Chapter Text
Diego counts the number of each floor as the elevator descends. When it reaches ground level, he starts counting his words instead, making sure to picture them in his head before he speaks. As the doors slide open, Stanley presses his back to the wall, looking scared to emerge. It’d been Diego’s plan to march the young man over to the family, have him explain what he did, own up to his mistakes. But with Klaus’s body weighing heavy against his back, Diego’s suddenly feeling too exhausted for a stern parenting moment.
He can’t deal with being a dad right now. He has to handle being a brother first.
“Here’s what you’re going to do…” Diego begins, holding his nerve, careful not to stutter. “You’re going to go over to the bar and get your mom. Just her, okay? Don’t tell your other uncles and aunt what’s happened. Don’t draw any attention to the elevator. Got it?”
“Okay,” Stan nods, his head bowed, not able to meet Diego’s eyes while he still has Klaus’s head lolling against his shoulder. The kid hesitates to step out into the lobby.
“I’m not going to call the cops,” Diego promises him for a third time. “I never do that. And besides, Klaus wouldn’t want you to get into trouble. Back when he was your age, he could’ve just as easily been the cause of some stupid accident like this one.”
“I know,” Stan murmurs. “He told me. He told me all about himself.”
His voice is solemn and mournful. Diego can tell that Klaus must’ve done a better job of bonding with the kid than he’s managed himself so far. Stan heaves a sigh and then shuffles out of the elevator, leaving Diego alone with his dead brother for the first time.
He closes his eyes tight, stealing himself, trying not to lose his shit now he doesn’t have a child around he has to stay strong for. Klaus is starting to slip down the elevator wall. Diego gently pushes back, arching his spine, determined to keep his brother upright. He winces as Klaus’s cheek rubs against the scratch on his neck. The new wound that he’d earned from a night of brawling with neo Nazis in some shitty racist dive bar when he should’ve been here looking after his child. Not dumping his responsibilities on Klaus. If his son was going to shoot someone through the heart with a harpoon, it should’ve been him.
Several stray locks of long curly hair fall against Diego’s ear. He sweeps them back, his knuckles grazing his brother’s cheek as he does so. Klaus’s skin is still warm to touch. It sets Diego’s fingers trembling, until he bunches them into a fist and braces them against the elevator wall once more. His ears prick up at the sound of Lila’s voice.
“…there better be a bloody good reason why you’re dragging me over here, Stanley. Because the grownups are busy dealing with some serious world ending shit right now. So what is it you need to…oh, fuck me sideways, what the hell happened?!”
Diego forces his eyes open and finds Lila standing before him, her mouth hanging slack as she stares at the corpse wrapped in the carpet. Stanley lingers just outside the elevator, squirming on the spot, his eyes fixed on the floor once more.
“Spear gun.” Diego nods at their child. “An accident.”
Lila just blinks. “And your brother…is he?”
“Dead. He took a bolt clean through the chest.”
“Jesus.” She glances over her shoulder at Stan. “So…so any fatherly ideas on what punishments we should be dolling out for killing his uncle? I mean, this is going to call for something more than a timeout on the naughty step, right?”
Diego shakes his head. “I don’t know. And right now, I don’t care. I just need you to take him for a few hours, ok? Go buy him a slushie and get him to calm down. It won’t do him any good to be hanging around here when I’m breaking the news to my family.” He winces, holding her stare. “Can you do that for me, Lila?”
For once, she doesn’t argue. “Sure. And I’m sorry, Diego, really.” She shakes her head. “Poor kitten. You know, of all your screwed up siblings, that fool was my favourite.”
Mine too, Diego thinks, though he can’t bring himself to say it out loud.
“I’m taking him up to our room on the second floor. Tell Five to gather the others and meet me up there.” He swallows. “Don’t tell them why. They should hear it from me.”
Lila nods, pressing the elevator button for him, before stepping back into the lobby and tugging Stanley away with her. As the doors close, Diego glances out at his siblings where they’re grouped around the hotel bar, slugging drinks, already full of foreboding. And while they may be grappling with another apocalyptic threat, they are still living in a world where they believe Klaus will come waltzing through the door or down the stairs at any moment. They don’t know how much darker their new world has just become.
When the elevator opens on the second floor, Diego hoists Klaus over his shoulder again, carrying him into their room and laying him down on Luther’s bed. And for a second this could be just one of those times back when they were in their teens. One of those nights when Diego had found Klaus wasted on drugs or passed out drunk in the hall and he had the job of hauling him to the nearest couch to sleep it off. But even when his brother couldn’t stand up on his own, he would still be slurring and ranting in his intoxicated haze. Now Klaus’s face was still and unsmiling, his skin paler than Diego has ever seen it, his lips a sickly shade of blue.
“Goddamn it, Klaus…you’re not supposed to be this quiet.”
That’s when Diego’s knees buckle, sinking him to the floor beside the mattress. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to cry, at least not until he’d told the others, then found a moment to drift into a quiet corner, and shed a few silent tears. Instead there’s a childish sob surging up his throat that he can’t seem to choke down. A noise that hasn’t come out of him since the last time he lost one of his brothers and couldn’t do anything to bring him back.
“This can’t be happening,” he whimpers. “P-p-please, not again...”
~*~
Klaus stares down at the meat in his menudo bowl, watching it form itself into the shape of a buffalo. And it’s at this moment he feels a familiar tug in his navel. There’s the white noise in his ears, the blurring of his vision, the sudden headrush…and he knows, it’s happening again. He’s about to be sent back. Spat out of the void and slammed down to earth. And he doesn’t want to go back. Not yet. Why does this always happen when he’s getting close to some revelation? Some truth that’s forever slipping through his fingers.
“No wait, I’m not going!” he cries out, dropping his spoon and shoving himself back from the table. “I’m staying here. For once, I need to know what I’m meant to be doing with this life I keep being forced back into. No more riddles! I just want answers.”
Klaus rises to his feet and is almost sent sprawling in the sand as a wave slams into the backs of his legs. His mother is still sat at the table, the surf now washing around her skirts. She tips her head to the side and gives him a sad wistful smile.
“The tide’s coming in,” she says. “That means were out of time.”
She stands, reaches out briefly to cup his cheek, then begins to walk into the sea.
“Wait!” Klaus blurts. “Who…who says you have to go? Who’s rule is that?”
His mom glances back over her shoulder and sighs. “You know who.”
She nods to the gravel path that’d led Klaus down to the beach, passing the mausoleum and a lot of other buried memories along the way. Sure enough, the girl is watching them, perched on her bicycle seat, her eyes narrowed beneath her smug little sunhat.
“I’m sorry,” his mother says. “This water isn’t meant for you, sweetheart. But I love that you can still visit.”
With these parting words, his mother slips beneath the waves, disappearing like a mermaid into the deep. Klaus’s head whips back and forth between the ocean and the path, before he bunches his fists and marches across the sand, straight up to the girl who may be God, or who may just be some weird reoccurring figment of his imagination. He still considers himself agnostic so he’s not willing to commit to either of these beliefs.
“Just so you know, I’m hanging around a little longer this time.” Klaus crosses his arms in defiance. “Call it a sit-in, a peaceful protest, occupy the afterlife or whatever. You’re not kicking me out before I know what my purpose is down there. I won't be moved.”
He reaches out and plucks a yellow flower from her basket, tucking it behind his ear.
“You have to leave,” the girl replies through gritted teeth. “You’re nothing but trouble here.”
“Hey, I’m not making any trouble!” He throws up his hands in frustration. “Jeez, you’re as bad as the Amish. Why can’t I enjoy a little eternal peace, same as everyone else around here?”
The girl shrugs. “It’s not how you’re made. Some people down there can’t walk. Some can’t see or hear. They have to adapt to their conditions and so do you.” She pauses to shake her head at him. “Many would say that you are blessed. Blessed and ungrateful.”
“Oh well, good thing that you and I know different,” he snipes back.
Her sullen face remains impassive as ever. “Sometimes I think that maybe I didn’t make you after all. Sometimes I wonder who else might have created you…and for what purpose.”
He frowns. “You mean, you don’t know my purpose either?” Klaus brings his hands up to rub his temples and then tug at his hair. “Christ on a cracker! There’s got to be someone around here who can help me. Who can tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
The girl considers this, then raises her finger, pointing back to the long grass.
“Maybe him. He’s been following you since you got here.”
Klaus follows her gesture, turning his head just in time to see a figure dressed in black disappearing amongst the reeds. They are lost to the wilderness before he can get a good look but Klaus already has a sinking feeling he knows who it is. The same man who was waiting for him the last time he landed here. The man who had pushed him through this endless revolving door between life and death in the first place. The man who’d made him.
“Dad…” he groans, “…what does the old bastard want this time?”
Klaus sets off at a run towards the long grass, leaving the little girl to peddle off into the sunset for all he cares. He’s ready to chase his father all the way to his damn barber shop if he has to. And Klaus won’t be sitting in his chair this time. He won’t be cowering under his razor anymore. He’s the one who wants answers now. He wants to know the motive behind all his childhood murders. He has to know how anyone could do that to a little kid in their care.
It turns out Klaus doesn’t need to run that far. He breaks through the long grass into a wide green clearing, where the person he’s chasing sits on a log, waiting for him. Not the person he’s expecting to see, but a familiar face all the same. A face he’s very fond of, though not so much the last time he set eyes on it. For a split second, he wonders if another member of the Sparrow Academy has bitten the dust. Then the smile comes and Klaus just knows.
“Ben?” he gasps out, clasping his palms together.
His Ben. His gone into the light forever Ben. The little shit heel is sat smirking on the log right in front of him.
“Hey Klaus. You owe me twenty. I always said you wouldn’t last a week without me.”