Chapter Text
Klaus leaves the kitchen in a whirlwind with a sharp request to be left alone. The second he’s out the door, he feels terrible for leaving Dave alone with his siblings, a lamb in a pack of bloodhounds. But then again, Klaus reminds himself, Dave is anything but a lamb; he’s strong, and protective, and the bravest man Klaus has ever known. If anything, it’s his siblings who should be scared.
He glides through the Academy’s gloomy hallways without looking around him; the walls blur in the corner of his eyes and his vision tunnels in front of him until nothing is left but the urge to get away, to escape. From what and to where, he has no idea, but the pounding of his heart drives him onwards. Somehow convinced he is being followed, he whirls around abruptly, but the corridor is empty. He picks up the pace like he’s being chased by a wild animal and refuses to stop until the fire licking at his heels has sufficiently dwindled down.
Klaus glances around his father’s office, at the antique furniture and eccentric trinkets littering the sturdy desk. He wants to tell himself he doesn’t know why he’s here, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Elbows deep in the drawers, he rummages around his father’s documents for anything else than the red notebook that might concern his children; some lab reports, notes, pictures, weapons, newspaper clippings, or even receipts. Klaus needs answers.
And of course, what he does dig up amounts to a big fat nothing. Old articles about Umbrella Academy missions and Reginald’s investments in the city, the ownership documents for the mausoleum and a few other meaningless properties, a report and some formulas about the medical procedure that was performed on Luther after he came back from the moon, theories and mathematical equations on time travel. Nothing on Number Seven. Nothing on Number Four. No pictures, either. Of course not. The old bastard had never been known for his sentimentality.
Klaus still needs answers, but he knows he won’t find any without resorting to more extreme measures. He doesn’t want to. There’s nothing in the world he wants less than this. But, here’s the thing; he doesn’t have a fucking choice. He never did.
He closes his eyes. Breathes in deep. Holds the air in his lungs, then lets it out. He doesn’t inhale again. Waiting until his chest burns, until his heartbeat shrieks in his ears in alarm, until he is that much closer to the ghosts, he focuses on the void in front of him and calls his father’s name.
Klaus had never managed to summon a specific specter before. He’d tried, albeit not very seriously, to talk to his father after his siblings had first asked, but he’d been as unsuccessful as he has always been since he first developed his powers. He has no idea how it works; how can a living man — even someone like him — pretend to know anything about death? It’s unfathomable.
But then, maybe his mistake was that he and his father had tried to understand what cannot be.
Klaus’ lungs hurt, a fiery sensation crawling up his throat like acid. The need to breathe pulses in the forefront of his mind, overshadowing all other thoughts except the image of Sir Reginald Hargreeves in his office. Klaus’ attention harpoons itself to the hazy recollection of his father’s frown, holding on to it like it’s the only tether Klaus has left to life itself.
Stars burst in front of his closed lids, and he feels his consciousness start to slip away as the lack of air becomes too much for his body to bear. Klaus’ eyes fly open and he sucks in a deep, desperate breath, coughing and gasping to stop himself from dry-drowning.
“Are you done?” A stern voice asks.
Klaus’ head snaps up at the familiar intonation. His wide-eyed stare meets his father’s cold eyes as they watch him critically, already scanning for flaws. Klaus freezes, struck speechless both by seeing his father again for the first time in years and by the notion that he actually succeeded to summon him.
“Well? Care to explain the reason why you feel the need to bother me even after my untimely death, Number Four?”
Klaus’ mouth opens and closes a few times. Reginald looks the same as he always did; prim and proper, wearing arrogance as well as his crisp three-piece suit, his mustache well-tailored and his monocle perched expertly around his left eye. He’s obviously older than when Klaus left the house over a decade ago, but somehow age has only heightened the cool elegance the man projects, giving him an experienced and self-possessed air.
“Has your drug abuse finally given you mental damage, boy? Use your words.”
Klaus wilts under his father’s judgemental gaze, but he forces himself to appear as unaffected and carefree as he has always pretended to be. “Dear father, hi! How’s the afterlife treating you? Your little stay in Hell seems to have done wonders for your skin tone!”
Reginald peers down at Klaus through his monocle, exuding a disdainful kind of exasperation as if he can’t believe he has to deal with this. Klaus smiles at his father, all teeth and all bluff. Reginald’s words ring out like clear water over a riverbed’s stony banks: “I have to admit I am surprised by your summoning me here. It seems like you are perhaps not as lost a cause as I previously assumed. Tell me, Number Four, what else have you discovered in the momentary moments of lucidity between your self-destructive urges?”
Klaus’ grin sharpens. He hopes it distracts his father from the shakiness of his voice when he replies: “Well, Dad, I did discover a very shocking fun fact; turns out I can’t die! How crazy is that? But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
A momentary flash of astonishment crosses Reginald’s face, there one second and gone the next. Dear old Dad probably didn’t expect to be called out on his child-killing tendencies. Klaus keeps watching his father’s expression, hoping even despite knowing better, to detect even just a hint of guilt, of remorse, or even of pity. Anything that might indicate that murdering his own son over and over again hadn’t been a pleasant walk in the park.
But, of course, Reginald wears the same apathetic, detached mask as always, the impersonal look of a scientist analyzing his lab rats. Klaus has no idea why he expected this time to be any different. Why would death change Sir Reginald Hargreeves, after all? Why would death give him the incentive to review his life’s mistakes? If he would even call them that.
“Indeed. It was about time you realized, Number Four. You’ll be able to practice and reinforce that particular ability now that you’re finally aware of it.”
“How many times, Dad?” Klaus doesn’t bother clarifying because he knows that his father knows. The accusation under the question is as transparent as Klaus’ flimsy act of bravery.
Reginald, bright blue and slightly see-through, does not hesitate, as unbothered as if he was discussing the amount of times he bought a new oddity for his house: “I lost count. Why does it matter?”
Klaus opens his mouth to reply, outrage already sparking in his veins, but his father, uncharacteristically, barrels on like his next sentence is burning the underside of his tongue the longer it remains unvoiced, “Really, Number Four? Why does it matter? Only the first time is truly of any consequence.”
And the worst thing is that it’s true. After that first time, Reginald knew Klaus would come back. Can Klaus really call it murder then?
“Anyone else would’ve begged to be in your place, boy. Anyone else would’ve sold everything they own for the chance to live again.”
Klaus stares at his father, feeling so dumb that he wonders if Reginald’s right and the drugs did give him brain damage. His face burns, a hot pressure building behind his eyes. Klaus wouldn’t wish his powers on anyone, not even his worst enemy (which, technically, happens to be his dad). He wouldn’t wish anyone to know what death tastes like, to know what ghosts sound like, to know how agonizing it is to be shot in the chest and to live again knowing it might happen a second, third, or fourth time.
He wouldn’t wish this on anyone, and yet… and yet, Klaus is lucky, isn’t he? Nobody ever truly dies for him; he never really lost Ben, he never really lost his father, he will never really lose any of his other siblings. He will never truly grieve Dave when the time comes. Klaus himself never truly dies. That’s lucky, isn’t it? It’s wonderful, right? How short his life would’ve been if he hadn’t had the chance of having these powers? What, he’d have lived six, seven years at most? The mausoleum would’ve gotten the better of him.
If not the mausoleum, then the drugs. He’d have died at fourteen, maybe fifteen.
He’s blessed enough to have reached thirty. Blessed to have lived enough years to meet Dave. Blessed to have had so many chances to pick himself back up and fix his damn mess of an existence. Anyone else would sell their soul for the opportunity to come back and make amends for their mistakes, for the opportunity to say ‘I love you’ to all the people they took for granted while they were alive. Anyone else would be elated for the chance to speak all the unvoiced things they never dared to throw in the open, to finally take a risk and follow their dreams, to hug their children and spouse just one last time, to get rid of all the bad influences that sunk them to the bottom.
Anyone else would want this, so why doesn’t Klaus?
He’s so fucking ungrateful.
“I know that if I could live again, I’d not waste my time on all of you this time around.” Reginald’s biting tone cut through Klaus’ musings. He blinks, faced with his father’s displeased frown and brisk reproaches. “I squandered my life mending your reckless, senseless mistakes; I can now see how abysmal an investment I made when I adopted you. Knowing of your definite uselessness now, my second chance would be better spent.”
A shiver travels up Klaus’ spine when Reginald’s frigid glare settles on him. Fire blazes on his cheeks, his shame bright. The floor creaks underneath him when he shifts on his feet. His father takes one step forward, finger pointed, and the floor remains silent.
“I thought you and your fellow numbers would avert the apocalypse. All those years, whenever you tested my patience, I had to forcibly remind myself that you little brats would save the world. But what have you been doing, Number Four? Ruining yourself with drugs? Frolicking around some common soldier’s sheets? Squabbling with your siblings? What a failure.”
Reginald’s closer now. Klaus and his father stand nearly nose to nose, Klaus shriveled and cowardly, Reginald towering and imperious. He can feel the ghost’s icy aura, the cold seeping into his bones.
“Ever tested if you can bring people back to life, Number Four?”
Klaus stumbles back a step. “N-No.”
Reginald observes Klaus with a severe twist to his mouth. “Why not share some of that power of yours? It’s about time you learned not to be so selfish.”
Klaus infuses as much authority as he can into his voice. “No. I’m not bringing you back.”
Even if he could — which he sincerely doubts — he would not. He’d never do this to his siblings. He’d never do this to Dave, who should never have to fear meeting Sir Reginald Hargreeves. While Klaus had never wished for his father’s death, he can’t pretend that he believes it’s all that terrible a thing. Sure, losing his father had hurt and still does, because grief doesn’t discriminate between good and bad people; but, when he’d heard the news, there’d been no small amount of relief too, a sick sort of elation as a burden he never knew he carried finally slid off his shoulders.
Klaus would never willingly assume that burden again.
If Klaus’ refusal angers Reginald, the man doesn’t let it show. As factual as ever, he says, with all the conviction of the irrefutable truth, “You owe me as much, boy. I gave you everything you have. I made you into who you are.”
Klaus straightens up and stares directly into his father’s dead eyes. “No.”
“I will not tolerate such insolence from you, Number Four,” Reginald sneers. “You will do as I say.”
The room’s temperature feels like it dropped several degrees; out of the corner of his eye, Klaus notices that frost has begun to creep over the windows, turning the faint daylight hazy. His father’s office had always looked somewhat intimidating with its eccentric trinkets and gloomy furniture, but right now, icy cold and nearly dark, it looks downright threatening. The atmosphere, heavy with Reginald’s displeasure, clings to Klaus’ skin like a layer of grease.
“I’m not scared of you anymore, Dad. What are you even going to do? You’re dead; you can’t touch me unless I allow you. You depend on me.”
“Can’t I? Do I?” A grim sort of amusement colors Reginald’s words as he stares at Klaus, an eyebrow raised. The window’s reflection in his monocle hides the ill intent in the man’s left eye, but it shines bright as a diamond in his right. “Don’t overestimate your worth.”
And before Klaus can even think of an answer, Reginald thrusts his hand directly through Klaus’ chest. Klaus gasps as his lungs seize, his body shocked into a standstill as ice spreads through his veins. His limbs sting, full of sharp pins and needles but numb with cold, and somewhere between the liquid winter inside his bones and the paralyzing fear of what his father will do to him, his skin burns like he has been set on fire.
Reginald’s ghost form melts in front of Klaus’ helpless eyes, and the blue energy seeps into his torso before he can do anything to stop it. For a second, the room is blessedly empty, Reginald gone in a flash, and the hot-and-cold sensation recedes. Klaus breathes, heart pounding a panicked tune directly in his ears, blood pulsing behind his forehead. He notices belatedly that tears soak his cheeks.
Klaus’ spine straightens up. His hands smooth his clothes and wipe the water from his face.
Inside, Klaus screams.
He screams because he did not want to do any of this, and he isn’t the one who did it.