Chapter Text
The room he wakes up in is cold, empty, and brightly lit. Klaus is glad, at least for the light, because being trapped in a small space all alone—
Bile rises in his throat, and he rolls forwards onto his knees, doing his best not to throw up.
"Are you okay?"
"Fuck off, Ben," Klaus mutters, spitting acid off his tongue as the whole world sways.
An ambush. An ambush in his own home. A flying—no, teleporting child? Klaus squints his eyes, vision still blurry (no doubt thanks to the growing bruise on the back of his head) and tries to remember. He must have been seeing things.
A bad trip?
He hadn"t taken anything.
An old dealer maybe, an enemy he thought he"d left behind.
"Five hit you really hard."
"Five?"
"I thought he was dead too," Ben continues as if Klaus hadn"t spoken. "But he looks the same age as he did when he vanished."
"This would be a much better conversation if I actually knew what the fuck you were talking about."
Ben, who had been pacing across the wooden floors (or rather, above the wooden floors) of the room, suddenly stops and turns to look at him. Then he blinks.
"You really don"t recognise us?"
"Am I supposed to?"
Klaus is a man who lived the first half of his life in a secluded house in Switzerland—and even then, mainly in a basement—and the second half on the streets, as high as he could get in a country far away from the one he"d grown up in. It is only in the last few years that he"s settled down and watched things like T.V., daytime news and actually remembered what he"s seeing.
Honestly, he doesn"t really like it, can"t understand the appeal of sitting in front of a box and staring at it for hours on end; Klaus needs to move, act, be one with the world around him. His Sight demands nothing less.
"I mean..."
"Ben, I"m locked in a room having apparently been kidnapped by someone you know, so can you please fucking explain before I lose my shit."
He"s surprised that he hadn"t been tied up. Either they trust him (unlikely), or they trust themselves enough to know he"d never escape. The latter option sits like a rock in his stomach. Again, he feels like he might be sick, that woozy feeling of fear coursing through his veins.
"My name is Ben Hargreeves," Ben says, putting a little too much emphasis on the last word.
Threads are knotting in his temples, veins bursting, healing; the universe is trying to show him something, but Klaus has his eyes squeezed shut.
"I already know that." Klaus"s voice comes out as a hiss, his nails digging sharp crescent moons into the milk-flesh, ink-stained skin of his palms. Milk, that"s what he feels like, milk that"s been left out in the sun for too long, and now it"s rotting into gelatinous chunks.
"Shit," Ben says. "You have no idea."
The floor wavers, and Klaus dry heaves, tries to keep his insides from becoming his outsides. Stares at the door, a heavy wooden thing.
Let me go, please let me go.
The voice echoes in his head, high and warbling. It"s the voice of a child, one who"s desperate to be heard, and each cry makes his ears ring. His breath comes short, he tries to inhale through his nose, out through his mouth, count to eight the way he"d been taught, but every time it catches in his throat. Through it all, the voice screams at him.
The voice is his own.
"Klaus, Klaus—"
Another voice.
"Klaus, you need to calm down."
"Shit, I don"t—"
"Klaus—"
Ben. Ben is talking to him. Klaus squeezes his eyes shut until the muscles in his face waver and then opens them; around him, the basement melts away until all that"s left is white painted walls, wooden floors, and sunlight. When he catches Ben"s face, Klaus winces at how he"s frowning, eyes blown wide.
"What was that?"
"Nothing. Not—None of your business."
"You had a-a... what, a panic attack?"
Honestly, he feels bad for Ben; he"s a teenager—a dead teenager at that—who"s definitely not qualified to deal with the myriad of emotional issues Klaus has. It"s unfortunate that he"s the only one around.
Klaus is glad he"s the only one around; the only thing worse than being trapped in a room alone would be if he was trapped in a room with hordes of screaming ghosts.
"Hargreeves. You said Hargreeves," Klaus says in lieu of answering Ben, pushing himself up to stand. Ginger hands brush across the back of his head, feeling the egg-shaped bump that"s grown.
"Yeah...?"
"That feels... familiar. I can"t—isn"t there an actress with that name?"
"Allison! My sister, Allison; that"s all you know?"
Yes. No. Klaus has no idea how to answer that, his teeth worrying across his lower lip as he paces. There"s a window; he looks through the glass. The drop is enough to make him back away again.
"What else would I know?"
"We were... have you ever heard of the Umbrella Academy?"
Another spark along his tired nerves, the universe chimes. Church bells demanding nightly attention.
"The comics?"
"I mean, yeah but, it wasn"t just a comic."
Klaus wouldn"t know, but he doesn"t tell Ben that. No need to inflict his traumatic ass backstory on the poor boy; a mother, a basement, a broom breaking across bones. Breathe, Klaus, he tells himself. It"s hard when his brain is spinning out, going a thousand miles a minute.
The Umbrella Academy. Klaus has heard of them, more recently than some. A man died, a man with a monocle and a cane, Klaus dreamt of it—a heart attack, suicide. And then, customers he"d had; not many of course but a few—
My aunt, she died. The Umbrella Academy tried to save her, but they got there too late.
My brother always wanted to be a superhero; he loved the Umbrella Academy as a kid. Guess he died trying to live up to those standards.
My dad, I don"t want to talk to him, just tell him... I should have been in the Umbrella Academy. I will be.
Klaus hadn"t liked that last one, his words dripped black as tar off his tongue, and his father had been a vengeful thing, screaming about murder and hate. He"d hurried to get the man out of his shop, practically vaporised the ghost in an effort to cleanse his space.
"You were real? Superheros?"
Ben winces and then nods. "Superhero is a... term for it. More like child soldiers with powers."
Klaus opens his mouth to answer, but the chance to reply is stolen when the heavy wooden door of the room shoves open and not one, not two, but three people come tumbling inside.
The little guy, the big guy, and—
"You!" Klaus stumbles to unsteady feet, pointing a finger at a familiar frowny faced figure.
"Klaus?!" Diego looks just as shocked. "You kidnapped Klaus? He"s just a weird ex-junkie who gets himself in more trouble than he should."
"Me? In trouble? That"s rich coming from you, leather man."
"Oh, come on, your freaky occult boy stuff is way more troublesome. And you get mugged like twice a month."
"Shut up, scarred and kinky. First of all, not a boy. Second of all, I don"t seek out trouble; trouble just happens to come across me when I"m doing my best to enjoy my day. Thirdly—why the fuck are you kidnapping me?"
Diego crosses strong arms over his chest and scowls; for once, it"s not aimed at Klaus, but rather Luther and who he assumes is Five. "I told you this was a bad idea."
"He could be dangerous," the kid says.
"Klaus is about as dangerous as gum."
"Oi, asshole—"
Luther shifts awkwardly between them, his massive bulk swaying like an oak tree in a particularly bad storm, all the roots pulled from the Earth. "I don"t know, Diego..."
"You don"t know? What the fuck do you know, Luther!"
"I"m just saying, I went to his shop, he has... powers, Diego. It was weird."
Diego opens his mouth to speak, and the kid flashes forwards to shove a hand against his chest. Klaus blinks at the realisation that the teleporting hadn"t been some panic-induced hallucination.
"Luther is right, he"s an anomaly and an unknown quantifier, we have to be sure."
"Jesus Christ, you speak to him once, and you suddenly decide he"s dangerous? Klaus, who gets beaten up twice a month because—"
"Diego shut up," he hisses.
"We thought Vanya was harmless too," Luther mutters, and all of them go quiet but Klaus doesn"t know why. Klaus turns to Ben, who"s hovering in the corner of the room, and mouths "Vanya?", but he doesn"t get a reply. Great.
Well, at least now he knows what the cards meant by conflict.
The siblings are still arguing, so Klaus takes the opportunity to slide back down to the floor before his legs give out on him entirely. Exhaustion and pain are sliding through his bones, and all he really wants is a line of coke if he"s going to be up any longer. He"d settle for a joint. The taste of weed curling over his tongue.
"You said it yourself Diego, what was it, "ex-junkie who gets himself into trouble"?"
"Not that type of trouble, Five."
"Do I get a say in this at all?" Klaus asks as they bicker among themselves, resting his palms on his legs. "You know, I"ve been quite the gracious kidnapping victim. I haven"t even tried to escape once."
What he fails to mention is how the world is spinning, how he feels sick to his stomach, how he knows that trying to escape would only result in failure. Being hurt is low on his list of things he wants to do.
The kid blinks, and suddenly, there"s a face uncomfortably close to his own.
"You know, I charge for the horizontal tango," he says before he can stop himself.
The kid blinks. Behind them both, Diego groans like he"s been punched. "Klaus that"s my brother. This is why you get beaten up."
"Uh, no. I get beaten up because I have a lot of debts owed to very nasty people who seem to think I have the money and the desire to pay them back."
Fingers snap in his face. "Who are you? Who sent you?"
"Um, you kidnapped me? No one sent me."
"Why are you in this city?"
Klaus opens his mouth and doesn"t know how to answer. It was the easiest to get a flight to? It was the first flight out of Switzerland that day. It was the only one he could afford with what little money he had in his hands after fleeing home with nothing but the clothes on his back, a passport in his father"s name.
None of those are true. Klaus had come over in a private jet, the lap toy of a man with more money than sense. When he"d escaped, he"d taken a bus as far away from LA as he could find and ended up here.
"It wasn"t a conscious decision," he says slowly. "I just kind of ended up here."
"Don"t lie to me! We stop the apocalypse, and oh look, another one of the forty-three just happens to be hanging around our front door, waiting for a chance?" A snarl shows off clenched teeth, and Klaus fights the urge to shuffle back a step—for a thirteen-year-old boy, the kid is slightly terrifying. "Who sent you? The Handler? Herb? AJ?"
"I don"t know who any of those people are. I don"t even know where we are!"
"It"s our childhood home," Ben pipes up. "I looked around while you were knocked out."
Klaus waves GOODBYE at him, and Ben coughs awkwardly.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing, I"m just stretching."
"Five," Ben starts, then stops. Still adjusting to being a ghost, forgetting that no one can hear him but Klaus (and Klaus is a master at in one ear and out the other).
"Who are you?" Five asks again, only it"s more a demand than a question.
"Klaus, Klaus Schärer! I"m just a Medium who works night shifts, alright? I don"t know what you want with me, but all I want is to go home and sleep!"
His nerves feel frazzled, tongue hot where it rests in his mouth. Fingers clench and unclench, and Klaus takes a long breath in. When he exhales, it is cold as ice.
"Don"t lie to me!"
"I"m not!"
Around him, invisible to anyone but Ben, the room flashes, fills with ghostly figures that layer their voice over his own, mutating it into one warbling echo. Ben stumbles back until he"s halfway through a wall, squawking with what is probably fear, and Klaus does his best to strengthen his wards, but it"s hard. Pain and fear, and cravings have his walls slowly crumbling.
He looks up. Five stares back at him.
"You do have powers," he says.
"I have magic. The Sight."
"No. You"re one of us."
"I am not some superhero child soldier with superpowers. How—who even are you people?"
"When were you born?" Five changes direction suddenly, a shark curving smoothly through waves. Klaus rubs across his temples, lets himself slump backwards again. Maybe playing along will make them let him go; maybe it"ll get him killed.
He doesn"t really care at the moment.
"October first."
"Year?"
"Nineteen eighty-nine."
Ben winces. "That"s our birthday too." He generously doesn"t mention Klaus"s little accident, and Klaus would give him a thumbs up or a smile if he thought it wouldn"t be noticed.
"Same day. Powers that normal people don"t have. Mother pregnant when you were born?"
"Of course she was," Klaus says, but his own voice is wavering a little, arms crossed over his chest.
"The Devil brought you here, boy, I never asked for you."
"You came in one day, and I can get rid of you in one day too if you"re not careful."
"Go ahead, scream. I screamed too, boy, when you forced your way out of me with no warning!"
Swallowing is difficult, goosebumps raising little paths along his arms, hidden beneath long sleeves.
"She wasn"t, was she?"
"None of your business."
"Klaus, man..." Diego"s voice is tight. "Why didn"t you tell me?"
"Not a man," he answers reflexively, then frowns. "Tell you what, exactly? I don"t—I didn"t... You knew my job!"
"I didn"t know you were powered." For some reason, Diego sounds like he"s actually hurt by the idea of Klaus keeping secrets, and Klaus hadn"t known they were even friends. Diego was just the dude who seemed to appear whenever Klaus was in trouble, scaring people off with knives and a glare to rival Batman"s own—only, Batman didn"t wear discount bondage gear.
Klaus had never even invited him in for coffee.
"Neither did I," he says after a moment, dropping his head into his hands.
"You must have known," Five blinks back and forth a few times, a teleporters version of pacing. "You have too much control not to have known?"
"Control?" Klaus snorts out something that might have been a laugh, might have been a sob. "I have wards, and I cleanse, and I protect myself, but I"ve only learned that in the past few years, kid. I only know what Marie-Anne taught me. Before that, I thought I was just cuckoo."
"I"m fifty-three," Five hisses.
"Sure," Klaus says. He"s too tired to argue.
"Who"s Marie-Anne... I don"t recognise the name, a Commission agent?"
"A who what? Marie-Anne, an agent? I think she"d off herself first; the only thing worse than the police are the feds."
"Not—"
"She"s my boss. At the Emporium. Owns the shop?"
"Oh! Killer brownie lady."
"They were edibles, Diego. You weren"t meant to steal them off me."
"Who drugs brownies, Klaus?"
"Plenty of people—"
"Shut up," Five hisses. "Your power, it"s what? Seeing ghosts."
"That"s the bulk of it," Klaus admits, shifting a little on the spot.
"And the rest?"
"I can... glimpse things sometimes. The past or the future."
"Like what?"
"I, anything. Sometimes it"s just someone playing the violin, or I"ve seen Diego boxing a few times. Some dude with a mannequin." Klaus shrugs and picks at his nails.
Five recoils. "How?"
"Dreams, usually, unless I"m working with someone. Then my cards help, or water. I like water scrying better than crystal balls; unless you"ve got a really good one, the images get all distorted."
"You dreamt of me?" Diego is pink-cheeked.
"Don"t flatter yourself," Klaus replies with a snort.
There are other things, things Klaus doesn"t want to admit to. How he can order the dead around (all of them but Ben), how he can move things without touching them, how his heart can stop-start-reboot. The grey place.
Draining the life from his mother as she screamed at him to stop. Klaus blinks and shakes his head, fingers tingling beneath his skin.
"You spoke to Ben," Luther says after a moment, finally speaking up again.
"Ah, yeah. He"s still hanging around, actually, like a bad smell."
"What? Ben is here?" Diego lurches forwards and frowns. "Don"t you dare lie about that—"
"Why would I? I don"t lie to people." Not often, anyway, not anymore. "He"s in the corner, scowling like a grumpy teenager."
"I"m not grumpy!"
"Cranky?"
"Maybe I just find you annoying."
Klaus gasps. "Me? Annoying! I can"t believe you"d say something like that, Ben, not when I"m being so nice as to keep you here."
"You just can"t get rid of me," Ben is smarter than he looks, Klaus is realising.
"Whatever."
"Ben, I"m sorry," Diego says suddenly. "I shouldn"t have left."
"Oh my god, can they stop apologising?" Ben whines, kicking through the floor.
"Unfortunately, guilty family members never really stop."
"Stop what?" Five asks.
"Being annoying."
There"s a long moment of silence, and Klaus wonders if he should stand up again. Five doesn"t seem anywhere near as scary now; instead, he looks like a tired boy, a tired old man, two faces layering over one.
"You"re a strange man, Klaus Schärer." He says eventually.
"I"ve been called that before," Klaus replies with a grin. And then: "Can I go home now?"
"Five hit you pretty hard; maybe you should stay for the night. Just so uh, Mom can look over you."
"Your Mom?"
"She"s kinda like a nurse," Luther says.
"Then I can go?"
Five frowns, flashes towards his brothers. Ben inches over to them as if all he wants to do is be involved. It"s been years since Klaus manifested a ghost (not since he was twenty-one and sick with guilt, calling his mother back from beyond the grave. He"d sworn never to do it again), but he thinks he could take a chance for the surly teenager who"s currently haunting him.
They speak too quietly for him to hear.
"You can go home," Five says slowly, "but we"ll be keeping an eye on you."
Diego gives him an awkward grin, and Klaus forces himself not to point out that he already has one ex-superhero "keeping an eye on him", what"s a few more?
"Hey, don"t you have a sister?" he asks as Luther leads him through the house.
"Two, actually. They"re... not well at the moment," Diego says.
"Oh. That sucks."
"I"m sure you"ll get to meet them."
It"s not until he"s sat in the infirmary (and Jesus Christ, they have a whole infirmary in their house) that Diego catches him alone. "Hey, Klaus," he murmurs.
"Batman," Klaus replies, a little cooler than he intended.
"Hey, I tried to tell them not to just go and randomly kidnap someone, but Five wouldn"t listen to me."
"He does seem rather stubborn."
"It"s the worst."
Klaus rolls his eyes. Diego is just as stubborn, and he knows it, has seen that patented frown more times than he can count, but he refrains from pointing it out.
"What do you want, Diego?"
"Nothing!"
Klaus can taste the lie dripping from between his lips and raises a slow brow in return. Diego has the good nature to look embarrassed and gives him a nervous grin.
"Fine, fine. Could I talk to Ben?"
"I charge for that, you know."
"You already charged Luther way more than I know you usually ask for!"
"Different customer."
"C"mon Klaus, you"re gonna make me pay? After all the times I"ve saved your skinny ass?"
"Hey, I have to make a living," he says, but Diego and Ben are both giving him puppy eyes, pleading looks that tug unfairly on Klaus"s heartstrings. He wonders when he became so soft.
"Come to the shop one night, okay?"
Diego does come. Then Luther comes again, followed by Five, a mousy girl who Klaus learns is Vanya—violinist and bringer of apocalypses. Klaus gives her tea and bonds with her over withdrawals, loneliness, and eventually how it feels to kill.
Allison, he meets last; she"s quiet but not by choice. Klaus offers to paint her nails while he translates Ben"s chatter, and she tips him in more cash than Klaus has ever seen in his life. It"s almost too much to accept. It is too much to accept, a temptation in green notes, but he takes it, falls off the wagon for the first time in years.
When he wakes up, Diego is in the chair by his hospital bed. It"s the first time anyone has been there after an overdose, and it makes his heart clench in his chest, a wave of affectionate nausea.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" he hisses, but Klaus can hear the upset under the anger, see the way Diego"s mouth is quivering. Blue flashes through the room when Five appears.
"Do that again, and I"ll kill you myself," the little axe murderer hisses.
Awkward and overwhelmed, all Klaus can do is let out a laugh and nod.
Vanya brings him hot chocolate, plays soothing music and only breaks one glass. Allison paints his nails in return, a hideous lime green that gets all over his shaking hands.
Luther watches from the doorway, a stern, worried figure.
"I told you they"d be upset," Ben says when they"re alone for a few moments.
"I still don"t understand why, Ben-Ten."
"You"re... they like you, Klaus—"
"A terrible decision, really. Look at me. I just went and blew all that money on heroin and ket. I—"
"You died."
"Don"t tell anyone."
Ben sighs and perches on the edge of the bed—he"s been able to do that more lately, interact with the physical world like he"s barely passed over. Klaus doesn"t tell Ben how nervous it makes him.
"They care about you. You"re like family."
The only family Klaus had ever known had locked him in a basement, had beaten him blue, had hated him until he hated himself and the whole world. Klaus rubs roughly at his eyes.
"Sure," he says.
No one asks why he"s crying when they come back, and for that, he"s grateful.
It"s surprisingly easy to fall into a routine. Before he knows it, the Hargreeves call him not just to talk to Ben but to invite him round to dinner, to orchestra performances, and meet Allison"s daughter the first time she flies out from LA.
"I lived in LA for a while," he tells Claire, spinning her around and around in the courtyard, holding her up to a sky full of stars.
"Why"d you leave?" she asks.
Klaus hums as he thinks of a response. The truth is he"d fled a man who wanted nothing more than a pretty, obedient hole in his bed, but that"s not exactly appropriate for a seven-year-old.
"The universe told me there was something special waiting for me here," he says eventually.
"What"s that, Uncle Klaus?"
"A family."
"I"m sorry for kidnapping you," Five says one night, they"re sat together with ice water between their hands and a shared craving for something stronger. Across the room, Ben sits Claire on his knees and reads from a book, solid for the third time this week. A smile works its way across Klaus"s face.
"Don"t worry about it," he murmurs, shuffling cards between his hands. With a hum, he pulls one, passes it over to Five.
Ten of Cups.
"Best thing that ever happened to me."
Truth is honeysuckle on his tongue.