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Klaus never got used to the voices in his head. His father used to tell him that they were a part of him, that they’d grow to be like another limb to him. An extension of himself, is what his father had said. It was all bullshit, Klaus knew now, like everything the bitter old man had said. Almost thirty years and the only voice Klaus was familiar with was Ben’s. His own was still a stranger to him.
“Hey, dude, are you okay?” Diego asks him one evening when he’s sober and silent, staring into nothing. The others are gathered around the bar behind Klaus. They don’t look over.
‘Okay’ is a vague word and Klaus isn’t really sure what defines ‘okay’. He feels like his eyeballs are bleeding and his skin is on fire: he wants another hit so badly that he starts to tremble, freezing and burning up at the same time. He slides down the sofa slowly until his head hits the cushion and his legs are curled up, toes curled. His eyes remain open, unseeing, fixed on the space just in front of his face. All of a sudden, Diego is there instead of the familiar tile of the floor.
“Jesus, Klaus, are you high? What did you take? Klaus, look at me, tell me what you took!” Diego’s voice fades out to a low rumble and the irony of everything forces a laugh to bubble up from Klaus’ chest and out between his lips. He can feel Ben’s eyes on him, reproachful and disappointed.
“I know,” Klaus breathes softly, answering Ben’s unspoken comment. Diego blinks, confused, and Klaus remembers that Diego isn’t burdened with the dead in the same way he is. “I think it’s time to go now.”
“Klaus, what the fuck are you talking about?” Diego snaps at the same time that Ben disappears. Unexpectedly, unexplainably, tears well up in Klaus’ eyes and spill down his cheeks. Everything is crushing him: the responsibility of sobriety, Dave’s death, their father’s suicide, Vanya locked up in a prison cell begging him to let her out, the sharp bow of a violin, Ben’s unwavering attention, Klaus’ own death, God, Pogo with antlers piercing his body, Grace tucking them into bed at night, Mom blowing them a kiss as she died.
“Diego?” Alison asks tentatively, her voice still weak and croaky. “What’s going on?”
Klaus doesn’t hear what Diego says. He’s back in the mausoleum, door swinging shut behind his father, faces bearing down on him, voices screaming his name. Begging for his help. Telling him how they died, how they’d kill him, how they’d kill his siblings, how cold they were, how alone. Klaus is just another one of them now. Cold, alone, empty. He doesn’t have anything left to give and the worst thing of all is that no one ever realised he was giving in the first place.
His eyes slip shut and sweat rolls down his forehead. His teeth are chattering and it feels like he’s flying, waving his arms around and wading through a sea of blood, his own blood under his own skin and he doesn’t make sense anymore, nothing makes sense anymore.
Nothing has ever made sense for them.
***
Everything hurts, is Klaus’ first observation. His brain feels like it’s full of cotton wool and his muscles are aching so badly that he can’t move without whimpering pathetically. This is only juxtaposed by the softness of the sheets beneath him and the warmth enveloping him. His bed at the rehab centre was never this comfortable and he’s definitely not back in the mausoleum; only his own bed in his own room ever felt like this, which means his hallucinations are getting worse.
His family must have carried him to his bedroom. Not the mausoleum, because they are not dad. His eyes flutter open.
“Hey there,” Vanya smiles at him, all traces of the ice princess or whatever it was Five had called her the other day gone. She’s just his sister now— his friend. “How are you feeling?”
“Like my brain just got fucked up the ass.” Klaus groans. Vanya grins.
Now that Klaus has enough wherewithal to look around he notices that they’re all there. Even Luther is looming over him with that stupid guilty look of his that everybody else seems to find so endearing. Alison did, at least.
“Well good morning.” Klaus struggles into a sitting position and - after double checking that he is, in fact, wearing clothes - tries to swing his legs over the side of the bed. Diego steps forward and puts a gentle but firm hand on his shoulder: the kindest way Diego knows how to say ‘no’.
“What’s going on?” Klaus asks, even though he has a pretty good idea of what’s going on. The thought of anyone in his family staging an intervention is ridiculous - the idea that it’s for him of all people is especially crazy - but that does appear to be what’s going on. Sure enough, Diego looks from Five to Alison back to Klaus before he replies.
“You were going through withdrawal,” Diego explains, like Klaus isn’t already fucking aware of that, thank you very much. “You started fucking… shaking, it was real bad. You had a couple seizures.”
“I had a seizure?” Klaus asks, high pitched in the same voice he uses to mock people. Defence mechanism, something screams at him. This time it isn’t even Ben.
“Two,” Five corrects from where he’d standing, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. He looks hilarious in those schoolboy shorts and prim, pristine outfit made all the more bizarre by his surly attitude. “You had two seizures.”
“Right.” Klaus blinks. “Well thanks for carrying me to my bed and all. I’m sure I was the prettiest damsel in distress, but I better be off. I guess we’ll see each other at the next funeral, right? Bets on who it’ll be— I’m gonna say Five.”
Five scowls at him, unimpressed.
“Hey, no offence man. Just all the jumping around in time, being chased by inter-dimensional assassins, it’s gotta give you an expiration date, right?”
“Klaus,” Diego moves his hand from Klaus’ shoulder to his chest and pushes until Klaus’ back is against the pillows propped up against the headboard. The message is fairly clear: you’re not going anywhere.
“We thought you were dying. You were having seizures and talking to dead people. You were talking to Ben. You were talking to dad.” Diego whispers the last bit, like they’re dirty words. They may as well be, any mention of dad is unwelcome.
“Look what you’ve done now.” Klaus directs that at Ben who’s leaning against the wall, arms crossed in an unintentional parody of Five’s posture. Vanya, who’s standing closest to where Ben is, glances to where Klaus is looking and shifts away a little bit, looking creeped out.
“Shut up,” Ben tells him. “Listen to what Diego has to say. He’s right.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate your concern,” Klaus stresses the last word in obvious mockery. “But this is turning out to be a sort of lame intervention, so if you don’t mind I think I’m just gonna…”
“You aren’t leaving this room until you’re sober.” Alison says, interrupting whatever Diego was about to say to him. Good thing too, Diego would probably have been ruder.
“I am sober.” Klaus points out.
“You know what I mean.” Alison sighs. “We can’t keep you in here forever and we can’t stop you from going out and getting high after this. But just… stay here for a week, Klaus. Give it a chance.”
“I don’t know if you know how addiction works—”
“Please, Klaus.” It’s Five that speaks. The fact alone that Five just said ‘please’ is shocking enough that it stuns Klaus into silence. “As much as I hate to agree with dad, he’s right. You’re capable of so much more.”
Klaus stays.
***
They take turns checking in on him. Klaus calls it Klaus-Watching, because it’s so obvious that they consider themselves his babysitters and as annoying as that is it’s also kind of nice as well. Luther has said that all Klaus ever wanted was to be the centre of attention but that’s not entirely true. Klaus just wanted to be noticed, and if not noticed them numb to his own invisibility. That’s what the drugs had been for, but without the narcotics his siblings seem to be substituting them for a different addiction.
Love, Klaus decides, is its own narcotic, and it’s just as addictive as any other. Just as dangerous too.
Klaus’ favourite times are when Vanya or Diego sit with him. Diego lets him talk and talk about Dave until his mouth is dry and he’s used up all his tears and he feels spent, physically and emotionally exhausted but cleaner than before. Like Dave is another drug that he has to work out of his system, slowly but surely. Sometimes Diego talks about Patch as well, talks about how good she was and how he wishes he could have done things differently. He makes Klaus tell and retell him about the few seconds between Patch breaking into the motel room and Klaus getting out through the air vent. He tells Diego how she had been fearless, so sure that what she was doing was right.
She was helping him, Klaus tells Diego. She died helping him. The guilt that has been hiding just under the surface all this time makes itself known and tears that Klaus didn’t know he had left threaten to well up again.
Diego tells him that she died doing something she believed in, and that she would have been happy with that.
Whenever Vanya comes in she brings soup and her violin. She’ll play her violin while she waits for the soup to cool and sometimes, if Klaus cries, she won’t say anything. She’s been practising controlling her powers, and the others must have decided that they needed to trust her to do that. She can control her emotions better now, and since her emotions are apparently directly related to her powers that means she can control those too.
After she’s finished playing she’ll feed Klaus soup, even though he has two perfectly good arms and is not, as he has pointed out on many occasions, an invalid.
“I appreciate the concern and all, but couldn’t I just go out for a sandwich or something? I can still walk.”
“I know,” Vanya had answered, and smiled. “But you guys locked me in an underground torture chamber from my childhood for hours. Shut up and eat your soup.”
That’s how Klaus knows she’s forgiven him. Not for everything, granted. They still have a clusterfuck of emotional issues from their childhood to sort through, but the worst of it is over. It even starts feeling like they might be able to look forward to the future now.
Besides, Klaus kind of likes the attention anyway.
On the fourth day Klaus discovers a new power. Luther has been sitting next to his bed for hours in silence and it’s unbearable. Luther’s self-righteous attitude is giving Klaus a headache and his fingers are twitching. God, if they would just let him have a cigarette it might tide him over for the next few days. Even just a drink. He’d take anything over this agonising judgement and clear headedness.
“What?” Klaus finally snaps, bitter and cranky. “Whatever it is just spit it out.”
“What?” Luther blinks dumbly.
“You have something to say to me? Some piece of advice? Maybe you want to tell me how this is all my own fault and I’m just getting what I deserve.” Klaus suggests, biting the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, coppery sharp on his tongue.
Luther sighs, obnoxious and long suffering, and Klaus has had e-fucking-nough.
“Just get out.”
Surprisingly, Luther doesn’t put up much of an argument. He just stands up, narrowly avoids knocking his head on the ceiling and hovers by the door awkwardly for a few moments. Misplaced hope leaves Klaus wondering if maybe, maybe, Luther will stay. Maybe they’ll talk about things like he did with the others, maybe Luther will give up on the fucking judgemental silence and treat him like they’re actually brothers for once.
No such luck.
“Klaus, I know you don’t want to hear it, but maybe if you’d just listened to dad—” he starts.
“Get out.” Klaus breathes, lump in his throat. Luther was always dad’s favourite lapdog and it’s no different now, even after the old bastard is dead.
“I’m serious.” Luther talks like he’s speaking to a child, like Klaus won’t be able to understand him if he doesn’t dumb it down for him. It’s so patronising and painful and Klaus can’t stand it anymore.
Luther is talking but Klaus can’t really hear him anymore— he’s thinking about what his father had said. About how Klaus was his greatest disappointment, and he’s thinking that it’s true about himself too. He had so much potential and he cracked under the pressure and every single bad consequence he’d had since have been because of his own shitty mistakes. He may resent Luther for thinking it, but he can’t stop himself from agreeing.
Suddenly the dull droning of Luther’s voice gets too much for him to bear - reminds him too much of the voices always surrounding him and following him - and his arm is swinging before he even knows what he’s doing. It’s… weird, like he’s trying to throw something heavy even though there’s nothing in his hand.
“Leave me alone!” He screams, and the door slams shut in Luther’s face. Klaus falls back against his pillow, exhausted. He’s out of breath and there’s a faint trace of wetness above his upper lip that he thinks might be a nosebleed, but none of that matters because Klaus moved the door without touching it. The books shudder on their shelves and Klaus’ dolls and action figures dance on the desk for a few seconds before toppling over and clattering to the floor.
He thinks back to what his father had said. He’s only just scratched the surface.
Slowly, the door creaks open and Luther pops his head through the crack. His wide eyed expression looks comical on his massive frame.
“Did you just…?”
***
They hold a family meeting. There have been too many significant changes in their lives to keep track of and so they make a unanimous decision to write everything down, so they don’t forget. It’s the first unanimous decision they’ve made in over a decade, and they all smile awkwardly at each other like they’re not sure how to act amongst the unexpected show of solidarity.
They compile a list. Five’s return, Vanya’s power, Ben manifesting, Pogo and Grace’s death, the destruction of the academy, the consequent rebuilding of the academy, and then there right at the very top of the list: Klaus’s telekinesis. Klaus has never been at the top of any list before - except maybe the first of them to overdose - and it feels special somehow. Like an acknowledgement of some kind, he just can’t figure out what.
Luther comes to find him afterwards. He’s messing about with his power, alternating between making a stack of books float above his head and wiping the blood off his face. His new power tiring, but absolutely addictive, and he understands how Vanya must be feeling a little better now.
“Hey,” Luther starts, his huge, hulking form shuffling up to where Klaus is sitting. “How are you doing?”
“Peachy,” Klaus grins, and he can’t tell if it’s genuine or not. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be using your newfound sexual experience to impress Alison into getting back with you.” This is normal. After any arguments between any of them, they’d let a few hours pass and then go back to pretending like nothing ever happened. It may not be the most psychologically approved method, but it’s a method they’re used to. Klaus is not, however, used to an apology.
“Why do you always do that?” Luther asks. “Act like an asshole whenever people try to get close to you?”
He doesn’t give Klaus a chance to reply.
“I came to apologise, for what I said earlier. And what I said the other day. You do want to be the centre of attention, but so did we all. It was the only way to get dad’s approval; we all did it. You were just the most honest about it.”
Klaus breathes for a few seconds. He doesn’t know what to say. Luther and he have never been particularly close, even less so since everyone else left the academy, and a heartfelt apology from Luther would be the last thing he’d expect.
“I died, you know.” He says eventually. Luther stills. “That night at the rave. I hit my head: it put me out for a few minutes. But I didn’t stop looking for you, because I know you would have done the same thing. I wanted to leave. I almost did. But you wouldn’t have.”
It’s as close to an ‘I love you’ as Luther will ever get from Klaus, but he seems to understand.
Luther turns to go, but he stops at the last moment. He holds something out for Klaus, and when he gets closer he can see that it’s his tatty veteran’s patch. His chest constricts at the sight of it and he feels guilt clawing it’s way up his throat at the fact that he hadn’t even noticed it was missing.
“I found it on the floor, after…” Klaus understands Luther’s unspoken message. After you did the thing.
“Thanks,” Klaus murmurs, holding it between his fingers. “Been looking for that.” He lies.
“I’m sorry about your friend.” Luther tells him, sounding more genuine in those five words than Klaus has ever heard him sound in his life. “I didn’t know.”
***
Alison comes to fetch him the next day, and she leads him out into the courtyard just outside the kitchen. Five, Luther and Diego are already gathered there; Vanya is stood a little way in front of them, in front of Ben’s statue.
Except now it isn’t just Ben’s statue.
“I had them made,” Vanya tells them softly, no longer looking for approval in their faces. It’s a good thing, Klaus recognises, that she no longer feels like she needs it. “They should be together, here, next to Ben.”
Statues of Mom and Pogo have been placed on either side of Ben, all three so close together that it almost looks like they’re holding hands. They look like a family, Klaus realises with a smile. Diego holds his hand out for Vanya, smiling, and she takes it without hesitation. Alison and Luther’s hands find each other without them even having to look.
Next to him Ben holds Klaus’ hand in his own, and Klaus feels it all the way in his core.