Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Five felt horrible. His weary body ached with hunger pains, thirst, and his hands were rubbed raw from digging through the rubble of stores, trying to find something to eat. Anything to eat. He knew he needed to head out of the city with Delores, find someplace with more supplies, but he couldn’t bear to leave his home. The Academy had been many things, but no matter what, it had still been his home.

And now home to the graves of his siblings.

He cracked his knuckles, face tightening with determination as he pushed all his powers into trying to create a portal. Getting back to the past should be the same calculations as getting into the future, so why was he stuck in this fucking nightmare. He gritted his teeth, and then – and then – a portal opened. Small, but there.

His heart skipped a beat and his concentration slipped, the rift disappearing. Terrified he wouldn’t be able to recreate it, he tried again, straining and focusing intensely, desperately. 

The rift grew and he didn’t even have to think as he dove through, body protesting to the painful sting of time travel, his body instinctually knowing it wasn’t natural. He was ripped from the apocalypse to fall from higher than he’d anticipated and sprawled on the ground ungracefully.

He almost didn’t want to look up, in case he was wrong, in case he would only find a desolate, destroyed world. But he could feel the presence of people watching, hear their shuffling feet, and he really really hoped they weren’t going to attack him or kidnap him. He wasn’t in peak condition for a fight.

He had the fleeting, sudden realization that he’d left Delores behind. He hoped she wasn’t mad at him, but then all thoughts of his mannequin friend left him when he stumbled to his feet and saw who he was near.

He stared into the faces of his siblings, older than he knew them alive, rosier than they had been in death. They were alive, gloriously alive, though looking eerily like the corpses he’d had to put several feet in the ground.

And they were all gaping at him.

“Does anyone else see... Little Number Five or is that just me?”  Klaus asked dazedly.

Five’s eyes filled with tears, his lip quivered. He — wait. Someone was missing. 

“Where’s Ben?” he demanded hoarsely. Vanya’s book had said he died, but where in the timeline where was he? They looked old, but Five had to be sure. He wanted to see his — full offense to the others — favorite brother alive. Desperately. 

Klaus made a funny, aborted jerking motion to the side. He seemed at a loss for words for once in his life.

When the pulsing portal-like thing – Klaus never claimed to have a way with words – spat a person out, the very last person Klaus had expected to see was little Number Five.

Five looked precisely the same as when the fateful breakfast he’d left, though skinnier, dirtier, and horribly more haunted, his shadowed eyes gleaming with tears. He was so much smaller than he was in Klaus’s memories.

Ben stayed by Klaus’s side, his eyes wide, grief and guilt written on his face. Ben hadn’t taken Five’s death well, none of them had, but… It had been bad. “Say something,” Ben urged, looking seconds away from trying to talk to Five himself. Knowing that interaction would only hurt Ben more, Klaus stumbled forward just as Five started to cry.

The boy drew in a shuddering breath, eyes filling with tears, then let out a sob and wrapped his arms around himself. Klaus didn’t hesitate to pull Five into his arms, and Ben tried to join the hug, only for his hand to pass through Five’s body, incorporeal. Ben looked devastated.

That was enough to jolt the other older — weird, being older— siblings toward Five, with Vanya holding a hand to her mouth in shock. The others formed a protective circle around them, like a shield. 

Klaus now had an armful of crying child. It had been so long, though clearly not that long for Five. What the hell had happened?

“Five,” Luther began, looking uneasy and desperate to know more. He cleared his throat, getting a warning glare from everyone else, including Klaus. Even Ben glared at Luther, lips thinning.

“He better not make things worse,” Ben said darkly to Klaus.

Diego had the strangest expression on his face, torn between murderous and heartbroken. It wasn’t a good look on him, and Klaus especially hated it because it was painful to look at. What an asshole, making Klaus sadder.

Klaus realized that it had only been months – probably – for Five, so how the hell did he even know who he was hugging? Did he just not care who was hugging him, was he that desperate for affection? Or had he met some other future version of them? Klaus almost hoped it was the first option because if Five had met them in the future, they’d obviously failed him.

Vanya mumbled something nonsensically about the warm house and how they should get Five was food. “Peanut butter and – and marshmallow sandwiches,” she mumbled, almost numbly, staring at Five with wide eyes.

Allison looked horrified, but shuffled her feet impatiently, clearly agreeing they needed to go inside. Klaus honestly didn’t care. If it started raining, whatever, he’d just use his body to shield Five.

“We need to know what happened,” Allison said softly, making Luther and Diego nod in agreement, looking antsy.

“Uh,” Klaus said, not succeeding in getting their attention. “UH,” he repeated louder. “Or how ‘bout we don’t question him until we get him some hot chocolate, and us, I don’t know, drinking something stronger?”

“No alcohol is strong enough for this,” Ben pointed out faintly, clenching his fists, probably to stop himself from reaching out to Five.

“True,” Klaus said. Luther gave him an odd look for that comment since he addressed it to the seemingly empty space beside him. God, it was like the entire family purposefully forgot that Klaus’s whole thing was seeing ghosts. “Come on, shortie, we’re going –“ to the house, Klaus was going to say, but Five interrupted him before he could:

Through his crying — god he sounded so upset — he managed to gasp out: “Don’t leave me again. Not again. Don’t you dare. Please.”

“No! Fuck that, no we’re going together, come on,” Klaus said, hefting Five higher in his arms and striding toward the house, trying to pretend like Five – who was light, but not that light – was easy to carry. Unlike Luther, who must use steroids, that guy was built like a brick wall, Klaus wasn’t the strongest.

The other siblings trailed behind, and they situated themselves in the living room while Vanya mumbled something about sandwiches and rushed off. Klaus, Five, Ben, and Diego sat on the couch. Luther leaned against the couch with his arms crossed, and Allison stood at the other end of the couch, running a hand through her long hair in agitation.

 “It’s been seventeen years,” Luther began, looking unsure where the hell to begin.

“Who – what happened to you?” Diego asked at precisely the same time as Luther, clearly aching to put a knife through whatever had caused Five to act like this. The two brothers glared at each other briefly, then turned full attention back onto Five, who just burrowed himself deeper into Klaus’s arms.

Klaus guessed he had a permanent resident in his arms now. He was surprisingly fine with this. Ben frowned worriedly. “Ask Five if he has any injuries. He looks like he might have to go to the hospital. You know how good he was – is – at hiding injuries.”

Right. Klaus asked Five, directly demanding the sneaky little guy not to hide any injuries – subtly wasn’t his strong suit. Five just shook his head again before finally unpeeling himself from Klaus. If only enough to look around at the others blearily.

“What —” Five’s hoarse voice cracked. “What day is it?” 

“24th,” Vanya said as she walked back in, sitting on the floor in front of Five and handing him a plate with a hastily made sandwich. “March 24th. 2019.” 

Five took a huge, shuddering breath that Klaus could feel, with Five still being so close to him. Five held the sandwich but didn’t eat it, just squeezed it so hard a marshmallow popped out.

“Seventeen years,” Five mumbled. He had clearly mastered the look of being both utterly serious and extremely scared in the time he’d been gone. “It’s been – two months. For me. Shit. Eight days.”

He started crying again.

Klaus felt like he was missing something very important. “Eight… days?” he questioned gently, rubbing Five’s back reassuringly, sending a helpless look to his siblings, who must have misread his gaze as being what’s wrong with him, and not, please tell me how to comfort this small child what the fuck why did he choose me to hug, because they didn’t offer any advice.

Five said, into Klaus’s now tear-stained shirt, voice muffled: “To the apocalypse.”

“Oh, fuck that,” Vanya said.

When Vanya cursed, Klaus knew shit was getting real.

An apocalypse…. “What she said,” Klaus said.  

Chapter Text

Five knew in a distant way that Dad’s funeral was happening outside, though it still hadn’t truly sunk it. He knew because most of his siblings were missing from the living room, and he felt their lack of presence like a physical thing weighing on his chest. He hated how utterly relieved he was that Klaus and Vanya had stayed, both seeming thankful for an excuse to ditch the funeral anyway.

He’d last seen Dad two months ago, on the same day he found a newspaper with a small note at the bottom declaring Reginald Hargreeve’s death. Technically, he’d had more time to mourn for his father than any of his siblings. Two months of time. Two months of fire and destruction and the scent of death– he was fine. He couldn’t go down that rabbit hole. Instead, he inched closer to Vanya on the couch until his leg brushed hers.

The concrete proof that she was real helped relax him.

He was glad it was Klaus and Vanya who stayed with him, though at this point, he wouldn’t have minded any of his idiot siblings. He’d missed them so much. Though he definitely hadn’t missed their ability to start arguing in the worst moments. Before they’d relaxed after his announcement of the apocalypse enough to return to the funeral, there had been so much yelling and noise. He was embarrassed to say he hadn’t bothered listening to their arguing since he’d been tucked against Klaus’s warm chest.

Klaus was on Five’s other side, and he was keeping up a running, rambling commentary that seemed to have no real purpose. It did, however, include a far-too-detailed step-by-step story of how Klaus had once waxed himself with chocolate. It only served to be irritatingly distracting and seeing as Five needed to brainstorm how to end the apocalypse, a distraction was the last thing he needed.

Eight days. Eight days was nothing. There was barely any time remaining with his siblings if the timeline stayed the same, and he was not having that bullshit. He refused to let his – mostly – innocent siblings die… again. He couldn’t handle that, just the thought made him want to cling his Vanya and Klaus, though he resisted the urge.

Instead, he wrapped his arms around himself in a weak parody of a hug and drew his legs off the floor to tuck underneath himself.

He stewed in thought, absently fingering feel the prosthetic eye in his pocket that he’d found in Luther’s immobile stiff fingers, bloody, so much blood, and the empty eyes – and god, that was Number One, he wasn’t supposed to look like that –

“Five!”

That was his name. Someone was saying his name.

He blinked, suddenly aware of Klaus waving a hand in front of Five’s face. He flinched backward, releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. There was a peculiar, twisted expression on Klaus’s face. His forehead was creased, his lips tightened and downturned, and altogether it looked painful.

Five stared at his brother blankly, breaths sharp and unsteady as he tried to remember how to breathe. Klaus. Alive. He was in the past, which was at the same time his future. He was safe.

For eight days.

“I need to go,” Five managed to wheeze, blinking back tears he refused to let fall. Too much was happening. He needed out of here. More importantly, he needed to find where this goddamn eye came from. “Where’s – the car? A car?” He might be able to teleport to place the eye was located at – MeriTech – but the idea of using his powers made his stomach churn. He didn’t want to be stuck in the future again, though he knew, logically, it didn’t make sense.

It was irrational. Yet it was still terrifying.  

God, he was turning into Ben – too afraid of using his own powers. Afraid of himself.

He’d used to love his powers, he’d spend hours upon hours pouring over books, learning more, needing to know more, know his potential. He felt like that spark had been thoroughly stamped out.

He heaved himself off the couch and looked around as if a pair of keys would magically appear.

“You know…” Klaus said thoughtfully. “I kinda want to sit back and see what’ll happen – no, never mind, I’m joking,” Klaus said, eyes flitting to the side with his sudden change of mind.  Klaus stood up, holding his hands up in surrender as he languidly made his way over to Five, who paced in a small circle. He felt emotionally and physically drained, and his body was so weak, he felt pathetic.

Vanya stood, too, and rubbed her arm, brow drawn together tightly. It was such a Vanya expression of worry, though Five was unused to seeing it on a much older face. He stared at her, not having seen her dead, only in a photo on the back of his autobiography. It was strange. “Bangs,” he said, almost to himself. That’s what had been throwing him off. She’d finally gotten a haircut.

Vanya didn’t seem to understand what he meant. “Uh – okay? Five… please, you… you really should stay.”

If Five stayed, the apocalypse would happen. He refused. “No,” he said hoarsely instead of explaining how he couldn’t bare looking at their dead corpses again, couldn’t be trapped in another apocalypse. He licked his dry, chapped lips. “I have… important business to attend to.” He pulled the eye out and absently fingered with it.

Of course, that was when Klaus, in a catlike fashion, swiped the eyeball from Five’s fingers.  

“Do you really,” Five snapped, clenching his fists tightly, knowing he would be laughed at if he tried to grab it back. “Not have better things to do than steal my things?”

“Oh, I’ve got loads of better things to do,” Klaus said airily, holding the eyeball up to the light and making a face. “This thing is positively macabre. Truly ghastly. Absolutely Edgar-Allan-Poe’s-The-Raven – no” Five had tried to grab it back, but Klaus held it high above his head, almost idly sidestepping away. “I’m so into the goth thing, but… why? Wait, don’t tell me, it’s more fun to guess.”

Seeing as Klaus looked prepared to start listing his doubtlessly disturbing guesses, Five cut his losses.

“It’s an eye. Surely you can tell.”

“I can see that,” Klaus said, now holding it up in front of his eye and pulling another face, then he flourished his arms out, stumbling slightly with the motion and grinning. “Hah! ‘See’! I should have a talk show. Now, let’s see, my first guess is –“

Five sighed with defeated resignation, shutting his eyes before he interrupted Klaus: “It’s the only clue I have to the end of the world.”

Dead silence. He opened his eyes. Klaus handed the eyeball back, smile cracking and falling off his face. His brother opened his mouth, and Five thought that he was going to say something stupid about Five being a downer, but instead, he just said, with a rare seriousness and purpose: “You don’t have to deal with that can of worms alone, you know.”  

Five’s mouth parted. Then he coiled his shoulders up defensively. “I can – I can handle it. You shouldn’t –“ you shouldn’t have to see the apocalypse, you shouldn’t have to die, you need to stay far away from everything to do with this eye. “You don’t even know where to begin.”

“You don’t either,” Klaus pointed out, and he reached out and clamped a hand on Five’s shoulder. Five’s heart squeezed painfully, and he found himself at a loss for words or the energy to shove Klaus’s hand off him. “We’re here for you.”

Vanya nodded. “Five… I – I know I failed you before, but this time, I don’t want you to get in over your head. I get we don’t understand what you went through, but you’re so young, you know I wouldn’t leave you alone. I’d never.”

“I’m thirteen, I’m not… You…” the words died on Five’s lips, sticking in his mouth like ashes. He inspected his two siblings closely. All he saw was the genuine desire to help, a sincerity he was unused to. He swallowed a lump in his throat. “Alright.”

“Alright?” Klaus and Vanya said in eerie unison.

Vanya blinked. “To… where, then?”

Five scrutinized the eye since it was easier than staring at his siblings. “MeriTech. It’s the manufacturing for this prosthetic eye. We need to find out who this eye belonged to.”

“I’ll drive,” Vanya said. “I wouldn’t trust Klaus too. Sorry – no offense.”

Klaus grinned. “I’m wounded. But oh, goodie, what fun this will be. The one with the most useless power – for sneaking – the one with no powers, and…” he waved vaguely in Five’s direction like he wasn’t sure what to call Five. “This can only go well.”

“Can only end in disaster, you mean,” Vanya mumbled. “We shouldn’t leave now, though, it’s late and you must be tired… “

“No,” Five snapped. “The sooner the better.”

“Tomorrow morning is soon,” she said, shepherding Five toward the bedrooms, presumably to put him to sleep. Moving made him dizzy – that couldn’t be good. He blinked blearily, lightheaded.

“Can’t believe you thought we’d let you go alone,” Klaus sighed, trailing after them, “to break into a manufacturing place, or – or whatever you have planned. You wouldn’t make it a street before being arrested or crashing.”

“I can drive,” Five snapped defensively. It didn’t look too hard, he could figure it out.

Vanya’s eyebrows rose. “Can you now?”

“I can do everything.”

“Except be humble.”

Klaus oohed dramatically.

“I’m –“ Five started, unsure where he was going with the sentence, since the world was spinning distractingly, and his siblings’ voices seemed farther and farther and farther away and – he crumpled to the floor.

Chapter Text

Klaus had to say he was impressed by Vanya’s quick reaction. Five crumpled, and Vanya dove to stop him from hitting the floor. While it was less than graceful, and Vanya slowly sunk to the floor trying to support his weight, Five didn’t hit his head. Klaus rushed to her side as she called Five’s name to no response.

In the corner of his eyes, Klaus saw Ben crossing his arms, trying to look judgmental. He was too worried to pull it off. “I told you he’s good at hiding his injuries,” Ben said. “Here – wait don’t move him. Tell Vanya not to move him.”

“Stop,” Klaus ordered Vanya, trying to look calm and collected, though since he never looked calm and collected, he doubted it was effective. God, his heart was racing so much. “Don’t move him. It’s –“ he listened closely to Ben and repeated his brother’s words –“better to elevate his feet and lay him on the ground than try and take him someplace. Otherwise, it could make it worse.”

Vanya was sickly pale and panic was clear on her face, though she nodded curtly and did as she was told.

“Nerd,” Klaus muttered out of the corner of his mouth to Ben, who rolled his eyes.

“No, I just read, unlike you,” Ben said.

“Exactly.” Klaus checked over Five for any injuries in a frenzy of hurried, clumsy movements. Dear-Dead-Dad had given them all lessons on basic first aid, and though he’d forgotten most of it, he knew enough to get by. Probably.

“I think he fainted,” Vanya said, checking Five’s pulse and nodding to herself. She made no move to stop his frantic search for wounds. “Not – not hurt. Physically.”

Sufficiently satisfied that Five hadn’t been shot or stabbed or something – just the thought filled him with the same aching dread he had felt when Five went missing that fateful breakfast – Klaus took a deep breath. He looked at Five, so still and unbearably tiny. His cheeks were still wet from crying, and Klaus used his sleeve to scrub at his dirtied, tear-stained cheeks. Then in true big-brother (he was big now, he didn’t think he could ever get over that) fashion, he lightly slapped Five on the face.

Five shot up, unconscious one second and conscious the next. Klaus scrambled back, but it was too late to stop Five’s head from crashing into Klaus’s.

“Shit,” Five gasped, looking disoriented and clutching his head.

“You fainted!” Klaus accused, holding his own head and seeing stars, though they faded quickly. He carefully looked over Five, darting his eyes all over the kid’s body. “What happened, buddy?”

Five looked unnerved. Probably by the nickname. Five experimentally tried to stand up and wobbled.

“Woah, woah, woah.” Klaus stood and reached out to help Five, stabilizing him. “Not so fast. You fainted.”

“Dehydration,” Five said thoughtfully, still rubbing at his head. He cleared his throat, and Klaus realized just how hoarse the kid’s voice was and how dry he looked. Like a dead plant. He’d just spent a long time crying, which wasted water or some shit, and who knew when the last time the little brat drunk some water had been.

“Yeah,” Vanya said with a sigh. “We’re definitely getting you to your bed. Klaus, could you…?” she trailed off weakly, but the subtext was clear.

Klaus cast another long look at Five, then rushed off to the kitchen to get water. He rummaged through cupboards just as a drenched Diego, Allison, and Luther trudged into the house, all frowning. It must have started raining. Luther had a long cut on his arm (his incredibly hairy arm, would it kill him to shave?) and Klaus could assume that was Diego’s doing.

“Where’s Five?” Diego said instantly, narrowing his eyes at the cupboards Klaus was going through like Five was hiding in there. “You didn’t let him leave, did you? He seems a bit… loopy.”

Klaus turned around, precariously balancing four glasses of water. He handed Diego two, Luther and Allison one, then dutifully followed Ben’s instructions and found some watery food to give to Five too. Arms laden with a hulking slice of watermelon, a glass of water which sloshed as he moved, celery sticks stuck under his elbow, and a look of determination, he marched down to Five’s bedroom. His three other siblings demanded to know what he was doing, but reluctantly followed behind him when he didn’t answer.

Klaus used his foot to toe the door to Five’s bedroom open, then shuffled inside, nearly dropping the celery sticks as he adjusted his hold. “I got the goods,” he announced to Vanya, gesturing a bit too much with the cup and sloshing more water over the rim. Oops. He dumped his armful of things onto a handsome wooden desk.

Vanya plucked a glass of water from bewildered Allison and gave it to Five, who was slouching in his bed. She gestured to the others to hand over their waters, and when they didn’t do so immediately, she leveled them with an impressively judgmental frown. Damn, Klaus didn’t know she had it in her.

Luther and Diego quickly handed her the remaining cups of water.

“Can we not drown Five?” Luther asked rhetorically, frowning sternly, though looking reluctantly curious for the actual reasons. Allison looked worriedly at Five, and Klaus wondered if she was thinking about her own kid.

Diego crossed his arms. “Yeah, I’m the only one who can breathe underwater here.”

Vanya rubbed the back of her neck as Five sipped at his water. “Uh, he fainted – Five. Dehydration.”

Diego made a ‘huh’ noise, then turned his attention onto Five, mouth slightly open. “When was the last time you drank water, bro?”

Five had a peculiar expression on his face as he looked at them all. Klaus struggled to remember what the whole team had looked like when they were thirteen, and while it was hard to picture, he knew it was very different from now. They acted differently, too. Five was probably thrown off by that, and, well, Klaus couldn’t think of any other reason Five had such a stricken, haunted expression. Five stared at them, but it was like he wasn’t seeing them. It was disconcerting.

“Couple days,” Five finally admitted, then downed the rest of the water like it was a shot.

Klaus had a foggy memory of Five doing that with all his drinks when they were young; they’d thought it was hilarious and gotten in trouble several times for refusing to tell Dad why they were all giggling at the table. Going by the pinched, saddened look Allison had, he wasn’t the only one who remembered.

“A couple of –“ Diego started, then stopped and frowned. “You should’ve said something. Jesus.”

Five scowled and helped himself to some watermelon, looking like he was savoring each bite. He seemed to be enjoying it more than Klaus with drugs, and for a second Klaus wondered what the hell was in that watermelon before remembering – apocalypse. Probably not much watermelon in the apocalypse, whatever the hell the apocalypse entailed. Five had been vague about that.

“He’ll be fine with some rest and hydration,” Vanya interjected, wringing her hands together, though she looked calmer now that Five was in bed. Or maybe she had taken some of her anxiety medication. “I just need to make sure he drinks his water…”

Five frowned. “I don’t need five people watching for that,” he pointed out, voice cracking because he was a literal infant, Jesus Christ.  

Diego shook his head gravely. “You do when the person can fucking teleport.”

Klaus clutched his heart, heaving the most horrified gasp he could physically do. “Language!”

“No,” Vanya said. “I think Five’s right – we shouldn’t crowd him. Right?” She looked at Five, who shrugged.

Luther frowned. “Well, we can’t trust him not to run off again, maybe we should stand guard, make sure he doesn’t leave us like last time –“

Five lifted his head, mouth agape for a second before a look of fierce anger took over his face. “Excuse me?”

“We just don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.” Luther didn’t know when to shut up. “Besides, Dad always said that time travel could mess up someone’s mind.”

“I’m not crazy!” Five interrupted, eyes wild and a look of deep hurt settling onto his shoulders like a physical weight.

“He just got back, Luther,” Diego said defensively, putting himself squarely between Luther and Five, fingering his knife. Klaus’s gaze flickered to the wound already on Luther’s arm. Shit, this was not the time for fighting. Again.

Ben groaned. “If they fight….”

Luther clearly understood the subtext of Diego’s action. “You acting like I’m going to hurt Five, huh? I’m just trying to do what’s best for him. What’s best for the team.”

“Team?” Allison interrupted. “We’re family. Not some team.”

Ben sighed. “They’re going to fight. Klaus do something.”

Klaus shuffled between Luther and Diego, raising his arms defensively when they both shot him glares. “As home renovation shows have taught me, big open-room spaces are wa-ay better than this for family arguing and knife fights.” He snorted at his own nonsensical joke. “Rendezvous elsewhere.”

Luther looked ready to continue arguing, but a look around the room made him realize he had no allies, so he stormed away. Diego stalked out after him, with Allison trailing in their wake after casting an apologetic look to Vanya.

Five sat on the bed tensely, frowning deeply. “I tried to come back.”

“Huh?” Klaus felt he’d missed a memo.

“From… the apocalypse. I didn’t leave on purpose – I didn’t want to leave my home.” He seemed rather desperate to make them understand. “Did you really think that I’d ditched you guys?” He shoved enough scorn and derision into the words that they almost passed as sarcasm, but Five still had that weight on his shoulders and his eyes glittered.

Ben made a pained noise. “We totally thought that…”

Great, now Klaus felt like an asshole. Should he lie and pretend they knew the whole time Five was heroically trying to come back or something? One look at Five’s face convinced him. He should lie. He should definitely lie.

Unfortunately, he’d spent so long debating whether or not he should lie that Five had already taken his silence as an answer. His little face crumpled before he turned away from them resolutely laid down. “Goodnight,” he said firmly.

“Five…” Vanya began, gnawing her lip. “I –“

“Goodnight,” Five repeated.

They took the hint and reluctantly left, flicking off the light switch on the way out.

After making good use of the drugs he’d bought earlier from selling Dad’s shit, Klaus slumped into the living room and collapsed onto the couch in a sprawled mess of limbs. He fell into an uneasy sleep. That part was nothing new. Just, usually, it was visions of ghosts mocking him that kept him awake, or actual ghosts, or some unholy combination of the two. This time, he was consumed with thoughts of Five, imagining a city in ruins and Five all alone.

The next morning he stumbled out of bed, cracked his back, and narrowly dodged a probably-awkward meeting with Pogo on his way to see Five. He was ninety-nine percent sure the whole Five-coming-back part of yesterday hadn’t been a fever dream, because Ben mentioned it when he woke up, but he felt the desperate need to confirm it anyway. Make sure it wasn’t a dream. That Five was safe.  

He knocked on Five’s door. There was no answer. Giving it up as a lost cause, he shouted, “Don’t be naked!” and barged in.

Not only was there no answer, there was no Five.

He stared at the empty bed. Ben peered over his shoulder and let out a small noise of despair. He rubbed his eyes. Five was still not here, though the sheets were rumpled, so he had been here.

Okay. Don’t panic. It was only his thirteen-year-old kid brother missing. His brother who could teleport. Could Five teleport to Hawaii? Klaus wondered hysterically. How would they ever find him?

“Do something!” Ben demanded.

Klaus nodded, took a deep breath, then turned and hollered: “DIEGO!” as loud as he possibly could.

Five sat on a bench across the street from MeriTech, dressed in a clean Umbrella Academy uniform he’d found in his closet, and tried to figure out a plan. He’d taken a taxi here, grabbing some money from his piggy bank to pay for it.  

Luther’s words echoed in his mind. He scowled down at his lap, fisting his hands angrily. He couldn’t believe they’d thought he’d purposefully left! It was an irrational hurt since he shouldn’t have expected anything more, and his siblings couldn’t have realistically known, and yet… He had spent two months in hell trying to get back to his family, only for them to have apparently just… accepted his disappearance? In his fantasies of returning home, he had always imagined there having been some sort of search for him, maybe the assumption that he’d been kidnapped. The truth hurt in an indescribable way.

Whatever. It was fine.

Except it wasn’t, because there were only seven days until the apocalypse. And all he had to go on was an eye.

He stood up, dusted himself up, and after looking both ways for cars, he ran across the street. It would have been easier to teleport, but… he’d rather not be gaped at, not to mention… well. His own powers trapping him in his own personal hell had given him a strong sense of self-distrust.  

 He wandered into the manufacturing building and coaxed his way upstairs using his best pleading expressions, sneaking, and bullshitting. Then he stalked up to the first man in a white lab coat he saw and thrust the prosthetic eye to the brown-haired man’s startled face. “Whose eye is this?”

Alright, he admitted, not his best opening line, but the man really didn’t have to squeak like a frightened animal.

There was an awkward pause. The rather plain-looking man cleared his throat. “Where did you find that eye, young man?”

“Playground. I got to… return it to its owner. The sooner the better.”

“… Okay? I can take it off your hands and run the serial number through –“

“No!” Five interrupted urgently, his heart rate spiking. He started to wish he had brought Vanya and Klaus – they had seemed interested. He had just felt so betrayed this morning, waking up and feeling like they hadn’t missed him. So, he’d left before he was forced to confront him. Probably not his wisest decision.

“Now, listen here, I need –“ the man said, and Five, fuming, was this close to attacking the man. Five let out a wordless sound of frustration suspiciously close to a snarl instead, panicked and angered at the idea of letting go of the eye. Luther had died holding it. Five wouldn’t let this useless man steal it and never give it back.

“I –“ Five started, but then faltered when he noticed the look the brown-haired man was sending to a woman behind a desk behind him. It was a clear call security on this weird kid look. Five licked his lips, then frowned. “I’ll be back,” he said, spinning away and trying not to look too much like he was fleeing as he speed-walked away.

Outside the manufacturing building, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and trudged across the street. There was a cheap, virtually abandoned motel there, and he shuffled inside intent on finding a phone to call one of his siblings to pick him up. Preferably Vanya.

He went through the drab, beige lobby and up to a counter, dinging a little bell to let the missing receptionist know he was here. It rang through the room. He squinted at the silver bell, seeing the distorted reflection of several large men walking in after him, dressed in black.

With guns.

Oh shit.

He was about to teleport the hell out of this place, but he noticed something else. Or rather: someone else.

From a back door beyond the front desk, a young woman with black curly hair wandered out, a little silver nameplate on her blue coat declaring her as the receptionist. She let out a high-pitched shriek of terror at seeing the men with guns, and Dad’s training made Five hesitate to leave a presumably innocent woman to deal with these men. Dad had trained them to be superheroes – Five just had to stay calm. He was trained to handle this… kind of. This was just like a mission… kind of.

Except, with missions, he usually had a lot more information to go on and all of his siblings to support him and watch his back. Here, he was completely alone.

“Alright,” one of the men said, easing up behind him, gun aimed at Five’s head. “Come with us. We’ve been looking for you.”

Five cautiously turned to look up at the man, swallowing back his fear. He surveyed them all quickly. He’d never seen any of these freaks in his life. “And who the hell are you guys meant to be?”

Chapter Text

Diego stared at Klaus angrily, though Klaus thought that was somewhat unfair. “I still can’t believe that you lost Five,” Diego said, not for the first time. They were standing by the couch in the living room. Klaus eyed the bar, tempted to crack open some of Dad’s drinks but heroically – in his opinion – resisted the urge.

“No! Kind of.” Klaus gestured helplessly, anxiety twisting his stomach.

Diego ran a hair through his short hair, heavy stress lining his face. “We should check the roof.”

“Again?” They had already searched the house top-to-bottom. “Y’know, I think we have better places to look than where the pigeons go.”

“Like where?”

“Like, oh, say, MeriTech. Where else would Five go than a place for prosthetic eyeballs?”

Diego looked baffled, and it seemed as if he couldn’t tell if Klaus was joking or not.

“You wouldn’t get it,” Klaus assured him, patting him on the head and grinning like a loon, “You missed a lot of bonding while you were attending a funeral like a – a arschkriecher!” Yeah, he’d memorized German insults when he was a teen (which certainly wasn’t what Dad’s library was intended to be used for), and what about it? “So, grab your coat and your knives, vigilante brother of mine, let’s hit the road.”

Diego scoffed and made no move to grab knives, which was actually fair since the weirdo was already wearing them. “What’s the point of insulting me in another language if I can tell it’s an insult.”

“Uh, style is the point,” Klaus grumbled, then shepherded Diego out the great front doors of the Academy into the morning sun. It felt wrong for the day to be so nice, considering Five was missing (again, a traitorous part of Klaus’s mind whispered, he’d managed to lose Five after only just getting him back).

Ben materialized beside Klaus as Klaus got into Diego’s car and the ghost shook his head in the negative – there was no sign of Five inside then. Klaus had lied to Diego when he’d sworn off not triple checking the house since Ben had already been doing that like the good ghostly brother he was.  

The knowledge that Five was truly gone from the Academy made Klaus’s overly-cheery smile falter, and the dread in his stomach worsened.

Perhaps some of Klaus’s urgency and dread transferred to Diego, because Diego broke so many traffic laws it was a wonder they didn’t get pulled over, and Klaus definitely knew why the guy never made it past police academy.

They parked right outside MeriTech, stared up at the large, foreboding building, and exchanged a look.

“Alright,” Diego said commandingly, “It’s a big building, but if I cover the first floors, and you cover the top floors, we can –“

The sound of distant gunfire interrupted him. It was coming from a dingy motel across the street from them. Bystanders passing by the sidewalk rushed away from the noise.

Diego met Klaus’s wide-eyed gaze with his own panic-filled eyes, and they both fell over themselves charging out of the car, and despite Ben hopefully saying that it might not be where Five was, Klaus just knew that was too good to be true. Because the Hargreeves luck was shit. And Diego knew it too.

Five’s heart was beating quicker than a hummingbird’s wings. He felt trapped – leaving would doom a random civilian, staying would doom Five.

The bald man whose identity Five had demanded stared at Five, his jaw squared and brown eyes cold; steely. There was no pity there. It was the eyes of a killer, someone who was good at killing and knew it.

“Kid,” the bald man said warningly. “Do you really think I want to have your death on my conscious?”

Five hesitated, nervous, and even more nervous to show any weakness. “…What do you want?”

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” the bald man said, the grip on his gun never wavering, his finger lightly touching the trigger. All it would take was the man tensing his finger…

“Anybody can come into a motel lobby,” Five pointed out absently, eyes flickering around the motel lobby.

Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum went his heart.

This would take a lot of improvising, he’d never taken down four men, not all by himself. He’d have to use his powers and hated the flash of fear the thought caused him.

The bald man looked pissed. Another of the darkly-dressed men behind him snarled. It was a sound of wordless anger. The others shifted, guns all pointing on Five. Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum.  

“You aren’t supposed to be in this time, kid,” the bald man said gruffly. Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum-bum. Five’s heart skipped a beat. “You’re changing things. The apocalypse is set in stone, you can’t change that – we won’t let you. There are three outcomes here. You return to the apocalypse. You come with us. Or we kill you. Which one is it?”

Holy shit, how did these guys know about that? It was terrifying – did this mean he wasn’t the only time traveler?

“Huh,” Five said, thinking the outcomes over. Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum. “I like option four –“ he tore through space, grabbing the silver bell as he went and appearing several feet above the bald man. Gravity gave him the extra force he needed to bring the bell down on the man’s head with enough force to make him crumple to the ground with a thud. One down. “ – me, beating all you.”

He ripped another hole through space as bullets rained through the air where he had been, and appeared behind the welcome desk, where he fumbled to grab a pen, just in case.  

He teleported back into the fray, ducking a spray of bullets to grab the bald man’s gun from beside his unconscious body. He appeared right behind one of the other men, who was too disoriented to realize what was happening. Five hefted the gun up and slammed the butt of the gun over the man’s head. The man fell to the ground with a grunt of pain. Two down. Halfway there.

The other two guns turned toward him – shit, he had to move.

He teleported between the last two men and whistled for their attention. They were on opposite sides of Five and spun their guns to him, angry snarls on their faces. The second he saw their fingers pressing down on the triggers, he was gone.

The men shot each other, unable to stop the bullets once they were in the air, no kid between them to take them as they had planned. They both went down with sharp, piercing cries that rung in Five’s ears and surely his nightmares.

Five panted in the middle of the lobby, dropping the gun and bracing himself on his knees. Ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum. He felt faint.

There was a groan from behind him. He twisted, face screwing up with horror as he realized the man he’d hit with the gun was still conscious. And holding his gun. And pressing the trigger. And sending a bullet through the air.

Five teleported behind the front desk, making the young receptionist open her mouth in what must’ve been a loud scream of shock. His ears were ringing from all the bullets that had been flying around, so it was hard to tell, being temporarily deafened.

He breathed heavily, even as the young woman kept frantically gesturing at him. He peered down at his arm, which she kept pointing at. His jacket sleeve was ripped, and the skin revealed underneath it was an angry red – apparently, he hadn’t dodged that last bullet as well as he’d thought.

The second he wondered why it didn’t hurt, the pain struck him, and a part of his mind absently diagnosed himself with shock. It felt as if someone was pressing a red-hot piece of metal against his arm, shit. He touched the wound and hissed in pain, drawing back his now bloodied fingers.

The man who had grazed him was probably standing up by now, so Five heaved an exhausted breath, sweat beading his brow and making his hands clammy, and tried to do another spatial jump.

Nothing happened. He was too exhausted and wrought. Shit. He didn’t have time for this right now. Grimacing, he tried again. His panic grew when nothing happened, no familial feeling of being pulled through space, nothing. He held up the pen he still had in a shaking hand, readying the only weapon he now had.

“What’d you do with him?!” someone yelled, loud enough that even with the painful side effects of how fucking loud bullets were Five could hear him. He recognized that voice. He cautiously peered over the top desk, staring in shock at Diego, who held a knife to the throat of the man who had shot Five.

Klaus was beside him, looking frantically around.

Five didn’t even care how his brothers had managed to find him, all he felt was utter relief. He even forgot he was supposed to be mad at them, and it felt like a weight was lifted off his shoulders since they could handle this. It was okay.

Klaus knew that Diego hadn’t wanted him to come in the motel, seeing as Klaus’s powers were about the worst for fighting in the whole group, but Klaus didn’t care and came anyway. Even Ben was incredulous that Diego suggested that. Did Diego genuinely think that Klaus wouldn’t come in when little Number Five was in danger? If so, Diego had never been more wrong, because hell no.

While Diego interrogated the darkly-dressed man, looking about two seconds from murder, Klaus’s only concern was Five. The motel was a mess. There were bodies strewn across the floor, only two of them – including the one Diego was dealing with – still breathing. He could smell gun powder and swore he could taste the metallic tinge of blood in the air, or maybe he was just biting his lip too hard. Bullet holes littered the desk, the walls, and some of the windows were cracked or completely shattered, glass sprinkled across the carpet.

There was a noise from behind the desk, and he moved toward it, grabbing one of the guns and cocking it (thanks, Dad, for that fun skill), only to lower it when he saw it was Five.

Five was half-crouching behind the desk, pale eyes wide, looking exhausted and frightened, clutching a pen in a white-knuckled hand. He held his arm to his chest awkwardly, and he looked deeply upset, but Klaus didn’t care about the doubtless extra therapy sessions this whole ordeal would cost, because Five was alive. The kid seemed to be in shock, which was understandable since he had either just killed two men, or seen them die, both of which were traumatizing, but he was alive.

Ben made a sad little noise.

“Found him!” Klaus hollered to Diego without looking at him, eyes fixed on Five. He heard the distinct, rather nauseating sound of a neck being snapped, then Diego hurried over, not putting away his knives but lowering them at the sight of Five, then raising them just as fast at the sight of the young woman, who Klaus had disregarded as a threat

He strode over to her and hefted her to her feet, seeming torn between interrogating her or helping the obviously terrified young woman. “Who’re you?” Diego demanded, and she stammered something about working at the motel.

“She – she works here,” Five said in a small voice, ashen pale. “Nothing to do with it.”

After a tense pause, Diego patted the woman’s arm awkwardly in apology for assuming she was, y’know, evil, and motioned for the exit. She fled, but honestly, Klaus could care less. He only cared about Five right now and apparently, Diego felt the same.  

Diego surveyed Five critically, zeroing in on the kid’s arm. “Are you hurt? Who the hell are the men who did this?”

Klaus helped Five stand, worried by the way the kid stumbled. He could hear police sirens getting steadily closer. “Come on, we need to scram before we get put in the back of a police car and Diego reunites with his police buddies in the worst way possible.”

Diego cursed. “Right. Let’s go.” He took a steadying breath then took the lead, ordering Klaus to keep Five looking away from the corpses.

Five looked at Klaus like he was an idiot when Klaus suggested Five cover his eyes, though Klaus noticed Five did resolutely stare straight ahead and never once looked down. Maybe Five was listening.

On the way out the back door, Diego, ahem, took care of, the last remaining bad guy after confirming with Five that he’d been one of the others. By took care of, Klaus of course meant killed, because never let it be said that Diego wasn’t hardcore. Another reason he didn’t do well at the police academy, Klaus was sure.

How a guy with so many knives strapped to his body he was a walking circus act and a guy who probably looked high as hell (not too untrue) managed to make it to their car half-carrying a bloody thirteen-year-old would forever be a mystery. Thank god for idiot bystanders who were too distracted crowding outside the front of the motel to notice them, Klaus supposed.

Klaus sat in the backseat with Five and finally noticed the long rip in the sleeve the kid had been hiding. “Je-sus – did you get shot?” He immediately reached out and lifted Five’s arm for inspection, wincing in sympathy at the painful wound. It looked like it was a graze, thank god, but still.  “You did. Those assholes hurt you!”  

“Yes,” Five said grouchily, and his lack of a snarky comment really said how much pain he was in. He hunched in over himself, looking angry and upset. “I’m – did you guys really not miss me?” he burst out suddenly.

Klaus almost thought he’d misheard, because where the hell had that come from? “Did those men tell you that?” he asked dangerously. They started driving, and while not as mad a rush as before, Diego was definitely pushing those speed limits. He was probably as eager as Klaus was to get Diego back to Mom and Pogo, who were both trained at treating injuries. In the driver’s seat, Diego, who was unsubtly eavesdropping, gripped the steering wheel tighter.

Five faltered, looking surprised. “No – they just want to kill me.”

That poor steering wheel.

“Then – what?” Klaus asked. Ben frowned beside him, seeming just as lost.

Five hunched over farther, looking terribly vulnerable and defensive. “Last night, you said you thought I’d just – left you. If you thought I would’ve abandoned you, and didn’t look for me after I disappeared, then you must not have miss –“

Diego interrupted him: “Hold on. I don’t know what the hell Klaus said, or how you got that impression, but, bro… We missed you. We were worried. We looked. For so long.”

Klaus finally remembered the conversation Five must be referring to, and his heart sunk. “No, no – I’m just awkward, that’s why I didn’t give an answer. Not – that. We might not have known you were in an apocalypse trying to get back, but we still missed you. We knew something – bad must’ve happened. I even tried,” Klaus looked anywhere but Ben, “To summon you a few times.” He snorted humorlessly. “I thought you must be dead – wanted to see you again. We do care about you though. Everyone.”

Ben looked devastated but proud, a surprisingly common expression on the ghost’s face. “Hug him,” Ben suggested plaintively.

“That’s your solution to everything,” Klaus pointed out weakly, addressing Ben, though seeing as his chest physically hurt with the desire to hug the kid, he couldn’t blame his ghostly brother.

Five and Diego both ignored Klaus’s random comment addressed to seemingly nobody, too used to his behavior by now. Oh, if only they knew…

Five hesitantly smiled, his shoulders relaxing minutely. “Oh,” he said simply. “I didn’t –“

“We understand,” Diego said before Five could finish what was probably going to be a very sad sentence. Klaus was glad he did, though a depressing part of him that pondered what Five had been going to say (‘I didn’t know you loved me?’ ‘I didn’t know you cared?’ ‘I didn’t think I would be missed?’).

There was a moment in the car as they speed down the streets, Five still bleeding onto his shirt, with a dead brother by Klaus’s side and his other brother driving, where they all empathized with each other, all understood. It was a surprisingly tender moment.  

Then Diego asked, tensely: “So, what happened?”

Five scowled, smile vanishing, and if they weren’t in a car, Klaus would have hugged him, he hated to see the boy go back to his usual grumpy self, he deserved better. But there was nothing he could do.

Five sighed. “I was going to call for one of you to pick me up, and then… then those men came in, threatening to either – ah –“ Five seemed to struggle with how to say it, and Klaus gave him a warning glare that hopefully conveyed don’t underexaggerate it you little twerp. It must have been effective because Five finished with: “Either kill me, kidnap me, or send me back to the apocalypse.”

A wide-eyed Diego twisted around in his seat to face Five, swerving dangerously. “THEY WHAT!”

Five licked his lips, looking a bit scared. “Yeah.”

“So… that’s a thing that people somehow know about, why not, I guess, why not have life get even weirdo,” Klaus said, slightly hysterical. The idea of anyone sending Five back to that nightmare of an apocalypse which he might not fully understand but knew to be horrible made something protective surge in his chest. “They won’t do that, though, baby bro, not on my watch.”

Diego nodded. “No, none of us will – we have to tell the others….” He trailed off. Klaus paled. They both realized that they hadn’t told any of their other siblings that they were leaving, or that Five was missing in the first place. Oh no.

Klaus gasped out: “Nose goes for who tells the others!” and immediately put a finger on his nose.

Diego, forced to keep his hands on the steering wheel lest they risk crashing, cursed Klaus out for unfair advantages the entire way back to the Academy.

Chapter Text

Five supposed Klaus had been right. As his brother had predicted, there was a lot of yelling involved with getting him past his siblings to Mom to be treated. He was out of it and felt half-dead as Mom sat him on a hospital gurney in the infirmary room, tutting at his injuries.

He hadn’t seen Mom properly in so long that he felt rather weak-kneed at the sight of her. His hands were stained with his own blood, and his arm hurt like a son of a bitch. To put it nicely: he looked like a wreck.

His siblings had never been good with mature ways of dealing with stress, though apparently, that had only gotten worse in age. They surrounded him on the hospital gurney and were yelling their heads off.

“How’d he even get hurt?!” Allison demanded sharply over the ruckus, crossing her arms in a stance eerily identical to the one Diego had. She sounded just like she had when she was thirteen, Five noted, and the thought sent a pang through him. He wished he had been there to grow up with them, it felt like even though he had them back, he still had lost something. Something irreplaceable. He’d lost time.

“Uhh,” Diego said, looking nervous, and Klaus pointedly stuck a finger on his nose and winked with a shit-eating grin. Diego scowled. “He was shot.”

“I can speak for myself, you know,” Five commented, though nobody paid any attention to him. Grace finished disinfecting the bullet wound, humming a little, and began wrapping it.

“Jesus,” Luther breathed.

“What’d you two get him into?” Vanya asked Diego and Klaus in a small but worried voice, hunching in on herself. Again, with the ignoring him – why did everyone do that? It was patronizing.

“I get it, we worried you –” Diego started, trying for a soothing tone, and was interrupted by Allison:  

“Worried?! …Worried?! Yeah, we’ve been worried. We woke up to all of you gone, no explanation, Vanya nearly cried, Luther was all – Luther – about it and… Guys, what the hell?”  

Klaus squirmed beside Five, then pointed at him. “Blame him, he’s the one who got shot. Loving, caring me was just there to save his ass – Klaus clutched his heart and sighed exaggeratedly. “– I had no other choice than to save sweet baby Five. Diego was there too.”

Five shot Klaus a venomous glare, and Klaus nonchalantly stepped out of arms reach of Five. Many things could be said about Klaus, but his brother definitely wasn’t an idiot.

“Now, sweetie,” Mom said with a big smile, ignoring everyone besides him as she tapped Five on the nose. He allowed it, since, well, it was Mom. She neatly pressed a bandage with yellow smiley faces over the bullet wound, and Five hissed through his teeth at the stinging pain he felt when she applied pressure. “You will need lots of rest, and no strenuous movement with your right arm.”

Allison, at Mom’s proclamation, simply said “Alright,” and sat neatly on the floor. It was weird seeing her in her expensive movie-star clothes plonking down on the hard floor, invoking a sense of wrong that’d happen if one of those stuffy old grandmas he always saw on TV who knitted and loved baking suddenly announced they were a part of the mafia.

He squinted at her suspiciously.  

Luther and Diego heaved themselves onto the floor beside her, Luther failing to find a natural position in his oversized, thick jacket that looked like it could fit several people inside and definitely made him look like a drug dealer.

“What’re you doing?” Vanya asked them guardedly, eyeing them like they were fit to explode any second. Considering Five was ninety-nine percent sure that Diego and Luther had gotten into a knife fight last night, he could ask the same thing.

“Uh,” Allison drawled, “Exactly what it looks like. Making sure Five rests.” Then she shifted a bit to get comfortable and shuffled backward until she was flush with the wall, clearly settling in for the long run. Diego and Luther followed her lead, and after a shrug, Klaus plopped down, patting a spot beside him for Vanya. Vanya hesitantly sat down.

Something tight constricted Five’s heart, binding his breath in his lungs and making it hard to breathe. He shakily inhaled, his throat closing up. It felt like he was dying, but he recognized it was pure emotion. His chest was thick with it.

“Why?” he asked, trying to sound demanding but only succeeding in sounding confused.  

“Last time we left you to sleep alone you ran away and got shot,” Klaus said faux-brightly. Alright, fair enough considering Five had considered going back to MeriTech and learning more about that damn eye the second his siblings turned their backs.

Vanya nodded, brow furrowed. “Yeah,” she said. Her sentiment was echoed by all of her siblings in their own words, though Diego added enough cursing to his agreement that Allison swatted him.

Five slowly leaned back on the gurney, shutting his eyes and forcing himself to relax. He waited a few minutes. There were no sounds of movement from his siblings. No sign of them leaving.

He waited another few minutes.

Another.

Another.

After fifteen or so minutes, his belief that they would abandon him faded. They were here; he could hear their soft breathing and the murmurs of a conversation that Vanya and Klaus had struck up. They weren’t leaving him.

He smiled as he fell asleep.

Of course, this didn’t last too long. He woke up incredibly disoriented, with loud angry voices around him, and his surroundings totally different. Panic seized him, and he shot out of bed with a defensive scowl in place before realizing that the yelling stopped the moment he moved. He blinked rapidly, roughly rubbing his eyes of sleep.

His siblings stared back at him, frozen in the middle of a heated argument. Diego slowly lowered his arm from where he had been aggressively pointing at Luther.

Five paused and looked around, realizing that he hadn’t been kidnapped, he was just in his bedroom. They must have moved him while he was asleep, which was embarrassing, but not dangerous (at least not for him, for them, well…).

Klaus seemed jittery as he flourished a hand to Five, definitely high. “Look at that, sleeping beauty did indeed wake up to loud yelling. Called it.”  

Allison hurried over to Five, trying to push him gently back onto the bed. “You should get back to sleep – I told you guys to lower your damn voices.” She directed the second part over her shoulder. Five batted away her attempts.

Diego threw up his hands in apparent disgust. “Well, Luther can’t seem to shut the hell up about blaming one of us for Dad’s death.”

Allison huffed, crossing her arms shifting her weight onto her right hip as she glared at Luther. “You really didn’t last more than four hours before arguing over such a – a wild theory. Next, you’ll be saying I killed him. Or Five.”

Luther paused for several heartbeats before opening his mouth to retort, and his hesitation caught Diego’s attention. Diego flexed his fingers like he wanted nothing more to grab a knife. “Really – Really?! Great leading Luther. Accusing the missing brother of murder! Nothing like that to bring us all together!”  

Five scowled past his hurt. He cared about all his siblings, and that included caring about what they thought of him. To think Luther would accuse him of murder – Luther, who little over two months ago had sworn to Five that he would trust him, was… disturbing. Realistically, it hadn’t been that long for Luther, but for Five it was still fresh and felt like a betrayal. “I didn’t kill Dad,” he hissed. “Wha – how could you say that?”  

“I know you didn’t!” Luther defended earnestly, raising his hands to mollify them. “Diego is jumping to conclusions.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk.”

Klaus sighed. “There’s better things to do than argue.”

“Like what?” Luther snapped. “Getting high?”

Klaus’ face flashed through several indecipherable emotions before settling on irritated. “I meant there’s an apocalypse to stop since I’m apparently the only one who recalls that fun little tidbit. I’m already high, get with the program, Luther.”

Luther winced. “Well, I – you know what Dad always said, about how time travel messes with the mind.”

Five felt his stomach drop. “You don’t believe me!” His voice cracked. Rage and utter disappointment filled him in equal amounts. He glowered at the entire room. “You’re all useless! There’s – seven days! A week! Before the apocalypse!”

“In Luther’s defense,” Klaus lazily commented, “Seven days from now is April Fools Day.”

Five twisted to look at him, eyes widening in horror. “You were supposed to believe me!”

Klaus hastily shook his head. “No – I do. It’s just…” He weakly chuckled. “Funny. In a sad way. Like everything Luther does. Y’know?”

Five didn’t think it was funny at all. He had an apocalypse to stop, and his gaze darted across the room, settling on each of his siblings in turn as he selected who to bring along. He eyed Vanya speculatively for a moment, but she was so normal it wasn’t safe for her. “We don’t have time for this. Come on, Klaus, Diego –“ He grabbed Klaus by his garish shirt and dragged him to the door, Diego following behind, “– let’s leave.”

Five had a prosthetic eyeball to solve.  

Klaus, Diego, Ben, and Five all climbed into Diego’s car. Though, per usual, only Klaus was aware Ben was even there. It was a bit weird since it was barely over four hours ago that Diego and Klaus had broken the speed limit in a mad search for Five. He definitely wasn’t going to let that happen again.

In the backseat, Klaus tried to put a comforting hand on Five’s shoulder since the boy looked incredibly stressed, but Five shrugged it away. The boy glared at Klaus with all the rage of a cat who was aware they were in a tiny, adorable body and was pissed as hell about how it worsened their ability for murder. Huh, Five was a lot like a cat. Really – the whole vibe he gave, and – Klaus shook himself out of his thoughts before he spiraled.

“I have a plan,” Five said determinedly, though unsureness edged his words.

“Oh, pray tell?”

“Well, the eyeball is important. So –“

“What eyeball?” Diego interrupted, looking rather lost.

Five slipped a hand in his pocket, presumably to touch the aforementioned eye. “I found it, day after I got stuck. Same day I found everyone’s –“ he faltered, face crumpling for a half second before recovering. It sent a pang of worry through Klaus; what had he been about to say. “All I know is this eye – it’s important, to the apocalypse. So, we need to find more, and we can do that at MeriTech.”

“Alrighty,” Klaus said, blowing an irritated raspberry at how hopeless this situation felt. At least he’d get in some quality sibling time before the end of times or whatever, so it was fine.

“It’s really not alrighty,” Ben said like the pessimistic jerk he was. He made a face at his ghost brother, who made a face right back. The nerve! Oh shit, Diego and Five were still talking and he hadn’t been listening.

“ – so, you two will pose as my parents,” Five said. “I need an adult, to look normal.”

Klaus and Diego traded a disbelieving look. Klaus was far from normal. Diego was still covered in knives. If Five had wanted normal, he should’ve gone for Vanya.

“You sure?” Diego asked, clearly following Klaus’ line of thought.  

It would be a mess, Klaus decided, but he could make it work. “I didn’t take improv for nothing! Let’s do it, brother dear – or should I say, husband dear?”

Diego looked rather sick. “Yeah – this won’t work. How about we steal this info ourselves?”

Five blinked. “Huh, that’d work – cool! Wait, Klaus…”

“Yes?”

“When did you take improv?”

Klaus grinned widely. “Never have, but I’m sure I’m a natural.”

Twenty-five minutes later, he proved them right.

Diego had decided to go the boring criminal way (this guy was seriously not made to be a cop), and they slipped through the lobby floor and past a door proclaiming the woods STAFF ENTRANCE ONLY.

 “Hold on,” Klaus hissed, and gestured for Ben to go down the stairs first and check things out. Ben ran ahead while Diego and Five just stared at Klaus blankly, waiting for him to elaborate, then continued down the stairs when he didn’t. Why did he even try?

Ben materialized next to Klaus as the three brothers reached the sterile basement floor, which looked like a big lab combined with a storage area. “It’s all goo – did you really not wait for me to play lookout?”

“I tried,” Klaus said defensively, waving away Five’s question of who he was talking to.

Five unearthed the prosthetic eye from his pocket, handing it to Diego after a small argument of whether Diego could be trusted with it. Diego looked at the serial number, frowning. “If it’s from the future, it might not have been made.”

Diego went into a glass-windowed room that looked vaguely like a science lab and started rummaging through the cabinets. Five, meanwhile, methodically checked each serial number on all the eyes on the table in the middle of the windowed room.

Klaus wandered in after them, dodging a prosthetic eye that Five discarded over his shoulder. While his baby brother and Diego were doing whatever the hell they thought that would accomplish, Klaus pursed his lips as he picked an important-looking clientele book from a counter at random. He flipped through it while Ben read it over his shoulder.

“Wait,” Ben said, batting Klaus’s shoulder with an incorporeal hand to get him to stop on a page that had caught the ghost’s attention. “This is shifty. Look.”

Klaus skimmed over it, then grinned. “Seems our friendly neighborhood MeriTech are sticking their toes in the black market.” After wiggling his fingers, he flipped to the last pages of the book, finding a pinned list of prosthetics titled by serial numbers and who had ordered them. “Found your eye, kiddo!”

Five gave a small gasp that had no right to sound so adorable while they were uncovering a conspiracy through illegal methods. Five spatial jumped beside Klaus and yanked the clientele book out of his hands, staring at the little innocuous serial number of the eye he was so obsessed with.

Diego joined them, surveying the book and nodding to himself: “Sold to some hospital in Jackpine Cove.”

“Get this,” Klaus said. “It hasn’t been used yet. Or even sent to this hospital.”

“Should we take the – uh – present eye, then? So we got both?” Diego asked.

Five shook his head. “No – we’ll know who’s responsible for the apocalypse by whoever buys this eye. We need them to buy it, so we know. Leave it.”

Klaus wandered over to the table in the middle of the room, picking up a prosthetic arm and gesturing with it: “Well, we’ve got some handy information, best be off, then.”

“Before you’re all caught,” Ben said, noticeably not including himself in that and looking somewhat smug about it. Wow, betrayed by his own brother. Klaus sent him a wounded look, which was ignored.

They quickly fled up the stairs and made it an admirable distance across the lobby before someone called out to them:

“Hey – aren’t you that kid who wanted to know about that eye? You need to give me that. It’s not yours, even if you found it. And – did you – you came out of the Staff door! I’ll call security!”

Five froze. Diego and Klaus spun around to face the rather bland-looking man in a lab coat who was frowning at them.

Klaus flashed Diego a vengeful grin, internally thinking of all the times Diego scared him by throwing knives at him, and then grabbed Diego’s hand and pressed himself to Diego’s side in a sort of side-hug. He groped for Five and after making contact, he dragged the unwilling boy to his side.

Klaus drew in his most dramatic, shuddering inhale. “How dare you yell at my son!”

The man blinked, looking taken aback. “Son?”

Diego had a look in his eyes like he was twitching to grab one of the knives and throw them at Klaus for real. Klaus bravely ignored that and continued with his Oscar-winning – in his opinion – performance. “Yes, our dearest, dearest son. Me and my husband, why, we would never raise him like that! And we would never corrupt him by – by teaching him to break laws and sneak around! I can’t believe you’d try to trash our reputation!”

The man looked angry. “You’re lying.”

“Oh,” Klaus said, smiling devilishly and lowering his voice, noticing that there was nobody at the front desk, which was just perfect. “Definitely. But I’m not lying when I saw that if you ever tell anybody, well… I’ll have already reported you. For assault. And black-market dealings.”

“I haven’t –“

While Ben giggled in the background, Klaus spun around, winked at Diego, and punched Diego in the face hard enough to give the poor guy a split lip.

“Shit,” Diego cursed, grabbing at his face and grimacing with pain, rubbing his lips together. “That hurt! What –” Diego suddenly smirked, anger transforming to something impressed by Klaus’ stunt.

“You’re crazy,” the man said shakily, backing up, seeing something in the trio’s eyes that told him they were deadly serious. “Just – get out of here. I won’t tell, just – don’t come back.”

“Pleasure doing business,” Five said brightly, and then the three of them unattached themselves from each other and stalked out of MeriTech into the afternoon sun.

“That could’ve gone better,” Diego said, rubbing at his face.

“I thought it went perfectly,” Klaus said, laughing a little shakily with exhilaration, caught in the moment. “Ben agrees with me!”

He expected Ben to give his usual irritable ‘I didn’t say anything’ thing, but instead Ben stared at him in clear surprise. Klaus blinked, then it dawned on him. Shit – he’d said that in front of Five and Diego. Who weren’t aware Ben had been there every step of the way. Who probably wouldn’t believe him since he was high. Who were both gaping at him.

“What?!” Diego and Five yelled.

“Surprise?” Klaus said with inappropriately timed jazz hands.

Chapter Text

Five felt the color drain from his face after Klaus’s proclamation that Ben was here.

Ben – his brother. His family. His brother who had died while Five wasn’t even there for him. To Five, Ben had been there forever, then the next second Five was in a strange, terrible world where Ben was dead. And now Ben was apparently here, outside the stupid MeriTech building, and suddenly Five couldn’t breathe.

Diego seemed at a loss for words, then his face twisted into a scowl. “Don’t joke about that. You’re high – you can’t see ghosts when you’re high.”

Klaus scratched at his neck uncomfortably. “I am high.” He chuckled nervously. “I wouldn’t say I can’t see any ghosts when I’m high.”

“But you have said that – many times!” Diego yelled, putting both his hands on Klaus’s shoulders and shaking him.

Klaus didn’t bother to shake Diego off. He just wiggled his hands in a wishy-washy way, scrunching up his face. “Yes,” he said weakly, “I did. Turns out, fun factamundo of the day, not always… true. Ben can attest to that. He’s right by me. Been there since – well…”

Five stared intensely at the empty space beside Klaus, grief knotting his chest. He remembered the day he’d read Ben’s chapter in Vanya’s book – the denial, the horror, the grief, and the sudden realization that Ben hadn’t made it out of the Academy. He’d held hope for Vanya and Ben for being alive out in the apocalypse until he found the book. The fact that he’d still never found Vanya disturbed him. She probably died alone. 

Klaus cleared his throat. “He’s not on that side, kiddo –“ he gestured to his left – “Ben’s right there.”

Five felt tears stinging his eyes. “Huh.”

Diego went quiet, slowly taking his hands off of Klaus, seeming to register that Klaus wasn’t joking or hallucinating. His eyes were bigger and rounder than the moon as he looked from Klaus to the empty space indicated. “R – really?”

Five took a moment to realize that Diego stuttering should register as a sign of Diego’s shock since Five was so used to it just being the norm. In his time, Diego stuttered every day, but now apparently it was only under high stress. His older brother looked somewhat sick.

“Can… I talk to him?” Five asked, very quietly and very softly. It felt like his lungs had shrunk and with it his voice. All his usual demanding attitude seemed to have abandoned him in his time of need. Holy shit Ben. “Can he hear me?”

Klaus gave a big nod of his head, his hair bouncing with the motion. “Yes – he’s kinda freaking out – not sorry, it’s true! You are! Oh, say what you want, I’ll –“

Diego cleared his throat. He sounded hoarse when he next spoke: “Was that him? Speaking?”

“Obviously,” Five snapped, suddenly impatient and rather pissed. “Why didn’t you say something! Klaus! I – …whatever. This is pointless. Just tell – tell him I miss him.”

“You can tell him yourself,” Klaus said, raising his hands in the air as if to alleviate himself of that responsivity. “I’ll only be a ghost-translator for half of this.”

“We should move,” Diego said, looking around. They were in public.

Five glared at him, opening his mouth to retort that he didn’t give two shits what anyone said, but then noticed an elderly woman staring at them. He spun to her, giving her a murderous look and making her squeak. “Don’t stare, asshole – we’re having a family moment here!”

“Yeah!” Klaus chimed in. “It, well, involves a lot of death, so get outta here. It’s family moment, not stranger’s moment. There’s a difference!” The woman had left long in a huff before Klaus finished his speech, but Klaus clearly hadn’t been about to let that deter him from finishing.

Unfortunately, Diego was right that they shouldn’t be attracting too much attention. So, the three brothers – no, four, because holy shit Ben – shuffled to the shadowed side of the MeriTech building for more peace. It was colder in the shade, or maybe that was because Five was just so stunned it felt like a bucket of ice had been dumped on him.

Five took a deep breath, staring determinedly at Klaus’ side. And if he was looking at his eye-level because his only memory and visual for Ben had him at Five’s height, well... nobody called him out on it. “I… I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

Klaus smiled, looking both amazed and teary-eyed like he wasn’t quite sure that this was happening. “He says it’s not your fault, and if you blame yourself, he’ll haunt you forever.”

Five had time in the apocalypse to think about all the things he wished he said to Ben, the brother who always joined him in the library and let Five ramble. The brother who came to Five for advice, and the one Five went to vice versa. He swallowed harshly, closing his eyes. If he closed them, he could imagine that Ben was actually in front of him.

“Love you, Ben. Sorry,” he mumbled, voice rough as sandpaper.

He opened his eyes. There was nothing in front of him. Only Klaus’ sympathetic face. Five rapidly blinked, not letting the tears sheening his eyes fall. Nothing. There was nothing. Because Ben was dead.

“Ben says he loves you back,” Klaus said, rubbing at his arm and eyeing – presumably – an invisible Ben. Then, a mischievous spark lit Klaus’ eyes: “He also said – and you have to do this, to honor his memory, yeah – he said to do this in his name.”

Klaus reached out and pulled Five into a hug, and Five limply let himself be hugged. His heart seemed like it was trying to crack in three (it had already been cracked in two the day he time traveled).

Five slowly reached up and hugged him back, tears freely falling down his face as he burrowed his head into Klaus’ chest like he used to do to freshly laundered towels.

“Guys,” Diego said, sounding rather hoarse like there was a lump in his throat. Diego was always an emotional child, so it was rather relieving to Five to see him finally behaving normally. Familiarity went a long way, especially in such a different world.

Five pulled back like he’d been slapped, stuffing his hands in his pockets and stepping away from Klaus and Ben. He couldn’t resist darting a glance to Klaus and saw his brother frowning reproachfully at Diego.

“Family moment!” Klaus said.

Diego crossed his arms tightly, though it looked less defensive and more like he was hugging himself. “I’ll talk to Ben later – don’t interrupt me –“ Klaus had indeed opened his mouth to interrupt Diego “ – it’s because the cops are right across the street at that motel, and we should get out of here before… ah shit. She saw us.”

Five looked over. A policewoman across the street who had been scanning the area with a hand over her eyes to shield from the sun’s glare perked up and stalked in their direction.

She was jogging over from the motel, which was roped off with vibrant yellow police tape and surrounded by red and blue flashing police cars.

Five instinctually took a step back, eyes widening in alarm – did this scowling woman know that he was the murderer? And if so, how the hell did she know he’d killed some of the people in that motel? Why was she coming over to them?

He side-stepped closer to Klaus, then gave his brother a What-The-Hell-Is-Happening-And-Are-You-Responsible look. Klaus didn’t say anything, just kept staring at the woman. Oh, that jerk definitely knew what was happening, Five was sure of it.

Klaus had no idea what was happening.

This was true for most days, but still… it wasn’t exactly a good thing.

Five looked rather frightened, and clearly didn’t know what was happening, so Klaus suspiciously looked at Diego. His vigilante brother looked annoyed but there was a relaxation in his stance that made Klaus ease up.

“Who’s she?” Five hissed, looking about two seconds from teleporting back to the Academy.

“Nobody tells me these things,” Klaus said with a sigh, narrowing his eyes at Diego in question.

“Just my old police partner.”

Klaus grinned, eyes lighting up with an unholy glee that Ben could attest was usually reserved for splendidly terrible thrift shop finds like a Peppa the pig shirt that just said ‘bastard’ in comic sans. Which he did buy. “They totally boned,” he told Ben, who palmed his face but reluctantly nodded.

The policewoman came right up to them and halted, planting her hands on her hips. Her lips thinned with disapproval.

 “Hey,” Diego said, boldly ignoring Klaus’ comment. “Eudora, it’s good to see you.” The woman, Eudora, did not look whatsoever interested in pleasantries. She held up a taser threateningly and Diego shuffled away.

“Don’t call me Eudora.”

“See you haven’t changed, Detective Patch,” Diego said once he was arms distance away.

“Definitely boned,” Klaus repeated with more excitement. He glanced at Five, who looked rather incredulous. Five had always been a skeptic. “Now that the cat’s out of the bag, the beans spilled, the –“ Five cleared his throat and Klaus stopped listing every metaphor for a secret being revealed that he knew – “Well… I can say Ben agrees.”

Five considered this then nodded seriously, lips thinning. “Then they definitely boned.”

Klaus grinned – victory! Ben rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe you’re using your dead brother to make your impressionable little brother agree with you.”

“You do agree, though,” Klaus reminded him, inwardly scoffing at anyone calling Five ‘impressionable.’ The little brat was so stubborn Klaus doubted he’d ever been impressionable.

Eudora stared at Klaus with something like horror and curiosity. Not unlike the look children had for dead animals seconds before they poked them with a stick. “Is that Klaus?” she asked.

Diego did not look pleased. “Eudora, meet Klaus. He has tact. Don’t you, Klaus?”

Klaus gave her a little wiggly-fingered wave and conspicuously didn’t answer Diego’s question.  

Eudora seemed to have finally taken them all in instead of hyper-focusing on Diego and slowly lowered the taser as she saw Five, though she appeared suspicious. She opened her mouth, but Diego beat her to the point –

“I didn’t kidnap the kid.”

She closed her mouth, then something else seemed to dawn on her and she opened it again.

“Klaus didn’t either.”

“Right…” she said slowly, then sighed. “Diego, what on Earth have you gotten into this time?”

“Eudora, meet…” Diego wavered, gesturing vaguely at Five and Klaus but not saying anything. He seemed at a loss if he should be honest here.

Klaus understood that. Diego didn’t want to overwhelm the woman he was totally into and who was possibly his girlfriend. Unfortunately for Diego, Klaus understanding something didn’t mean shit, so Klaus helpfully chimed in, placing a hand on Five’s shoulder: “Five, Eudora. Eudora, Five. He is indeed the Five you’re thinking of.”

She took their little brother reappearing looking like he hadn’t aged a day decently well. “Nice… to… meet you?” She gazed at Diego imploringly, but Diego wasn’t forthcoming with an answer.

“Time travel’s a bitch,” Five interjected, his voice cracking like a prepubescent boy… which he was, so that was fair.  

“Language!” Diego, Klaus, and Ben said in unison.

Five crossed his arms, scoffing. “Three months ago, Klaus taught me German curse words, and Diego got in trouble for saying fuck. But now that you’re older you’ve someone gotten more boring, and more hypocritical.”

“Well butter my biscuits and call me a butt,” Klaus exclaimed somewhat nonsensically with a deep sigh, “That isn’t… wrong. Fuck, I mean – I did teach you all you know.” He giggled. “Time travel is a bitch. I’ve gotten all – discombobulated up in the ol’ mind just thinking about how I taught you that three months ago, but also, like, seventeen years?”

Eudora blinked. “What?”

Right. She was still here.

Ben was hiding his face in his hands, muttering something about second-hand embarrassment. Jokes on him, assuming Klaus could ever feel embarrassed. Pah.

“Don’t worry about it,” Klaus said, waving a hand like he could shoo away the confusion.

Eudora pinched the bridge of her nose, then rounded on Diego. “Diego – you care to explain what you’ve done?”

“Well, Five –“

“Not Five! The motel! The receptionist said she was attacked, and some kid saved her, then you came. There are dead bodies in there, Diego.”

“They must’ve shot themselves,” Diego said stoutly, daring her to argue.

She scoffed. “Some, yes. Some had broken necks.”

“What a shame,” Diego said, inspecting his fingernails. It would’ve worked better if he was wearing nail polish (he really should wear some, Klaus had photo evidence from their teenage years that Diego rocked black nail polish).

“I’ve got to take you in, Diego.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Diego countered easily, not looking very worried, and even helping Eudora handcuff him. Klaus squinted, trying to figure out if that was couple goals or more of the endless proof that his brother was a weirdo. “Five, Klaus… Ben.” Diego nodded shortly in farewell.

Five gave a serious nod in return like he was an accountant finalizing a – a tax deal or something (Klaus didn’t really know what accountants did, actually) and not literally in a school uniform. Klaus waved goodbye with exaggerated cheerfulness and blew a sloppy kiss.

Klaus heard Eudora hissing “Ben?” to Diego as she carted him away, sounding appropriately bewildered. Eh, this was what she signed up for, dating a Hargreeves. Ben giggled somewhat manically, clearly still not used to that doozy of a secret being out.

What Diego said to her was lost to distance, as he was manhandled into a cop car.

Five stared after him, looking lost in thought. Klaus clapped his hands obnoxiously to get his lil’ brother’s attention, and Five, blinking rapidly, turned to him. Klaus cleared his throat: “What say we do now?”

Five agitatedly started pacing. “We have to wait until someone buys that stupid eye.”

“And how’ll we… know when someone does?” Klaus scrunched up his face.

“Think – think! We need someone who can talk to the hospital and get them to tell us when someone…” Five trailed off, and they exchanged a look.

“Allison!” Klaus and Five cried in unison.

“Back to the Academy then!” Klaus chirped, looking to where the car was parked. He technically couldn’t drive, but it should be fun. Especially since it wasn’t his car. “Come on!” He turned back. Five was already gone. That little shit. Grumbling, he jogged to the car, finding Five already in the backseat, seatbelt on and tapping his foot impatiently.

“I should put you in timeout for that,” Klaus muttered. “Or! Better than a timeout, I drive so fast we get to have a car chase with the cops! Hmm?”

Five paled, clearly unsure if Klaus was joking. “I’ll leave.”

“Spoilsport,” Klaus said, sighing. “Seatbelt on, Ben!”

“You’re a jerk,” Ben said; being incorporeal he could be touchy (Hah! Touchy! Get it!?) about jokes like that.

The trip back to the academy was quiet, all of them lost in thought about how cool it would be to be an actor like Allison. Or, well, Klaus was thinking about that, he couldn’t speak for the others.

Inside the Academy, they tracked down Allison, who was talking with Pogo. She looked up when they came over. “There you are! Pogo – I’ll look at the tapes later. Where have you been? I’ve been worried.”

Pogo left while Klaus, Five, and Ben shuffled forward, trying to explain what happened in simple terms. Klaus gave it up as a lost cause only one sentence in and just explained that the eye was important.

“And Diego is in jail,” Five added, making Allison’s eyebrows skyrocket.

“I’ll bail him out later,” she said dryly.

“His police girlfriend will let him go,” Klaus assured her.

Her eyebrows impossibly climbed higher. He grinned innocently as she slowly shook her head, laughing to herself: “I’m… not even going to touch on that. So, you just need me to rumor someone at this Jackpines hospital? I can do that. I can do better than that.” She looked determined, and when Klaus prompted her she explained: “I can do it without my powers. I don’t want to – abuse them like I did before. Some doctor is bound to be a fan of me.”

They exchanged a smile before she wandered away to find her phone and make the call. Klaus wished that his power was more like that, something he could just decide not to use. No offense to Ben. He respected her decision to try and do it without powers, though he crossed his fingers she was right, and someone would recognize her.

“Say, Five, should we get some lunch?” He turned around to Five, finding the boy obviously with his head in the clouds. There was a faraway look in his eyes, and he looked paler than some of the ghosts Klaus saw.

Klaus waved a hand in front of Five’s face, and the boy startled. “What was that for?” Five demanded. Before Klaus could give an answer, Five continued: “Never mind. I’ll be… right back. I have to find someone. I shouldn’t have left her alone for so long.”

“That’s suspicious,” Ben said, looking alarmed. “He doesn’t know anyone besides us.”

“Not so fast there,” Klaus said, “Who?”

Five ignored him, taking a steadying breath. “I hate teleporting,” he grumbled to himself as he appeared to hype himself up. “Be back soon.” Then, he disappeared with a burst of blue, leaving Klaus grabbing at nothing.

“Shit,” Klaus said eloquently.

“Last time he disappeared, he got shot, Klaus. Shot.”

“I know, I know, I know, I need to do something.” Klaus wrung his hands together. “I’ll get him lunch ready. For when he gets back! Don’t give me that look, what else am I supposed to do?” He had no clues for where the boy could’ve gone and no Diego to help him sleuth it out. If Five didn’t come back in under an hour, he’d have to go out searching and hope luck was with him, but until then…

Klaus wandered down to the kitchen, noticing that Mom was absent. She’d been acting off recently, so who knew where she’d ended up. He’d look for her in a bit since one missing person was good enough for him, thanks very much.

Ben read a book at the table while Klaus clumsily cracked some eggs into a ceramic bowl. He’d been planning on making microwavable ramen, but Sir Reginald Stuffy-Pants was apparently above that so eggs it was.

Just as he was searching for the frying pan, there was a tremendous crash from upstairs.

He looked up slowly, then exchanged a look with Ben. They both ran out of the room. “Five?” Klaus yelled, running up the stairs and skidding into the grand entry room with pillars and looking around.

But it wasn’t Five.

It was two people dressed in black holding guns and wearing bulbous, round masks. One mask was a pink bunny and the other a truly disturbing blue and yellow bear.

They turned to face him.

Chapter Text

Five shoved his hands into his shorts pockets to hide the way they trembled while he gazed up at the looming department store. Even though he was staring at it, he wasn’t… seeing it, not as it was now.

It hadn’t looked like this in the apocalypse. The sky had been an ugly, putrid brown, caked in smoke and smog—it had been like that simultaneously only two days ago and hadn’t even happened yet. The dilapidated department store had still been burning, the towering orange flames the only vibrant color for what felt like miles. Everything else had been made gray by ash and dirt. He had stumbled inside—it was only hours after arriving in the apocalypse, and he still had hope he might find somebody, anybody. It had been shortly before finding the bodies of his siblings, when the last dregs of his hope bled away. A world without his family was obviously not one that was going to be kind to him—if his siblings were dead, it almost made sense that everybody else would be too.

His throat felt dry, overflowing with ash, god—he couldn’t breathe, how was he back there, he was supposed to be safe. When he pulled in a shuddering lungful of air, it wasn’t permeated with ash, dust, and death, it was just air.

It was just air, but he still couldn’t breathe properly.

The bandaged wound on his arm throbbed with every minuscule movement, and Mom hadn’t given him pain killers, though he didn’t think his siblings even noticed. Five remembered many times where he begged her for some sort of relief when a mission went sideways, or Dad’s training left… unfortunate marks. It was always the same answer: “I’m sorry, Number Five, but any pain medication may impede your power, and your Father wants you in optimal condition.”

His throat worked furiously, trying to take in blessed air, but he couldn’t stop panicking. He was useless – what kind of hero couldn’t even look at a damn store without crumbling, falling to pieces like a house of cards sent tumbling over the removal of one measly card. Just one thought, just one thing, and he was undone.

A hand landed on his shoulder, flinching him out of his reverie. He jerked to look at a kindly old woman holding the leashes for two small wrinkly dogs in one hand. They yapped and twirled around her ankles, faces flopping in a morbidly fascinating way. He had to tear his eyes away to pay attention to her.

“Are you okay, hun?” the old woman asked, face crinkling into a smile.

His heart was trying to pound out of his chest, he wanted to scrub his skin until it was raw and not a trace of the dirt he knew was still under his uniform remained, and his stomach was ravenous with a familiar hunger. The only thing he had eaten since time traveling was some snacks on his first night here.

“Your dog’s face looks like it hit a wall,” he pointed out, voice cracking dangerously. It was safer than giving an honest answer—was he ‘okay’, god, take a wild guess, lady, what did she think? Did she ask all kids having panic attacks in parking lots that? Christ. Kindly old women didn’t want to hear about the damn apocalypse, so he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood rather than say anything else. He was fine, he was going to stop the apocalypse, and he wasn’t back there no matter how much it had felt like it.

He heaved in a breath of moderately clean air, just to prove he still could, then stalked away before the aghast woman had time to gather her thoughts. He faked a confidence he didn’t feel, flinching at the rush of air conditioning that met him when he stepped inside. When he spatial jumped and left Klaus at home, he hadn’t really considered that would, obviously, mean he was now alone here. He hated being alone. Even though there were other people here, it wasn’t the same. They were all nameless faces, reminders of what would be lost if he failed and the apocalypse came in seven days.

Now he was in the department store, he realized he had no idea where Delores was. The mannequin bust had to be here somewhere, but the racks of clothing, walls, ceiling, and even the floor were currently far too intact for any of it to ring familiar.

Jesus, Dad would be so disappointed in him, freaking out like a little baby over visiting a damn clothing store. A dark, well-buried part of him was hideously relieved Dad wasn’t alive—he could just imagine all the extra training he would be forced to do. Dad’s favorite method for training spatial jumps had been shoving Five off the spiral staircase they had used to practice running and ordering Five to spatial jump right before he became a bloody heap on the floor.

“You must be in the utmost control of your powers, Number Five,” Reginald would say, again and again, dangling Five over the railing while Five thrashed in his bruising hold and begged for it to stop.

Five considered, as he meandered through the racks of clothing, air conditioning cool on his skin, if they still had to do training. Vanya’s book had said the family didn’t go on missions anymore, but would that change now that Five would be back? Everybody had come together for the funeral. Maybe they were planning on training him now, all of them going back to living in that stifling manor. He… was ashamed to admit he really, really hoped they wouldn’t do that. Klaus surely would have told him if that was the plan, right? Unless… no, he couldn’t let his mind go down that path. Klaus wasn’t like Dad;  he would never do that.

Luther, though… it was impossible to tell. They hadn’t talked much, though that was mostly on Five—he had run off with Klaus and Diego without giving his other siblings much of a chance to chat. Would he want to continue Dad’s training? Would Five be able to stop Luther if he wanted to? Five fisted his hands deeper in his pockets and swallowed around the lump in his throat. He was so lost in his grim worries that he nearly walked right past Delores.

He froze, then turned.

She was posed on a box, tall and undamaged — Five had honestly forgotten she wasn’t meant to be only from the chest up. That had been how he found her, that first day of the apocalypse. Here, now, she wore a yellow beret, a brown wig, and a black-dotted shirt.

He glanced around himself, stuffing his hands into his pockets. There were shoppers milling about, but more importantly, there was a security guard by the sliding glass doors, and several employees with neon-colored shirts and nametags wandering around.

Ah. This was definitely another of his… less than thought out plans.

No sense stalling. The sooner he got out of this store, with far too many people to make him comfortable after two months of isolation, the better. So, he thinned his lips into a facsimile of a smile, rolled his shoulders back, cracked his knuckles, then grabbed Delores off the box, tucked her under his shoulder, and spatial jumped.

Or… he tried to spatial jump. An employee grabbed at his arm before he could, heavy fingers digging into the bullet wound. Five’s pained gasp went entirely unnoticed, the shock of the burning ache making his thoughts unravel. He didn’t even fight back, just stared at the employee, face drawn tight.

“Hey, hey, kid, you can’t just take those,” the man told him, irritation covered by a polite mask only mastered from years of retail service (or having a billionaire asshole dad who trained his kids to be weapons).

“No, it seems like I really can,” Five snarked, yanking his arm free and elbowing the man’s grabby hand away. Bony elbows: 1. Employee trying to stop him from shoplifting: 0.

Five sprinted off, progress slowed by the clunky mannequin he was toting. The weight wasn’t an issue, the plastic was simply hard to grip, the shape awkward to hold, and okay maybe he wasn’t as strong as he anticipated. Delores’ legs bumped into several other shoppers, who seemed torn between stopping him and minding their own business.

The male employee gave chase – he obviously took his job too seriously, considering none of his colleagues were stepping in to help.

The security guard stepped in front of the door, shaking his head in warning at Five. Unfortunately for him, Five didn’t care. He kept running full speed ahead, swerving to duck into a family-size restroom next to the entrance and locking the door.

There was pounding on the door, but it held firmly.

“It’s okay, Delores,” Five reassured the mannequin, adjusting his grip on her and trying to catch his breath. Jesus, his arm hurt.

Outside, the security guard and employee started talking furiously about grabbing the keys. They seemed convinced that he had cornered himself.

“There’s no way out, kid, just sit tight and we’ll get you,” one of them yelled, voice gruff.

Five adjusted his sleeves and smoothed out his shorts. “You keep telling yourself that,” he called back. “And for my next trick—”

He smushed down his fears around spatial jumping, took a centering breath, and the space around him warped, stretched, cracked. If he had to splice and compartmentalizes every precarious thought until he was an empty shell to save his siblings, then so be it. He wasn’t about to let the world end because he got arrested shoplifting. He growled in frustration when the energy dissipated around his hands as if sensing his turmoil. But he had been doing everything else right, that didn’t make sense.

Focus. Remember the equations.

The yelling outside stopped, replaced with the click of a key turning in a lock. Shit, he needed out of here right now. He wanted to go home, back to Klaus and Allison and Ben and all of his siblings. Blue energy swirled around his fists, and with a grunt of exertion he popped out the other side in the basement kitchen at home.

Hah. Those macho assholes at the department store would have fun trying to figure that disappearing trick.

He looked around, seeing nobody else. Hopefully he wasn’t home alone. Shaking off a shiver of unease that slit under his breastbone and refused to budge, he set Delores down next to the kitchen table.

“Much better,” he murmured, stepping back to observe the treasure of his shoplifting endeavor and nodding to himself. Then he turned, a crease wrinkling his brow. Now, to find Klaus. He would still be home… right? Surely he wouldn’t have left Five? Then again, Five never actually told Klaus to stick around. Maybe he’d already left. Struck by a surge of paranoia that he was alone again, he ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Halfway up, he heard a loud crash and what sounded suspiciously like a scream.

He froze. His heart made an admirable attempt at escaping his ribcage. Then, instinct born of a lifetime of training took over, and he sprinted up the rest of the stairs, stumbling over his feet at the top. “Guys?” he yelled, cautiously moving from the side hallway where the stairs to the basement lay and into the entrance hall. There was no response. Then, the distinct sound of gunfire from upstairs, where most of his sibling’s bedrooms were. He flinched, eyes going huge.

He took off upstairs to find out what was happening without a second thought.

Klaus stared down the two masked intruders standing in the entryway. One was big, big enough to give Luther a run for his money, donning an acrid blue and yellow mask. The other had on a pink bunny mask with floppy ears. Like a reverse mullet, these heavily gunned intruders were business on the bottom in sleek suit and ties, then all party on the top. They had apparently figured: why bother paying for clown school when they can go raid the Party City Halloween section and come out looking like Cirque De Soleil rejects?  

Klaus turned tail and ran. A hail of gunfire dogged his path. He wasn’t Diego, he wasn’t Allison, and he was quite definitely, certainly not suited for fighting. In both the literal sense of his outfit being way too sexy for any blood stains, and in the sense of him being shit in a fight like this. On missions, his siblings compensated for his weakness – he could handle himself with a weapon, he could fight at close combat, but against two masked intruders in masks who were more trigger happy than a ten-year-old playing Call of Duty for the first time? No thanks. He was in no hurry to discover how his ghost powers would translate to… actually being a ghost. Klaus was going to skedaddle, scram, dare he say vamoose.

He pelted up the stairs, falling over his own feet. By the cursing behind him, they had to reload. Hah, he thought hysterically, that’s what they get for just shooting and praying one would hit. Thing was, that strategy wasn’t terrible. A bullet was bound to hit sooner rather than later.

“Where did they come from?” Ben cried, following closely behind.

“Oh, yes, I’ll be sure to ask if they’re local or from Italy, just as soon as they stop trying to shoot me!”  

Klaus swerved to sprint onto the walkway above the living room. He heard his pursuers behind him – he only had seconds before they figured out where he went. Fear pressed against him, prickling bitter and sharp like the thorns of some poisonous vine. Strange, how he could go from overdosing in a back alley after a bout of frivolous disregard for his life to doing whatever he could to stay alive. He didn’t know if it was seeing his family again, if it was just the instinctual response to an outside force threatening his life, or what, but Jesus he didn’t want to die.

“Klaus!” Ben yelled, voice pitching high with panic. “This is a dead end, what are you doing?”

Klaus did a clumsy, anxious dance as if he were hopping on hot coals while he dithered over the options. The footsteps neared.

He jumped off the walkway, vaulting over the ornate iron fencing put there precisely to discourage him from doing something stupid like this. Ben screamed his name behind him, fear bleeding into his voice. Weird, how ghosts were still scared. Couldn’t catch a break, huh, Klaus thought wildly as he fell through the air, flailing his arms.

The fall only lasted a second, though it felt like eons longer, before he crashed onto the couch. It knocked all the air out of his body with an oomph. He wheezed out a curse, rolling off the couch and stumbling to his feet, ducking through the doorway to the entrance hall with its grandiose chandelier and white pillars. He leaned against the wall, catching his breath.

“Where did that rat bastard go?” a man, the one decked out in the evil Care Bear mask, yelled from up on the second floor. Klaus tensed in preparation to flee again.

“I saw him come in here,” a woman replied, voice more level but no less biting.

“Check the corners. Maybe we can use him as a bargaining chip.”

A bargaining chip? They weren’t here for him, then. That was good, in that at least he hadn’t forgotten pissing somebody off that badly. However, that meant they were here for one of his siblings. Oh, shit. His siblings.

Allison was still here, but how had she missed the gunfire?

Klaus ran for the second-floor bedrooms, skidding into the hallway to the left of the entrance hall and pelting up a flight of stairs. He did not miss having this many stairs to climb every day, though his doctor would love how good this was for his blood pressure.

“Allison!” he whisper-yelled. Where the hell was Luther when he needed him? Or Diego. The only sibling he didn’t want to see right now was Five. “Luther! I swear to –“ He ducked a spray of bullets, unsteadily trying to gain his balance. He blinked rapidly; guess they found him.

“Hey, assholes!” Allison cried, standing in the doorway to her room, eyes glinting dangerously. She waved her arms to get their attention. The moment the focus was diverted off Klaus, she cracked her knuckles and tossed a baseball bat in her hand. Oh. So, she’d been busy looking for a weapon. Knowing their dearest deadest dad, there were probably hundreds of weapons in this dump. A smirk quirked her lips. “Come and get me.”

“Is she insane?” Ben shouted, face tight with fear, hands clenched into frustrated, useless fists at his side. It could not be clearer that he would have given anything to help his siblings in this moment rather than the torturous experience of observing, watching, haunting. “A gun wins against a baseball bat!”

Fair, but Klaus stumbled to duck behind Allison anyway, taking his mind-controlling sibling over air any day. 

The man and woman invading their home exchanged pointed looks, then turned to open fire at the two siblings. They ducked into Allison’s bedroom, stumbling backward. Allison locked the door, putting all her weight into shoving her vanity in front of the door. A desk lamp toppled to the floor in a clatter, and several of her old papers and journals were shoved onto the floor.

“Dead end!” Klaus and Ben screeched at the same time. Dad had taught them never to corner themselves, to always go on the offensive when they could. This was not well planned. Allison pulled Klaus protectively behind her, face drawn in regret – she must have realized her mistake as soon as she made it.

“Please tell me Luther is going to show up any second,” Ben yelled from outside, keeping a watch on the masked intruders. “They’re going to just shoot right through the door! It’s wood!”  

“Where’s Luther?” Klaus asked Allison, voice pitching high, choking on a nervous chuckle. God, only in the Hargreeves family, huh. Back for only a few days and almost back to dealing with trigger-happy assholes; got to love the nostalgia it brought. “He has a relationship with steroids that would be so helpful right now.”

“He’s – he went out, something about a boxing place. Where’s Diego?”

“Prison foreplay still. And Five’s doing some kinda errand……uh, they got really quiet, should –“

He was interrupted by a hail of thunderous gunfire – true to Ben’s word, poor Allison’s door now resembled swiss cheese. The pink bathrobe hooked on the door fluttered with the force of the bullets. Klaus screamed and picked up the first thing to use as a weapon, which happened to be a way heavier than expected desk chair. The big guy punched a hole right through the wood, hand coming to grope for the doorknob.

Before he could realize there was something much sturdier blocking the door than a lock, Allison lunged forward with a war cry, swinging the bat high over her head. She brought it down on the man’s thick hand with a terrible crack that had everybody, including Allison, cringing.

The man howled, hand sliding back out of the hole.

“Those shitfaces,” the man yelled, “I just got a god damn wrist splint for that hand, Jesus Christ that hurts. You’re gonna pay for that!”

“Put it on my tab,” Allison snapped. Klaus oohed dramatically, putting his hands to his mouth to fake a scandalized gasp.

“That was a good one,” Klaus complimented breathlessly, heart rate still unhealthily high. If he died from a heart attack of all things, he was going to be pissed.

Allison flashed him a toothy grin then set her jaw. She shifted her stance, exchanging a loaded look with Klaus and jerking her head in the direction of the door, raising her eyebrows. She mouthed “on one?” at him and he frantically shook his head.

She wanted to make a surprise attack on them. Only problem with that was surprise attacks generally were supposed to have more… surprise than this. While everything about Klaus may be surprising… well, that wouldn’t be enough to keep him alive.

“Just rumor them!” Klaus whispered. Outside, the intruders were casually discussing the merits of getting a grenade from their car and tossing it into the room. Then they started bickering, which probably added a few minutes to Klaus and Allison’s burgeoning expiration dates.

“I can do it without,” Allison hissed back, waving him off impatiently.

Klaus scowled at her, and she stubbornly turned back to the door. He threw up his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, fine. But you’re not invited to my funeral if you get me killed.”

“You can come to mine,” Allison said generously, and they both shifted into position, Klaus shoving aside the vanity as stealthily as he could and Allison silently counting down on her fingers. Three. Two. One.  

 The woman outside said something disparaging about budget cuts, then shoulder slammed the door – thing was, she clearly didn’t expect it to actually work, given the full weight of the man trying to shove in had done nothing but probably give him a nasty shoulder bruise. Without the weight of the vanity, the door crumpled inward.

The woman practically stumbled into their arms.

Allison grabbed a switchblade from her vanity and why did teenager Allison even have that and in one smooth move, grabbing the disoriented masked woman, twisted her arm behind her back, and put a knife to her throat, tossing her gun behind them.

Klaus grabbed the woman’s other arm, dragging it behind her back and twisting it – she was a strong and wiggly woman, Allison had looked like she needed some help constraining her.

“Ow –she kicked my leg!” Klaus complained, trying to rub his leg with his other foot and only succeeding in stumbling over himself. “Je-sus that stings like a jellyfish with rabies.”

The man in the doorway froze at seeing his partner in such a vulnerable position.

“Don’t give in!” their hostage gritted out, finally going pliant in the sibling’s hold. “Just shoot them!”

“Surrender, or I’ll slit her throat,” Allison warned him. Even Klaus couldn’t tell if it were an empty threat.

The man seemed to struggle with himself – or, Klaus was fairly sure that was what he was doing. It was hard to tell what with the inflatable mask and all. Then the man dropped his gun with a clatter and toed it away from him.

“Further,” Allison snapped, “kick it out of range.”

The man kicked his guns away, stubbing his toe in the process, which brought another wave of cursing. Despite her life-threatening position, the woman that Klaus was now helping keep hostage still had the gale to roll her eyes. Klaus honestly could not tell if that was more insulting to her partner, to the siblings for not being intimidating enough, or to herself for having shockingly little self-preservation.

Allison considered the man, lips thinning. “So, what do you want with us? Don’t even think about lying.”

“I’m not here for you,” the man said gruffly, face firmly set on his partner. “I’m here for the kid.”

Allison’s determined expression faltered, eyes widening in surprise. Ben, leaning on the hallway wall behind the man, let out a small gasp, and Klaus felt the blood leave his face.

“Five?” the three of them clarified in unison. The man nodded, just once.

Allison seemed incredulous, but then, she hadn’t seen the destruction at the hotel like Klaus and Diego had. Those men had come for Five, with the explicit plan to kill or abduct him. Apparently, they’d sent in reinforcements. Who the mysterious ‘they’ were… well, that was the million-dollar question, and Klaus was dirt-poor.

“What do you want with him?” Allison demanded. “He’s just a kid, asshole.”

“Job’s a job,” the woman managed to bite out, chin lifted high to avoid getting nicked by the switchblade. “I don’t care if he’s the Queen of England.”

Klaus had to applaud Diego on appearing at literally the worst possible moment. Any other time, they would have appreciated some backup from the one brother who was literally covered in weapons. As it were, Diego leaped into sight to land on the big man’s shoulders with a grunt of exertion, and it all spiraled out of control.

“What the hell!” the man hollered, an understandable reaction to being ambushed by a man who gave the impression he’d learned about ninjas and hadn’t looked back since.

“Now that’s how you sneak attack!” Klaus crowed, making the mistake of slipping one of his arms off his grip on the bunny-masked woman to punch it into the air. She yanked free, lunging for the guns behind them on the floor. Allison ran to help Diego, who had been shoved against the wall by the bear-man and was wheezing, throat caught in a stranglehold.

Klaus would love to help, but he had to stop the woman from getting the gun. He accidentally tripped her in his haste to steal the gun before she could, hit the side of Allison’s bed with his knee, and sprawled in a gangly mess to the ground. That didn’t stop him from crawled and reaching, stretching out his hand to grab the gun. The pads of his fingertips grazed the cool metal. Then the woman wrapped her hand around the barrel and flipped it the right way around to aim right at Klaus’s head.

In the hallway, Diego was a crumpled heap on the floor, groping at his throat, Ben was yelling, and Allison was locked in hand-to-hand combat with the bear-mask man. As he watched from the corner of his eye, the rest of his focus on the gun in his face, the man picked her up and slammed her to the ground, where she wheezed.

Then, of course, things went from worse to absolutely terrible when a familiar little voice yelled from downstairs, “Guys?”

Diego lifted his head, eyes flicking rapidly from Klaus, to Allison, to where Five’s voice had come from. Then, in a burst of movement, coming alive with a protective fury, he grabbed the gun the man had kicked aside. Standing up tall, he fired at the ceiling, raising a knife threatening with his other hand. “Nobody move!” he yelled.

Five skidded into the hallway.

In true Hargreeves fashion, everybody – including Diego, that hypocrite – immediately moved.

Chapter Text

Five only had a moment to try and comprehend the scene happening in the dimly lit corridor. The scene he had sprinted straight into. His gaze flicked between all of his present siblings, trying to see if they were hurt – the gunshots he’d heard, it hadn’t been them being shot, right? God, no. It couldn’t be.

Allison was fighting with a bulky masked man in a crisp suit and tie, her teeth gritted. Blood speckled her otherwise pristine dental work. Five sucked in a gasp when the man’s punch landed squarely on her cheek. She reeled back, crashing into the wall with a painful thud.

“Five,” she yelled, voice tight with pain. She spat out shiny red blood, a hand coming up to her cheek, her instinct to prod at bruises evidently still there no matter how hard Dad had tried to get her to stop. “Get out of here.”

But Five couldn’t leave. Not when his siblings were in danger. Not when Klaus was on the ground in Allison’s room, past the splintered husk of her door, with a gun to his head. Not when Diego fired his own twin gun at Allison’s attacker only for it to give the telltale click that it had run out of ammo.

The masked man swiveled to look at Five, letting out a disbelieving huff. Allison pounced, jabbing him in the side with a kick, and he grunted, shoving her to the ground. She turned it into a summersault, springing back to her feet to kick at him again, but he managed to catch her shoe and unbalance her. For a split second, the move eerily paralleled the white fighting poster they were in front of, with the cartoon drawings locked in the same pose as them.

The masked woman turned away from Klaus, bunny mask eyes fixed blankly at Five, who felt blue pinpricks of ice roll down his spine and automatically stepped back. He knew, deep in his gut, that her real eyes were just as cold and callous as that beady black bunny stare.

“So, you’re Number Five?” she asked rhetorically, taking the gun off of Klaus — that was good — to aim at Five, which was… decidedly not as good. “Can’t believe they sent us for this low-level hit.”

Allison froze, stopping her efforts to take down the man, and Diego gave a wordless growl of anger.

“Back off,” Diego bit out, eyes darting between everybody in the corridor. He fingered one of his knives, obviously trying to decide what would be the best move.

They were here because of him? He thought of the men from the hotel this morning who had said he could come with them or die. It had to be the same people, right? His pulse was deafening in his ears, breath hitching in a traitorous move that only revealed how scared he was to his enemies. Stupid – it was an amateurish, stupid hope to think they’d leave him and, more importantly, his family, alone. As an Umbrella Academy student, he was used to dealing with threats that he sought out, not ones invading his home, attacking his siblings, all because of him. He hoped Delores would be okay in the basement kitchen.

Before the woman could shoot at him, before Five could tear through space, Klaus made a desperate grab at heroism, rising from his knees to grope for the gun. He kneed her in the leg, by some miracle remembering where a particularly painful nerve was, nailing his bony knee right where it hurt most. She howled. He fumbled for the gun, but the woman swung it around, hitting Klaus soundly across his forehead and sending him to the floor.

He crashed down in a crumpled heap, going dreadfully still.

“No!” Five cried, voice pitched high and cracking with emotion. Allison and Diego ran forward. The woman shot at Five. He ripped through space not a heartbeat too late, ears ringing with the startled cries from his siblings, and, oddly enough, from the man in the bear mask.

Five appeared right behind the suited woman in Allison’s room. Realizing he had no weapon, he forced his way through another spatial jump, appearing panting in the basement kitchen. Black spots blurred his vision in a vignette effect.

Everyone had a limit. Five was no different – there was only so much he could do before he drained himself, and he had already been in one fight today. Two, if he counted the brief scuffle in the clothing store. Too bad for the damn universe trying to buffer him, because he wasn’t about to abandon his family when they needed him. This could wait. He controlled his body, not the other way around.

His clammy hands shook as he pulled a knife from a drawer. He reached for his power and gripped on for dear life, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. With a warp of blue and a grimace, he appeared back in Allison’s bedroom.

His heart dropped when he saw that Diego was unmoving, slumped against the bed, only feet from Klaus. He must have tried to check on his brother. Five almost dropped his knife in his haste to check his brother’s pulse, blinking hard to try and clear his vision.

The world was spinning dangerously, only tilting back into some semblance of sense when he found a steady pulse, Diego’s wrist warm to the touch.

Five felt more than heard somebody approaching him from behind. He threw himself bodily into another jump that had his stomach swooping dangerously, nausea curdling his stomach. He reappeared in the corridor, where Allison was held at gunpoint by the woman. A hand landed on his shoulder, and Five turned, thrusting the knife forward, but the man with the bear mask easily grabbed Five’s wrist and bent it back until his numb fingers dropped the knife with a clatter and his bones screamed for relief.

He tried to spatial jump, but his hands glowed blue briefly only to fizzle away like the dying embers of a once raging fire. “Not now,” he gasped out, humiliated to find himself shaking, his voice as tremulous as his body. His eyes stung – either with pain or emotion, it was hard to differentiate when his feelings were so agonizing.

“Just give it up already,” the man told him, voice weary and annoyed, allowing Five to free his wrist with a hiss of relief, but keeping a bruising grip on his arm. For all it ached, at least he wasn’t jabbing at the gunshot wound from earlier today. Five’s writhing and struggling were for naught – the man was too big, he was too small, and too weak, and too little of everything that mattered. “If you even think about trying your little disappearing act, I’ll kill the moron first.”

Five went boneless in the man’s hold, feeling his face flush with a rush of terror. That could be any of his siblings, but he had a suspicion it was referring to Klaus.

“Atta boy.”

Allison, from across the corridor, heaved in a breath, whipping her head up from where she had been tamely staring at the floor, long braids flying with the movement. She warred with herself briefly, then – “I heard a –“

The masked woman flipped one of Diego’s knives in her hands and pulled Allison up to hold it against Allison’s throat. Allison laboriously gulped, trying to lean away as best she could from the weapon. She stared at Five, stricken with guilt, then her jaw set.

“I heard a rumor that you –“

“—not a chance,” the masked woman groused, pressing the knife harder against Allison’s throat.

“Don’t hurt her!” Five screamed, more of a plea than a demand, caught between needing to try and escape from the man holding him in place, and the fear that he would just get Klaus killed.

The woman huffed, swinging her gun around, delivering a sharp blow with the butt to Allison’s crown, making her fall to her knees. It took a lot to knock somebody unconscious – Allison was conscious, but only barely. She grabbed at her head, moaning in pain and squeezing her eyes tightly shut, lashes wet.

Five was dragged along with his… home invader (Kidnapper? Hired hitman? Asshole obviously overcompensating for something with a big gun?) when the man joined his partner at her side. Five wanted nothing more than to help Allison but could do nothing but silently and meticulously recite Latin phrases that Dad had taught them. Compartmentalize. Don’t cry. Don’t think about what was happening. Otherwise, he may very well die from a heart attack, and what a way that would be to go after everything.  

 “Say one word, and I’ll make you watch while I kill your little buddies,” the masked woman ordered Allison, swatting his sister’s head with a well-polished shoe. She turned that merciless, cold-eyed mask onto her partner, looking up over Five’s head like he wasn’t even there. “Should we just kill ‘em?”

Five could feel the man behind him shrug. “Eh. They can’t do shit right now. Let’s just take the kid and go.”

“Woah, woah woah – why not just kill the kid? They said alive or dead, and honestly, I’m liking the sound of him dead.”

The hands keeping Five in place went taut before the muscles eased one-by-one. When the man spoke, unconcerned as could be, there was no sign of his muscle tick: “Come on, Cha-Cha, I think sending this kid’s ass back to the apocalypse or whatever sounds way more fun than just killing him. Besides, we both know the higher-ups change their minds without warning, and out of killing or bringing him in alive, only one of those can be easily fixed if they decide differently.”

The woman – Cha-Cha – considered this. “Yeah, whatever. Let’s just go.”

Five found his voice. “Not so fast, dipshits, I need to check on my brother, or did you forget that head trauma can cause brain damage?” Yeah… taunting had always been one of Five’s weak points.

The man released out a startled huff of laughter, while Cha-Cha just scoffed. “That dumbass already has brain damage; if he’s lucky, maybe I managed to jostle some of his screws back together.”

Only Five could make jokes like that. He bridled with indignation, hating that his brother couldn’t even defend himself. Only cowards insulted people who couldn’t argue back. “Don’t talk about Klaus like that!”

She froze. “…What’d you just call him?”

“His name,” he snarked, stomach dropping with a deep feeling of unease. “Heard of those? Or did your mommy not love you enough to give you one?” He knew that was rich coming from him, of all people, but she didn’t know that.

She made a noise of repugnance in the back of her throat, low and gravelly. “Mouthy, isn’t he?” she remarked as she stalked over to Klaus, despite Five’s vocal protests, and lifted up his head, observing him. She tilted his head this way and that, as if he were a favored doll, a plaything for others to be entertained by. It made Five sick to his stomach. “Is this Klaus Cotton-Eye?”

“No way,” the man holding Five protested. “Can’t be.”

Five opened and closed his mouth wordlessly, disoriented by the utterly wrong last name. What the hell? “You guys must not get out much – newsflash, multiple people can have the same name.”

Cha-Cha tore off her mask in one smooth motion, perhaps to observe Klaus better, scowling down at his older brother’s sprawled form like it was all his fault. She ran a hand through her evenly cut brown bangs, shaking her head. “It’s him, Hazel. Look.”

The man – Hazel – grumbled under his breath incredulously, pulling Five with him as he went over to peer closer at Klaus, pulling off his own mask as well. When Five craned his neck, he could see Hazel had a beard, which Five hadn’t quite expected.

“No, no,” Hazel denied, “the face is all – wrong shape. Wasn’t his nose bigger?”

“No, it’s the same face.”

“It can’t be, though.”

“I’d recognize his mug anywhere. It’s him, Hazel.”

“…Holy shit, it’s him.”

By now, the two seemed to have forgotten about Five entirely, though he wasn’t dumb enough to think they wouldn’t upkeep their threats if he tried anything. It wasn’t like he could spatial jump, anyway, not in this state. His body tingled all over, little bursts of pain like grinding sand trapped under his skin. It felt like his very atoms were clashing together as if they were flint and steel, leaving sparks that stung but didn’t burn.

Hazel chuckled shortly, a smile stretching across his face. That probably wasn’t a real name, same for Cha-Cha, but if there one thing Five understood, it was a complicated relationship with names.

“This is ridiculous,” Hazel said, torn between delight and a fascinated horror. “Best take him with us – Five and Klaus Cotton-Eye himself, what a catch. We’ll tell Commission and wait for further orders.”

Cha-Cha patted Five on the head, making him flinch violently. She grinned, unperturbed. They both looked so ordinary for people who seemed to work for some kind of shady organization; with the masks off, they could pass as normal. Even more normal than Vanya, and that was saying something.

They made quick work hogtying Five and Klaus, carting their two new spoils out of the mansion, passing by Allison on the way out. If she wasn’t unconscious by now, then she seemed to be seriously considering the potential benefits.

At least Five had a name. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was something: The Commission.

He could only hope that Klaus could shed some light on what the hell he had done this time when he woke up (please wake up).

Klaus lurched awake, urgency rolling over him in waves, his mind screaming at him to get up. It was at odds to how his head felt as full of lint as his bellybutton. He tried to stand, head throbbing worse than the pulse of thundering music at a rave. Unfortunately, his valiant efforts to stand were utterly ruined by the ropes tying him to a chair. All he succeeded in doing was chaffing the rope against his skin. Hm. Ropes. That… he should have noticed that sooner, right? God, his head hurt.

He had no idea what the hell was happening – last he remembered, he and Allison had been doing cool moves… oh, right, then baby brother popped up, Klaus failed at kicking ass, and now somehow his own ass was tied to a chair.

“Holy moly, I can taste the color blue,” Klaus moaned in complaint, sticking out his tongue and making exaggerated gagging noises. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that would help the headache. He wished he could squeeze his nostrils shut too, block out the smell of cat piss and overuse of bleach that made his nose burn.

“No sleeping with a concussion,” Ben’s voice said, from right beside him. It made him twitch but wasn’t enough to get him to actually listen. He wasn’t sleeping, anyway. Just… trying to gather his scattered thoughts. Maybe using a butterfly net would help.

“Klaus!” a well-recognizable voice gasped out, and Klaus snapped his eyes open, seeing Five was in front of him, tied crudely to a wooden chair. He didn’t look too good, his light green eyes rimmed red, cheeks gleaming like he’d been crying, forehead wrinklier and more creased than one of those hairless Siamese cats.

“Five! Thank god, kiddo.” He paused, relieved smile faltering, thoughts finally catching up to his sight. “Wait, fuck. Why’re you here?”

“Why am I – this isn’t running into each other at the mall, we got kidnapped. And be quiet. They could hear us.”

Klaus nodded, then stopped, before ouch. He frowned, trying to find out what was wrong with him. Something was off. Even with the concussion, things seemed… oddly crisp to him, his mind not slummed up with bliss and floating thoughts. “Am I getting sober?” he whisper-yelled in horror. “Jesus Christ, get me out of here.” He did not want to deal with ghosts. Rehab had been hellish enough; he wasn’t looking for a repeat experience. No thanks, his tickets away from ghost hauntings were supposed to be a one-way trip and non-refundable. Ben was just a clingy little limpet of a ghost who didn’t count: a stowaway on the Klaus express.

Five let out a shuddering breath, lips twitching like he wanted to smile but couldn’t bring himself to. “We – we don’t have much time. Hazel and Cha-Cha are doing something in the bathroom, I think they’re – they’re getting directions from the Commission.”

“The what who when now?”

“You don’t know?”

“Obviously not.”

“Of course you don’t know. But then – how do they…. I…?”

Whatever the hell little Five was rambling about was cut off when Hazel and Cha-Cha – sounded fake, but okay sure – stalked into the room. He had no idea which one was which. He was disappointed to see they didn’t even have at least an evil mustache tucked under those masks – at least ol’ Reggie had the dramatic flair to grow one out. Ugh. Thinking about Dad made him feel all pissy – he was pretty sure a doctor would recommend not thinking about the old sack of farts for health concerns.

“Heyy, guys,” Klaus greeted them, trying to hide the tremble in his voice with a lopsided and entirely fake grin. Then, because it never hurt to ask: “So, uh, why bring us to your place here? Adore the motel chic, bee-tee-dubs.”

The woman smacked him upside the head. Okay, never mind, sometimes it very literally did hurt to ask.

“I ask the questions around here,” she said grimly. Wow, somebody had seen one too many action movies; that explained the Purge-style masks. “So. Klaus Cotton-Eye. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Uh,” Klaus said intelligently, with no idea where she was going with this. That wasn’t his last name, to begin with, but it was pretty funny. “I mean, yeah…” Hazel and Cha-Cha leaned in closer, mangling the concept of personal space rather impressively. Even Five gazed at him as if he would reveal the secrets of the universe. Oh, well, disappointment was what Klaus did best. His entire life was proof of that. Klaus cleared his throat, knowing this script from years of rehab. “My name is Klaus – ‘hi Klaus’ – yes, thank you, thank you, I’ve been addicted to drugs since, oh… feels like forever, but it started when I was…. uhhh…”

The tension was so thick it was suffocating. Klaus trailed into silence, giving a high-pitched, anxious giggle, then biting his cheek hard enough to taste the bitter iron of blood to stop himself from saying anything else that would get him killed. Probably shouldn’t have said that, come to think of it.

“Please shut up, please shut up, please shut up,” Ben chanted, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Five and… well, ghosts couldn’t hyperventilate, but he was sure giving it his best shot. Guilt was an emotion Klaus avoided on principle alone, so he shoved down the twinges of it plucking at his heartstrings.

“My bad,” Klaus mumbled, hoping that Thing #1 and Thing #2 didn’t think that apology was for them, god forbid.

The man threw up his hands. “I’m telling you, it can’t be him.”

“We agreed it’s him, Hazel, don’t take it back now!”

“No takesie backsies,” Klaus agreed without any idea what they were talking about. Keep the attention off Five, he told himself. As long as he did that, he could take whatever the hell they threw at him.

Cha-Cha’s face twisted in disgust as her attention returned to him. “You’re a lot more moronic than I thought you’d be. So… you gonna say how you did it?”

“Did what? Look so damn good? It’s natural, I’m afraid.”

She slapped him across the face, open-palmed. One of her nails caught on his cheek, scratching a long line. His head wrenched back with the violent swing, neck twinging with a crick.

“What’re you doing!” Five cried out in alarm, straining against the ropes. Klaus knew this was definitely not the right moment, but damned if he didn’t feel a little warmed by how he cared. Klaus wasn’t used to people caring; unreciprocated love and care and desire for attention was kinda his whole thing (he should get it trademarked).

Would his siblings even care if he didn’t make it out of this alive? He wasn’t exactly the figurehead of being a good brother, but… all those years had to count for something, right? Would they at least realize how hard he tried? Tried to connect, tried to make them feel better, tried to be their friends, their brother. That was all he really wanted. Fat load of good that did for him, but… he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.

“Don’t antagonize them!” Ben advised; he’d jumped to his feet when the woman slapped him and just stood there now, powerless to intervene, too full of adrenaline with no outlet to sit down.

Hazel cracked his knuckles, pressing his lips together in a hard line and stepping up to Klaus. “Come on. The Commission will probably just kill you in a couple hours if we don’t decide to do it beforehand. You got nothing to lose by telling us.”

Klaus laughed, high and thready. “I’m – I really have no idea what the hell you lunatics are talking about.”

“Klaus,” Ben whispered quietly. The amount of emotion he shoved into a name… wowie, it was painful to listen to.

Hazel ripped off his tie, maintaining eye contact, then set it around Klaus’s neck.

“Dress coding me?” Klaus asked, laughter faltering. The cold fabric on his neck seemed to burn where it touched, his entire body alight with tension, all awareness centering on that cool rustle of the tie on his neck. He forced his lips into a sardonic smile and looked anywhere but Five. Look at those duvets, sure were ugly, huh.

The man didn’t even bat an eye. “I’ve been in this business for decades. I know ways of torture that’ll have you confessing for everything your parents did.”

“You’ll be here a while, my dad’s a shitshow, his sin list is so long even Mr. Ol’ Saint Nick wouldn’t check it twice, and the priest would fall asleep in confession.” The tie on his neck tightened enough to dig into his skin. “Sorry, sorry sorry! Uh – uh, what was the question?”

The tie did not loosen. “How’d you even find the Temps Commission base?”

The what. Klaus had a feeling playing stupid – which he was a natural at – was not going to work in his favor here, even when it was entirely true. “Like I’d tell you,” he said instead. He studiously did not glance at Five but was sure that his little brother would be confused. Eh, he was a bright kid, he’d figure out it was a ruse.

Hazel nodded as if he expected this. “Figures. You use the kid? Figured out how to get to 1955?”

Cha-Cha eyed Five, and Klaus’s heart skipped a beat. Oh, no, they were not about to torture Five for information.

“Yes!” Klaus blurted out, relieved to find the woman’s wandering attention returning to him. “That’s… that’s what I did.”

Cha-Cha exhaled slowly. “You been hiding out in 2019 all this time? Bad year for that.”

The apocalypse, yeah, Klaus had heard of it. “What can I say, ladies and gentle-kidnappers? I’m a master of… stealth….work… stuff.”

Hazel looked reluctantly impressed, easing on the tie, allowing Klaus to breathe more easily. “Can’t say any of us thought to check 2019 for you – bold move. Hiding in plain sight in a year any sane time traveler would leave.”

Klaus, who did not know what the hell was going on, continued lying his ass off. It had got him this far. “I’ve always been a step ahead.”

Ben had a sudden coughing fit that was pointless on several levels, the first of which being it was obviously badly disguised laughter, and the second of which was that he literally had nobody else who could hear him, so why even bother pretending? Ben bit his lip. “You’ve literally never been a step ahead of anything,” Ben observed. That was generous. It was more like Klaus was on the wrong hiking path, had fallen off a cliff, landed on a beehive, and been attacked by a bear… or something.

Hazel shrugged. “I say we kill him, take back the kid. He’s too dangerous to keep alive. We already know the Commission’s had that kill-on-sight on him for years.”

“We haven’t got our orders yet, Hazel,” Cha-Cha refuted. “Think this through! You’re the one who said that death is significantly less fixable than just killing ‘em later!”

“Take the kid where?” Klaus squawked, feeling his heart drop. God, he was messing this up so badly. He was supposed to protect Five, not get captured with him. Though, he would rather be suffering alongside Five than be safe and comfy, stewing in the knowledge that Five was alone. No, no, at least this way the kiddo wasn’t alone.

“I am thinking I don’t want to be killed by Klaus goddamn Cotton-Eye,” Hazel bellowed, folding his arms across his chest, puffing up like a furious penguin.

“Moi?” Klaus asked, flummoxed. Maybe these two had eaten some of his ‘special’ chocolate, because this conversation was dizzying to try and follow. “I’m not into creating more ghosts, there’s enough of those annoying bastards as it is.”

They wisely chose to ignore him, though Ben did absently flip him off, acting off of pure brotherly instinct.

Hazel scowled. “On your head be it. Just know that the Commission doesn’t give a shit about how dangerous this is for us.”

Cha-Cha hesitated, and the moment stretched on, with Klaus’s life dangling in the silence, in the decision. Five seemed to have stopped breathing entirely. “…You’re being irrational,” she decided at long-last. “And I’m sick of it. Come on, I know what’ll cheer you up.”

“Cold-blooded murder of innocents?” Ben suggested acidly. Klaus made an odd wheezing noise he hoped passed as hyperventilating or something.

Hazel seemed to be fighting a reluctant smile now, anger fading away. This was by far the weirdest… flirting (???) that Klaus had seen in a while, and he’d seen Diego and Detective Eudora flirting, so he did not say that lightly. “The donut place?” he asked.

Cha-Cha nodded, casting a significant look to Five and Klaus and then raising her eyebrows meaningfully at Hazel. “With the woman who told us about the Parasol School, or, uh, what’s-it-called.”

“Umbrella Academy,” Five mumbled under his breath, making Klaus’s hackles raise. Fortunately, the two kidnappers didn’t pay Five’s correction any mind, busy having an entire conversation with just their faces.

Hazel nodded stiffly. “Fine. But this debate isn’t over.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Cha-Cha made quick work of trussing Five and Klaus up even further, duct-taping their mouths and turning the volume on the TV up until any noises they could try and make would be drowned out. The two kidnappers nagged and debated the entire time, continuing to whine as they went over to the front door, adorned with a Do Not Disturb sign.  

“They can take their protocol and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine,” Hazel was saying as he opened the door for Cha-Cha, who jeered at the gesture but obligingly went out first. The man hesitated for only a beat, glancing askance at Five and Klaus, then shut the door behind him.

Five started talking the second their kidnappers left, words tangled and incomprehensible through the duct tape. He gave a wordless scream of frustration in his throat and struggled against the ropes as if that would do anything, pupils dilated so much he looked like some kind of frightened animal.  

Ben hovered between the two chairs, as if unsure which brother he should be focusing on. “Get your gag off!” he ordered Klaus. “Be strong.”

Klaus glowered at his deadest brother – easy for him to say, he wasn’t the one with tape on his mouth. He stretched his jaw, trying to get the tape off that way. There were too many pieces of tape doubled on, it mostly just gave him a jaw workout. Five’s own method seemed to be… eating the tape? Alright. That was… too easy, it would never–

“Did it,” Five declared, still spluttering to get tape out of his mouth. There was a red square around his lips, where his skin had caught and been tugged. “HELP!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, which, holy shit, turned out to be incredibly loud. Ben winced, and Klaus flinched bodily away from the noise, scrunching up his nose. Allison was supposed to be the one with vocal powers, but apparently, it had secretly been Five all along.

Ben shook his head gloomily, face closing off. He got like this sometimes, trying to numb himself to what was happening. “TV’s too loud. Klaus—do something.”  

In a cruel fit of dramatic irony, the cable television seemed to be playing a bad action movie probably only found at shitty motels, with New Yorkers screaming their heads off as they ran from some big, low-budget CGI monster. Their screams were loud, shrill, and utterly annoying. At this point, they stood a better chance of being rescued by somebody with a noise complaint than anything else.

Still, Klaus barely noticed. The TV became a dull roar in his ears. His hands shook, heartbeat rapid, dread neatly settling in his ribcage. It was a familiar feeling, a nightmare revisited time and time again. Not just in sleep, but whenever he closed his eyes, whenever he tried to go sober, whenever he went to rehab in an endless cycle of wondering if this time, this time, he would be able to control it. But he never could.

A ghost stood across the room. She was elderly, with a shawl around her shoulders and a gaping hole in her forehead. She stared around as if confused why she was here, mumbling incoherently under her breath.

Klaus squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. “No, no, no,” he pleaded, words lost on the duct tape, horror clawing at him, leaving long bloody trenches on his heart. Not now. Please, not now.

The ghosts did not listen. And there were indeed more now. When he opened his eyes, the entire room was swarming with them. People of all ages, of all languages, all haunting their killers, all tormented with all, and worst of all: all desperate for a chance to be heard. The noise—oh, god, the noise. He was reminded of the parades that Reginald had forced the Academy to do, of being grabbed at by fans from all sides, the screaming constant, grating, and painful on his ears. It was all too much. At times, a voice would be distinct, but mostly it was just noise. Deafening in its fullness. He couldn’t hear his own thoughts, the pounding of his migraine only worsening, stronger than war drums now.

The ghosts continued to scream and sob:

“—It’s so dark it’s so dark it’s always so dark—”

“—MAKE IT STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP –“

“—where is my family? I need my mama—

“—mich getötet–“

Klaus hunched over, trying to force his head between his legs. Maybe if he curled up tight enough, he wouldn’t be swallowed up by the cacophony. A child screamed in his ear, and he swore he could feel the breath on his neck, but of course he couldn’t. Somewhere, somebody familiar was yelling, but he couldn’t focus properly.

These people were all dead, killed by Hazel and Cha-Cha, who now had Five and Klaus at their mercy. Though given the number of young voices – younger than Five, even – this “mercy” was a tenebrous concept at best for the kidnappers.

“—should’ve killed the fuckin’ kid when I had the chance—”

Klaus jerked his head up, opening his eyes to zero in on the man who had spoken. He was familiar, in that Klaus had seen his corpse earlier today. He was one of the ones who had tried to kill little Number Five.

Sometimes he forgot that all the Umbrella Academy had blood on these hands, and he realized... well, not all these ghosts had been killed by Hazel and Cha-Cha.

Chapter Text

It took Five worrisomely too long to get Klaus’s attention.

Klaus was curled up as tightly he could on the stiff, unrelenting chair, a pathetic attempt to make himself as small as possible. Five yelled his name, cursed him out, and even complimented him in a desperate attempt to shock him out of his stupor. Despite being literal feet away, Klaus didn’t even twitch, eyes darting sporadically around the room, seeing —fearing — things that Five was not privy to. 

Goosebumps feathered down his arms, skin crawling with the realization that they weren’t alone in this dingy hotel room. It was one thing to be aware of ghosts, of Ben, even, and another to know he could be surrounded and have absolutely no idea. Deeply unsettling didn’t even begin to cover it.

“Klaus!” Five cried, mouth still smarting from the harsh adhesive of the duct tape. His ropes chaffed his ankles as he tried to wiggle the chair closer to his brother. All he achieved was tipping the chair over, thudding onto the carpet with a groan of despair. 

From his awkward topple on the floor, Five looked up just in time to see Klaus jerk his head to Five, eyes glassy and unseeing, then suddenly alarmingly sharp. It was as if he remembered he wasn’t the only living soul here, and the sudden seriousness on his face made Five feel even more freaked out.

Klaus stretched out his jaw, making faces until the duct tape came undone enough for him to scream, voice hoarse and strangled–

“Five!”

Which was when the entire room exploded with noise. Five made a squeaky noise eerily akin to a creaky door and flailed madly in his bindings. 

“Holy shit!” he yelped.

The room was definitely, absolutely not empty anymore. He’d never seen a ghost before, for all Klaus had described them as a kid. It was — worse than he could’ve ever pictured. The blue forms, the gore, those expressive, pained faces, all caught in a rictus of agony. He was pretty sure that Klaus saw them in full-color resolution, which was even worse, but he was far too freaked out to compare notes.

The noise – it was so much. They were all yelling, talking over each other. It was a myriad of screaming and sobbing, fear heavy and heady in the air. He couldn’t hear his own thoughts over the overwhelming noises and stifled a scream of his own when one of the ghosts stepped through him. 

“What’s wrong?” Klaus yelled, though Five barely heard him over the commotion. “Did you – did you get an ouchie? Need me to kiss it better?”

A ghost was staring right at Five, who screamed again, flinching back in his restraints. He knew this man — it was one of the men who had tried to kill him, back in the shitty motel, the man who he had killed.  

“Klaus, turn them off, turn them off, turn them off, turn them off already.”

Klaus gazed at him blankly, then stared down at his hands with alarm. Even clenched on the wooden chair arms as they were, they throbbed an electric, glowing blue identical in hue to Five’s own powers. “You can — see them? But I can’t–” 

The second Klaus became conscious of what he had done, the noise and screaming and yelling all abruptly stopped as if somebody had pressed pause, ghosts disappearing in a blink. 

“Are... are they gone?” Five dared to ask. He turned his head as much as he could, trying to see if there were any lingering ghosts, heart trying to escape his ribcage. They were alone again. The sudden silence – apart from the blaring TV – felt too quiet in comparison.

Holy shit. Five hadn’t expected one of his… victims to confront him like that.

Klaus tilted his head at something — or someone — that Five couldn’t see. “You’d have to be the judge of that, buddy, because the whole party’s still goin’ for me.” 

Five stared at a stain on the carpet for a long second, absorbing this, then blinked and looked up at Klaus. “Wait – is it — it’s always like that?” 

“I haven’t been this sober since I was a teenager, little man,” Klaus said with a laugh, overly loud. He must be overcompensating for the ghosts, trying to be heard. “So–it would be like this without my, uh, drugs, y’know? 

“You said the ghosts don’t like to talk,” he accused his brother, thinking of conversations late at night, sneaking into each other’s rooms. He had mostly hung out with Ben and Vanya. Ben’s was the best room to go to because it was right across from Five’s room, just the two of them on that topmost floor. Sometimes Five was too wrought out from training, stomach nauseous or sometimes violently sick, body rebelling against breaking the laws of physics on a regular basis. On those nights… it was nice to be able to stumble over to Ben without spatial jumping, sit under the covers in a makeshift blanket fort, maybe whisper about their newest books. They even had a game — they called it “Cookie-Cutter” because in it, they didn’t have powers, they just were normal siblings. They had their own apartment, with no adults to train them, and they got to go to Griddy’s whenever they wanted. It was nice, fantasizing about school, real-life public libraries, a world where they were allowed to explore.

Klaus seemed unaware of the turn Five’s thoughts had taken and shrugged, jittery and shaking with manic energy. “Yes, well, they don’t talk — more like —“ he pulled a face and let out a garbled yell that certainly wouldn’t be winning him an Oscar anytime soon, “–y’know?” 

Five tried to shake this off, though he felt a bit hurt that Klaus never told him the truth. Then again, Five never told Klaus or anyone except Ben about his training. He could… relate to underplaying his weaknesses.

“What do you want to do when we get outta here?” Klaus asked, apropos of nothing. He stared fixedly at Five like he was trying very hard to not look elsewhere. “I’ll go first. I want to get high as a kite.” 

“I need to stop the apocalypse,” Five snapped. “Or there won’t be a world to do anything in.” 

Klaus went quiet. It was so unlike him that Five rewound what he said, trying to figure out what he’d said to cause this. “So, end of the world, huh. Was there — nobody else?” 

Five shook his head. This time, he wouldn’t have another lame episode, another fit. He could do this. It was just talking. He wasn’t actually there. His chest felt like there was something heavy pushing down on it, like he lay on the bottom of the deep sea with an anchor on his chest and not enough oxygen to last long. He started talking as if that would relieve pressure, as if he should use his last breaths to say something so pointless.

“I was—I was the only person... it’s — I didn’t see any bodies. Besides—“ he was about to say ‘besides yours’ but rethought it. It... felt too personal, too raw, even if he had no right to make it about him when it was his siblings who were dead, cold and crumpled in the end of the world. He just kept the knowledge, wedged somewhere under his breastbone, cold and achy. “…Besides at the beginning,” he finished weakly.

Klaus spluttered around his duct tape and managed to get it fully off his lips. It hung off his cheek like a tag. He ran his tongue over the back of his teeth in thought, humming low in this throat. “Climate change sucks, cutie-pie.” 

The nickname made Five feel things, none of which he wanted to touch with a hundred-foot pole. “If I wasn’t tied up, I’d punch you.” 

“Which is why my timing is always perfect.” 

“Except for when you slept in through a mission alert. And the entire mission.”

“That was — I did?” Klaus had to think about it for a while, then wheezed in amusement. “Ooh, that. Now... that was a mess. Worth it just to see Dad’s face.” 

“The press thought you died,” Five reminisced fondly. He yanked against his restraints, trying to find a weakness, but they held strong. “We thought you’d be in trouble for life.” 

“No, no, just a — just got shoved in the mausoleum for a bit.” 

It took a moment for that to sink in, so preoccupied trying in vain to loosen the ropes. Five blinked, squinting at the carpet. “The what?” 

“The... oh, yeah. Dad didn’t air out that secret of his ‘til I was sixteen. And whoo-wee, that secret was stale by then. I mean, really?” Klaus was avoiding the topic, eyes darting anywhere but Five. If he was choosing to look at ghosts rather than face his brother, it had to be bad. Really bad.  

Five nodded slowly, putting together the pieces. He hated the shape this story was taking. “Training?” he guessed, sympathetic.

He woke up in cold sweats sometimes, nightmares of training sessions where he didn’t jump quite right, where his body gave out on him, where he was scattered through the liminal space between jumps that didn’t quite exist nor have a name. Jumping was hard and it had always rankled him that nobody seemed to get that. The equations gave him some security, but he still had to account for mass, density, distance, and numbers that bounced around his skull like the world’s most complicated, mathematical game of Plinko.  

Klaus nodded stiffly. “Training. Uh, Dad sure was creative, huh?” He tried for a smile, but it fell flat. This entire conversation was stupid, really, but Five couldn’t help but give it his full attention. They should be preoccupied with escaping, as hopeless as it seemed, because Hazel and Cha-Cha wouldn’t stay away forever. Five didn’t want to die, or go back to the –

He changed his mind. Klaus’s distracting conversation was perfect. If he thought about the apocalypse, returning there after finally, finally fucking escaping, he would start crying. That just wouldn’t do.

“It’s okay to...” The word’s stuck in Five’s throat. He was bad at this, comforting his family. Even worse at it now that his siblings were older, now that he felt silly and small next to them. He just hoped they didn’t think he was annoying and immature. He tried again. “Dad’s an asshole, and you — he — you didn’t deserve that.” He scowled at nothing in particular. “Manipulative old bastard.” 

“I’ll drink to that,” Klaus said wistfully, though his lips were doing an odd thing like he was trying not to cry. 

Five panicked. Had he done that? “He’s dead now,” he tried frantically, “so don’t worry. About… uh, it. He’s so dead, so we’re orphans, which is—uh—you’ll never have to do any of that again. I’ll make sure of it.”

Klaus threw him an odd, amused look. “No, I’m just—it’s sweet. Nobody’s ever... said that. That it isn’t my fault. Well, Diego kind of has. But...“ he paused, blinking. “Hold on. Why’d I have to — SHUT UP, MAN, I’M BUSY – not you, a ghost; why would I ever need to do any of that bullshit now? We don’t... train anymore. We barely even see each other.”

Five shrugged, a jerky, embarrassed thing, especially given he was still laying on the ground, chair digging into the carpet. His arms hurt; the bullet wound ached angrily. Before he could explain his theory on Luther starting the Academy again, Klaus’s attention was fully torn away to a seemingly empty spot next to his chair. 

“I’m sorry, man, I don’t care who you are — oh. Are you... oh. Huh. That’s… iffy in a moral sense, but I’ll dig it.” 

Five wondered what they were talking about. 

Klaus was delighted to learn that the angry ghost of one of the assholes Five had killed was as pissed at his antemortem employers as he was at Five. Like any man after a nasty breakup, he was eager to share all his ex’s nasty secrets. His ex, in this case, being the Temporal Commission.

“They didn’t tell me shit about the job,” the man – Barry – ranted, getting really into it now. “I’m a local hire, but one of the guys wasn’t. He was our leader, came directly from the Commission. He was an asshole.”

“I’m sure he was,” Klaus soothed. “You’re better off without him, honey.”

“Yeah. Yeah! You’re right, I’m better off like this.” Barry was not better off like this. Barry was dead. Luckily, the man was too busy ranting to remember that tidbit. “I’m a hitman for hire, you know, so I’m used to tough jobs. But man, that brat could teleport. Who does that?”

“It runs in the family,” Klaus told him sagely, actually rather miffed at the insult to Five, especially when the kid was right there. Then again, Five couldn’t hear the conversation. Unless… whatever the hell Klaus had done before happened again. Which it wouldn’t. That had just been… a weird fluke. Nothing to worry about! Ben was doing enough worrying for the both of them.

“Don’t talk about Five like that,” Ben snapped at the other ghost. It figured that the second Ben was able to actually talk to somebody besides Klaus, he got hung up on small details such as ‘Klaus he tried to kill our brother’ and ‘he’s literally a murderer’ and ‘we saw his corpse this morning and you nearly stepped on his hand’ and ‘he looks like he bought his outfit at a costume store for villains.’ The last part was just flat-out mean, Benny-boy! Though, the all-black combat gear seemed… excessive, to be frank. But Klaus wasn’t named Frank, so whatever.

“Ignore him, he’s repressed,” Klaus told the hitman brightly, trying to shoo Ben away. “So. You’re hitmen? Are Hazel and Cha-Cha hitmen too?” A nod. “That… explains a lot, though not the masks. Are they required? You sure aren’t donning one.”

The ghost rolled his eyes. “No, just them.” 

“I do have to kink-shame that,” Klaus informed him remorsefully. Five made a choked noise. “What’s the Commission do, anyway?” 

“Take out irregularities in the timeline. We use the briefcases to time travel, kill who we’re told to.” 

“And… me? Do you... does Klaus Cotton-Eye ring any bells?” 

“Who are you talking to?” Five demanded.

“Uh. An informant.” Not like Klaus was going to tell the kid he was the one who killed their informant. “I got a man on the inside.”

“I’m dead.”

“Oh, now you remember,” Klaus said with a huffing giggle. “So, so–where would one find the base for these temporal irregularity hunters? If it’s the moon, Luther will never shut up about it.”

“The what? No,” the man looked snidely at Five like he wanted to say something. But, pretty early on, Klaus had told him that trying to haunt his brother would earn Barry nothing but a banished soul. Not like Klaus could do that, but this guy didn’t realize that. Lying had gotten him far in life! (And kidnapped, but… couldn’t win them all!)

“More’s the pity. So. Time-traveling hitmen. Christ, are we sure this isn’t a plot by the comic book company to get new plots? This is just—too much.” He was far too sober for this. 

“What? What was that?” Five asked. He was sooooooo adorable. Klaus’s head still hurt, aching with like, layers of pain, both emotional and physical. Goody. 

He smiled his best reassuring smile at Five. Because as ceaselessly irritated and grumpy as the cutie was, he never, ever disregarded what Klaus was saying. Yes, Five snarked and rolled his eyes and insulted him like there was no tomorrow, but as far as Klaus could tell, it was how the kid showed he cared. It showed he was listening intently, quite literally looking up to Klaus. He never felt stupid around Five; it was more than could be said for the rest of his siblings, bar Ben and, on occasion, Diego. (Even Vanya had a tendency to ignore him, and there was an irony somewhere in that.) 

“Just a little bit of ghost gossip, you know how it is.” 

“He doesn’t,” Ben said. “And neither do you. That’s literally not a thing.” 

“Ben’s just jealous I made a ghost friend before he did,” Klaus conspired. 

Ben rolled his eyes. “You need to get out of these ropes.” 

“And how do you figure I’ll do that?” 

Ben’s silence was answer enough. They were trapped here, wholly and utterly.

When Hazel and Cha-Cha finally returned, Five only felt dread. He gave an experimental tug at his powers, trying to dredge enough energy to just make one crucial spatial jump, but it did nothing. He was as hopelessly weak and trapped here as he had been earlier. 

“They got the damn duct tape off,” Hazel groaned, grabbing a roll off the bed and seeming to give it some thought to if he should just try again. 

Klaus grinned at them, all bite and no joy. “Got a bit peckish and ate it, I’m afraid. Room service here is awful, not even a meal for us poor, beguiled souls?” 

“No,” Cha-Cha said flatly. “But we did get our orders from Commission. Any last requests?” 

Five froze at the same time Klaus’s face went blank. 

“Yes, I have a request—“ Klaus started. “Uh, don’t kill us. How’s.... that for speed?” 

Cha-Cha took off her tie, circling around the back of Klaus’s chair. 

Five sucked in a breath, then abruptly stopped breathing. No, no, no. Klaus was not going to die here today. 

“It’s okay,” Klaus told Five, voice shaking, hazel eyes wide in desperate fear. He seemed to be struggling to breathe. “It’ll. It’ll be okay.” 

Five clawed at his restraints, all his muscles jittery. Panic washed over him. He was too weak.

This couldn’t be happening. 

Hazel heaved Five’s chair back upright, jostling his bandaged gunshot wound in the process.

Klaus grit his teeth, staying strong, even as Cha-Cha rolled her eyes and wrapped the tie around his fluttering throat. 

“Hey, Five, remember—remember when... when you snuck out of the house and brought back ice cream? That was, like, so nice, and I never thanked you for that.” 

Five couldn’t quite see what was happening now. Something blurred his vision. He blinked, squeezing his eyes shut for a second. His cheeks were wet when he opened them back up.

Oh, he realized distantly: he was crying. 

This couldn’t be happening. 

Klaus looked terrified. He was afraid to die. He was afraid to die but still comforting him, fingers stretching toward Five as if he wanted to hold him, reassure him with a comforting touch, as if he were somebody worth protecting. His fingers trembled. 

Five’s chest hurt.

This couldn’t be happening. 

Klaus couldn’t die here. If he failed saving his family, if he failed in to save Klaus, then what use was there in stopping the apocalypse? He had already failed Ben. He couldn’t— 

He couldn’t cope with this. 

Cha-Cha pulled taut, eyes hard as ice. Klaus let out a terrible wheeze. 

This 

Couldn’t. 

Be. 

Happening. 

“Klaus—“ Five gasped, vision reduced to a blurry visage. It looked dreamlike, though he knew this could be nothing but a nightmare. “No, no, no, no. I—I love you. Klaus—please—“ 

Hazel stepped in front of Five, entirely blocking his vision, looking down at him with big, mournful eyes. “We got orders to take you back to the apocalypse, kid.” 

Klaus’s next wheeze sounded angrier.

“We kill the junkie first,” Cha-Cha grunted out. “See how long the legend can really last.”

Five made a noise in his throat that Klaus honestly did not know a human could make.

Klaus’s fingers felt numb, his heart thumping madly, lungs expanding and compressing rapidly, trying to make up for the inevitability of his death, and the tie on his throat burned, squeezing him exactly where it hurt the most. “It’s okay, Fivey,” Klaus didn’t quite say, his voice lost to him, only making another strangled noise. God, he didn’t want to die like this.  He snapped his teeth, trying to bite the tie, and the Cha-Cha made a disgusted noise.

Ben was yelling at the hitmen, Five was crying, and he was starting to see white spots in his vision.

If Diego and Luther fought at his funeral, he would be pissed. Or would they even bother to show? His thoughts were spiraling, and he couldn’t even blame it on the head injury. No, now he had a new injury.

“Just shoot him,” Hazel suggested, voice sounding as if it was coming from very far away. “This is taking too long.”

Five screamed. His entire body flashed with blue energy, but it wasn’t enough. His form shuddered, almost glitching, his body overlaid on top of himself, contorting, but then like a hair elastic stretched too far, breaking and giving Klaus a blister, the kid snapped back to the chair, panting.

“No!” Five yelled. “I’ll–I’ll do whatever you want. Don’t you have some use for a–a person with powers like me? I’ll fight for you. Anything.”

The hand on his throat loosened, then fell away entirely. They were interested. Interested in buying out his baby brother.

Klaus wheezed for air, shaking his head violently both in an effort to get rid of the white spots and show how much he vehemently disagreed with Five’s offer.

“No, no, no,” Klaus gasped out. “Not happening. You’re grounded. Don’t listen to him, he’s–he’s bad in a fight, super squeamish, his powers barely work half the time, just–just leave him alone.”

Ben wasn’t moving at all, eyes wide and silently pleading. To who, Klaus couldn’t say.

Hazel stared at Five, lips thinning. “No. You’re gonna be popped back into the apocalypse, where you should be, or maybe the Commission will decide to kill you anyway. Klaus has to go — he’s too dangerous to be left alive.”

“Please,” Five begged. Klaus had never heard him beg like that.

Klaus swallowed harshly. “Ben. I hope being a ghost isn’t as bad as you complain it is.”

Ben shook his head frantically. “No – you’re going to be fine, Klaus. Just hold on.”

Klaus blinked rapidly, his chest constricting. The fear and apprehension were so thick he felt bile in his throat. It physically hurt to think too hard about it. “Five. Close your eyes.”

“No—”
Hazel shoved a big hand over Five’s eyes. The boy tried to headbutt them away but failed.

“Lemme go!” Five cried, and he shouldn’t have to see this, and he wouldn’t, and all Klaus felt was relief. “KLAUS!”  

Cha-Cha cocked the gun. She didn’t say anything. Just aimed, and shot, and—

Didn’t miss.

Chapter Text

The gunshot made Five flinch as if he was the one who was shot.

“KLAUS!” he yelled, voice cracking, splintering in two like something broken. It was just darkness, Hazel’s rough, calloused hand pressing against his eyes, keeping them firmly shut. He couldn’t see what was happening, couldn’t see where his brother was. Where was his brother? His Klaus? “What the shit–answer me! Klaus!”

Nothing. Just a laughing scoff from Cha-Cha, condescending.

Five felt a sob catch in his throat, and he tried to push through space, force his weak body into a warp, but he could only strain against his bonds, remaining firmly in the chair. “You fuckers, let me see. KLAUS!” 

“You don’t want to see this,” Hazel warned him gruffly. “Trust me.”

Some days, Dad’s training was all strict martial arts, tactics of war, but sometimes — Five chomped down on Hazel’s hand with all his might — sometimes it was how to play dirty. And by god, Five was going to bury these assassin shitheads in the mud.  

Hazel yanked his hand back with a cut-off curse, and Five’s eyes snapped open. “The brat bit me!”

The first thing Five saw didn’t make any sense, because Klaus was never that motionless. Never that still.

Klaus’ blank eyes were staring directly at Five, still wide with fear but so, so empty. Slumped. Restrained. A red spot on his forehead (a red hole, that wasn’t paint, that wasn’t lipstick Klaus stole from Grace like when they were kids). Head lolled to the side. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t—

There was a high keening kind of noise, raw and cracking at the edges, and Five realized with a start that it came from him.

This couldn’t — no. This couldn’t be happening.

“Shit…” Hazel mumbled, looking away, but his voice was muffled, distant, impossible to comprehend past the ringing in Five’s ears.

“Jesus, gag him already. We’re going to get found, idiot,” Cha-Cha might have said, far away, like an old memory he couldn’t really recall. None of the words made any sense. Nothing made any sense.  

“Klaus?” Five asked weakly – pleaded – but before the sight (the all too familiar sight) could make any sort of sense in Five’s brain, Cha-Cha was stalking toward him, blocking Klaus from sight, and he strained to keep looking, desperate for any sign of life.

Hazel, of all people, stepped in front of him, hands up soothingly. “Cha-Cha, just relax. It’s fine.”

“God, what’s gotten into you recently? He’s a liability right now. Knock him out, be done with this mess. C’mon, you can’t tell me you don’t want this mission to be over just as much as me?”

Hazel stood his ground. “I don’t know… You’ll hurt him, if I let you by.”  

“So what? Hazel, just let me deal with him, you’re thinking too small and – and personal.”

They weren’t paying him attention. Part of him, a strong part of him, just wanted to sit here and let whatever fate befall him happen, but Klaus had – Klaus wouldn’t’ want that. He had to find his other siblings.

Tears sticking to his lashes, he clenched his hands into fists. Come on. Just a tiny spatial jump. Maybe he was thinking too big, maybe he should take a page out of Hazel’s book, start small. He didn’t have to jump outside the hotel. He didn’t even need to jump outside the chair.

His hands shone blue, and he didn’t waste a second, pushing through space, stretching his limits so hard that sweat beaded his brow and it felt like he was dying, it felt like penance.

When Hazel turned to face him, Five waved both hands. He was still in the chair, but he was free, hands and feet just moved to an inch outside the restraints.

Before Hazel could comprehend the sight, Five ran for the door.

Cha-Cha blocked the way, yelling at Hazel to toss her a gun.

They were yelling now, and Five’s heartbeat made him dizzy with its intensity. There was nowhere to go; he knew there was no way he could spatial jump again after that.

There – a vent, in the wall. He jumped over the bed, diving for the escape, and maybe it was a fool’s gambit because it probably didn’t lead out of the room, but he had to try. He had to.

The grate came off easily, already loosened, and he slid inside with a small cry, lunging forward, pulling himself through.

“—you can’t tell him, he’s needed alive—”

“Shut up and grab the weasel before he gets out!”

Five’s hand found the edge of something leather, blocking his way in the vent. A briefcase. If it had been secreted away here, it must have something important. Something like… a weapon.

He fumbled to grab it, and it clanged into the metal side of the vent with a clatter. He fumbled for the latch in a panic, needing a weapon, hoping for anything he could use to survive, anything to get an upper hand he was sorely lacking.

A hand grabbed at his shoes, and he kicked back, hard as he could — no, he couldn’t go back, he couldn’t die, he didn’t want to die before he could even go through fucking puberty, it wasn’t fair.

His chin banged onto the bottom of the vent, and he screamed wordlessly, low in his throat, as he felt his grip slip, getting dragged back inch by painful inch. With a flash of inspiration, he shoved his other heel down onto the hand. A crunch of bone and cry of pain proved his aim true. The hand pulled harder, but he managed to shove his shoe off with his heel, and the hand fell back with a surprised grunt at the loss of weight. Hopefully the asshole hit themselves in their face with the shoe.

He figured out the latch and wrenched the briefcase open. He was free, he had a chance—

And then his vision went blue. 

Klaus had died before, or at least he always thought it was death. When the defibrillators pulled him back, surrounded by doctors, tears in his eyes, he knew he had been dead, knew his heart had stopped. The dull ache of realization that he’d finally fucked up in an irreversible way when the world faded away and slowed until moving his lungs was a chore that he lacked the strength to do. Though the worst part had been listening to Ben screaming at him, crying, in those last minutes of consciousness. Benny always made everything about him, pfft.

Ben had been screaming this time, too. Scared like he got when daddy-do-evil pulled him away for training. Scared like he only got nowadays when Klaus was doing something exceptionally stupid.

Klaus never felt the bullet, but he heard the gunshot.

Which was why it was a bit of a problem that he felt, y’know, pretty damn alive right now.

And he was in a field, or a park, or whatever. It was black and white, looking as like one of those silent films, or maybe what happened that one time with a real bad trip.

He cupped his hands around his mouth. “FIVEEEE!” he screamed, until his throat screamed its own pain, turning hoarse. “FIVE!”

If this was heaven, he wanted more color; he’d never expected that God failed color theory art class. More importantly, he wanted to leave, because his baby brother still needed him, so fuck this place, he wasn’t here to stay.

His dead heart beat an uneven rhythm.

A bicycle bell dinged, and he twisted around, wary. A little girl riding a bike stared at him impassively in such a way that had this been anywhere but heaven-or-maybe-hell-depending-on-what-sins-were-being-counted, he would have introduced her to Five. They both nailed that asshole preteen look.

“Helloo?” he tried.

“Ugh.”

Klaus was used to inspiring this reaction in people. He just nodded, bouncing on his heels, riled up with so much energy and nothing to do with it. He felt useless here, not knowing what was happening to Five, who just saw him… die, maybe. “Mmhmm. So, are you…?” he made a gesture that might have indicated anything from ‘go kill that guy for me’ to ‘are you God, be honest.’

“God? What do you think? I made you. If that’s anything.”

“Je-esus… Or, no, wrong one. Were you drunk when you made me?”

A scoff. “Hardly. Though… every second I look at you makes sobriety less appealing.”

“If that was the case, they’d have taken my mirrors away from me at rehab.” He splayed out his hands imploringly. “So, uh. I sort of don’t believe in you? Agnostic, see.”

“Believe what you will. Doesn’t matter.” She tilted her head to the side, long dark hair curtaining her face. Every second she spent talking to him seemed to make her more and more disgusted by his very existence. “To be blunt, I don’t like you. Not at all.”

Klaus almost wanted to say that was obvious given the last twenty-four hours and… well, give or take twenty-nine years. Instead, he nodded agreeably. “Yeah… didn’t think god would be so much like my dear deadest dad, but…”

“I don’t like him either, but… he can stay.”

 “Wait – wait, wait, does that mean I can’t stay? Gonna get expelled from heaven? If I’ve got detention in alive-world, you won’t even have to be the one supervising. Probably.”  

She looked extremely unimpressed with his feeble attempt to un-dead himself. Rather than immediately replying, the little girl started picking petals off one of the flowers in her cute wicker basket, and Klaus just hoped she wasn’t playing ‘he’s doomed to eternal damnation, he’s sent to eternal damnation not.’

“I don’t like you. So, I don’t want you here.” She made a face, scrunching up her nose. “Ugh. He’s waiting for you, you know. Over there.”

Klaus looked over to the building, then back. The idea of voluntarily talking to his dad was laughable. “Oh, no no no, no siree, I’d like the express shipping without childhood trauma, thank you peachily, so just – no, just send me back.”

A shrug. “Suit yourself. Don’t visit again soon, if you will. I’d rather not have to talk to you.”  She turned to bike away, and everything started fading at the edges, like an old vignette.

“Wait – wait, wait wait,” Klaus cried. So many people would kill for the opportunity to talk to God. To be able to ask them any question, prove any theological ideals. She stopped, putting down a foot to balance and turning to him impatiently. Her eyebrows raised.

“What now?”

“I, ah… I’m kinda tied up, how do I… not come back and bother you quite so fast?”

“Hm? You have all those…” she waved a dismissive hand around, “’ghosts,’ around. They’ve got to be good for something.”

“I – right, sure. Thing is, your holly-ness, I don’t know how, ‘s’ not all that easy or peasy.”

“You see the dead sibling even medicated, don’t you?” She didn’t smile, but her eyes brightened a bit, like she was laughing at him on the inside. “It’s obvious. Figure it out.”

“Alrighty then. Hey, I love what you’ve done with the place, but so, does this mean colorblind people go to hell? Or—”  

For a split second, he saw God’s face twist in annoyance, and then, without even a gesture, without a blink, everything disappeared.

One moment, Five was fighting for his life with nowhere to run, walls seeming to press in on him, and the next, he was abruptly in a different place. For somebody used to teleporting around as he pleased, it was disorienting to be tossed face-first into a place he very most certainly definitely did not jump to. 

He was still curled up on the ground, breathing hard, and he choked on an angry sob at the idea of having to fight more, to get out of another hellish situation. “Shit,” he breathed out, which summed up his thoughts quite nicely.

He squinted blearily around, aching on a bone-deep level. It was not his time to rest, though, and maybe it never would be.

This was… a tent. It smelled of sweat, dirt, oil, and humidity. A helicopter’s blades whirred somewhere overhead.

He sat up, clutching the briefcase to his chest, hands and legs raw from the tape. God, this was a nightmare, it had to be. He just didn’t know where he fell asleep. Maybe he was still in the apocalypse. Maybe he never left. He bent over the briefcase, squeezing his eyes shut.

Klaus, dead in the apocalypse, dead in a shitty motel room. Dead then, dead now. Nothing mattered — and it was all his fault, if he could’ve just had the strength to jump, then Klaus would still be….

(Klaus had a bullet through the head, dead, deaddeaddeaddeaddead—) 

His hands scrubbed raw from dirt. Digging, digging, digging. His nails caked with blood. When he finally found a shovel, it hurt to hold. Klaus’ skin was so cold so dead when he heaved his brother into the hole. His limbs went all horribly eschew and Five couldn’t fucking focus past his tears, ones he was shocked he could still cry

It didn’t hurt any less the second time his brother died. His hands shook, and he swore there was funeral dirt on them when he looked. That his palms were still bloodied. That he was still fucking there. 

So much for fixing anything — all Five had done so far was screw everything up. Everything. He was a failure, just like Dad always said, and maybe the old man was right about some things, because—

“Uhhhh, kid?” a male voice questioned, and Five maybe might have yelped. The burgeoning panic attack jumped right out of his body in shock, fleeing from the situation in a way Five was almost jealous of. 

There was a cot right next to Five, and a shirtless man was gaping at him, eyebrows furrowed, head slightly tilted, holding a pound cake hallway to his mouth. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and seemed, if possible, even more bewildered when Five failed to vanish like a bad dream. Five could definitely relate.

Five’s eyebrows shot up as he took in this new situation. “Uh…” he said intelligently.

The man pointed his pound cake at him like a weapon, sending crumbs scattering, blinked down at it, then glanced down at his gun on the floor. He looked between the two objects with abject confusion knitting his brow.

“I can explain,” Five blurted out, before the man could fully figure out that he was holding a pastry, not a weapon. 

The man stared at him expectantly, and Five realized that he could definitely not explain. Jesus Christ — where even was he? America still? Someplace else?

“Who the hell are you?” Five snapped, clearing his throat to sound less prepubescent and hoarse from crying. It was hard to sound in control when he was still sitting on the ground, so he hastened to his feet.

The man just stared at him; he had dog tags, and Five… had no idea who they were even at war with these days. “You – what?”

“Well?” 

“You’re in our tent.” 

“Our—” Five looked around and could have slapped himself. There were about seven other cots, all with men — soldiers? — sleeping, fully dressed in military gear. It was dark, the open flaps of the tents showing a nighttime sky and patrolling officers. “Ah. I didn’t see a name on it.”

The man just slowly pointed the pound cake toward a sign with the tent’s name on it. 

“Well, I’ll be.” Five wished he could say he was fully ready to win a fight against this man if need be, but he was already fighting against the growing urge to just drop unconscious. He wasn’t sure when he last ate anything — his muddled memories of the past day or so made it hard to figure out. Maybe the marshmallow sandwich when he first got back?

He lifted up the briefcase, turning it to inspect it from all angles, muttering lowly to himself all the while. It had to have an undo button of some kind, right? That was just basic design functions. Dread curdled his stomach. He had to get back.

The man cleared his throat and Five glanced up, irritated. “What?”

“Listen, if you lied to enrollment ‘bout your age… I don’t know how you swung that, but you can be honest with the boys, and you’ll get sent back, they’re good people. Y’know? Nobody wants an eleven-year-old’s death on their conscience.”

Five had absolutely no idea what the man was talking about, but he bristled with indignation anyway. “I’m not eleven. I’m eighteen.”

“Really?”

“No. Obviously not.”

Five was stuck in a tent with a crazy person, rambling on about god knows what, and his brother was—

No. He couldn’t think of that right now.

This… was not good.

As if to prove his point, there was a thunderous explosion that made Five duck and cover his head, then everybody was jumping to their feet, surging into action. There was yelling, and guns being drawn, and it was all a flurry of motion that Five had no grasp on.

“Katz — what the hell’s taking you? Get on a shirt, boy—” a rather angry-looking man yelled, coming into the tent, voice gruff and holding no room for bullshit. Five’s entire life was bullshit, so this was going to end splendidly.

“Sir! I just– look!” The man without a shirt – Katz – pointed at Five helplessly, who slowly lowered his hands from his head.

There was a moment where Five and the… commanding officer, perhaps, stared at each other in stupefied silence. The newcomer broke the silence:

“How the hell did the kid get here?”

“’The kid’ can speak,” Five snapped, if not somewhat shakily. There were a lot of eyes on him. The other soldiers were gathering around him, and he hated how they looked at him with such concern and confusion as if they actually cared.

“So he isn’t a recruit,” Katz seemed deeply relieved. “I was gonna be having some words with the higher ups, sir.”

The commanding officer seemed to shake himself out of it. “Right. Ladies, get to your stations, don’t stand there catchin’ flies, we got Charlie’s on the wire! Katz, get the kid a damn helmet and keep him outta the fire. We’ll deal with it later.”

“Yes, sir!”

And then it was just him and Katz in the tent, the man hastily pulling a shirt over his head. It was inside out, but he didn’t seem to notice. He thrust a helmet onto Five’s head, who instantly took it off.

“I’m not wearing that.”

“Yes, you are.” He put it back on, and Five had to push it up so he could properly glare at Katz. Stupid helmet was too big, kept falling over his eyes, which just wouldn’t do.

 “I swear you just… appeared. How….” 

Five braced himself for questions. This was why Dad recommended stealth; people were nosy and only asked questions for gossip, for their own benefit. They didn’t care, it was all a farce. He tried to picture this was from Katz’s perspective – a thirteen-year-old had randomly appeared in front of him holding a briefcase, wearing a school uniform, and bruised to all hell. All things considered, the man was taking this in stride.

“Are you okay?” Katz asked instead.

Five’s mouth parted in a small ‘o.’

He’d been mentally preparing to face any threat, but the earnest question nearly broke his carefully constructed façade of normalcy. Fighting his wobbling lips into a sneer, he just nodded stiffly. “Doing just peachy.”

“Uh — no, but, are you hurt?”

“Obviously.” Five stared at the oil lamps, then at Katz’s gun. It wasn’t new – he’d memorized them for fun in the library once, and this was a 60s model. His stomach dropped.

What kind of a briefcase would time-traveling assassins have? Because Five was scared of the answer.

“What – what year is it?”

“1968. Did you hit your head – kid, hey, hey, stay with me. What happened to you?”

Five heaved in a breath, not having noticed he stopped breathing until Katz helped him. “I’m fine.”

What if he was stuck? Again? What if instead of getting back to his home, he was trapped here, just like the apocalypse. Oh, god. What if he never got to see his siblings again?

He screwed up his face as he tried to spatial jump, but the blue energy around his hands sputtered and died before it could get him anyway.

There was another explosion from somewhere outside, and they both flinched.

Katz looked between Five’s hands and his face; he’d seen the glow, and Five took an automatic step back. Instead of mentioning it, Katz just set his jaw.

“Okay… okay. I’ll – figure it out. You’ll be just fine; I’ll keep you safe.”

Somehow, when Five looked at this oblivious, painfully earnest man, he couldn’t help but believe the words.

Klaus stopped being dead in the same way that he died — suddenly, and with a lot of complaining. 

He drew in a gulping breath through lungs that pumped oxygen to a furiously pounding heart. It beat like it was trying to escape his ribcage, quite upset with its host for dying.

His eyes flashed open, and everything was so bright-bright-bright.

Ghosts filled the room, but he only had eyes for Hazel and Cha-Cha, their backs turned to him. They were yelling about vents and briefcases, and a smile split Klaus’s face. He felt rejuvenated, felt awash with something that rolled underneath his skin. His hands glowed blue, soft at first, then growing brighter and brighter.

He’d never felt like this before, aware of the ghosts in a way he’d never been. They were all there, and he knew, instinctually, that he could touch them, and they could touch him. He couldn’t see Five, but he did see Ben, looking ready to cry.

The sight made something in him snap.

“Kick their asses,” he snarled, not able to recognize his own voice, his own tone.

He’d had enough of these assassins, and it seemed the ghosts did as well.

A small girl with a bloodied frock and a man with half his neck missing ripped apart Klaus’s restraints, and he stood up, attention still locked on the assassins, who were trying in vain to shoot at ghosts, screaming in horror. Whether it was because of Klaus’s sudden resurrection or the ghosts, well, he’d hazard to say it was a bit of both.

The entire room was awash with spectral light. There were ghosts, everywhere, filling the room. And they weren’t looking at Klaus this time. No — they were screaming at Hazel and Cha-Cha, all of them, from the small blonde child to an old Russian woman.

“—you killed us—”

“—You’re monsters, where’s my mommy—”

“—Chtob tebe deti v’sup srali—”

“—WHY?—”

Hazel made an awful noise. “Oh, god.”

“What the hell!” Cha-Cha yelled, trying to shoot one of the silvery-blue ghosts, but it went right through the old woman, hitting the tv instead. The movie audio cut out with one last cry of static.

“Can’t kill them double dead!” Klaus sing-songed, and Cha-Cha cursed colorfully. The ghosts went incorporeal before a bullet could ever hit, hitting the wall behind them instead. She shook her gun angrily when she ran out of bullets, panic stark on her face despite her best efforts to stay cool.

“I told you we shouldn’t kill the guy, he’s a freak—”

“Not now, Hazel!”  

“Get out of here, Klaus!” Ben cried, relief battling with fear on his face. “Now’s your chance!”

“Where’s Five?!”

“I don’t – just run.”

Klaus cast a despairing look at Five’s abandoned chair. “I’m not leaving without him!”  

“If you want to screw yourself over, fine, but what are you going to do? I can’t – I thought you were dead, I–“  

“It’s not what I’m going to do. It’s what they’re going to do.” The ghosts, as if on cue, grabbed Hazel’s gun straight out of his hands and threw it aside. Klaus laughed, some part of him thriving off of the revenge. They’d hurt him and his little brother. They’d hurt his family. This was deserved.

“Klaus, your… your eyes.” Ben took a step away from him, looking almost frightened, looking at Klaus like he’d never seen him before.

“What?”

“They’re glowing.”

The door to the hotel room burst open, revealing Diego, Allison, Luther, and Diego’s cop not-girlfriend. In true sibling fashion, they had to come in at the perfect time to ruin Klaus’s moment he was having.

“Oh, goody, the cavalry!” Klaus threw up his hands, and all the ghosts vanished. He blinked. Hazel and Cha-Cha blinked. His family blinked. Even the cop seemed surprised. “Uh…” he looked down at his distinctly not-glowing hands. “Oops?”