Archive of Our Own ^beta

“What did you do? What did you do?!”

“You wanted me to just let you die?”

Allison’s question ricochets off his own and slaps him across the cheek along with the wind that brings no Christmas merry. Klaus clenches and unclenches his fists. HELLO, GOODBYE, his palm tattoos are back, letting out a faint blue glow as he looks at them. His umbrella tattoo also reappeared, just like some of the old features for all of them. Luther’s gorilla body, Diego’s scars. At least Five doesn’t look like a 13-year-old boy. That’d be too uncomfortable.

“And what if I say yes?” Klaus shoves his hands in his pockets. He briefly remembers the not-Jennifer running towards him, then the real-Jennifer yelling, and then the not-Jennifer pulled out a gun and shot Klaus in the chest. He should’ve seen that one coming.

“You don’t mean it,” Allison steps over the blue surgical gloves on the ground and aims her perfectly manicured finger at the bloodied hole in Klaus’ striped sweater. Her nail would still fit in if she tried. “With the way you were scared of death for six years—”

“Never said I was scared of being dead.”

It’s getting awkward, with their siblings watching. The tone of their voices triggers the shallow outbursts of Viktor’s newfound power; he closes his eyes, trying to calm down the hurricane that’s about to turn over Diego’s van. 

“What’s going on?”

“Oh, happy Hargreeves lore learning day,” Klaus turns to Jennifer. There’s a yellow light radiating off her body. “Does anyone see that?” he gets no reply, only more confused glances. “Huh, weird. Seeing auras was not on my bucket list before I kicked it.”

“Dude, can you not start a scene for once? We saved your life!”

“Just because you didn’t like the new me, and yet so selfishly didn’t want to deal with all this shit without me! Am I right, Diego?”

Diego doesn’t answer. It wasn’t him who poured marigold onto Klaus’ chest — and Klaus feels betrayed and used again. Allison wanted him back, Allison needed him back, and he knew it.

“So this is how you thank me?” Allison sounds more heartbroken than she would probably like.

It’s just the wind, Klaus tells himself. His throat hurts from the sobs he’s trying very hard to not release. You’ve gotten too soft over the years, too sentimental, you take a Polaroid picture of an iron before leaving the house to be sure you unplugged it, you don’t drink or smoke anymore and go to bed at nine. You’re no fun, Klaus.

“So this is how you thank me?” too soft, too sentimental, it’s seeping through his vocal cords. “For helping you with little Claire while you bombed every shitty audition in town?”

And Allison plays a card they promised each other to never play.

“If Ray was here—”

She only starts and lets the line hang in the air, but Klaus reads the rest in her eyes. 

“You know I won’t be able to conjure Ray even now.”

He almost expects to get his brains rumored into oblivion for saying that. But Allison only chuckles,

“So you think I only need you for that.”

“Well, it’s so tempting, isn’t it?” Klaus feels the goosebumps popping up on his neck. The not-Jennifer with her throat ripped out looks over his shoulder. HELLO, lost soul, your worst medium is in. “The only good thing about my power,” Klaus walks to Allison to whisper the rest into her ear. “is that I know how to turn it off.”

Apparently, she wants to ask if he sees Ray now, standing behind her back, all bloodied and with his lips pressed into a tight line. Klaus’ Ouija 2:0 powers didn’t get an upgrade where he wouldn’t see the ghosts the way they died, what a waste of marigold Allison’s move was. Ray isn’t haunting her, no. He just looks sad seeing his family fight again. Too much trauma for Claire, Klaus feels bad for her.

Klaus nods at Ray, Ray nods back at him. One day, Klaus thinks. One day I’ll be ready. His power hasn’t been calibrated yet, failing him and causing stingy electric discharges in his palms. He feels pretty much like he’s going to puke and pass out if he tries to do anything with it. 

He crosses the street, watching the cars carefully as the voices of the living and the dead keep ringing in his ears. Klaus doesn’t want to be hit, he doesn’t want to cause any trouble to drivers. He knows how many pedestrians are killed annually in this country: 6,977 as he read it in the newspaper.

Three years ago, Ray became one of them. Klaus was there, Klaus witnessed Ray’s last breath and he just couldn’t take it — he was useless, he couldn’t even let him say a proper goodbye to his wife and his stepdaughter.

After the funeral, something between him and Allison cracked.

“Klaus!”

“Hey, Klaus, stop!”

He keeps walking, having nowhere to go. He’d go back to looking for Dave in this timeline, but he doesn’t want to give himself another obsession; he was doing so well! Trying to avoid triggering situations, staying clean and sober, and now, 

The ghosts wail even louder after years of silence. All Klaus ever wanted was full control over his head, his body, his life — yet there was always someone making decisions for him. 

“Klaus!”

Not again.

“Leave me alone, Five.”

“I gotta show you something,” Five’s pants out. The little old man was running after him, not being able to blink correctly. Klaus thinks it’s funny.

Sure, Five has his own thing going, with both CIA and the Keepers — the not-Jennifer was one of them; Klaus got this grain of information from his siblings’ conversations he wasn’t even included in. He was only the subject. Oh, remember the day when a mortal Klaus died? We saved him! We are the real superheroes!  

“I’m not interested,” Klaus says. “I don’t want to see any more ghosts, and if you want to know what the problem is, ask Jenny! She’s full of radiation or something like that, and don’t tell me I didn’t warn you!”

“Cut that crap, Klaus.”

“I will happily do it if you stop distracting me from going wherever the fuck I’m going!”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Where?” 

It’s too late to ask because Five grabs the sleeve of Klaus’ coat and blinks. Oh, Klaus didn’t miss that. He didn’t miss that at all, and he’s still fragile after coming back to life, okay? He lands on the floor, and the blood boiling in his veins is too loud, and he almost expects to be grabbed by ghosts, torn apart by greedy hands. Klaus curls into himself and tries very hard to not hyperventilate.

“Klaus. Get up.”

Five looks oddly concerned. 

“Where the hell are we?” Klaus rubs his eyes to wipe away the blur from his surroundings. They’re in an empty subway, the ceiling lights are dim, flickering creepy messages in Morse. The floor is abnormally cold under Klaus’ back so he hurries to get up.

“It’s the only place where I can blink now.”

Five’s statement drowns in a “ding” and then in the voice on the radio, words turned backwards, and are too loud, too loud, too loud; it all gets even louder when the train comes. Klaus clamps his palms over his ears and hunches his back. He can’t handle it. He needs his peace and quiet, and —

“Klaus! Get on a train!”

Before Klaus can argue, he’s shoved inside, and then they’re moving, and he can’t breathe.

“Klaus! For fuck’s sake,” and then softer, “Klaus?”

He slides down the wall next to the window and buries his face in his hands. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he says, words muffled and heart hammering in his rib cage. 

Five sits next to him.

“Doesn’t look like it.”

Klaus lets out a wet giggle and slaps Five’s forearm when he tries to touch him. The train stops, metal insides shaking and bawling. Five jumps to his feet and goes to the sliding door, and Klaus follows him with enough caution to earn three eye rolls in a row.

“Where are we going?”

“Sh,” Five puts a finger over his lips and pulls Klaus out of the train.

Klaus doesn’t know what to expect; screwing his eyes shut, he hears the sounds: there’s an echo of footsteps, there’s swearing that was never allowed by Reggie, there’s—

Crying? Oh God, it almost sounds like,

“Klaus, Klaus, get up,” a girl sniffles. “Come on, you can’t leave us like this!”

“He’s dead, Allison.”

Klaus gasps and opens his eyes. 

Five still holds his sleeve, not to let him keel over, probably, and his facial expression tells nothing and everything at once. The train has taken them to the old days of the Umbrella Academy, as the exposition tells. Everyone is wearing their black catsuits and domino masks, and there’s the body sprawled out next to a big round container — Klaus’ lanky teenage body, with a puddle of blood gathering on a concrete floor beneath him.

The warehouse. The arms dealer mission. 

And there’s Ben, their Ben, so terrified and alive, who says,

“Jennifer killed him.”

Diego stares at him, lips wobbling and eyes teary. Allison squirms out of Luther’s hug and falls to her knees next to a motionless Klaus. It’s so weird to see himself so young and dead again, it’s almost like the scenes the Bicycle Girl showed him. 

Klaus and Five are free of all psychosis symptoms though, one is currently lifeless and another one got lost in time four years ago. This timeline is closest to the original, but Klaus took the Jennifer-shaped bullet instead of Ben.

Being a self-proclaimed leader, Luther finally notices the two timeline intruders.

“Five?” 

“Who the h-hell is the other guy?” Diego asks as he pulls out one of his daggers.

Klaus can only wonder what kind of a paradox him being temporarily dead both young and adult in one timeline might cause.  

“Don’t interact with them,” Five warns. “We shouldn’t be here.”

Five blinks them out of the fateful 2006 before the young Klaus on the warehouse floor lets out a laugh and waves his HELLO hand.

***

“What the hell was that?!”

“Klaus, calm down or I’ll knock you out.”

“Why did you take me there?”

Klaus staggers down the slippery platform, about to start ripping his hair off. He wants to be home — at Allison’s home — and watch his evening news and then a climate change documentary, and then go to sleep. He can’t do it. He can’t believe his powers are back.

“You saw it!” Five grabs Klaus by the collar and slams him into the wall. “You literally just saw it!”

“I don’t get it!” Klaus screams out. “I’m sorry, I really don’t get it!”

“I thought I was alone for 45 years in the Apocalypse, but it turns out I wasn’t! Because you, immortal idiot, were there the whole time! I buried you, because I didn’t fucking know!”

Five lets go of Klaus’ poor coat, and Klaus nearly loses his footing again.

“Oh.”

He needs three to five business days to process it. He was buried alive. Just dying and reanimating, dying and reanimating, over and over again, forever. This is the real powerlessness.

“I think it might be the key,” Five says. “Your immortality. Technically, you exist in every timeline except the Obsidian one.”

“I made it into the Void there,” Klaus rubs the back of his head where he hit it on the wall. 

“Can you do it again?”

Klaus shakes his head. 

“No ghosties here, either.”

“Because this is an in-between place,” Five walks to the interactive map, lines and dots gleam with different colors. It looks calming and mesmerizing, and Klaus gets curious.

He comes to Five and looks at the ribbons of the ways closer. Each has a date, a time, and a name. 

“These are not stations, these are the timelines,” Klaus drags his finger along the green line that has his name on it. “How many of them did we mess up?”

And Five says,

“All of them.”

“Sounds reassuring.”

“Buckle up,” Five looks up at the blue timeline that is connected with too many. “We’re not leaving the subway until we’ve checked all timelines where we could possibly exist without catastrophic consequences.”

“What?” Klaus doesn’t like the sound of that. “But this could take years! Decades! And I’m the only one immortal here, remember?”

“I remember,” Five rubs his palms. “So that’s why we need to hurry up.”

***

“I told you I just need a little bathroom break!”

“Klaus. You’re doing the laundry.”

“Yeah, because I might not be ready to roam around Girl-on-a-Bicycle knows how many timelines in a bloodied sweater!” Klaus uses the last of the subway liquid soap to get it clean. The water runs red, then pink, then clear. Klaus takes a deep breath and wrangles the front of his sweater into the sink.

He never stopped wearing Dave’s dog tags around his neck, and they got his blood on them too. Klaus cleans them carefully, to not stain Dave’s name with the fingerprints of death any more.

He probably looks ridiculous only wearing too-baggy pants while he holds the sweater under the dryer. After Ray’s passing, Allison gave most of his clothes to Klaus. He could use something from her wardrobe too, but today he didn’t feel like it. 

Five’s lips keep moving as Klaus waits for the wool to dry. When it stops being so hideously damp, he rummages in his bag, and takes out a thread and a needle. It’s good to have everything he might need in one place. 

“Are you serious?”

“I don’t want anything to remind me that I got shot, okay?”

He’s good at stitching, or knitting, or crocheting, so it doesn’t take long for him to patch up a hole. Five looks just tired, watching Klaus as he pulls the sweater back on, feeling a bit better after being forced to see death again.

“Let’s continue if you’re done using me as a hanger, shall we?” Five hands Klaus’ coat back to him.

Klaus nods and throws it over his shoulders, automatically polishing the tap with his palm until it shines like a disco ball. Then he takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes the sink, then the surface around the sink, then the wall—

“Klaus.”

“Sorry,” Klaus drops the handkerchief into the trash can. “I do this when I’m nervous.”

“Should have known,” Five sighs. “Shouldn’t have taken a germaphobe with me.”

“Well, that’s too bad since I’m exactly the person you need to solve your little mystery,” Klaus quips.

“And we’ve proven to be a good team before,” Five replies. “Despite… everything.” 

Klaus didn’t expect that. It’s almost like… Five respects him more than his CIA buddies. 

Klaus wishes he could also respect himself. 

The universe reset must’ve fucked up something in Klaus’ already fucked up head. Their little family survived the pandemic that did no wonders to Klaus’ mortal health, both physical and mental. With gloves and masks, fully covered from whatever dangers might be waiting around the corner, he felt safe.

And then Ray died and things went downhill all at once.

Meditation didn’t help, yoga didn’t help either; deep inside Klaus knew that drugs and alcohol wouldn’t help him too so he tried to avoid any possibilities of consuming any of those. He attendeded NA meetings not to forget what he’s fighting for; he gave Claire a lecture about the dangers of smoking, about drugs and whatnot. He knew Allison never fully quit smoking and enjoyed spending an evening with a glass of wine in bed, but he never saw her doing that since he got sober, and he knew she never did it in front of Claire either. Klaus was grateful for that.

Sometimes, they’d fight. Just a regular mother-daughter relationship and Klaus rarely had to intertwine. The good thing about it after all was that Claire was listening to him, Claire thought he was still funny even when he was sober, Claire thought he was smart as he helped her with homework and her lines for her theater class. He helped Allison to rehearse her lines for auditions, too. 

And he was covering their house in bubble wrap.

And he was polishing every surface until the skin on his hands would start peeling off from cleaning products, so he started wearing rubber gloves while doing the chores, then casually indoors too. All the fear of death he was living with hand-to-gloved-hand for years, just came back. Claire somehow managed to calm him down, to tell him that the house was clean, that he was clean, and there was nothing to be scared of. 

Of course, he hasn’t left the house without the mask and gloves since the pandemic.

Of course, nothing of it makes sense now, when his power is back. When his curse is back.

***

“And the next stop: whatever the fuck it is!” 

“You’re really getting into it, aren’t you?”

If Klaus can’t get out of here until he’s done, he might just try to adapt and have a little fun with the ride. He doesn’t want to spend his eternity being stuck in the subway with Five, which is not the worst option, by the way. Klaus might really see this grandpa-minded boyish prick getting old for real.

Five pulls him on a train again, and there are the backwards words on the radio adding to the creepy scenery. Klaus could have recorded the lines and turned them the right way just to know what the voice is saying, but he left his record player in Diego’s van. Too sad. The machine begins to move, ripping time and space and Klaus’ expectations bar has never been lower.

“We keep dying in every timeline.”

Five points at the door.

Klaus steps out of the train.

“That’s the only thing we do together as a family.”

He doesn’t have time to add up more because he recognizes the modern-day Academy. Klaus wants to tell Five that he probably miscalculated, because there’s his portrait above the fireplace, and—

“Five?”

“He’s dead, and you know it.”

It’s Luther and Ben talking, and Klaus clearly remembers Five’s instructions to not interact with their siblings in the alternative timeline. 

“Klaus!” Ben cracks his knuckles. “How does it feel coming back after exposing our dirty laundry in your shitty book?”

“What do I do now?” Klaus turns his head to Five, who looks equally confused. “I’m the Viktor of the family here!”

“I don’t know yet,” Five clenches his fists to power himself up for a blink, but it doesn’t work. “Shit.”

“Shit, indeed,” Luther nods, walking towards the brothers from another timeline. “You really thought I’d just let it be, Klaus?”

“You really thought conjuring Five will make you a better person?” Ben asks, the smile on his face looks threatening.

“Five, I don’t like this timeline,” Klaus whimpers, hand gripping Five’s shoulder. “Do something!”

“I’m trying!”

Five’s body creates a faint purple glow, but his energy is not enough to open the portal. 

“Oh, asking a ghostie to cover you up? Typical,” Ben smirks. “Coming to Dad’s funeral? Appearing the first here when it comes to inheritance? So stupid. So useless,” he turns to Luther. “Do your thing, big guy.”

This Luther, this version of him, doesn’t have a gorilla body hidden under the Umbrella uniform; this Luther doesn’t smile, his cold blue eyes are full of hatred. Even in their timeline Luther didn’t look at Klaus like this before pinning him to the column and choking him.

“Five,” Klaus whispers, taking a few steps backwards. “What is he up to?”

“I don’t know,” Five whispers back. “But I’m not letting him.”

“As if someone’s gonna ask you,” Luther laughs. Then he puts a hand on Klaus’ shoulder. “I heard a rumor,” he begins. No, Klaus thinks, but he can’t move. Don’t do this to me. Next to him, Five is frozen in a fighting stance like his action figure. “That you’re locked up in a mausoleum.”

***

“Klaus!”

“Klaus, wake up!”

“Why did they kill me?”

“What if I use this pretty body of yours?”

“Klaus, can you hear me?”

Ghosts can touch him now, he shouldn’t commune with them defenseless. But the hands grabbing the lapels of his coat definitely don’t belong to a ghost. There’s the smell of mold and damp concrete and cemetery and death. 

Klaus opens his eyes. He knows what he’s about to see.

Five’s face is surrounded by the distorted faces of ghosts behind his back and everything in Klaus’ head goes fuzzy again. A slap on the face and a firm shake don’t do much; semi-conscious, Klaus feels that Five is trying to sit him up next to the wall. There’s the names engraved on tombstones, there’s that sleeping girl statue decorating one of the caskets. Nothing has changed here since Klaus was a kid.

Klaus huddles in a corner and covers his ears with his hands. The spirits mess with his brain settings, sneaking straight to the core, sending shivers down his spine. Help us, help us, along with some vulgar things they know they can do now.

Five calls his name a few more times and stops, realizing that Klaus is in no shape to talk. Klaus wishes he could help him with brainstorming, but there are too many ghosts, whole families, all wanting attention.

They keep wailing, they keep reaching out their rotten-to-the-bones hands to him.

The flashes of Five’s unsuccessful attempts to blink them out of this horrible place light up the dark, only to allow it to creep back into Klaus’ lungs when the glow is gone.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

Klaus closes his eyes again.

Five finally blinks.

It feels like dying this time, and if Klaus weren’t already on the floor, he’d never keep his footing when they landed in the subway. To Five’s credit, he doesn’t touch him anymore, letting him gather his bearings. Klaus coughs, trying to get rid of mold and fungus in his lungs. His chest burns, he keeps wiping sweat and tears off his face, but they won’t stop coming. 

“Didn’t expect that from Luther, I’ll admit that.”

“Yeah, really?” Klaus glares at Five. He can talk again, and emotions spill all at once. “It’s not just rumoring someone, it’s altering reality within an altered reality! He teleported us there! How the fuck was that possible? Five? Did you ever think one of us could get a combo of powers?!”

Klaus gets up on his shaky feet and begins to unsteadily walk toward the row of turnstiles. Five looks at him, concerned.

“I think it was a very vivid vision?”

“Oh well, then he’s like that drug-spitting Sparrow girl?”

“Maybe.”

“It was real,” Klaus stops and hugs himself. “I know what I saw. I know what I felt, okay?”

“Your relationship with ghosts, I thought… things got better?”

“You think I’d prefer to die rather than have my powers back for no reason? Ha-ha, you’re so funny, Five.”

Klaus doesn’t expect to hear this, but Five says,

“I’m sorry, Klaus.”

“Yeah, you pretty much owe me one.”

The apology triggers another memory, quite fresh, something that Klaus shouldn’t even remember,

“I’m sorry, Klaus.”

Allison’s voice, Allison’s pain, it’s the last thing his dying mind registered. It wasn’t her decision to pour marigold onto his chest — he’s dying, he’s dying, he stopped breathing, get the jar — but she just gave up under the pressure.

Allison. Claire Bear. 

He’s gonna miss them. 

He needs to get out. 

***

“You went from dumpster bagels to organic food?”

“Not my problem that you wanted me to always eat from dumpsters.”

Listen, that bacon-lettuce-avocado-tomato sandwich was delicious. Klaus just needed to get rid of it before it turned into a biological weapon in his bag, and Five looked hungry. Five didn’t mind the food though, Klaus knows it, he just had to be a little grumpy.

Classic Five.

They sit next to the wall, waiting for a train. This one’s a bit late, and Klaus can only wonder how much time already passed. Five doesn’t look any older than he did a few hours ago. What if the time-travel train drivers are all on strike or something?

“So, what now?” Klaus is getting impatient. He nervously taps his fingers on his knee.

Five tosses the paper wrapper into the trash. 

“We wait.”

“But what if…” the sound of the arriving train drowns out Klaus’ voice. “...the train doesn’t come,” he belatedly finishes.

There was no weird backwards announcement this time, and Klaus finds it suspicious. Recently, he’s found many things suspicious. Allison called him paranoid.

He comes in first, getting some courage back after the nightmare that the mausoleum torture was. There’s no ghosts on the subway still, it’s only him and Five. Which is fine, Klaus always wanted his peace and quiet.

Hopping on every new train is hard to call “peace and quiet.”

When the door opens, Klaus feels like getting back from Vietnam all over again. His head was about to burst open as he curled into himself at a bus stop, hands covered in Dave’s blood.

The current timeline has nothing left of it. They’re navigating a nuclear wasteland, the sky is ashen and the ground is covered in the bricks of a ruined building. Dust swirls in the air and Five coughs into his elbow. Klaus feels bad for his 60-something-year-old lungs. God knows what the guy can inhale.

“I got you, buddy,” he pulls a gas mask out of his bag. Yes, the one he was made fun of for when they went to meet the guy who kidnapped Viktor. He hands the gas mask to Five, and Five puts it on.

Klaus hears a muffled “thanks” and lets out a chuckle. 

They walk a bit further, feet unsteady on shards of glass and chunks of wood and concrete. Some bits of this deadly Lego look oddly familiar; burnt sheets of the wallpapers, broken furniture. A deer head.

“This is the Academy again,” Klaus rubs his chin, thinking. “Original timeline then?”

“Be careful,” Five mutters. “Paradox psychosis.”

“Oh, right! Not a big fan of what I’ve heard.”

Klaus feels fine, except for a bit of nausea still tugging at his insides. Time travel does that.

“Knowing me, I’ve set traps.”

“Well, stay out of the way then,” Klaus shrugs and jumps over a cracked cupboard. 

Apocalyptic air burns his eyes and throat, and he begins to cough too. Teary-eyed, he almost misses the bodies on the ground. 

Five harshly pulls him back.

Klaus looks down and gasps. Five, dressed in a red jacket and pants, is lying on his stomach, the side of his head is black with dried blood. Next to him, lies Klaus himself, on his back, eyes locked on the dead sky. Five’s left sleeve is torn, Klaus’ is pulled up, baring the Sparrow Academy tattoos on their wrists. 

“No paradox psychosis, I assume,” Five comments. 

Seeing your own death will mess you up, Klaus knows it. Five once saw himself die.

“So we were the Sparrows. And we died.”

“I’m not sure about you though,” Five crouches down and presses two fingers to Sparrow Klaus’ neck. “No pulse.”

“Typical me,” Klaus says. “Dead, beautiful, and completely useless.”

He can’t breathe.

“This one isn’t helping,” Five says.

With that, Five blinks them back to the subway.

***

“I thought it couldn’t get worse!”

“Oh, there’s always a chance, babe!”

They’re in the Academy’s backyard, and the world is ending again. Klaus and Five are in the middle of it, the sky is red and orange, so bright it makes Klaus cover his eyes with his forearm.

It’s almost like a Kugelblitz, it’s the same colors, but in this inside-out world, they’re facing the consequences of their inside-out decisions. 

Five runs towards the back door, and Klaus runs after him. 

And that’s where he sees her.

Allison lies on the ground by the steps, eyes turned into lifeless scorched-out holes, mouth open with a trickle of black slime oozing from the corner of her lips. It looks like a chemical burn. Almost like the ones FBI agents who faced Viktor’s power in the sixties had—

“No,” Klaus whispers, his mind refusing to accept it. “Allison, meine Schwester, who did it?!” he knees beside her, hysterical.

“Klaus, the gloves! Can’t touch her without gloves!”

Five’s scream makes Klaus freeze with his palm midway towards Allison’s face. 

“Yeah, buddy, you’re right,” Klaus sniffles and shoves his hand into the bag. How ironic. He snaps on a pair of blue gloves, offering another one to Five. Klaus looks around, searching for Allison’s ghost. She’s not here. Klaus accidentally says that out loud. 

Five crouches down next to him and begins to inspect — Klaus can’t believe it — Allison’s corpse.

“Cephalopod ink. A mutated version of it that is extremely toxic,” Five concludes like a boring coroner in those law-and-crime soap operas. “Whatever killed her might be still inside the Academy.”

Klaus can only think of one person who could produce that.

“Do you know how to fix it?” Klaus can’t hold back tears now. Poor little sister. She died like a hero, but she never wanted to be one. He doesn’t know what he’ll have to say to Claire if they get stuck in this timeline. There’s no way an unemployed freak with an obnoxious background like him can get custody of his niece. 

Poor Allison.

Poor Claire Bear. 

“Let’s see,” Five gets up.

The gloves on Klaus’ hands are stained with whatever chemical liquid killed Allison, and he wipes them on the doorframe as Five kicks the door open. 

They enter another circle of Hell inside the Academy; Klaus ducks and hides behind the couch as a huge, gleaming tentacle is about to greet him with a mighty slap that’d cost him a few broken ribs. 

“What the fuck!” it’s more of a fact than a question.

“It’s the Cleanse!”

Luther’s voice sounds like it’s coming through the depth of water. Klaus carefully sits up and looks around. There’s the… Thing in the corner of the main hall, it’s big, and burning from the inside, and it’s pulsing like a giant lava heart. Klaus hears chunks of sentences around him, and the point is: when durango meets marigold, the world ends.

Ben is the marigold. Jennifer is the durango.

The Cleanse, then.

Klaus vaguely sees the two faces in it, one of them is still painfully familiar. 

“Ben,” Klaus whispers. It’s too much to handle. After dealing with their deaths all day, holding Allison’s cold body in his arms and now seeing his not-a-brother turning into a shapeless hungry monster, he feels like there’s nothing left inside of him.

Ben turns, his tentacles swipe over the columns, and Diego’s knives can’t stop it. They just disappear in the bumpy substance, an enormous jello blob just digests the metal. The whole remaining family is here, trying to fight whatever this is.

“Let Ben go!” Viktor screams.

Even Viktor’s powers can’t destroy it. He gets thrown away, hits the wall, and stills. Luther rushes to check on him immediately.      

“It’s too much for a girl who came out from a giant sea dildo!” Lila shoots lasers from her eyes, but mostly ruins the plastering and the floor. 

The Cleanse is unstoppable. 

Now Klaus sees that the second face of the Cleanse once was the Jennifer that they tried to save. They only lost Allison, he can’t get that picture out of his mind. And Five still can’t blink within the timeline.

So he can’t get out of the way when Ben, Jennifer, or the monster inside of the Cleanse squirts out a stream of black ink. Five freezes as he doesn’t have his sharp reflexes without his powers, and the chain of black blobs would’ve hit him in the face if Klaus’ gloved hand didn’t stop them.

“Who’s the human sippy cup now?”

Klaus wipes his palm on the couch.

“Klaus, I must admit that the shit you’re carrying around all the time is weirdly useful,” Five thanks him with a nod. “By the way, I’m done with this shitshow of a timeline,” he spits and blinks them into a place that somehow seems the safest now.

***

“It was on the TV.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Squid Girl,” Klaus massages the back of his aching head. “I saw it on the TV. Claire Bear and I love to watch some old documentaries, and the Squid Girl was in one of them, and it got me thinking—”

Five stops so harshly that Klaus nearly trips over him.

“Klaus,” Five looks at him, confused. “I just realized… I don’t remember if we ever talked about Ben’s death.”

“Oh-uh, brother mine, me and old Benny did!”

“And?”

“Yes, right, grandpa, you weren’t there,” Klaus nods hastily. “So, there was that girl, Jennifer, and we were on the mission, and she was inside the container… Oh my God,” Klaus clamps his palm over his mouth. “She was a weapon! Reggie told us to not open the container because something inside of that girl could start a chemical reaction, but Ben did— Oh God.”

Teen Klaus saw that yellow light all around Jennifer’s body; he thought it was because of the pills he took, but turns out he can still see it when he’s not high. 

“Klaus? You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s just… memories. I wasn’t… very sober when that happened, so,” he takes a deep breath. “The Horror took her.”

The picture of the Umbrella Academy failure is just a page of their family photo album of failures. Ben couldn’t control the Horror all of a sudden, and one of the tentacles squeezed the girl whose face Klaus couldn’t see clearly, and then—

It all happened too fast.

There was an orange flash, which was weird because none of their powers ever emitted orange light. When Klaus’ vision got back to him, Jennifer was gone, and Ben was lying on the floor, surrounded by his own blood, the shape of it vaguely looked like an umbrella. 

Klaus got sick at the look of it, and Luther yelled at him for being incompetent.

Ben’s ghost appeared at his own funeral, thinking he killed an innocent girl. Ben didn’t know it was a sacrifice.

They were too young to understand she was a weapon.

Five listens to him, the crease between his brows deepens. 

“And then she popped up inside a giant squid in the sea. In the wrong timeline.” 

“Yeah, apparently traveling through Benny’s bowels will do that,” Klaus winces. “With Ben being around all the time, I tried not to remind him. Then he was gone. And two days ago, I saw the documentary. Wow, what a coincidence, I thought!” he snaps his fingers. “Turns out, it wasn’t.”

“So we will die in the Cleanse if we stay in the reset timeline,” Five begins to pace nervously, back and forth down the subway station. “We need to go back and fix it.”

Allison. Klaus feels tears creeping up again and he swallows them back down. Allison, I couldn’t save Dave, or myself, but I will save you and your kleiner Bär.

He has to be strong. Be responsible. Klaus shakes his arms to get the blood flowing and cracks his neck. Fighting stance, fighting stance. 

“Klaus! Let’s go!”

Klaus nods and walks towards Five. The reset universe is just one of the futures they’re trying to avert, right? The Cleanse already got Ben. It killed Allison. It was about to destroy the entire timeline.

“So we’re saving the world from the Squid Squad now?”

“Looks like it.”

***

“Are you feeling better?”

“Uh-huh.”

He says this before he actually uses his brown paper bag for the third time.

“You sure it’s not the Cleanse?” Five frowns, and presses his palm to Klaus’ forehead.

“Would be funny if it was. Imagine permanently dying of some squid tripper?”

Klaus laughs until his throat hurts. They haven’t moved on in the past day because he fell ill. But he doesn’t have any burning rash on his body, he’s checked. Maybe the gloves did him a little favor after all. What if the Cleanse will turn him into a zombie?

“I’ll bring you some water,” Five pats Klaus’ shaking shoulder before getting up.

The last time Klaus was sick was during the pandemic. He managed to catch that damn lung-eating thing twice, which eventually landed him in the hospital for nearly three weeks. He didn’t miss it. 

Whatever is gnawing at his health now, is almost as bad. 

It could be the night in the mausoleum, it could be the cold floors of the subway and trains, it could be the Cleanse encounter aftermath as well.

Klaus puts away the sick bag, squeamish. He rolls over onto his side and tries to make himself small enough to fit under his coat. He shivers as cold sweat soaks through his sweater. Maybe getting some sleep will make him feel better. They can’t stop now, after all the timelines they’ve crossed out of the map. Klaus’ body trembles even worse when the train comes in, and he cracks his eyes open. Five’s already inside, water forgotten.

“You said no more time traveling until I feel better,” Klaus whines. 

From inside the train, Five waves at him. 

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” Klaus scrambles to get up. He adjusts his bag with All the Necessary Things along his thigh and limps to the train. “Hey, where’s your suit jacket?” 

Five looks down at himself as if he’s just noticed that he’s only wearing a vest and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. 

“Got a bit hot. Took it off.”

“Are you sure you’re not sick?”

“Absolutely.”

“Huh.”

Klaus puts all of his energy into keeping himself vertical. He tucks his hands under his armpits to keep some warmth.

The train stops. 

Klaus wants to let Five leave it first, but then he notices one tiny detail that suddenly clears his head. 

Five doesn’t have an umbrella tattoo on his wrist.

Klaus loses himself in fear and panic, he might as well be hallucinating because the painkillers he took didn’t work.

“It’s not you!” he rasps. “Where’s Five? You are not him!”

“Goodbye, Klaus,” “Five” smiles.

And pushes Klaus into an open train door.  

***

“Hey, Herschberger!”

Klaus doesn’t know which is worse: lying face down in a piss-smelling alley or hearing this voice.

“It’s Hargreeves, sadly,” Klaus props himself up with an elbow and squints at the tall figure all dressed in leather.

“Didn’t know you tweaker got married.”

Herschberger. It might mean that his mother Rachel is alive in this timeline. And he’s breaking her heart even though he got here just a few minutes ago. 

“Quinn,” Klaus grins against growing panic. He can’t run. He can’t run. His unluckiness never stops surprising him. Fuck this Mariana Trench of a subway. Fuck Five. Fuck the other Five. “You age like fine wine, mon frère.”

Klaus gives him a thumbs up from his position on the ground. Quinn kicks him in the hip with the toe of his boot.

“Doing great in withdrawal, I see?”

Klaus hisses through his teeth and rubs a bruise already forming under his pants.

“I might’ve caught a zombie virus from a different timeline,” he laughs at the end, because Quinn would have never believed what Klaus has been through in the past 24 hours.

“You fucking STD rat,” Quinn spits at the ground. “Where’s my money?”

Oh shit. Klaus weakly hits the asphalt with his fist. Two timelines ago, the debt had been paid off at least twice; Klaus ended up in a dumpster with his pants half undone at some point. That’s what the Bicycle Girl showed him. He didn’t know he was dead. 

The Mothers of Agony raised a toast the day Klaus Hargreeves died. 

The Mothers of Agony are all after Klaus Herschberger in this timeline.

Quinn grabs Klaus by the back of his coat and yanks him up, pressing him to the wall. There’s the crumbs of Doritos in Quinn’s beard, and his breath stinks of booze and cigarettes, and it makes Klaus want both to throw up from disgust and get drunk again. He’s been clean since the universe was reset. He can’t break this streak of sobriety he fought so hard for. He’s disappointed enough people in his life so he can’t disappoint Claire. 

“Quinn, Quinn, Quinn,” Klaus sighs. “I don’t have your money. But if you give me just a little time, I might—”

A punch to the stomach doesn’t let him finish.

“Look at me,” a hand on his neck makes him raise his head. “You’re not getting it, are you? I need my money. And you can make lots with this pretty mouth of yours,” Quinn’s fingers squeeze Klaus’ cheek. “Just like old times.”

“I don’t think I’m in the right shape for this anymore,” Klaus forces himself to smile. 

“Oh yes, you are.”

The grip on Klaus’ wrist tightens, he’s being pulled towards the bikers’ club back door. He doesn’t want to go, he wants to turn into a spirit and get back to the subway, to Five, into the right timeline. 

He tries to fight off Quinn’s hands on his body, but he’s too feverish to gather his strength. So his feeble attempts to set himself free only annoy his kidnapper, and the last thing Klaus sees is a large fist connecting with his face.

He doesn’t even feel his body hitting the ground.

***

“Rise and shine, the clients are waiting!”

“Why are you so loud?”

Klaus moans, slowly blinking his eyes open. He can’t feel his left arm as it’s chained to a radiator, he’s cold from half-sitting on the concrete floor for God knows how long. Klaus licks his lips and tastes blood.

Apparently, Klaus owes Quinn money in every timeline.

“Fucking behave,” Quinn kicks him in the side. Klaus bites at his knuckles to keep silent and not make it worse. “Your Daddy for the night loves good boys,” he drops a tote bag at Klaus’ feet. “If he asks you to cover the bruises, you cover them. If he asks you to change your clothes, you change them, got it?”

Klaus nods.  

Quinn always liked him pretty. Quinn always liked him on his knees. And so did the others.

Quinn unchains him, which makes Klaus question why it was needed in the first place. To humiliate him? Quinn’s far into that. Quinn loves playing with handcuffs, not sex shop fluffy ones, real ones. The ones that scrape skin raw.

Klaus wiggles his fingers, GOODBYE, his palm’s gone numb, his wrist has a red thread of irritation around it.

“Klaus!”

He jumps up in his corner, startling Quinn too. 

“What are you looking at?”

“Uh, nothing,” Klaus rubs his forearm and looks at his knees to not look at the young woman with a blackened necklace of bruises around her throat. 

“Klaus,” she calls him, voice hoarse. “Tell him Theresa says hi.”

She turns her head, showing Klaus the way she died. He never saw her before.

“You weren’t the only one,” Theresa whispers. “You’re just the only one who can come back.”

And it hits him. Klaus probably lost count of the times when something went wrong at work. One was too drunk to control himself, another one was just too violent. It happened multiple times before.

And, as Theresa says, he wasn’t the only one. 

“Yo, Herschberger!” Quinn snaps his fingers in front of Klaus’ face. “Want your client to do your job behind the door?”

“Don’t fucking put my mother’s last name into that hell of a sentence,” Klaus snaps, anger and sickness ignite the spark of adrenaline. He needs to pull himself together. “Theresa says hi.”

“What?”

Fear distorts Quinn’s masculine features, and Klaus can only hope he won’t pass out during the séance. He can’t make Theresa fully corporeal, but she’s corporeal enough to greet Quinn with a slap across his face. 

“Oh, this feels so good,” she nods at Klaus. “Thanks, bestie.”

Shocked, Klaus replies,

“You’re welcome.”

Quinn has taken Klaus’ coat and his very useful bag away, but Klaus would rather die a million times in a row than touch the stuff he was given. But Klaus wouldn’t be Klaus if he didn’t have a little secret stash, right? He scrapes the side of his boot with his nails, looking for a bobby pin he hid there before leaving the house for little Gracie’s birthday party. You never know what you’re gonna need to save your life eventually. Claire liked doing his hair when it was still long; then he asked her to cut it because his curls required too much maintenance.

How good he was frugal enough to keep the pin in case he decides to grow his hair back. 

“Come to mama,” Klaus pulls the pin out. “You doing good here?”

“Yes!” Theresa replies. 

Quinn’s reply is a high-pitched moan.

Trying to escape and keeping the ghost semi-corporeal while running a fever at the same time is exhausting. As soon as Klaus loses focus for a second, Theresa flickers like a glitch in the matrix and stops smashing Quinn’s b—

“Jeez,” Klaus winces, almost sympathetically.

Asshole Quinn will never have kids. That’s for sure, that’s what the puddle of blood between his legs says. He once mentioned he couldn’t stand ballbusters on his crew. Well, Quinn, we can’t get everything we want, Klaus thinks.

Klaus hasn’t lost his skill of picking the locks; he stands on a chair and works on opening the window grid. Soon enough, he inhales the air of freedom. 

He doesn’t know for how long Theresa will stay when he leaves. He never got to test that.

He needs to get out fast, before other bikers will get on his tail.

Klaus nearly crashes down twice as he gets down the fire escape ladder. He’s freezing, the wind creeping under his sweater and chilling his feverish skin. Whatever he caught in one of the timelines is getting worse as the adrenaline euphoria fades. Shelter, he needs to find shelter for the night. Then food, probably, since he can’t remember when was the last time he ate something. Maybe he should find his mother. Again. And apologize for being born like this. 

Klaus is too stuck in his thoughts he doesn’t hear someone calling for him. 

“Hey! Why did you get on the wrong train?”

There’s a familiar silhouette leaning to the lamppost. Klaus falters. 

“Five! Is that really you?”

Blink. Well, Klaus didn’t expect it. Before he turns, Five is right next to him.

“Yes, what’s the question for, Klaus?”

“Why are your powers back?”

Five shrugs.

“So are yours.”

“Mine always work like shit.”

“Mine aren’t much better at the moment.”

Well, he’s not wrong. Maybe it was one good jump to a thousand unsuccessful ones.

“Show me your tattoo,” Klaus demands. 

“Klaus! Are you concussed?”

“Probably,” Klaus presses his fingertips to the stinging skin under his eye and hisses slightly. “Tattoo, old young man.”

“You idiot,” Five rolls his eyes and rolls his sleeve. The Umbrella Academy tattoo is here, correct and faded as it should. “Happy now?”

“I pretty much am,” Klaus lets Five take his hand. “Now take me out of here. I’ve got some trains to ride.” 

“You’re so gullible,” Five smirks. “There’s no trains for you.”

“What do you mean?” Klaus’ brain feels like a big hot ball of a migraine. “Five? Wait!”

The tattoo on Five’s wrist changes before he blinks — it’s still an umbrella, but now twisted inside out.

***

“You got mud in your ears, boy?”

“No, I’m— I’m not—”

“War’s not gonna wait for you to get pretty!”

Someone puts a helmet on his head. Someone gives him a rifle. 

It’s not a tent this time, it’s the front line. Everything inside Klaus shakes as he sees the bullet coming, slow-motioned by his fear.

“Dave! Watch out!”

Right in time with a hot piece of death ripping through Dave’s chest. Whoever, or whatever did this to him, to them, is the most cruel and vile thing in the universe. And Klaus would trade everything to be able to fix it, to avert it. To not witness the only person he truly loved dying again and again. 

“Medic!” Klaus yells, rifle forgotten on the ground and the helmet askew. “I need a medic!” 

He presses his palms to Dave’s chest, and Dave’s lips are covered with bloody foam, and Klaus doesn’t notice the second bullet hitting his thigh. Whoever is in charge of this fateful tarot, decides to give both of the lovers the card of death.

Klaus begins to lose his grip on reality, and Dave’s body slips from under his wet palms, and the reality around Klaus tilts.

Someone else calls for a medic. 

Klaus rushes a hundred miles per minute, losing himself in a series of blue flashes until his back slides down the clean floor, now stained with a trail of blood spurting out of his thigh.

The train comes to a halt and “Five” jumps out of it and runs to Klaus writhing in agony. 

“Klaus? You— how did you get out without a train?”

“Is this all that currently concerns you?” Klaus grits his teeth, squeezing his palms around his bleeding thigh. HELLO, GOODBYE, the wound might be just a little too deep. A oh-shit-the-bullet-hit-the-artery deep.

Dave died again and he couldn’t stop it.

This is an endless cycle he can’t break. People just can’t stop dying around him, and he can’t even fully control his powers to get back to them.

“Breathe, Klaus,” Five takes off his suit jacket and rips off his shirt’s sleeve to tie it around Klaus’ thigh. Sure thing, he had bandages and sanitizer in his bag, but that asshole Quinn took it. 

Klaus lets out a shuddering breath as he sees the gun in a holster around Five’s waist. CIA agent, my ass. 

“Shoot me,” he says, and the blood keeps coming, and God, that hurts. “You have one bullet left, I know. You always keep one just in case,” a crimson puddle beneath him turns into a pond. It’s too late to try and stitch up the flesh; he’s pretty sure the bone is shattered as well. “Shoot me, Five. I promise I’ll come back.” 

Maybe he’ll get to talk to Dave.

“The timeline rejected you,” Five frowns. Blood stains bloom on his formerly white shirt. Klaus’ blood, Dave’s blood, Five’s own blood; it’s just a mix of substances like the Cleanse. It’s going to destroy all of them. “This might be the answer.”

“That I made the space-time continuum sick? Oh great,” Klaus throws his head back. He’s getting woozy, and he’s too weak to reach for Five’s gun and shoot himself in the head to quell the pain. “It’s the… the evil you kept taking me to the wrong places.”

“Klaus, hey, it’s gonna be okay,” Five taps Klaus’ cheek. “Hey, don’t close your eyes, you idiot,” he tries to tighten the cloth around Klaus’ thigh, but the blood stubbornly finds its way out.

Too late.

“At least,” Klaus mutters, the world around him fades to gray, “I know it’s the real you.”

***

“You again.”

“You again.”

“Well, it’s my world, so…”

“Hey, let’s not start this whole “the Void belongs to me” thing,” Klaus sits up and folds his hands between his knees. “It’s big enough for the two of us. It’s endless, in fact,” he sighs. His pants are still torn and bloodied, but the pain is gone completely. “What can I do to save people I love?”

“You can’t save everyone.”

The Girl has a bunch of marigold flowers in the bicycle basket. They’re not black and white like the rest of the Void.

“In one timeline, yes,” Klaus nervously rubs his palms together. HELLO, GOODBYE, it’s time to drown in some surreal symbolism while the world is ending. “But the universe is infinite, so there can still be possibilities.”

“You came here to talk about possibilities?”

“I came here because I died in Vietnam. It wasn’t my choice, young lady!” he switches to his Uncle Klaus tone that used to work on Claire.

It doesn’t work here.

“It’s time to come back then,” the Girl looks around. 

“Just tell me, am I right or not?” he’s about to beg, he can’t keep dying for nothing.

Klaus hears a “yes” before the grass beneath him turns green again and a ray of sun brushes over his pale skin. 

***

“Klaus? Klaus!”

“Turn down the volume, bruder, turn down the volume.”

Klaus’ body shudders, coming back to life is a nasty process; it feels like being electrocuted repeatedly, and when all of it stops, his lungs hurt as he inhales, sweat rolls down his temples.

There’s a trail of dried blood on the subway floor, but Klaus’ thigh doesn’t have a fatal gunshot wound in it. He looks down and sees that there’s no gaping holes in his pant leg either, and his clothes are clean. It’s handy, no need to do yet another restroom sink-and-hand-dryer laundry. This is the first time he came back from the dead looking more neat than he did before dying. His fever is gone.

Five looks rather disheveled in his one-sleeved dirty shirt.

“Flowers?”

“Oh, this,” just now, Klaus notices that his HELLO hand squeezes a bunch of marigolds from the Void. “Came back with some merch this time.”

The dog tags feel cold between his collarbones, his skin can’t warm up the name of his treasure.

And they talk at the same time, and Five says,

“I think I figured this out.”

While Klaus says,

“I think I know what to do.”

Five pauses, Klaus pauses too, only to start speaking in unison.

“I had a long, eye-opening conversation with myself.”

“I talked to God.”

“Yeah, sure you did,” Five sags tiredly onto the floor.

Klaus cradles the flowers to his chest. 

“We can’t all exist in the same timeline,” he hands one of the marigolds to Five. Five puts it into a buttonhole of his suit. “Better separated than dead, right?”

“That’s what I think, too,” Five nods. “All the deaths the subway has taken us to happened when we were together. Too many superheroes.”

“Too many superlosers,” Klaus agrees. “Besides, most of us found their significant ones in the sixties.”

“Which means you can’t all stay in the sixties not to make the universe collapse again.”

“You read my mind,” Klaus smooches the flowers. “Let’s see how these babies can help.” 

***

“Not scared anymore?”

“I spent six years being a housewife. Nothing scares me anymore.”

“That was such a drastic change for a guy who started a sex cult in the sixties.”

“And you founded the Commission that tortured me and almost killed us all.”

“Fair.”

Well, he beats Five in this one.

“It wasn’t— it wasn’t even the sex cult,” Klaus wants to scrape the memories out of his brain with a grapefruit spoon. “I mean, people were having sex there occasionally, but… so did the Commission guys, right?” he lets out a shuddering sigh. “Listen, there’s not many safe places for a queer chaos junkie in the sixties, you know?”

It was Kitty’s idea, the old woman who recently lost her husband and her grandson, and who needed to take care of someone. She dealt with Klaus’ withdrawals and mood swings, and back then, he didn’t even realize she was using him and his powers, and he had to get Ben into it too. 

Then she died in her sleep, and he couldn’t stop the avalanche of admiration. People from all over the world kept traveling to the mansion, they drew the words HELLO and GOODBYE on their palms; as far as Klaus knew none of the tattoos were real except his.

“...and then Ben possessed me to sleep with the girl he fell in love with,” Klaus continues. If the world is ending and they all are about to be separated in different timelines, he wants to let someone know. “She was far too into that lucid dreaming thing so she kept following me and telling me which poses we did. To be fair, I can do none of those, so she had very high expectations of me.”

Five only hears what he wants to hear. 

“Ben could possess you?”

“Surprise-surprise,” Klaus wiggles his fingers in the air. “I don’t remember much. Then I came to in a pool of my own vomit in the alley, and you were being mean.”

He tries to not think of that day, he tries very hard. Because thinking of that sunny day in Dallas also makes him think of one of the less sunny days when Nothing Happened. Klaus went there again too when he was talking to Luther and the rave girl, and he said,

“I remember my first time… No, I don’t.”

There was something at the party, something that got him at the short gap of forced sobriety between the benders, when withdrawal made him incoherent. A blue shadow in the corner of a bedroom, a ghostly laughter in his ears and a partner whose name he didn’t know. They wanted it, they never asked if Klaus wanted it too, but something inside him showed its consent. And it left him sick and helpless, and it made him think that maybe, old man Reggie was right.

“You must become the master of your own life, Number Four! Or it will become the master of you.”

He didn’t tell anyone.

He overdosed the next day. 

And two weeks later, Ben died.

Klaus tried so hard to forget, but the possession in the sixties triggered some old memories, making him realize that controlling his own body was a privilege. Just like being able to just say no.

“God, I’m just so tired of going through all of this alone,” Klaus groans. He’s really about to give up. It’s almost like he’s excluded from his own family.

He probably looks too pathetic, because Five pats his back.

“When I was alone in the Apocalypse, I found Delores.”

“I haven’t found my Delores in the world of the living, Cinco.”

Klaus wipes his tears on his sleeve. Again. There’s nothing wrong with crying, but the problem is that it doesn’t help him.

“We need to go to the reset timeline,” Five says, shaking his fists as if ready to fight.

“Will Allison be…” Klaus can’t finish. Stop crying, God, stop crying.

“I hope she’ll be alive.”

Five doesn’t sound promising. 

The marigold flowers in Klaus’ hands and on Five’s jacket begin to glow orange when the train comes. 

***

“I can’t even rumor it, it just pisses off the durango!”

“Apparently we can’t stand up to the particle that is opposite to marigold!”

“Never expected you to say that many smart words in a row, Luther!”

“Shut up, and throw a knife, Diego!”

“I’m out of knives!”

“Now would be an excellent time for somebody to do something!”

“Oh, my God, Allison!” Klaus runs towards her, ignoring Five’s hand trying to grab his sleeve. “Allison!” he squeaks as he pulls her in a hug. 

It’d be even more heartfelt if they weren’t sitting lined up behind Diego’s van. Poor Wanda has her windows shattered, sharp shards of glass have blood stains on them. All siblings have various cuts and scrapes on their hands and faces, but all of them look alive.

“Allison,” Klaus sobs, burying his face in her shoulder. She hugs him too, she keeps whispering, Klaus, Klaus, Klaus, what happened, what happened, and he can’t just tell her. “I promise I’ll do anything to save you and Claire Bear. I promise, meine Schwester.”  

He really can’t stop crying. 

“They’re in the house,” Allison says. “Claire, Gracie and the twins, and Lila’s family. We can’t get there, because—”

Many things happen that explain the whole picture better than Allison’s words. 

First, the sky burns orange, and the street around the corner gets flooded with a thick, pulsating and glowing substance. The Cleanse is growing, consuming everything on its way. 

“I’ll get them,” Five says. His body tenses, power sparkles in his fists. 

“How?” Allison glances at him in mistrust. “I thought you couldn’t do that correctly anymore.”

“I couldn’t. But a smarter me told me how to do a trick. Think of the future,” Five replies and disappears in a flash of purple light.

So there were indeed multiple Fives, Klaus hasn’t lost his mind.

“Five!”

“Sh, Ally, it’s fine,” Klaus pats her back. “It’s fine, trust me.”

“Could you please have your therapy session somewhere else and not make Luther jealous?” Lila spits out as another tide of the Cleanse swallows the building right in front of them.

“Yeah, as if your family calling me a “thieving, cheating addict” wasn’t enough,” Klaus lets out a painful smirk. “Wonder who they caught that from. Doubt that it was our little sweet Diego.”

“Your little sweet idiot of a brother agreed with every w—” 

“Lila!” Diego takes her hand. “Stop it.”

“You think it hurt me?” Klaus smiles at both of them. Beside him, Allison begins to fume with rage. “Yeah, it did actually. Too much to laugh it off.”

Five tried to make it better, he really tried. It’s weird how Klaus could never find the balance between fear and freedom. Between life and death, scared of both. 

“What’s with the flowers?” Viktor asks. His power is about to burst out of his chest as he hears them bicker.

“Ah, these beauties,” Klaus waves the bouquet in the air. “They should help in the end.”

Just holding them makes him feel almost peaceful.

“We should get out of here, now, quick!”

“Five!” Klaus grabs at his spasming chest. “Do not test my immortality like that!”

Five looks rather pale and unsteady on his feet, as if he’s about to collapse.

“We need to get in the subway,” he then looks at Allison, Lila and Diego. “Your families are waiting for you.”

“Are you sure you can do one more jump?” Luther asks him, concerned. 

“I can help,” Lila outstretches her hand. “Let’s power up.”

Reluctant, Five takes it.

“Okay, fine, hold onto us! Klaus, flowers!”

“All here!” Klaus squeezes them tightly while Allison hooks his elbow with her hand. Luther grabs his wrist, adding Viktor and Diego to the chain as they close the circle with Lila and Five. 

“Ben?” Viktor suddenly asks.

“I’m sorry, Viktor. We can’t separate him from the Cleanse.”

It devours the sky now. It devours the stars, the Moon. Bye, old lady, you’ve already had a go.

“The final sacrifice,” Klaus whispers.

It would be nice to see him again.

Five and Lila power up together and blink.

***

“What?”

“Where are we?”

“The subway,” Klaus spins around himself, showing his siblings the interior. “Don’t you see?”

“Mom! Uncle Klaus!” Claire runs towards them from the edge of the platform. 

“Claire Bear!” 

Klaus laughs as she almost swipes him off his feet. Allison hugs both of them, and they shed tears of joy, they say how they missed each other, how scared they were. If Klaus is about to go to oblivion, then he’ll at least know he saved the people who saved him. 

He gives Allison a marigold flower. 

“Take care of it,” he says. She ruffles his hair. “Hey, don’t cry!”

Allison begins to understand where it’s going when the petals begin to glow. 

Diego and Lila also get a flower each, their family is too big now. 

“That should be enough for you and the kids and relatives. Hi, don’t worry, I’m not as kleptomaniac as these two tried to picture moi,” Klaus waves HELLO at Uncle Lenny. And turns back to Diego and Lila. “Try not to reproduce anymore in this economy, all right? A year or two and every person on earth will have their own Hargreeves.”

“Five!” Lila calls. “Care to explain the fuck we need this for?”

“Don’t get nervous, or you’ll laser us all off,” Diego throws his hand over her shoulder and pulls her closer.

“It’s weird, but I can’t feel it anymore,” Lila mutters, and rubs her eyes, listening to something within herself. “It’s almost like… it’s gone again?”

This whole subway journey never stops giving.

“Apparently you pushed yourself too hard while powering up to mimic that last blink, so… this place took your marigold not to separate you from your family,” Five says. “From Diego. That’s not the worst option, if you ask me.” 

“Yeah, I definitely won’t miss that constant burning in my eyeballs,” she reluctantly agrees.

Ah, come on, Klaus knows she loved her powers. Mirroring was pretty cool, it even made him jealous. But being a marigold-full family would definitely lead to some freaky timeline divorce. 

“Why should we even be separated?”

Oh, Diego. Never getting it.

If Five wrote a book of explanations about his time-traveling shenanigans, it’d be as thick as the Bible. Klaus finds it funny to be agnostic.

Five sums up their journey in one sentence, 

“Long story short, if we all stay in the same timeline, the Apocalypse will keep happening over and over and over again.”

“What are you implying?”

“That you all are going home?” Klaus puts a flower into Luther’s hairy hand. “Hoping for the best.”

Five continues,

“You should get on a train that will take you to the correct timelines, where your powers don’t screw anything up.”

Allison takes a step forward.

“How?” she drags Klaus after her, hand locked around his wrist.

“We’ll see how it goes since Reggie and his Moon Wife are seized to exist!” he gently untangles her fingers. “We’ve been each other’s emotional support siblings for years and decades, but it’s time for us to go and live our own lives, right? Oh!” Klaus lets out a sharp breath as Claire hugs him. “Hey, Claire Bear, there’s no need for tears! Your cool Uncle Klaus will definitely find a way to visit you and your Mom, okay? Hey,” he pats her head. “It’s time to go now.”

And they’re just too tired from running as fast as they can, jumping from one Apocalypse to another, so they just want to accept their new chances. They were ready to die like a family in the hotel Obsidian, but this time is different. This is not the end, this is a million of the new beginnings.

And, for the first time since Five got Klaus into the subway, the radio works the way it should. 

“Next stop,” a robotic voice that sounds like Grace’s makes all of them jump. “Diego and Lila Hargreeves, Timeline Number 7-568-345b.”

“That’s us,” Lila eyes the train with suspicion as it stops. “At least we’re gonna have the family here.”

“It was nice to see you all at the party,” Diego says, taking the twins in his arms. “Klaus.”

“What’s that, mi hermano?”

“I’m proud of you.”

“Gracias, I guess,” Klaus smiles and waves at him. GOODBYE.

The next train comes for Luther. And yes, it’s definitely Grace’s voice.

“Timeline Number 4589/47-s.”

“We’re using the flowers like tickets?” Luther asks. Klaus shrugs, then nods. “Where will it take me?”

“Somewhere where you’re meant to be,” Five replies, and that’s too philosophic for Klaus’ liking.

“Somewhere where the world doesn’t end every week, big guy.”

“Fair enough,” Luther shakes Klaus HELLO hand. “Hope to meet you again one day.”

With that, he hugs everyone who’s still here before entering the train.

Then, Grace’s voice calls for Allison Hargreeves, Timeline Number 934756-48c.

“Do I have to remember it?” she laughs nervously when the door opens.

“I think you’ll remember it when it matters,” Klaus says. And he smiles, because he doesn’t want his last words to be said in a tearful voice. “I love you, guys.”

Allison and Claire don’t cry as the train and a little flower-ticket takes them to a safer place.

The next stop is for Viktor, Timeline Number 976/3224-72a. He fumbles before saying,

“It’s so encouraging. We never were really close, but… you were always a good sibling.”

“Aw, spasibo, don’t make me cry again!” Klaus half-jokingly wipes his eyes. “Hey, Vik,” he slightly pushes his brother in the shoulder. “Just be happy, okay?”

“I will,” Viktor gives him a shaky smile. He nods at Five and steps into the train door, pressing a marigold to his chest. It resonates with his power, he closes his eyes and listens to the sounds of the subway intently. 

Klaus looks at the passing train until he feels tears roll down his cheeks again.

“You’re next,” Five says.

Klaus can swear his voice cracks a little. 

“I have a weird idea,” Klaus looks at the flower in his hand. “What if we take this to someone?”

“What do you mean?”

“If there is no Bennifer here anymore, what if we can find our Ben?”

“How? What?”

“Come on, Five!”

He tugs at Five’s arm as Grace calls the next stop,

“Ben Hargreeves, Timeline Number 685/4578-alt.”

Klaus crosses his fingers for everything to work. There’s only one marigold left, and he’s not risking Five’s. He’s about to start praying and meditating, and do whatever he can do to just see his brother from the original timeline one more time. 

Klaus’ hands begin to sweat when the train stops. 

And they do indeed meet Ben on the platform; he’s wearing a black leather jacket with a hoodie underneath. Klaus hopes he’s not the only one who can see him. The voice on the subway radio doesn’t belong to Grace anymore, and it speaks in Korean.

“Bennerino!” Klaus raises his hand with a marigold squeezed in it. 

“Klaus?” Ben adjusts the glasses on his nose. “Klaus!” 

And they maneuver through the crowd of people on their way, Five almost trips over his feet three times, just to pull each other into a hug. 

“Ben!”

“Five!”

Ben sags between them, hands on their shoulders. Klaus notices an umbrella tattoo on his wrist and lets out a sigh of relief. 

“I’ve got a very important book review to write, but it can wait a minute, I guess,” he grins at both of them. “Brothers!”

Five frowns. 

“Ben, quick question: what happened during the Jennifer mission?”

“Oh, Jennifer. You still don’t know? The particle of durango inside of her turned Reginald into a blob,” he winces squeamishly. “We buried that alien in a closed coffin. The Umbrella Academy stopped existing since, Grace and Pogo raised us, and then you… came back from wherever the fuck you were and told us to get separated to different timelines so the world doesn’t end.”

No Bennifer then. That’s good news.

Klaus tries to do the math in his head but something doesn’t stick. 

“How long has it been?”

“Seventeen years,” Ben replies. “You changed. He didn’t,” he nods at Five. “I just. Knew you were gonna come back eventually!”

“Thank God,” Five shakes his fists in the air in triumph. “We did it back then, in the original timeline.”

“Ben, listen,” Klaus whispers quickly. “I need you to keep this,” he shoves a marigold into Ben’s pocket. “It will help us to not get lost, okay?”

Ben’s smile fades.

“You’re not staying?”

“We’ll celebrate our birthday together one day, I promise!” Klaus squeezes him in a hug again. “God, I’m so happy to see you alive! Okay, gotta go now!”

GOODBYE. 

He grabs Five’s hand.

Five blinks.

***      

“Why did you do that?”

“Because he was the only one of us who didn’t have the flower.”

“But what about you?”

“I might not need one.”

They’re in Five’s subway again, that’s how Klaus calls it in his head now.

“You know where you’re going?” Five asks. Five sounds sad.

“I think I do,” Klaus nods. “What about you?”

Five, being the time and space himself, should also have a place in this mess of a universe.

“It looks like I’m staying. This thing,” he looks around the subway. “Might be alive. So it needs someone to maintain it.”

“Aw man,” Klaus sighs. “Won’t you get lonely?”

“I’ll find my Delores again, I guess,” Five replies with a soft smile.

That’s so bittersweet that Klaus’ chest gets tight.

And at that time, Grace’s voice over the subway radio says,

“Next stop: Klaus Hargreeves, the Void.”

Klaus smiles as he gets into the train; for the first time in his life and death, he feels like he’s doing the right thing. The door closes, and Five waves at him from the platform as the train begins to move. Klaus waves back.

GOODBYE.

Klaus’ train stops in the field, the field where he died so many times. The same field where he came back to life so many times. 

The place where he’s meant to be. It’s got some coloring now, right enough to not resemble the old, uninhabited Void. It’s not bright enough to hurt his eyes. It’s not loud.

“Klaus!” he hears the voice and can’t believe it. Klaus squints his eyes against — the Sun? — he didn’t know they actually had it here. 

“Dave?”

“Klaus!”

There’s no subway behind Klaus’ back now, so he can only run forward, into the embrace of the loving arms. 

“Dave! Oh God, I missed you so much!”

“I missed you too!”

They finally reunite after all the years and wrong timelines, and tears and deaths and pain. Dave looks a bit older than the last time Klaus saw him. He’s wearing a striped polo shirt and an army vest, and a pair of dog tags around his neck. They clank against the ones on Klaus’ chest as they tighten the hug, and Klaus feels at home. 

“You kept them,” Klaus sniffles, hands locked behind Dave’s neck. “They’re mine.”

And Dave says, 

“I’m sorry that you died too.”

“Oh, dear,” Klaus mutters, nudging his nose into Dave’s ear. “I was never fully alive to begin with.”

“Tell me,” Dave asks. “Tell me everything.”

And they hold hands, and they walk towards a small house on the shore.

They have so many things to talk about. The two marigold flowers beneath the tree might want to listen to their stories.

***

“Then how come I never saw you when the world first ended?”

“Maybe I preferred to stay in the Void. You know, to a-Void all those earthly problems.”

They meet again, of course, they meet again — it’s the safe gap between the timelines, Five said. It’s an empty diner at the edge of the universe — “Max’s Delicatessen”, but there’s no Max in here — and Five managed to send an invitation into the Void using one of those old Commission mailing tubes.

And Klaus came. He, as it turns out, can exist disconnected from all the equations. 

Five promised that their meeting won’t end the world again.

And they have pizza — no pineapples — and non-alcoholic beverages, and Five unfolds the map on the table like a main character from one of those spy movies.

“So, Klaus, how’s the Void?” Five asks, while writing something frantically here and there on different spots of a map.

“Oh, great, you know,” Klaus tucks a strand of his long-ish again curls behind his ear. “Me and Dave are redecorating it now. You know, building a little family nest. We got a couch!”

He and Dave still wear each other’s dog tags like wedding rings. Klaus’ tie-dye t-shirts now smell of Dave’s sweet cologne, and Dave never takes off a bead bracelet Klaus made for him. They haven’t seen the Bicycle Girl for a while, but Klaus knows she looks after them.

Klaus hates time skips, but this one helped him heal.

Five now looks like a young man in his twenties, and his inner grandpa has gained more wisdom.

“Truly happy for you and your partner, Klaus.”

“And what about you, my smartest, oldest brother?”

Five bites the tip of a pen.

“I’m working on something.”

“Oh, yeah, why am I not surprised?” Klaus puts his elbows on the table and looks at the plan of a subway Five is showing him.

“You know, I once founded something,” Five says. “Turns out, I can be the Founder of something else.”

“Yeah? What is it this time?”

“Well, the original plan of a project was to expand the subway to all the timelines so that we all could still have our family barbecues together. Once a month won’t hurt the universe,” Five drags his finger down the bunch of tied-together lines. “And part two of the plan is to… fix the leaks in the timelines. It requires someone who does travel in time and space professionally. Someone like… me.”

Wow. The old man sounds really proud of his new job. Klaus cocks his head to the side.

“No assassins in cartoon masks this time?”

“Definitely not,” Five winces. “Peace and love, as you like to say. If there’s people like us, wrong to the timelines, I’m looking for a way to find a place for them where they don’t kick the world off the rickety chair. It’s much easier with the subway than the briefcase, so I just need to improve the system.”

“So basically, you’re building a new DeLorean?”

“I’m calling her Delores.”

“Should have known. Cheers,” Klaus clanks his glass of apple juice against Five’s.  

“I’ve actually found Dot, and Herb. No Handler, luckily, I think she was erased from all the timelines like the Hargreeves couple.”

“Well, that’s definitely some positive news.”

And Five pulls a battered notepad out of his breast pocket. He’s wearing a suit again, but this one is more expensive, as Klaus’ fashion-trained eye tells him.

“I got more positive news for you, Klaus,” Five waves the notepad in the air. “It’s about our siblings.”

“Yes!” Klaus claps his hands. “Tell me everything, bruder!”

“Well, Luther and Sloane went on their first space mission from NASA,” Five says, and turns the page in his notepad. “Viktor and Sissy and Harlan are all a big family now? And Vik rediscovered his love for violin and played a concert at the Icarus. Again. No Armageddon this time. Diego… is a firefighter, and Lila sorta started her private investigation agency, so I’m not dwelling on the action movie these Mr. and Mrs. Smith are living in.”

“Spectacular! The entire Hargreeves family, self-actualized,” Klaus nods and takes a sip of his juice. “What about my Benji?”

“Ben wrote a bestseller, “Monsters Inside of Me” it’s called,” Five checks the notes. “A bit not typical for our family, but didn’t end the world, at least.”

Writing has always been their shared family passion. Klaus could see this one coming. With Ben’s love for reading and analyzing books, it was a matter of time until he decided to create something of his own.  

“Allison?” Klaus fidgets nervously on the edge of a chair.

“Well,” Five suppresses a smile. “Allison Chestnut won an Oscar last week.”

“No way!”

“It’s not all,” Five looks at the notes again. “Looks like… You’re gonna have another little Chestnut Bear as an Uncle in six months, but I didn’t tell you that,” Five pretends he zips up his mouth.

“Oh,” Klaus actually might cry. “I’m so happy for her and Ray! I wanna see them, all of them! Five, please tell me you have something figured out!”

And Five smiles the Five-style and says,

“I might.”