.
Hanging in the balance.
The fate of the world, dangling by a string.
And Five, strapped to a table, vulnerable and defenseless, has just one request. “Do what you will, with the timeline, with me,” he says. “But leave Klaus alone. He’s suffered enough.”
She looks almost disappointed. “But where’s the fun in that?”
“I’m serious,” he says, emphatically now. “I’ll do anything you want. Just leave him alone.”
“Anything?” she asks coyly. “I’d love to believe you, I really would, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to be so easy this time.”
Five tenses, pulling against his restraints for the first time. “Please,” he growls. “I mean it. Anything.”
She smiles, reaching down and patting him on the head. “Anything it is, then.”
SIXTEEN
It all sounds good when you say it: screw your family! Screw history! Be reunited with the man you love for your personal happily ever after!
Klaus had made the decision based on that emotion. He hadn’t thought about any of the practical implications.
That’s problematic, sure.
It’s downright disconcerting when it becomes clear that everyone else has thought about the implications.
Immediately, the Handler disappears, dog tags in hand. He’s given a pair of fatigues, and he’s dressed in them before he realizes that they’re his fatigues. He’s still trying to put together how they could be his fatigues when a new pair of dog tags are put around his neck. He’s looking at the name on them -- Klaus Hargreeves -- and remembering that he doesn’t even have dog tags with his own name because he’s not really supposed to be in the war when someone hands him a briefcase.
Distracted by the dog tags and how innanely real they look, he doesn’t think to give the briefcase a second look. By the time he realizes that holding a briefcase is probably a bad idea, the Handler reappears. She looks more put together than before, and a little rushed, to be honest. She adjusts her hair, smooths her coat and looks him steadily in the eye. “So, the operation is simple.”
Klaus is at a loss. “Operation?”
She hardly flinches at his confusion. “Saving Dave Katz should actually be a relatively easy affair. Since he was killed by your brother under orders, all you have to do is stop said assassination.”
“Whoa,” Klaus says, still reeling. He’s putting together the pieces, and the picture doesn’t make sense. This is saying something; most things usually don’t make sense to Klaus. “You want me to kill my brother?”
She looks skeptical. “I can’t imagine now is an appropriate time for you to get sentimental, but no,” she says. “Nothing so sinister. Changes to the timeline do not have to be dramatic, after all, to be entirely effective.”
“Okay,” Klaus says slowly, wanting to be reassured without any actual sense of genuine reassurance. That’s probably understandable. Still, it makes cooperation on an operation, so to speak, quite difficult. “So, what do I have to do then exactly?”
He’s hoping that he’ll be told not to worry, he doesn’t have to do anything. He’s hoping that he’ll be given a warm cup of a tea and a bathrobe with a promise to rest up because Dave will be here soon. Hell, at this point, he’s hoping for a hit of anything to take the edge off of breathing.
She shakes her head primly. “It’s simple, really. Five receives secondary orders while on a primary mission in Vietnam,” she explains. “At this point in his career, Five is an experienced veteran, having completed countless missions on behalf of the Commission.”
In other words, Five’s a ruthless assassin who has killed more people than he or his employer can recount right now.
The Handler waves a diffident hand through the air. “At this level of efficiency, Five requires very little planning,” she says. “That’s why he is tasked with secondary tasks via memo that far exceed his original mandate.”
There seems to be more to this story, something she’s not telling Klaus, but he has no idea what.
“Because of this, the only official notice of the order has been confirmed to him through official memo in the field,” the Handler continues. “If you can destroy this memo, then Five’s mission will never be enacted. Dave Katz never dies. You get your happy ending.”
She explains this pleasantly and reasonably enough. On the surface, there’s no reason to doubt her.
But Klaus has been dragged into the past. They are a bit beyond the surface.
Also, he’s not always known for making the best choices in the world. He’s not admitting he’s wrong or anything, but he’s starting to feel a little bit sick, honestly.
“Well, why not just do it from here?” Klaus says. “I mean, this is the time and place where the memo is sent, isn’t it? Why not just stop it from being sent in the first place?”
She smiles like that’s the cutest thing she’s ever heard. “I see that Five’s not the only one with a keen eye toward planning in the family,” she says. “And it’s a smart idea, it really is. I appreciate the initiative, but I’m afraid you’re underestimating the way the Commission functions. Ever since the Commission started its work with rehabilitating the timeline, we created something of an anchor. We’ve carved out a unique place on the time-space continuum. It allows us to do our work seamlessly, but it does come with some limitations. We have the power to change any other point in time, but right here, right now? That’s fixed. To mess with it might unravel the fabric of the universe itself.”
Klaus stares at her blankly, wondering if she’s actually talking about the end of all time and space or if he’s misinterpreting her polite talk of inevitable demise.
It’s pretty weird, really. Klaus has had acid trips that seem more normal than this.
“Okay,” Klaus says. He shrugs. “Then maybe, I don’t know. We send another memo? Telling Five to ignore the first memo?”
She snaps her fingers encouragingly. She looks like a proud owner who is housebreaking a puppy. Klaus has a not-so-inexplicable desire to pee on the carpet. He’s not sure if that’s a metaphorical urge or not at this point. “That is possible, yes,” she continues, not even missing a beat. “But I fear it would only have the opposite effect for Five in the field. See, multiple memos offering direct contradiction to one another would fly in the face of long established Commission protocol, protocol that Five himself is very well aware of. If he received such contradictory memos in the field at this time, it would raise multiple red flags. At the least, he would likely disregard the second memo and pursue his mission anyway?”
Klaus draws his brows close. “And in the worst?”
She frowns casually. “Well, at the worst, he might suspect someone has tampered with his orders. It might spark a killing spree on a vast scale as he tries to make sure the job has no loose ends.”
It sounds like a scare tactic. He stands there, briefcase in hand, donning fatigues, and he thinks that this has to be a scare tactic. He’s made the choice, but she’s holding all the cards, and shit, he’s not about to admit that Five was right about anything, ever, but she’s trying to scare him into something and Klaus can’t quite figure out what.
He just knows that she’s not telling him everything.
Or she’s telling him too much.
She’s just not telling him the right things, the things he needs to know.
Like how any of this will actually save Dave.
“But you can control time,” Klaus says. And he laughs because this point should be funny. Why is none of this funny? “That’s literally what you do.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” the Handler says, and her lips are drawn together earnestly now. “But time is fickle. It is unpredictable. We’ve found that a hands-on approach is necessary in the end.”
Klaus looks back at the briefcase, feeling his heart thud in his vacant chest. “So you really think it’s best if I -- what? Go back?”
“Well, go forward, actually,” the Handler says with a small chuckle. “But yes. There is a reason we rely so heavily on field agents. Yes, this is our place to monitor time, to form plans, to orchestrate action. But real change only happens on the ground, as it were.”
The room has become strangely vacant. It’s just Klaus and the Handler. He wonders, briefly, where Five is right now. But that’s not the right question. He swallows, trying to remember the right question. Wetting his lips, he comes up with something else instead. “But we’re talking Vietnam, Dave’s death,” he says. “Won’t I already be there? Like, past future me or something?”
“Ah, yes,” she says, and this sobers her slightly. She straightens, pressing her hands out over her dress. “That is one small detail we do need to discuss with some degree of seriousness.”
Klaus has to wonder why this hasn’t been serious so far.
She shrugs as she continues. “You should take care to avoid the other version of yourself,” she says. “It’s somewhat unpredictable in terms of the consequences, but our scientific models strongly indicate that such interaction between past and present selves could prove problematic.”
Klaus’ frown deepens substantially. This whole ordeal has proved problematic to him, so he’s not sure if this is a profound understatement or just a sign that Klaus’ assessment of the situation is off kilter. “Problematic how?”
“Oh, you know,” she says, flitting her hand through the air like it’s nothing. “An implosion of time and space. The disintegration of the fabric of reality.”
Klaus allows his mouth to drop open. His fingers feel like they might break off from the weight of the briefcase in his hands. “Wait? What?”
“Nothing for you to worry about,” she says, and she looks at her watch. She reaches up with her other hand, pressing a few buttons. There’s a few beeping noise, a burst of static. Then, before Klaus can protest further, the briefcase in his hands starts to vibrate.
He looks down at it, confused. He can only watch as the locking mechanism on the top starts to click around, clinking through the positions.
The pitch from the watch adjusts, whining like a transistor radio trying to tune in to a station.
“What are you doing?” Klaus asks.
“Oh, don’t worry, this is completely by the book,” she says, tweaking her watch a little more. “You have our latest suitcase model, and we’ve made it more user friendly, so to speak, while also adding a few key security protocol that I’m sure you’ll appreciate. It’s no longer possible to activate the suitcase by accident. We use precise radio frequencies with Morse code pulses to hone in on a correct time and place. It’s ingenious really. A simple SOS will even get agents home in a pinch.”
Security protocol would have been nice the first time around, sure. Klaus isn’t sure how this helps him now.
He just wants to get Dave back.
She adjusts the watch one more time. “Ah, perfect,” she says, and she looks up at him beaming. “Got it!”
“But shouldn’t I know how to do that?” Klaus asks, looking from the watch to the suitcase. It’s vibrating now. Like, actually vibrating. He thinks to drop it, but he worries that if he does, he’ll lose his chance at Dave forever. He’s made the choice, and his fingers tighten around the handle as his throat constricts. “You know? To get back?”
She smiles, her confidence unabated. “Don’t worry,” she says. “We’ll contact you with further instructions once your mission is done.”
There’s that word again. Mission.
Klaus shakes his head. “But I’m not going on a mission!”
The briefcase clicks open.
Light expands.
Klaus gasps but there’s no more time to protest as he’s drawn in and down. The world expands beyond its breaking point and than coalesces into an infinitesimal speck. He’s torn apart and pressed together, heart thudding in his chest as eternity expands between the beats. He falls, he rises. He breathes, he suffocates. There’s no turning back.
Mission or not, the choice is made.
-o-
It’s like a rebirth.
Violent and jarring, sudden and encompassing. Klaus takes his first breath of hot air with a ferocity that rips through him. He gasps, nearly keeling over. The force of it is nearly too much and still not enough. His head spins, and he braces himself.
Eyes squeezed shut, he breathes again, letting the oxygen flood through his brain. He feels it prickle in his synapses, igniting up and down his spine until the sensation tingles in his fingers.
Then, bit by bit, his other senses return to him.
Smell, first. Something is burning, rank in the humidity that prickles the back of his skin. It’s almost rancid, metal, blood and flesh. He’s rocked, then, with a crash of certainty as sound kicks in next. The explosions flare up, and he hears them, first rattling in his chest and then reverberating in his eardrums. The yawning booms hurt to hear, and his knees weaken, threatening to give out.
Finally, he blinks, and he realizes belatedly that his eyes are, in fact, open. There’s glaring sunlight to blind him, though, and it takes him several moments to discern the pitched white sky from the gray-brown foliage on the ground. The scene, still chaotic, is split inexorably by a white hot light, which explodes like a firework.
Someone screams; blood spatters.
Shit, Klaus thinks, as the sensations overwhelm him. Shit, shit, shit.
It’s a wave of PTSD, only it’s playing out in real time. The mix of memory and sensory overload is enough to kill him, he thinks. His stomach turns, and he hits his knees just in time to retch. The acrid smell in his nose is something of a relief, and the pain in his chest is suddenly grounding. He throws up again, though there’s hardly anything in his stomach to reject, and he retches again until clarity falls over him and he remembers why he’s here.
Dave.
He came for Dave.
Still on his hands and knees, he cranes his head up. He heaves for air, gasping to steady himself once more. He can see the briefcase on the ground, not far away.
He hates this place, loathes.
And, God help him, he loves it. Adores it.
This is the place that took away Dave, yes.
But this is also the place, Klaus knows, that gave him Dave.
This isn’t what he wanted, either time. But this is the choice he’s made. This time, at least, he knows what he has to do. He knows how to fix it.
Staggering, he gets his footing.
It’s time -- it’s finally time -- to act.
-o-
Being in war is disorienting, no matter how you slice it. Jumping into the middle of it after unexpected time travel makes it harder. Harder, yes. But not impossible. Klaus is galvanized a bit, in the end. He supposes that’s called purpose.
Maybe it’s hope.
Either way, he wonders if this is how Five used to cope with it.
He disregards the thought quickly enough; it’s not a good example for the time being. Five’s the reason he’s here, after all. Everything is Five’s fault.
Whether or not it’s an accurate mantra is less important than the fact that it’s an effective one. Ducking low, he follows along a protective line of cover, keeping the briefcase close to him. He’s been dropped in barracks. They’re familiar enough, but only in that all American barracks have the same look and feel. Klaus remembers this, and he doesn’t have to know specifics. Right now, he’s off the front lines, but from the sound of the fighting, he’s not far from it.
Rounding a corner, Klaus nearly runs into several soldiers. Dressed and strapping on their helmets, one collides with Klaus with a curse. Klaus stumbles and tries to apologize. Another gives him a look. “You better go back, get your gear!” he yells at Klaus. “Didn’t you hear the orders?”
Klaus blinks, stammering. It’s not hard to guess the orders. In fact, somewhere on this base, he imagines he’s already received them. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. He makes a face, fidgeting awkwardly with the briefcase. “Caught me in the latrine.”
There’s a small chuckle of commiseration. “Well, hurry it up,” another says. “The XO won’t care if you shit yourself, as long as you’re at the front lines.”
Klaus tries to laugh it off like a joke as they brush past him, on their way to report for duty. Another volley of explosions sounds in the distance. Klaus has enough sense now; they’re getting closer, but there’s time yet. Well, he thinks there’s time. It occurs to him, rather belatedly, that he doesn’t know when the Handler has dropped him off. He doesn’t know how much lead time he’s been given, how much wiggle room is built into the mission. He has to locate Five, intercept the message -- all without knowing where Five is.
That’s not true. He knows where Five will be. He knows that Five is on the battlefield the day Dave dies.
But what day is that?
What day is this?
Shit, for all he knows, he’s in the wrong year.
Purpose, hope -- it’s all well and good -- but is it enough? There’s a part of Klaus -- a really large part -- that wishes he’d just stayed stoned out of his mind in a crack house in 2019. He’s good and ready to panic, he is, but then he hears a voice.
He hears the voice.
The most perfect, the most beautiful, the most resonate, the most encompassing voice in the whole wide world.
“Klaus? What are you -- how--?”
Klaus’s heart doesn’t just skip a beat.
It damn near stops.
No, that’s not it. It’s not his heart.
It’s time.
Time stops.
Time stops.
It comes to a damn standstill. All of eternity, all of time and space, it comes to a freaking halt.
Shaking, Klaus turns. He’s ready and he’s not, but there he is.
Standing behind him, alive and breathing.
There he is.
Dave.
Klaus’ Dave.
“Klaus, but--”
Klaus doesn’t listen, can’t listen. He crosses toward Dave, reaches for him. His hands cup his face. Dave starts to protest, but Klaus smothers the words, embracing him and pulling him closer. The kiss is hot and Dave pulls away, but Klaus can’t let go. The sheer force of the passion overwhelms them both, and Dave melts into the touch. They’re sober this time, at least technically. The emotions that overpowers them is a drunkenness in and of itself.
This is why Klaus came.
He pulls back, tears in his eyes, looking at Dave again.
This is the only choice that matters.
-o-
Klaus is relieved. Very relieved. And overwhelmed. And horny. Shit, he’s so horny right now, but mostly he’s in love.
He’s been in love this whole time, but the grief has made it dormant. The grief has made it a monument, a memory.
But here it is again, pulsing inside of him. This is the most alive he’s ever felt. The most alive he’ll ever feel and he knows it. He knows it better than he knows anything else in this life.
His hands are still clutching at Dave’s arms as he stares at him in wonder.
Dave, for his part, looks uneasy. He glances about awkwardly, and tries to disentangle himself. He regards Klaus cautiously. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”
Of course he doesn’t, Klaus reflects with a surreal happiness. In their time together, there had been no acute declarations of love. There had been no talk of happily ever after. The only romance they had shared overtly had been fueled by drugs and alcohol. Sober, Dave was his best friend.
They were soldiers, after all.
And the war is no place for lovers, gay or otherwise.
Klaus lets go but he doesn’t step back. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”
Dave blushes, and he leans forward. “I know,” he says. “But -- we can’t. Not -- here.”
“I know, I know,” Klaus tells him. “But we can’t wait forever.”
“Just until the war, you know?” Dave says. “Then we can go home. Go someplace where we can, I don’t know. Figure it out a little. I don’t know how this works.”
Klaus smiles. Dave’s confused, and it’s a beautiful thing. He’s confused for Klaus. He’s confused because of Klaus. He’s confused because the only future that makes sense for them is one that neither of them planned on at all. The future Klaus came here to restore. The one he came to finally, finally realize. “I know,” he says. “I know.”
Dave looks concerned again, but for new reasons. “But we have to go,” he says. “I thought you said you had to take a leak? We’re due to report for transport in less than ten minutes.”
Transport. Ten minutes.
Klaus tries to remember, but those 11 months in Vietnam are a haze. The best and worst of his life. “Transport?”
Dave nods. “We’re being transferred to the Ashua Valley,” he says. He looks at Klaus, more confused than ever. “We literally just talked about this.”
Time travel, Klaus reminds himself. Dave did just talk to Klaus about this, but that Klaus really is in the bathroom. This Klaus, the one standing here, is the second one. Neither of them belong here, that’s true. But one Klaus started this story. Another will finish it.
Klaus feels his confidence ratchet up a few notices. “Right, the Ashua Valley,” he says. “We’re going there today.”
He goes over the details in his head, but he doesn’t really have to. He remembers the Ashua Valley of course. He remembers it because that’s where Dave dies.
Dave dies tomorrow.
The thought is, naturally, a little horrifying, but here Klaus is. The day before tragedy. And he has everything he needs to prevent the tragedy. He knows where. He knows how. He knows why. He knows when.
And now he knows who.
“Yeah,” Dave says, still looking at Klaus with a hint of confusion. “We have to keep it together, man. You’re going to get us killed if you don’t.”
Klaus shakes his head. “We can’t have that,” he says. “We won’t.”
Dave’s brows knit together. He swallows, uncertain. “Are you okay? I mean, really?”
“I’m great,” Klaus says, shifting the briefcase from one hand to the other. “I’m as good as I’ve ever been.”
Dave’s sense of disconcertion only seems to deepen.
Klaus steps forward, his fingers reaching out, just brushing the top of Dave’s hands. “We’ll get through this together,” he says. “I’m going to be with you through this, all the way to the end. And it’s going to be so much better, you know? On the other side? When all of this is done. When it’s just you and me, like we want. Like it’s supposed to be. It’ll be just you and me.”
Dave tries to scoff, but his attempt to be dismissive falters. He chuckles, but it wavers, and when he blinks, his eyes are wet. “I don’t -- I mean -- Klaus,” he says, and he chokes a little. “I never -- I mean--”
“Sh,” Klaus says, taking a bold moment to squeeze Dave’s fingers. He smiles warmly as he lets them go. “You don’t have to say it. You’ll have the rest of your life to say it.”
Boyishly, Dave grins, like a child who can’t contain his excitement on Christmas morning.
“Now, go,” Klaus says, nodding in encouragement. “I’ll see you soon.”
Dave hesitates as he turns. He glances back one last time before continuing on his way. Klaus watches him until he turns a corner and disappears, the rockets still firing somewhere overhead.
So, Klaus has his ends.
Now, it’s up to him to find his means.
-o-
The uniform he’s wearing allows him to pass through the barracks without eliciting notice, but Klaus is not insensitive to their limitations. As the barracks are cleared out, he will be called into question. The last thing he needs is to be deployed. The risk of someone discovering that there are two Klaus Hargreeves onsite is perhaps problematic. However, Klaus has been around this war once. He knows from experience that people don’t generally care who you are or how you got here. A warm body is a warm body; they’ll put you on the front lines if they can.
Klaus, in the past, allowed this.
This time, he cannot indulge it.
His motivation was, and still is, Dave.
And it is powerful motivation indeed.
The key to leveraging an army uniform is to act like you know what you’re doing. Everyone is so busy in war that they don’t really have time to take notice of the little things. If Klaus plays this right, he should be able to walk right off base without anyone noticing. It helps, of course, that there’s another one of him running around. It’s easier to disappear when you’re not really there.
And Klaus does need to disappear. The base has yielded him important information about date and location. It’s also provided him with the motivation he needs to ground him for the next, more calculated portion of his journey. It establishes the end.
Klaus has to focus now on the means.
This is easy enough to say, but it’s not so easy to enact. Klaus is, after all, not known as the best planner in the family. He’s never been particularly good at forethought. He prefers improvisation. Or, in actuality, he prefers not to think about anything at all. He’s spent so much of his life trying not to think that it’s actually a bit counterintuitive when he makes the effort.
There’s also some argument to be made that he’s just not that good at it. He has come through in conflict from time to time, but only under duress and not without some screw ups. Even his shining moment, back at the end of the world, he’d been out buying something at a food truck instead of doing his job. He’d nearly gotten shot when running back inside, and his big moment was nothing more than a conduit for Ben to have his big moment.
Now, that’s not to say that Klaus is entirely useless. He has powers, and they are increasing, though they’re not likely to do a lot of good right now. He’s not even sure they’re working again, though he suspects they must be. There’s not really time to explore that right now, though. Not with other, more pressing concerns to think about.
Like, how is he going to find Five?
How is he going to keep Five from finding his orders?
These are two, like, big tasks. Really big tasks. The Handler had made them sound easy, but of course she had. All prim and proper, back in the past, she’d made a point to assure Klaus how easy it was. But on the ground, Klaus is reminded that nothing regarding Five is easy.
For starters, Five doesn’t like being found. Even after getting back to 2019, Five had been lofty and elusive. It had taken the little bastard days to finally admit to them the truth of why he’d come. He was prone to sneaking about, slipping in and out without notice. He has a habit of going undetected, and Klaus can only suspect that he was better at it while on the job.
That’s not to say that Klaus can’t find him. He has done it before, after all. When his other siblings had failed, Klaus had come through. Though, success might be too heady of a word. After all, they had both been captured, and he had just abandoned his brother to a grim and unknown fate to serve his own ends.
That’s not the point, and even it it was, it’s still Five’s fault for being an asshole and Five is an asshole and that, thank you very much, is actually the point.
Because once Klaus finds Five -- and for now, he’s got to assume he can -- he still has to stop Five. Somehow, he doubts this will be easy. No doubt, the Commission doesn’t send messages to people while they’re away. How would you know to look for a hidden pneumatic tube if you’re not present? The fact that the Commission is able to do this raises the repeated question about why they can’t stop Five themselves, but whatever. Klaus is here. Klaus knows the tasks.
He has to disable Five.
Disable?
He’s starting to sound like the little bastard. He has to knock Five out, at least. He has to put him out of commission, to relish a pun under pressure.
And how is he supposed to do that?
He’s seen Five fight. He knows what Five’s capable of. He knows that his own powers are growing, but he’s not in control of them at the moment. He’s likely sober enough, but the effects of time travel are what they are. Not to mention that he’s malnourished and stressed and -- mostly, he doesn’t know.
In straight up hand to hand combat, it’s kind of an unknown.
Worse, he doesn’t want straight up combat. The Handler didn’t talk about this, the possibility of Five seeing Klaus. He doesn’t know what the effect might be of that. There’s some appeal to it, of course. If he talks to Five, Five might agree. Klaus would have a logical point of argument.
But there’s the whole time is fickle angle. If Klaus interferes and communicates directly with Five, it’s likely to throw the whole rest of the timeline off. And what would happen, then? And who’s to say that Five wouldn’t doubt his veracity? What if Five assumes him to be an agent and then fights to kill? Then Klaus dies and he has no idea what happens next because time travel is too wonky to think about like that.
No, the safest route, for his sake and Dave’s, is to take Five out of the picture discreetly.
So, all Klaus has to do is find Five, a trained assassin with years of experience, before knocking him out without a direct confrontation in order to intercept a message intended to kill his beloved.
Easy peasy.
Klaus nears the edges of the base and glances around surreptitiously.
First things first, he has to get off the base.
Normally, this might be daunting. Klaus huffs and ducks under a broken gap in the fence without a look back. But he’s got bigger things to think about right now.
-o-
It’s a bit harrowing, slipping off base. It’s a lot more harrowing, moving through uncontrolled militarized space. Klaus has more than a few close calls, but he works his way in the direction opposite the explosions, and soon enough he comes across unmarred farmland. He skirts his way around a village and finds a main road, walking off the side of it to keep out of sight while he makes his way to the closest town with nothing but the briefcase in hand.
He’s making an assumption here, but he likes to think it’s a pretty good assumption. He doesn’t know much about Five’s life as an agent, but he does know a thing or two about field agents from his time with Hazel and Cha Cha. He remembers quite well the crappy hotel they’d been holed up. Given their talk about it, it was pretty clear that wasn’t their choice -- but rather, company policy.
He’s seen the Commission first hand. They’re not an indulgent group, that’s for sure. They would pick cheap accommodations. Cheap but reliable. Sure, their agents could scrape through on anything, but a hotel room would provide a home base for rest, recuperation and -- more importantly -- necessary correspondence.
There aren’t a lot of hotels on a battlefield.
There are, however, still hotels in a warzone.
Klaus knows. He and Dave got drunk in a few and ended up entwined together in a bed they paid for out of their stingy paychecks. Hotels in this area loved western guests; it was their only way to make a profit out of such a horrible, horrible situation. True, there aren’t tourists in Vietnam right now, but there are soldiers and there are politicians and there are businessmen. Each town needs one good hotel.
It has to be enough to get the job done.
-o-
After a mile, Klaus hitches a ride the rest of the way through a series of smiles and polite gestures he has no idea the meaning of. It doesn’t much matter if the local is scared of him or plotting to kill him. In an hour’s time, he’s in the closest town, waving goodbye, and looking up for the tallest building in town.
He makes his way to it, smiling at the flashing vacant sign.
Now, he knows there’s a chance he’s got it wrong. This could be the wrong town. Five’s original objective could have taken him anywhere. But at the front desk, he asks the girl if she speaks English. She tells him she does, and he asks if there are any other hotels in the area.
“Oh, no,” she says. “This is the only one in ten miles.”
“What about the next town over?” Klaus asks.
She points in the opposite direction from where Klaus has come. “15 miles that way,” she says. “There is no other place. If you are going to be in this area, this is where you belong.”
Klaus smiles.
That is, of course, what he wants to hear.
She smiles back. “Can I book you a room, sir?”
“Actually,” Klaus says. “I had something else in mind.”
-o-
Klaus has nothing on him, by the way. He comes to that realization after he’s starting his attempt to bribe the poor girl. He’s got no money, no valuable, nothing.
Really, though, working with nothing -- that’s Klaus in his element. It’s what he’s good at. He’s charming and he’s convincing and he’s attractive and he’s a really, really good liar when he has to be. So, when he tells her that his employer will pay her back with a nod and a wink, she seems to think he means it.
It’s not that he doesn’t mean it.
It’s just that he has no idea.
He’s not even sure he has an employer. And if he’s counting on the Commission, then it doesn’t seem like they’re the type to follow through on promises of goodwill. Come to think of it, that could bode poorly for him, but he’s too far into it now for that kind of second thought.
At any rate, the girl confirms that there are a few other Americans at the hotel. She confirms that one is older, staying alone, checked in with nothing more than a briefcase. She tells Klaus the room number and says that he’s been out since morning.
Wink, wink, nod, nod.
That’s all Klaus needs.
-o-
Klaus spends all his energy getting the information he needs. He doesn’t take time to think of the more practical measures. To be fair, the girl doesn’t think about it either. When he finds the room, it’s a wonder what she thought he was going to do. Knock and hope? Sit outside and wait for the best?
There’s no best in any of that, so Klaus does what Klaus does. Under pressure, to get what he wants and needs, he finds alternative measures.
His father, of course, had hated that. Hated it. He praised others for thinking outside the box, but everything Klaus did was a shortcut, not an innovation. Klaus has never much seen the distinction. A solution is a solution, as far as he’s concerned.
Also, there’s some nonsense about beggars and choosers, right?
Besides, Klaus thinks as he picks the lock on Five’s door, at least he’s not breaking a window like Diego would. Sure, Klaus can be awfully blase about breaking the law, but at least he’s not so glaringly obvious about it.
Well, sometimes. Getting arrested multiple times for drug possession isn’t a note of subtlety, but the door snicks open and Klaus grins. He collects his briefcase and glances around surreptitiously, as if that’s going to do him some kind of good. It’s only after he’s inside that he remembers that he has special powers like levitation and mind control that might be helpful in such situations but whatever. What’s done is done.
Klaus closes the door behind him and looks around.
Not done, then.
He takes in the sparse room, preserved like it’s almost been untouched. For a second, he worries he’s broken into the wrong room, that Five’s not been here at all, but then he sees a neat suit hanging on the bathroom door. Vanya’s book, worn and creased, is positioned tidily on the bedside table.
Not done.
Just beginning.
-o-
Honestly, Klaus isn’t sure what he’s doing. The overall objective is all fine and simple: don’t let Five get the memo, save Dave, live happily ever after. And Klaus knows, okay? He knows he’s done a lot of the hard stuff. He’s made it here! He’s found Five’s room! He’s broken in!
But, now what?
That’s the simple, imperative question.
He’s gotten this far, but now what?
Does he wait here until the orders come? But when the orders come, won’t that imply that Five’s already here? And if Five’s here, then he’ll see Klaus and that’s probably not going to work, as he has established previously with his surely impregnable logic.
Which means….
Well, okay, fine, Klaus doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t know what any of it means. He was in 1950 two hours ago and he was in 2019 two weeks ago and he’s been grieving the man he loves who is very much alive and slated to die in a day. It’s a little complicated is all.
He reminds himself that the solution is still simple.
Intercept the memo.
As a drug addict, he’s learned to always opt for the simplest and most direct methods. Acquiring drugs with no money is not a matter of finesse. It’s pure survival. You do what needs to be done and you don’t overthink it. You can’t overthink it, really. Your brain cells are too busy being preoccupied by other things.
The answer, therefore, as best Klaus can tell is this: he has to intercept the message by intercepting Five first.
That sounds ominous, but no, it’s not. Klaus isn’t a killer, he’s not going to kill Five, even if Five probably deserves it. More to the point, he’s not sure he can kill Five, not with the questionable state of his powers and just the mental strain required to consciously kill your brother, your actual adopted brother, and death’s just not even necessary.
There are other ways to incapacitate people.
Simpler ways.
More pleasant ways.
See, this is another area of Klaus’ limited expertise. He knows the best way, the surefire trick, to forget the world around you. He knows how to go to sleep like you’ve never slept before. He knows how to find oblivion, pure, blissful oblivion.
Drugs, you see.
Drugs are really, really good for that kind of thing.
And Klaus?
Well, Klaus happens to be really, really good with drugs.
-o-
The girl at the front desk at least has the decency to look like she doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he asks about local drugs. Then, she blushes and makes a big to do like she’s appalled he would think to ask her. But when he promises her a bonus, she giggles like a schoolgirl and tells Klaus what he wants to know.
Bribing a silly girl behind a hotel desk with money that doesn’t exist is one thing. Trying to buy the drugs he wants without any capital is entirely another. Klaus plays fast and loose with things, and he’s stupid, but he’s not a complete moron. He needs something to work with here.
He goes back to Five’s room and starts about looking for anything valuable. The room is a dismal space with poor lighting and uncomfortable furniture. To call it spartan would be too generous. It’s downright depressing.
It doesn’t help that Five’s personal belongings are basically nonexistent. With his own Commission sanctioned briefcase, it seems like Klaus has brought as much along as Five has. The suit hanging from the door seems to be the only thing Five has brought with him. Rummaging through the pockets, he finds a few bills of local currency. The dresser is empty, and the only personal item Klaus can find is a book on the bedside table. He passes over it several times as he scours the room, but after three failed attempts to find something of value, he picks it up to rifle through it.
Then, he stops.
It’s not just a book.
It’s Vanya’s book.
The family secrets, laid bare. This aren’t going to be published until 2017. There’s no telling what decade Five was living in when he picked it up, but there’s a library barcode plastered to the side. All of Five’s travels, he’s left everything behind except this.
His fingers feel numb as he opens the front cover. The book is worn and creased. It’s been taped and scavenged, like Five has taken some time to keep it in one piece. Klaus goes to skim the first chapter, but he doesn’t make it very far. The prose is crowded on the page, supplemented by handwritten notes in the margins.
It takes Klaus a moment to figure it out.
The notes, they belong to Five. And it’s not just notes, it’s full on commentary. It’s complex equation and probabilities. Klaus can’t make heads or tails of most of it, but he can imagine Five, hunched over the book, reading and scrawling.
The whole book is covered, some pages almost so thick with handwritten additions that you can’t read the text. Five hasn’t just read this book; he’s memorized it. He’s internalized it. All those years Five has spent away from his family, and family has been the only thing he’s thought about.
It is, in turn, sad and embarrassing. Klaus had been in the same year as his family all his life, and he’d never offered dedication like this. But it’s not just dedication, is it? It’s obsession, it’s the last hope of a desperate man. Five hadn’t lied to him: this was all he’d had.
For Five, there’s no fallback plan. There’s no one to call in case of emergencies. He can’t dally down the street and beg a favor from his family. For Five, there’s nothing but an empty hotel room and memories of his family.
And orders.
Klaus finds those, too.
The little memo, tucked in the pocket of his pressed suit jacket. Klaus can’t even read the name -- Vietnamese, by the looks of it -- which means that Five’s on track to finish his first mission. It’s telling, probably, that the orders are in the suit and the book is by the bed. A separation, of sorts. A compartmentalization. Five’s way of keeping order. Business and pleasure.
Not pleasure.
Business and personal.
Swallowing hard, Klaus blinks. He puts down the book.
This tells him something about Five, but it doesn’t really help him all that much. There’s still the matter of the mission. To pull this off, he needs money. And if he’s going to get money, he needs something of value. A Commission memo, a worn suit coat and a vandalized book sure ain’t going to get it down.
Chewing his lip, he looks around the room again. It reminds him of the room Hazel and Cha Cha had used, the one they had locked him in. Minus the boxes for carry out and candy bar wrappers. Five is tidier. Or maybe he just eats less. Still, this reeks of the Commission, its policies and procedures.
Klaus tilts his head, thinking about that.
This does reek of the Commission.
Five’s his own man, no doubt, the best of the best, but he’s still the Commission’s man at this point. He’s playing their party line. He’s got their training.
Following that train of thought, he skirts around the bed, looking for the vents in the walls. He finds one, located not far from the bed. He grins; the screws are loose. Klaus still has to jostle them free -- Five isn’t as lax as Hazel was -- but the result is the same. Inside, there’s no briefcase stashed. No, there’s something better.
Weapons.
Lots and lots of weapons.
Now, Klaus has no particular affinity toward violence, and he doesn’t prefer using guns if push comes to shove. But -- and this is a pretty key but, okay -- guns are valuable. People who like guns, do you know what else they like?
Drugs.
They like drugs.
Klaus, it seems, has finally found his leverage.
-o-
Yeah, so, trading guns for drugs is really about as fun as you think it is. It’s scary and dangerous and everyone is super on edge and it’s stressful and dreary and honestly just depressing. It doesn’t help that Klaus barely speaks the local language, and he tries -- he tries really hard -- not to think about where these guns may end up.
Instead, he thinks about the drugs he needs in his hands.
Ends and means, after all.
Damn it all if Five wouldn’t be proud of him right now.
-o-
Back at the hotel, it’s starting to get late, but Klaus is relieved to find that Five’s not back yet. Whatever he’s off to, he’s keeping busy, which is just as well. Klaus, as it turns out, is busy, too.
Taking drugs is surprisingly easy, when you get right down to it. And drugging others, in theory, isn’t all that hard.
However, if you want to drug someone precisely, well, then, you need to use precision. Klaus is many things in life. Precise is not particularly one of them. But needs must, and Klaus will rise to this occasion.
For Dave.
He reminds himself of that as he crushes the pills and mixes them up.
For Dave.
-o-
At this point, it’s not hard to ask the girl for more help. Five, as it turns out, has his meals delivered each night. Nothing fancy, but like clockwork. Small portions with high protein levels. And one cup of coffee to top off the night.
Klaus simpers, and the girl agrees. He promises the drugs won’t kill Five, won’t put him at risk. He’ll just be out for the night, sleep it off for 12 hours, and wake up none the wiser. It’ll be fine, he promises her.
He may be promising himself, too.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that it will work.
This has to work.
-o-
-o-
With the pills for the coffee and the girl at the desk on board, Klaus retreats awkwardly to the closet, keeping the briefcase close to him on the floor. There’s of course some risk when it comes to hiding in the room, but it’s not like Five’s using the closet. Five’s footprint is so minimal that he imagines his brother wouldn’t even know what to do with the space. Sure, maybe he’s picked something up while out and about, but Five doesn’t strike him as someone who likes to carry his baggage.
Physically, anyway.
The metaphors for that are just insane.
The point being that Klaus wants to be onsite for the drugging in order to intercept the message, and the closet, as best he can tell, is a reasonably acceptable risk.
Look at him, all this planning and plotting.
How ironic that he’s finally the soldier that his father -- and the United States Army -- wanted him to be. On his own terms, of course.
At least, Klaus hopes they’re his terms.
-o-
Five comes back.
That’s what Five does, it seems. He comes back.
This time, however, he doesn’t make Klaus wait a decade. Instead, he comes back just after the sun sets. At first, Klaus doesn’t recognize him with the gray hair and the added bulk to his still-lanky body, but behind the mustache, behind the lined face, Klaus recognizes the weary curve of his shoulders, the heaviness of his feet. He hasn’t really thought about it before, the way Five still moves like an old man when he’s in a 13 year old body. It’s not just the breaking down of the body; it’s the weight of the years on the soul.
Klaus could recognize it anywhere.
Still, he watches with some fascination. He knows what Five has said about his time in the apocalypse, his time with the Commission, but it’s strange to see it. For Klaus, Five has been 13 for the last 40 years, but that’s not true. This Five has no guises. He sits down on the bed with a sigh, closing his eyes for a moment before he picks up the phone and orders dinner in a perfect Vietnamese dialect.
At least, Klaus thinks he does. He actually has no idea what Five says, but it sounds pretty spot on based on Klaus’ memories of this time and place.
Putting the phone down, Five sits back on the bed. He lays, staring at the ceiling for a moment before he picks up the book. Shoes still on, he extracts a pencil from his pocket and flips to some designated page. He reads rapidly, eyes flitting across the page, and from his spot in the closet, Klaus can hear his brother muttering to himself.
“It’s still got to be 2019,” he mutters. “It makes saving Ben and preventing Klaus’ spiral into addiction impossible, but it’s the only point they’re all together that is close enough to the endgame to matter.”
Five pauses, chewing his lip as he scribbles a little more frantically. He circles something, eyes lighting up. Then, he frowns, crossing through his notations again.
“I can’t risk the Commission knowing,” he says, fiddling with his mustache. “If I time it wrong, they’ll stop me before I get the chance to save anyone, much less them.”
He turns a page and his eyes skim over it again.
“But how long can I wait?” he says, the words hanging in the air. “How long?”
It’s a genuine question. A plea, really.
The silence in reply is aching.
Klaus is almost relieved when there’s a knock at the door.
Five sits up again, putting the book aside. He straightens his coat before going to the door. He pauses before he opens it, as if to muster something that might pass as a smile.
The girl on the other side of the door smiles back as she pushes the food cart in. They exchange pleasantries in Vietnamese before she giggles her way back out of the room. It’s possible to see her as flirting -- Klaus’ invocation or just her nature, it’s hard to say -- but it’s clear that Five hardly notices. He closes the door without sparing her a second look, and then makes his way over to the chair to sit down.
From the stuffy confines of the closet, Klaus watches as Five removes his hat and places it on the table before lifting the weathered stainless steel cover on top of his plate. The hair on the top of his head is thinning and gray, and he thinks that his brother might look distinguished if he didn’t look so damn tired. As it is, Five is not a fussy eater. He’s not proper, and uses his fingers to pop a few limpid vegetables into his mouth. He takes a bite of the meat before reaching for his coffee.
It’s the only item on the tray that looks warm. Klaus can see the smoke as it rises off the surface of the liquid. Five takes a moment to smell it, closing his eyes before he lifts it to his lips.
Klaus breathes in, and holds it.
Five takes a sip, then another.
He eats a few more bites before downing the rest of the coffee in eager, almost greedy swigs.
Klaus doesn’t dare move.
He watches as Five moves on to the rest of the meal, and he makes it most of the way through before he seems to give up on it. He yawns once, and then blinks his eyes as if to clear them. He pushes the food away, groping for the coffee cup. When he finds it empty, he gets up. He’s a little unsteady, but not much. It’s not until he makes it the two steps to the bed that he seems to notice that something is weird.
There’s a clear moment of disconcerment on his face. Concern, confusion, uncertainty. There’s a split second hesitation, as if Five is debating calling for help. Klaus can almost see his brain work sluggishly through the idea before he comes to the idle conclusion that it’s fruitless. No one would come.
Instead, Five seems to resign himself, almost instantly, to a quiet, inevitable fate. He’s alone in that moment. He’s alone in all the moments, probably. So very, very alone.
When he sits on the bed, he wavers. He lays himself down on the pillow for the mere fact that there’s no one there to catch him. His eyes are closed and he doesn’t move.
Klaus waits several more moments, but Five doesn’t twitch.
It’s done, he knows.
Tentatively, he opens the closet door. Still, there’s no reaction from Five. Klaush inches closer, half in awe of his own handiwork. All of Five’s skills and training and foresight, and he hasn’t seen this coming. Klaus stands above him and watches as he sleep. He shakes his shoulder to no avail. He checks his brother’s breathing, his pulse, and finds that he’s done the job.
Klaus has done the job.
Past, present, future; they fold together. Time has never been so powerful and so insignificant. His yesterdays are his tomorrows. What matters is what he does next, what he does right now.
He pats Five on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he coaches. “Everything will be better in the morning.”
Then, he hears a whoosh and a click.
A sound he knows by now.
Walking across the room, he sees a panel glowing along the wall. He opens it, finding the pneumatic tube inside. It’s still warm when he touches it, and he pops off the top, sliding the memo out.
Attention Agent Five:
Klaus reads.
The details of Dave’s murder are there, spelled out in black typeprint, and Klaus feels himself go cold.
Eliminate Private David Katz of the American Army. Use any means necessary. Extraction is not possible until target is eliminated.
He reads it once, twice, three times. He stares at it for a good five minutes before his body finally reacts. He has the urge to vomit, but he can’t let himself do it. Instead, he takes the paper and rips it. He rips it again and again until all he can do is crumple the tiny pieces in his hand. Then, he drops the pieces like confetti into the garbage can and takes the matches from the bedside table drawer. He strikes one, lets it burn, and drops it into the can. The small pieces of paper go up quickly, sparking and dying so fast it’s almost like they were never there at all.
Klaus watches until there’s nothing but ash, nothing left to burn.
Nothing at all.
-o-
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
FIFTEEN
It’s not a cell anymore.
That’s not really a consolation, but it is what it is.
Five is weak, discouraged, moderately traumatized, but he’s still, at his core, a pragmatist. He likes to think that will be an asset to him, but at this point, he’s not sure it matters. Whether he accepts his reality or denies it, he expects his fate will be much the same. Some people believe that facing your inevitable demise with dignity matters. Five knows from experience that it does not.
To be clear, that’s what this is.
This is his inevitable demise.
He has no delusions otherwise. He is also quite confident that this end will be neither swift nor painless. In fact, he suspects that his decline will be protracted expertly in order to be exploited as efficiently and completely impossible.
He was kept in isolation in order to prepare Klaus for his decision. No such decision is going to be put in front of him. He knows now that he has served his primary objective. If he is no longer to be kept in a cell, then he has a more utilitarian use to the Commission now.
Therefore, it is no surprise when the two guards drag him into something that resembles a medical laboratory. It is clinical and pristine, but it is not barren. There is equipment, monitors, people working in white lab coats. Conveniently, there is also an examination bed.
It has metal, chain link cuffs for his arms and legs.
Somehow, he doubts these are the kinds of doctors that prescribe to the Hippocratic oath.
That’s just as well, Five decides as he is forced onto the bed and his arms and legs are strapped down and locked roughly into place. Klaus should have just made the decision to kill him back in 2019 and spared them all the trouble.
-o-
No one tells him anything.
Not that there seems to be much to tell. It’s all very sinister and ominous and wholly uncreative. Five is well past feeling anything resembling dread. His own fate seems rather mundane at this point. So when the Handler finally shows up, looking horribly smug, Five asks the one question that matters, “Where’s Klaus?”
Annoyingly, this question only pleases her more. She’s practically beaming. “Don’t you have it figured out yet?”
Five is too tired to play her game. He sighs. “I know you’re setting him up,” he says. “I just don’t know why.”
She shrugs, feigning a malicious innocence. “Setting him up? But I’m only telling him the truth -- one thing you’ve never managed to do easily, if I may say.”
He shakes his head as best as he is able in the restraints that have him locked to the table. “Oh, please,” he says. “I never lied about anything.”
“But you also didn’t admit it,” the Handler says, raising her hand keenly. “Lies by omission, I think it’s called.”
“I didn’t even know I did it,” Five shoots back. “I still can’t even confirm it myself.”
“See, even now, denial,” the Handler says, shaking her head in disapproval. “Is it really any wonder that Klaus can’t trust you?”
“Because you’re so much better?” Five says. “You’re manipulating him. Why?”
“Oh, we’re all working the situation to our advantage, aren’t we?” she asks, arching her eyebrows. “Do you honestly mean to tell me that you never considered the possibility of your actions before now? That you never thought twice about all those times you pulled the trigger? You could have killed one of their fathers, mothers, grandfathers -- one small slip, one little bullet, and you could have erased everyone you cared about. Are you telling me that you never ran those odds?”
“Of course I did,” Five snaps. “But I had to suspect that the Commission’s sense of temporal mechanism would require no targets be related to their assassin team or it’d all be very self defeating.”
She seems to grant him that. “But Dave wasn’t like that,” she says, musing now. “You never thought it was ironic? You and Klaus in Vietnam? The same year?”
Five grits his teeth together and squirms despite himself. It’s one thing to be spread like a pinned butterfly. It’s another thing when his own hubris is being point out to him, plain as day. It’s another still when he knows he doesn’t have any defense whatsoever.
He swallows it back. “When I found out where he’d gone, of course it gave me pause,” he says. “I ran a lot of numbers that day. Most of them were about leveraging the situation to contact the Commission. But some of it was about the odds of my path intersecting with Klaus in the past.”
“And you didn’t tell him?” she asks, blinking her eyes knowingly. “You didn’t think to share your war stories?”
“It was all speculation,” Five says.
“But the numbers -- they were suggestive,” the Handler assumes.
Now, Five realizes scathingly, he’s blushing. “And inconclusive,” he says. “I wasn’t going to hurt him based on probabilities.”
The Handler clucks her tongue, crossing her arms across her chest. “Understandable, I suppose,” she says. Then, she mocks sympathy. “Though it might have prevents this.”
She nods to the laboratory around them with a hint of insincere commiseration.
He’s done with this. He’s done with explanations and numbers and probabilities and rationales. He follows her gaze with a shrug of his own. “Well, maybe this is the natural consequence of my action,” he says. “What I deserve.”
This time, when she tsks her tongue, she almost sounds sincere. “Aw, pity. Fatalism doesn’t suit you, Five.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure being the hero suits me either,” Five quips. He narrows his eyes, the facade faltering. “Do you still think you can win?”
Her own facades don’t falter, but they harden into the familiar mask Five knows too well. “History is always rewriting itself,” she says. “It’s a truly fascinating thing that I’ve learned on the job. Humans write these history books, these quaint little history books, and they never realize how inpermanent they are. They barely finish on before they have to start making changes.”
“I thought some things were fixed points, so to speak,” Five reminds her.
She brightens. “So they are,” she says. “Key moments that must be preserved at all costs. The Hindenburg. JFK’s assassination.”
Her smile looks positively delighted.
“The apocalypse,” she says. “Nothing is a given anymore”
It’s a long roundabout plan, complicated and layered and contingent on endless factors. Just so the Commission could get right back to where it started with the end of the world.
All of Five’s hard work and effort.
Hanging in the balance.
The fate of the world, dangling by a string.
And Five, strapped to a table, vulnerable and defenseless, has just one request. “Do what you will, with the timeline, with me,” he says. “But leave Klaus alone. He’s suffered enough.”
She looks almost disappointed. “But where’s the fun in that?”
“I’m serious,” he says, emphatically now. “I’ll do anything you want. Just leave him alone.”
“Anything?” she asks coyly. “I’d love to believe you, I really would, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to be so easy this time.”
Five tenses, pulling against his restraints for the first time. “Please,” he growls. “I mean it. Anything.”
She smiles, reaching down and patting him on the head. “Anything it is, then.”
SIXTEEN
It all sounds good when you say it: screw your family! Screw history! Be reunited with the man you love for your personal happily ever after!
Klaus had made the decision based on that emotion. He hadn’t thought about any of the practical implications.
That’s problematic, sure.
It’s downright disconcerting when it becomes clear that everyone else has thought about the implications.
Immediately, the Handler disappears, dog tags in hand. He’s given a pair of fatigues, and he’s dressed in them before he realizes that they’re his fatigues. He’s still trying to put together how they could be his fatigues when a new pair of dog tags are put around his neck. He’s looking at the name on them -- Klaus Hargreeves -- and remembering that he doesn’t even have dog tags with his own name because he’s not really supposed to be in the war when someone hands him a briefcase.
Distracted by the dog tags and how innanely real they look, he doesn’t think to give the briefcase a second look. By the time he realizes that holding a briefcase is probably a bad idea, the Handler reappears. She looks more put together than before, and a little rushed, to be honest. She adjusts her hair, smooths her coat and looks him steadily in the eye. “So, the operation is simple.”
Klaus is at a loss. “Operation?”
She hardly flinches at his confusion. “Saving Dave Katz should actually be a relatively easy affair. Since he was killed by your brother under orders, all you have to do is stop said assassination.”
“Whoa,” Klaus says, still reeling. He’s putting together the pieces, and the picture doesn’t make sense. This is saying something; most things usually don’t make sense to Klaus. “You want me to kill my brother?”
She looks skeptical. “I can’t imagine now is an appropriate time for you to get sentimental, but no,” she says. “Nothing so sinister. Changes to the timeline do not have to be dramatic, after all, to be entirely effective.”
“Okay,” Klaus says slowly, wanting to be reassured without any actual sense of genuine reassurance. That’s probably understandable. Still, it makes cooperation on an operation, so to speak, quite difficult. “So, what do I have to do then exactly?”
He’s hoping that he’ll be told not to worry, he doesn’t have to do anything. He’s hoping that he’ll be given a warm cup of a tea and a bathrobe with a promise to rest up because Dave will be here soon. Hell, at this point, he’s hoping for a hit of anything to take the edge off of breathing.
She shakes her head primly. “It’s simple, really. Five receives secondary orders while on a primary mission in Vietnam,” she explains. “At this point in his career, Five is an experienced veteran, having completed countless missions on behalf of the Commission.”
In other words, Five’s a ruthless assassin who has killed more people than he or his employer can recount right now.
The Handler waves a diffident hand through the air. “At this level of efficiency, Five requires very little planning,” she says. “That’s why he is tasked with secondary tasks via memo that far exceed his original mandate.”
There seems to be more to this story, something she’s not telling Klaus, but he has no idea what.
“Because of this, the only official notice of the order has been confirmed to him through official memo in the field,” the Handler continues. “If you can destroy this memo, then Five’s mission will never be enacted. Dave Katz never dies. You get your happy ending.”
She explains this pleasantly and reasonably enough. On the surface, there’s no reason to doubt her.
But Klaus has been dragged into the past. They are a bit beyond the surface.
Also, he’s not always known for making the best choices in the world. He’s not admitting he’s wrong or anything, but he’s starting to feel a little bit sick, honestly.
“Well, why not just do it from here?” Klaus says. “I mean, this is the time and place where the memo is sent, isn’t it? Why not just stop it from being sent in the first place?”
She smiles like that’s the cutest thing she’s ever heard. “I see that Five’s not the only one with a keen eye toward planning in the family,” she says. “And it’s a smart idea, it really is. I appreciate the initiative, but I’m afraid you’re underestimating the way the Commission functions. Ever since the Commission started its work with rehabilitating the timeline, we created something of an anchor. We’ve carved out a unique place on the time-space continuum. It allows us to do our work seamlessly, but it does come with some limitations. We have the power to change any other point in time, but right here, right now? That’s fixed. To mess with it might unravel the fabric of the universe itself.”
Klaus stares at her blankly, wondering if she’s actually talking about the end of all time and space or if he’s misinterpreting her polite talk of inevitable demise.
It’s pretty weird, really. Klaus has had acid trips that seem more normal than this.
“Okay,” Klaus says. He shrugs. “Then maybe, I don’t know. We send another memo? Telling Five to ignore the first memo?”
She snaps her fingers encouragingly. She looks like a proud owner who is housebreaking a puppy. Klaus has a not-so-inexplicable desire to pee on the carpet. He’s not sure if that’s a metaphorical urge or not at this point. “That is possible, yes,” she continues, not even missing a beat. “But I fear it would only have the opposite effect for Five in the field. See, multiple memos offering direct contradiction to one another would fly in the face of long established Commission protocol, protocol that Five himself is very well aware of. If he received such contradictory memos in the field at this time, it would raise multiple red flags. At the least, he would likely disregard the second memo and pursue his mission anyway?”
Klaus draws his brows close. “And in the worst?”
She frowns casually. “Well, at the worst, he might suspect someone has tampered with his orders. It might spark a killing spree on a vast scale as he tries to make sure the job has no loose ends.”
It sounds like a scare tactic. He stands there, briefcase in hand, donning fatigues, and he thinks that this has to be a scare tactic. He’s made the choice, but she’s holding all the cards, and shit, he’s not about to admit that Five was right about anything, ever, but she’s trying to scare him into something and Klaus can’t quite figure out what.
He just knows that she’s not telling him everything.
Or she’s telling him too much.
She’s just not telling him the right things, the things he needs to know.
Like how any of this will actually save Dave.
“But you can control time,” Klaus says. And he laughs because this point should be funny. Why is none of this funny? “That’s literally what you do.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” the Handler says, and her lips are drawn together earnestly now. “But time is fickle. It is unpredictable. We’ve found that a hands-on approach is necessary in the end.”
Klaus looks back at the briefcase, feeling his heart thud in his vacant chest. “So you really think it’s best if I -- what? Go back?”
“Well, go forward, actually,” the Handler says with a small chuckle. “But yes. There is a reason we rely so heavily on field agents. Yes, this is our place to monitor time, to form plans, to orchestrate action. But real change only happens on the ground, as it were.”
The room has become strangely vacant. It’s just Klaus and the Handler. He wonders, briefly, where Five is right now. But that’s not the right question. He swallows, trying to remember the right question. Wetting his lips, he comes up with something else instead. “But we’re talking Vietnam, Dave’s death,” he says. “Won’t I already be there? Like, past future me or something?”
“Ah, yes,” she says, and this sobers her slightly. She straightens, pressing her hands out over her dress. “That is one small detail we do need to discuss with some degree of seriousness.”
Klaus has to wonder why this hasn’t been serious so far.
She shrugs as she continues. “You should take care to avoid the other version of yourself,” she says. “It’s somewhat unpredictable in terms of the consequences, but our scientific models strongly indicate that such interaction between past and present selves could prove problematic.”
Klaus’ frown deepens substantially. This whole ordeal has proved problematic to him, so he’s not sure if this is a profound understatement or just a sign that Klaus’ assessment of the situation is off kilter. “Problematic how?”
“Oh, you know,” she says, flitting her hand through the air like it’s nothing. “An implosion of time and space. The disintegration of the fabric of reality.”
Klaus allows his mouth to drop open. His fingers feel like they might break off from the weight of the briefcase in his hands. “Wait? What?”
“Nothing for you to worry about,” she says, and she looks at her watch. She reaches up with her other hand, pressing a few buttons. There’s a few beeping noise, a burst of static. Then, before Klaus can protest further, the briefcase in his hands starts to vibrate.
He looks down at it, confused. He can only watch as the locking mechanism on the top starts to click around, clinking through the positions.
The pitch from the watch adjusts, whining like a transistor radio trying to tune in to a station.
“What are you doing?” Klaus asks.
“Oh, don’t worry, this is completely by the book,” she says, tweaking her watch a little more. “You have our latest suitcase model, and we’ve made it more user friendly, so to speak, while also adding a few key security protocol that I’m sure you’ll appreciate. It’s no longer possible to activate the suitcase by accident. We use precise radio frequencies with Morse code pulses to hone in on a correct time and place. It’s ingenious really. A simple SOS will even get agents home in a pinch.”
Security protocol would have been nice the first time around, sure. Klaus isn’t sure how this helps him now.
He just wants to get Dave back.
She adjusts the watch one more time. “Ah, perfect,” she says, and she looks up at him beaming. “Got it!”
“But shouldn’t I know how to do that?” Klaus asks, looking from the watch to the suitcase. It’s vibrating now. Like, actually vibrating. He thinks to drop it, but he worries that if he does, he’ll lose his chance at Dave forever. He’s made the choice, and his fingers tighten around the handle as his throat constricts. “You know? To get back?”
She smiles, her confidence unabated. “Don’t worry,” she says. “We’ll contact you with further instructions once your mission is done.”
There’s that word again. Mission.
Klaus shakes his head. “But I’m not going on a mission!”
The briefcase clicks open.
Light expands.
Klaus gasps but there’s no more time to protest as he’s drawn in and down. The world expands beyond its breaking point and than coalesces into an infinitesimal speck. He’s torn apart and pressed together, heart thudding in his chest as eternity expands between the beats. He falls, he rises. He breathes, he suffocates. There’s no turning back.
Mission or not, the choice is made.
-o-
It’s like a rebirth.
Violent and jarring, sudden and encompassing. Klaus takes his first breath of hot air with a ferocity that rips through him. He gasps, nearly keeling over. The force of it is nearly too much and still not enough. His head spins, and he braces himself.
Eyes squeezed shut, he breathes again, letting the oxygen flood through his brain. He feels it prickle in his synapses, igniting up and down his spine until the sensation tingles in his fingers.
Then, bit by bit, his other senses return to him.
Smell, first. Something is burning, rank in the humidity that prickles the back of his skin. It’s almost rancid, metal, blood and flesh. He’s rocked, then, with a crash of certainty as sound kicks in next. The explosions flare up, and he hears them, first rattling in his chest and then reverberating in his eardrums. The yawning booms hurt to hear, and his knees weaken, threatening to give out.
Finally, he blinks, and he realizes belatedly that his eyes are, in fact, open. There’s glaring sunlight to blind him, though, and it takes him several moments to discern the pitched white sky from the gray-brown foliage on the ground. The scene, still chaotic, is split inexorably by a white hot light, which explodes like a firework.
Someone screams; blood spatters.
Shit, Klaus thinks, as the sensations overwhelm him. Shit, shit, shit.
It’s a wave of PTSD, only it’s playing out in real time. The mix of memory and sensory overload is enough to kill him, he thinks. His stomach turns, and he hits his knees just in time to retch. The acrid smell in his nose is something of a relief, and the pain in his chest is suddenly grounding. He throws up again, though there’s hardly anything in his stomach to reject, and he retches again until clarity falls over him and he remembers why he’s here.
Dave.
He came for Dave.
Still on his hands and knees, he cranes his head up. He heaves for air, gasping to steady himself once more. He can see the briefcase on the ground, not far away.
He hates this place, loathes.
And, God help him, he loves it. Adores it.
This is the place that took away Dave, yes.
But this is also the place, Klaus knows, that gave him Dave.
This isn’t what he wanted, either time. But this is the choice he’s made. This time, at least, he knows what he has to do. He knows how to fix it.
Staggering, he gets his footing.
It’s time -- it’s finally time -- to act.
-o-
Being in war is disorienting, no matter how you slice it. Jumping into the middle of it after unexpected time travel makes it harder. Harder, yes. But not impossible. Klaus is galvanized a bit, in the end. He supposes that’s called purpose.
Maybe it’s hope.
Either way, he wonders if this is how Five used to cope with it.
He disregards the thought quickly enough; it’s not a good example for the time being. Five’s the reason he’s here, after all. Everything is Five’s fault.
Whether or not it’s an accurate mantra is less important than the fact that it’s an effective one. Ducking low, he follows along a protective line of cover, keeping the briefcase close to him. He’s been dropped in barracks. They’re familiar enough, but only in that all American barracks have the same look and feel. Klaus remembers this, and he doesn’t have to know specifics. Right now, he’s off the front lines, but from the sound of the fighting, he’s not far from it.
Rounding a corner, Klaus nearly runs into several soldiers. Dressed and strapping on their helmets, one collides with Klaus with a curse. Klaus stumbles and tries to apologize. Another gives him a look. “You better go back, get your gear!” he yells at Klaus. “Didn’t you hear the orders?”
Klaus blinks, stammering. It’s not hard to guess the orders. In fact, somewhere on this base, he imagines he’s already received them. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. He makes a face, fidgeting awkwardly with the briefcase. “Caught me in the latrine.”
There’s a small chuckle of commiseration. “Well, hurry it up,” another says. “The XO won’t care if you shit yourself, as long as you’re at the front lines.”
Klaus tries to laugh it off like a joke as they brush past him, on their way to report for duty. Another volley of explosions sounds in the distance. Klaus has enough sense now; they’re getting closer, but there’s time yet. Well, he thinks there’s time. It occurs to him, rather belatedly, that he doesn’t know when the Handler has dropped him off. He doesn’t know how much lead time he’s been given, how much wiggle room is built into the mission. He has to locate Five, intercept the message -- all without knowing where Five is.
That’s not true. He knows where Five will be. He knows that Five is on the battlefield the day Dave dies.
But what day is that?
What day is this?
Shit, for all he knows, he’s in the wrong year.
Purpose, hope -- it’s all well and good -- but is it enough? There’s a part of Klaus -- a really large part -- that wishes he’d just stayed stoned out of his mind in a crack house in 2019. He’s good and ready to panic, he is, but then he hears a voice.
He hears the voice.
The most perfect, the most beautiful, the most resonate, the most encompassing voice in the whole wide world.
“Klaus? What are you -- how--?”
Klaus’s heart doesn’t just skip a beat.
It damn near stops.
No, that’s not it. It’s not his heart.
It’s time.
Time stops.
Time stops.
It comes to a damn standstill. All of eternity, all of time and space, it comes to a freaking halt.
Shaking, Klaus turns. He’s ready and he’s not, but there he is.
Standing behind him, alive and breathing.
There he is.
Dave.
Klaus’ Dave.
“Klaus, but--”
Klaus doesn’t listen, can’t listen. He crosses toward Dave, reaches for him. His hands cup his face. Dave starts to protest, but Klaus smothers the words, embracing him and pulling him closer. The kiss is hot and Dave pulls away, but Klaus can’t let go. The sheer force of the passion overwhelms them both, and Dave melts into the touch. They’re sober this time, at least technically. The emotions that overpowers them is a drunkenness in and of itself.
This is why Klaus came.
He pulls back, tears in his eyes, looking at Dave again.
This is the only choice that matters.
-o-
Klaus is relieved. Very relieved. And overwhelmed. And horny. Shit, he’s so horny right now, but mostly he’s in love.
He’s been in love this whole time, but the grief has made it dormant. The grief has made it a monument, a memory.
But here it is again, pulsing inside of him. This is the most alive he’s ever felt. The most alive he’ll ever feel and he knows it. He knows it better than he knows anything else in this life.
His hands are still clutching at Dave’s arms as he stares at him in wonder.
Dave, for his part, looks uneasy. He glances about awkwardly, and tries to disentangle himself. He regards Klaus cautiously. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”
Of course he doesn’t, Klaus reflects with a surreal happiness. In their time together, there had been no acute declarations of love. There had been no talk of happily ever after. The only romance they had shared overtly had been fueled by drugs and alcohol. Sober, Dave was his best friend.
They were soldiers, after all.
And the war is no place for lovers, gay or otherwise.
Klaus lets go but he doesn’t step back. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”
Dave blushes, and he leans forward. “I know,” he says. “But -- we can’t. Not -- here.”
“I know, I know,” Klaus tells him. “But we can’t wait forever.”
“Just until the war, you know?” Dave says. “Then we can go home. Go someplace where we can, I don’t know. Figure it out a little. I don’t know how this works.”
Klaus smiles. Dave’s confused, and it’s a beautiful thing. He’s confused for Klaus. He’s confused because of Klaus. He’s confused because the only future that makes sense for them is one that neither of them planned on at all. The future Klaus came here to restore. The one he came to finally, finally realize. “I know,” he says. “I know.”
Dave looks concerned again, but for new reasons. “But we have to go,” he says. “I thought you said you had to take a leak? We’re due to report for transport in less than ten minutes.”
Transport. Ten minutes.
Klaus tries to remember, but those 11 months in Vietnam are a haze. The best and worst of his life. “Transport?”
Dave nods. “We’re being transferred to the Ashua Valley,” he says. He looks at Klaus, more confused than ever. “We literally just talked about this.”
Time travel, Klaus reminds himself. Dave did just talk to Klaus about this, but that Klaus really is in the bathroom. This Klaus, the one standing here, is the second one. Neither of them belong here, that’s true. But one Klaus started this story. Another will finish it.
Klaus feels his confidence ratchet up a few notices. “Right, the Ashua Valley,” he says. “We’re going there today.”
He goes over the details in his head, but he doesn’t really have to. He remembers the Ashua Valley of course. He remembers it because that’s where Dave dies.
Dave dies tomorrow.
The thought is, naturally, a little horrifying, but here Klaus is. The day before tragedy. And he has everything he needs to prevent the tragedy. He knows where. He knows how. He knows why. He knows when.
And now he knows who.
“Yeah,” Dave says, still looking at Klaus with a hint of confusion. “We have to keep it together, man. You’re going to get us killed if you don’t.”
Klaus shakes his head. “We can’t have that,” he says. “We won’t.”
Dave’s brows knit together. He swallows, uncertain. “Are you okay? I mean, really?”
“I’m great,” Klaus says, shifting the briefcase from one hand to the other. “I’m as good as I’ve ever been.”
Dave’s sense of disconcertion only seems to deepen.
Klaus steps forward, his fingers reaching out, just brushing the top of Dave’s hands. “We’ll get through this together,” he says. “I’m going to be with you through this, all the way to the end. And it’s going to be so much better, you know? On the other side? When all of this is done. When it’s just you and me, like we want. Like it’s supposed to be. It’ll be just you and me.”
Dave tries to scoff, but his attempt to be dismissive falters. He chuckles, but it wavers, and when he blinks, his eyes are wet. “I don’t -- I mean -- Klaus,” he says, and he chokes a little. “I never -- I mean--”
“Sh,” Klaus says, taking a bold moment to squeeze Dave’s fingers. He smiles warmly as he lets them go. “You don’t have to say it. You’ll have the rest of your life to say it.”
Boyishly, Dave grins, like a child who can’t contain his excitement on Christmas morning.
“Now, go,” Klaus says, nodding in encouragement. “I’ll see you soon.”
Dave hesitates as he turns. He glances back one last time before continuing on his way. Klaus watches him until he turns a corner and disappears, the rockets still firing somewhere overhead.
So, Klaus has his ends.
Now, it’s up to him to find his means.
-o-
The uniform he’s wearing allows him to pass through the barracks without eliciting notice, but Klaus is not insensitive to their limitations. As the barracks are cleared out, he will be called into question. The last thing he needs is to be deployed. The risk of someone discovering that there are two Klaus Hargreeves onsite is perhaps problematic. However, Klaus has been around this war once. He knows from experience that people don’t generally care who you are or how you got here. A warm body is a warm body; they’ll put you on the front lines if they can.
Klaus, in the past, allowed this.
This time, he cannot indulge it.
His motivation was, and still is, Dave.
And it is powerful motivation indeed.
The key to leveraging an army uniform is to act like you know what you’re doing. Everyone is so busy in war that they don’t really have time to take notice of the little things. If Klaus plays this right, he should be able to walk right off base without anyone noticing. It helps, of course, that there’s another one of him running around. It’s easier to disappear when you’re not really there.
And Klaus does need to disappear. The base has yielded him important information about date and location. It’s also provided him with the motivation he needs to ground him for the next, more calculated portion of his journey. It establishes the end.
Klaus has to focus now on the means.
This is easy enough to say, but it’s not so easy to enact. Klaus is, after all, not known as the best planner in the family. He’s never been particularly good at forethought. He prefers improvisation. Or, in actuality, he prefers not to think about anything at all. He’s spent so much of his life trying not to think that it’s actually a bit counterintuitive when he makes the effort.
There’s also some argument to be made that he’s just not that good at it. He has come through in conflict from time to time, but only under duress and not without some screw ups. Even his shining moment, back at the end of the world, he’d been out buying something at a food truck instead of doing his job. He’d nearly gotten shot when running back inside, and his big moment was nothing more than a conduit for Ben to have his big moment.
Now, that’s not to say that Klaus is entirely useless. He has powers, and they are increasing, though they’re not likely to do a lot of good right now. He’s not even sure they’re working again, though he suspects they must be. There’s not really time to explore that right now, though. Not with other, more pressing concerns to think about.
Like, how is he going to find Five?
How is he going to keep Five from finding his orders?
These are two, like, big tasks. Really big tasks. The Handler had made them sound easy, but of course she had. All prim and proper, back in the past, she’d made a point to assure Klaus how easy it was. But on the ground, Klaus is reminded that nothing regarding Five is easy.
For starters, Five doesn’t like being found. Even after getting back to 2019, Five had been lofty and elusive. It had taken the little bastard days to finally admit to them the truth of why he’d come. He was prone to sneaking about, slipping in and out without notice. He has a habit of going undetected, and Klaus can only suspect that he was better at it while on the job.
That’s not to say that Klaus can’t find him. He has done it before, after all. When his other siblings had failed, Klaus had come through. Though, success might be too heady of a word. After all, they had both been captured, and he had just abandoned his brother to a grim and unknown fate to serve his own ends.
That’s not the point, and even it it was, it’s still Five’s fault for being an asshole and Five is an asshole and that, thank you very much, is actually the point.
Because once Klaus finds Five -- and for now, he’s got to assume he can -- he still has to stop Five. Somehow, he doubts this will be easy. No doubt, the Commission doesn’t send messages to people while they’re away. How would you know to look for a hidden pneumatic tube if you’re not present? The fact that the Commission is able to do this raises the repeated question about why they can’t stop Five themselves, but whatever. Klaus is here. Klaus knows the tasks.
He has to disable Five.
Disable?
He’s starting to sound like the little bastard. He has to knock Five out, at least. He has to put him out of commission, to relish a pun under pressure.
And how is he supposed to do that?
He’s seen Five fight. He knows what Five’s capable of. He knows that his own powers are growing, but he’s not in control of them at the moment. He’s likely sober enough, but the effects of time travel are what they are. Not to mention that he’s malnourished and stressed and -- mostly, he doesn’t know.
In straight up hand to hand combat, it’s kind of an unknown.
Worse, he doesn’t want straight up combat. The Handler didn’t talk about this, the possibility of Five seeing Klaus. He doesn’t know what the effect might be of that. There’s some appeal to it, of course. If he talks to Five, Five might agree. Klaus would have a logical point of argument.
But there’s the whole time is fickle angle. If Klaus interferes and communicates directly with Five, it’s likely to throw the whole rest of the timeline off. And what would happen, then? And who’s to say that Five wouldn’t doubt his veracity? What if Five assumes him to be an agent and then fights to kill? Then Klaus dies and he has no idea what happens next because time travel is too wonky to think about like that.
No, the safest route, for his sake and Dave’s, is to take Five out of the picture discreetly.
So, all Klaus has to do is find Five, a trained assassin with years of experience, before knocking him out without a direct confrontation in order to intercept a message intended to kill his beloved.
Easy peasy.
Klaus nears the edges of the base and glances around surreptitiously.
First things first, he has to get off the base.
Normally, this might be daunting. Klaus huffs and ducks under a broken gap in the fence without a look back. But he’s got bigger things to think about right now.
-o-
It’s a bit harrowing, slipping off base. It’s a lot more harrowing, moving through uncontrolled militarized space. Klaus has more than a few close calls, but he works his way in the direction opposite the explosions, and soon enough he comes across unmarred farmland. He skirts his way around a village and finds a main road, walking off the side of it to keep out of sight while he makes his way to the closest town with nothing but the briefcase in hand.
He’s making an assumption here, but he likes to think it’s a pretty good assumption. He doesn’t know much about Five’s life as an agent, but he does know a thing or two about field agents from his time with Hazel and Cha Cha. He remembers quite well the crappy hotel they’d been holed up. Given their talk about it, it was pretty clear that wasn’t their choice -- but rather, company policy.
He’s seen the Commission first hand. They’re not an indulgent group, that’s for sure. They would pick cheap accommodations. Cheap but reliable. Sure, their agents could scrape through on anything, but a hotel room would provide a home base for rest, recuperation and -- more importantly -- necessary correspondence.
There aren’t a lot of hotels on a battlefield.
There are, however, still hotels in a warzone.
Klaus knows. He and Dave got drunk in a few and ended up entwined together in a bed they paid for out of their stingy paychecks. Hotels in this area loved western guests; it was their only way to make a profit out of such a horrible, horrible situation. True, there aren’t tourists in Vietnam right now, but there are soldiers and there are politicians and there are businessmen. Each town needs one good hotel.
It has to be enough to get the job done.
-o-
After a mile, Klaus hitches a ride the rest of the way through a series of smiles and polite gestures he has no idea the meaning of. It doesn’t much matter if the local is scared of him or plotting to kill him. In an hour’s time, he’s in the closest town, waving goodbye, and looking up for the tallest building in town.
He makes his way to it, smiling at the flashing vacant sign.
Now, he knows there’s a chance he’s got it wrong. This could be the wrong town. Five’s original objective could have taken him anywhere. But at the front desk, he asks the girl if she speaks English. She tells him she does, and he asks if there are any other hotels in the area.
“Oh, no,” she says. “This is the only one in ten miles.”
“What about the next town over?” Klaus asks.
She points in the opposite direction from where Klaus has come. “15 miles that way,” she says. “There is no other place. If you are going to be in this area, this is where you belong.”
Klaus smiles.
That is, of course, what he wants to hear.
She smiles back. “Can I book you a room, sir?”
“Actually,” Klaus says. “I had something else in mind.”
-o-
Klaus has nothing on him, by the way. He comes to that realization after he’s starting his attempt to bribe the poor girl. He’s got no money, no valuable, nothing.
Really, though, working with nothing -- that’s Klaus in his element. It’s what he’s good at. He’s charming and he’s convincing and he’s attractive and he’s a really, really good liar when he has to be. So, when he tells her that his employer will pay her back with a nod and a wink, she seems to think he means it.
It’s not that he doesn’t mean it.
It’s just that he has no idea.
He’s not even sure he has an employer. And if he’s counting on the Commission, then it doesn’t seem like they’re the type to follow through on promises of goodwill. Come to think of it, that could bode poorly for him, but he’s too far into it now for that kind of second thought.
At any rate, the girl confirms that there are a few other Americans at the hotel. She confirms that one is older, staying alone, checked in with nothing more than a briefcase. She tells Klaus the room number and says that he’s been out since morning.
Wink, wink, nod, nod.
That’s all Klaus needs.
-o-
Klaus spends all his energy getting the information he needs. He doesn’t take time to think of the more practical measures. To be fair, the girl doesn’t think about it either. When he finds the room, it’s a wonder what she thought he was going to do. Knock and hope? Sit outside and wait for the best?
There’s no best in any of that, so Klaus does what Klaus does. Under pressure, to get what he wants and needs, he finds alternative measures.
His father, of course, had hated that. Hated it. He praised others for thinking outside the box, but everything Klaus did was a shortcut, not an innovation. Klaus has never much seen the distinction. A solution is a solution, as far as he’s concerned.
Also, there’s some nonsense about beggars and choosers, right?
Besides, Klaus thinks as he picks the lock on Five’s door, at least he’s not breaking a window like Diego would. Sure, Klaus can be awfully blase about breaking the law, but at least he’s not so glaringly obvious about it.
Well, sometimes. Getting arrested multiple times for drug possession isn’t a note of subtlety, but the door snicks open and Klaus grins. He collects his briefcase and glances around surreptitiously, as if that’s going to do him some kind of good. It’s only after he’s inside that he remembers that he has special powers like levitation and mind control that might be helpful in such situations but whatever. What’s done is done.
Klaus closes the door behind him and looks around.
Not done, then.
He takes in the sparse room, preserved like it’s almost been untouched. For a second, he worries he’s broken into the wrong room, that Five’s not been here at all, but then he sees a neat suit hanging on the bathroom door. Vanya’s book, worn and creased, is positioned tidily on the bedside table.
Not done.
Just beginning.
-o-
Honestly, Klaus isn’t sure what he’s doing. The overall objective is all fine and simple: don’t let Five get the memo, save Dave, live happily ever after. And Klaus knows, okay? He knows he’s done a lot of the hard stuff. He’s made it here! He’s found Five’s room! He’s broken in!
But, now what?
That’s the simple, imperative question.
He’s gotten this far, but now what?
Does he wait here until the orders come? But when the orders come, won’t that imply that Five’s already here? And if Five’s here, then he’ll see Klaus and that’s probably not going to work, as he has established previously with his surely impregnable logic.
Which means….
Well, okay, fine, Klaus doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t know what any of it means. He was in 1950 two hours ago and he was in 2019 two weeks ago and he’s been grieving the man he loves who is very much alive and slated to die in a day. It’s a little complicated is all.
He reminds himself that the solution is still simple.
Intercept the memo.
As a drug addict, he’s learned to always opt for the simplest and most direct methods. Acquiring drugs with no money is not a matter of finesse. It’s pure survival. You do what needs to be done and you don’t overthink it. You can’t overthink it, really. Your brain cells are too busy being preoccupied by other things.
The answer, therefore, as best Klaus can tell is this: he has to intercept the message by intercepting Five first.
That sounds ominous, but no, it’s not. Klaus isn’t a killer, he’s not going to kill Five, even if Five probably deserves it. More to the point, he’s not sure he can kill Five, not with the questionable state of his powers and just the mental strain required to consciously kill your brother, your actual adopted brother, and death’s just not even necessary.
There are other ways to incapacitate people.
Simpler ways.
More pleasant ways.
See, this is another area of Klaus’ limited expertise. He knows the best way, the surefire trick, to forget the world around you. He knows how to go to sleep like you’ve never slept before. He knows how to find oblivion, pure, blissful oblivion.
Drugs, you see.
Drugs are really, really good for that kind of thing.
And Klaus?
Well, Klaus happens to be really, really good with drugs.
-o-
The girl at the front desk at least has the decency to look like she doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he asks about local drugs. Then, she blushes and makes a big to do like she’s appalled he would think to ask her. But when he promises her a bonus, she giggles like a schoolgirl and tells Klaus what he wants to know.
Bribing a silly girl behind a hotel desk with money that doesn’t exist is one thing. Trying to buy the drugs he wants without any capital is entirely another. Klaus plays fast and loose with things, and he’s stupid, but he’s not a complete moron. He needs something to work with here.
He goes back to Five’s room and starts about looking for anything valuable. The room is a dismal space with poor lighting and uncomfortable furniture. To call it spartan would be too generous. It’s downright depressing.
It doesn’t help that Five’s personal belongings are basically nonexistent. With his own Commission sanctioned briefcase, it seems like Klaus has brought as much along as Five has. The suit hanging from the door seems to be the only thing Five has brought with him. Rummaging through the pockets, he finds a few bills of local currency. The dresser is empty, and the only personal item Klaus can find is a book on the bedside table. He passes over it several times as he scours the room, but after three failed attempts to find something of value, he picks it up to rifle through it.
Then, he stops.
It’s not just a book.
It’s Vanya’s book.
The family secrets, laid bare. This aren’t going to be published until 2017. There’s no telling what decade Five was living in when he picked it up, but there’s a library barcode plastered to the side. All of Five’s travels, he’s left everything behind except this.
His fingers feel numb as he opens the front cover. The book is worn and creased. It’s been taped and scavenged, like Five has taken some time to keep it in one piece. Klaus goes to skim the first chapter, but he doesn’t make it very far. The prose is crowded on the page, supplemented by handwritten notes in the margins.
It takes Klaus a moment to figure it out.
The notes, they belong to Five. And it’s not just notes, it’s full on commentary. It’s complex equation and probabilities. Klaus can’t make heads or tails of most of it, but he can imagine Five, hunched over the book, reading and scrawling.
The whole book is covered, some pages almost so thick with handwritten additions that you can’t read the text. Five hasn’t just read this book; he’s memorized it. He’s internalized it. All those years Five has spent away from his family, and family has been the only thing he’s thought about.
It is, in turn, sad and embarrassing. Klaus had been in the same year as his family all his life, and he’d never offered dedication like this. But it’s not just dedication, is it? It’s obsession, it’s the last hope of a desperate man. Five hadn’t lied to him: this was all he’d had.
For Five, there’s no fallback plan. There’s no one to call in case of emergencies. He can’t dally down the street and beg a favor from his family. For Five, there’s nothing but an empty hotel room and memories of his family.
And orders.
Klaus finds those, too.
The little memo, tucked in the pocket of his pressed suit jacket. Klaus can’t even read the name -- Vietnamese, by the looks of it -- which means that Five’s on track to finish his first mission. It’s telling, probably, that the orders are in the suit and the book is by the bed. A separation, of sorts. A compartmentalization. Five’s way of keeping order. Business and pleasure.
Not pleasure.
Business and personal.
Swallowing hard, Klaus blinks. He puts down the book.
This tells him something about Five, but it doesn’t really help him all that much. There’s still the matter of the mission. To pull this off, he needs money. And if he’s going to get money, he needs something of value. A Commission memo, a worn suit coat and a vandalized book sure ain’t going to get it down.
Chewing his lip, he looks around the room again. It reminds him of the room Hazel and Cha Cha had used, the one they had locked him in. Minus the boxes for carry out and candy bar wrappers. Five is tidier. Or maybe he just eats less. Still, this reeks of the Commission, its policies and procedures.
Klaus tilts his head, thinking about that.
This does reek of the Commission.
Five’s his own man, no doubt, the best of the best, but he’s still the Commission’s man at this point. He’s playing their party line. He’s got their training.
Following that train of thought, he skirts around the bed, looking for the vents in the walls. He finds one, located not far from the bed. He grins; the screws are loose. Klaus still has to jostle them free -- Five isn’t as lax as Hazel was -- but the result is the same. Inside, there’s no briefcase stashed. No, there’s something better.
Weapons.
Lots and lots of weapons.
Now, Klaus has no particular affinity toward violence, and he doesn’t prefer using guns if push comes to shove. But -- and this is a pretty key but, okay -- guns are valuable. People who like guns, do you know what else they like?
Drugs.
They like drugs.
Klaus, it seems, has finally found his leverage.
-o-
Yeah, so, trading guns for drugs is really about as fun as you think it is. It’s scary and dangerous and everyone is super on edge and it’s stressful and dreary and honestly just depressing. It doesn’t help that Klaus barely speaks the local language, and he tries -- he tries really hard -- not to think about where these guns may end up.
Instead, he thinks about the drugs he needs in his hands.
Ends and means, after all.
Damn it all if Five wouldn’t be proud of him right now.
-o-
Back at the hotel, it’s starting to get late, but Klaus is relieved to find that Five’s not back yet. Whatever he’s off to, he’s keeping busy, which is just as well. Klaus, as it turns out, is busy, too.
Taking drugs is surprisingly easy, when you get right down to it. And drugging others, in theory, isn’t all that hard.
However, if you want to drug someone precisely, well, then, you need to use precision. Klaus is many things in life. Precise is not particularly one of them. But needs must, and Klaus will rise to this occasion.
For Dave.
He reminds himself of that as he crushes the pills and mixes them up.
For Dave.
-o-
At this point, it’s not hard to ask the girl for more help. Five, as it turns out, has his meals delivered each night. Nothing fancy, but like clockwork. Small portions with high protein levels. And one cup of coffee to top off the night.
Klaus simpers, and the girl agrees. He promises the drugs won’t kill Five, won’t put him at risk. He’ll just be out for the night, sleep it off for 12 hours, and wake up none the wiser. It’ll be fine, he promises her.
He may be promising himself, too.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that it will work.
This has to work.
-o-
-o-
With the pills for the coffee and the girl at the desk on board, Klaus retreats awkwardly to the closet, keeping the briefcase close to him on the floor. There’s of course some risk when it comes to hiding in the room, but it’s not like Five’s using the closet. Five’s footprint is so minimal that he imagines his brother wouldn’t even know what to do with the space. Sure, maybe he’s picked something up while out and about, but Five doesn’t strike him as someone who likes to carry his baggage.
Physically, anyway.
The metaphors for that are just insane.
The point being that Klaus wants to be onsite for the drugging in order to intercept the message, and the closet, as best he can tell, is a reasonably acceptable risk.
Look at him, all this planning and plotting.
How ironic that he’s finally the soldier that his father -- and the United States Army -- wanted him to be. On his own terms, of course.
At least, Klaus hopes they’re his terms.
-o-
Five comes back.
That’s what Five does, it seems. He comes back.
This time, however, he doesn’t make Klaus wait a decade. Instead, he comes back just after the sun sets. At first, Klaus doesn’t recognize him with the gray hair and the added bulk to his still-lanky body, but behind the mustache, behind the lined face, Klaus recognizes the weary curve of his shoulders, the heaviness of his feet. He hasn’t really thought about it before, the way Five still moves like an old man when he’s in a 13 year old body. It’s not just the breaking down of the body; it’s the weight of the years on the soul.
Klaus could recognize it anywhere.
Still, he watches with some fascination. He knows what Five has said about his time in the apocalypse, his time with the Commission, but it’s strange to see it. For Klaus, Five has been 13 for the last 40 years, but that’s not true. This Five has no guises. He sits down on the bed with a sigh, closing his eyes for a moment before he picks up the phone and orders dinner in a perfect Vietnamese dialect.
At least, Klaus thinks he does. He actually has no idea what Five says, but it sounds pretty spot on based on Klaus’ memories of this time and place.
Putting the phone down, Five sits back on the bed. He lays, staring at the ceiling for a moment before he picks up the book. Shoes still on, he extracts a pencil from his pocket and flips to some designated page. He reads rapidly, eyes flitting across the page, and from his spot in the closet, Klaus can hear his brother muttering to himself.
“It’s still got to be 2019,” he mutters. “It makes saving Ben and preventing Klaus’ spiral into addiction impossible, but it’s the only point they’re all together that is close enough to the endgame to matter.”
Five pauses, chewing his lip as he scribbles a little more frantically. He circles something, eyes lighting up. Then, he frowns, crossing through his notations again.
“I can’t risk the Commission knowing,” he says, fiddling with his mustache. “If I time it wrong, they’ll stop me before I get the chance to save anyone, much less them.”
He turns a page and his eyes skim over it again.
“But how long can I wait?” he says, the words hanging in the air. “How long?”
It’s a genuine question. A plea, really.
The silence in reply is aching.
Klaus is almost relieved when there’s a knock at the door.
Five sits up again, putting the book aside. He straightens his coat before going to the door. He pauses before he opens it, as if to muster something that might pass as a smile.
The girl on the other side of the door smiles back as she pushes the food cart in. They exchange pleasantries in Vietnamese before she giggles her way back out of the room. It’s possible to see her as flirting -- Klaus’ invocation or just her nature, it’s hard to say -- but it’s clear that Five hardly notices. He closes the door without sparing her a second look, and then makes his way over to the chair to sit down.
From the stuffy confines of the closet, Klaus watches as Five removes his hat and places it on the table before lifting the weathered stainless steel cover on top of his plate. The hair on the top of his head is thinning and gray, and he thinks that his brother might look distinguished if he didn’t look so damn tired. As it is, Five is not a fussy eater. He’s not proper, and uses his fingers to pop a few limpid vegetables into his mouth. He takes a bite of the meat before reaching for his coffee.
It’s the only item on the tray that looks warm. Klaus can see the smoke as it rises off the surface of the liquid. Five takes a moment to smell it, closing his eyes before he lifts it to his lips.
Klaus breathes in, and holds it.
Five takes a sip, then another.
He eats a few more bites before downing the rest of the coffee in eager, almost greedy swigs.
Klaus doesn’t dare move.
He watches as Five moves on to the rest of the meal, and he makes it most of the way through before he seems to give up on it. He yawns once, and then blinks his eyes as if to clear them. He pushes the food away, groping for the coffee cup. When he finds it empty, he gets up. He’s a little unsteady, but not much. It’s not until he makes it the two steps to the bed that he seems to notice that something is weird.
There’s a clear moment of disconcerment on his face. Concern, confusion, uncertainty. There’s a split second hesitation, as if Five is debating calling for help. Klaus can almost see his brain work sluggishly through the idea before he comes to the idle conclusion that it’s fruitless. No one would come.
Instead, Five seems to resign himself, almost instantly, to a quiet, inevitable fate. He’s alone in that moment. He’s alone in all the moments, probably. So very, very alone.
When he sits on the bed, he wavers. He lays himself down on the pillow for the mere fact that there’s no one there to catch him. His eyes are closed and he doesn’t move.
Klaus waits several more moments, but Five doesn’t twitch.
It’s done, he knows.
Tentatively, he opens the closet door. Still, there’s no reaction from Five. Klaush inches closer, half in awe of his own handiwork. All of Five’s skills and training and foresight, and he hasn’t seen this coming. Klaus stands above him and watches as he sleep. He shakes his shoulder to no avail. He checks his brother’s breathing, his pulse, and finds that he’s done the job.
Klaus has done the job.
Past, present, future; they fold together. Time has never been so powerful and so insignificant. His yesterdays are his tomorrows. What matters is what he does next, what he does right now.
He pats Five on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he coaches. “Everything will be better in the morning.”
Then, he hears a whoosh and a click.
A sound he knows by now.
Walking across the room, he sees a panel glowing along the wall. He opens it, finding the pneumatic tube inside. It’s still warm when he touches it, and he pops off the top, sliding the memo out.
Attention Agent Five:
Klaus reads.
The details of Dave’s murder are there, spelled out in black typeprint, and Klaus feels himself go cold.
Eliminate Private David Katz of the American Army. Use any means necessary. Extraction is not possible until target is eliminated.
He reads it once, twice, three times. He stares at it for a good five minutes before his body finally reacts. He has the urge to vomit, but he can’t let himself do it. Instead, he takes the paper and rips it. He rips it again and again until all he can do is crumple the tiny pieces in his hand. Then, he drops the pieces like confetti into the garbage can and takes the matches from the bedside table drawer. He strikes one, lets it burn, and drops it into the can. The small pieces of paper go up quickly, sparking and dying so fast it’s almost like they were never there at all.
Klaus watches until there’s nothing but ash, nothing left to burn.
Nothing at all.
-o-