Chapter Text
2011
The argument had been going around in circles for a while now, as Ben followed Klaus down the street, and up through the alleyway.
Ben had died just over four years ago now, and the last twenty months of that time had been him stuck to his brother in a low-security prison because Klaus had been arrested for possession with intent to sell.
When Klaus had first left home (as Klaus preferred to call it, rather than being kicked out. Which was the more accurate statement), Pogo had helpfully increased his allowance to assist him in finding somewhere to live, but Klaus had obviously decided to spend that on more drugs instead. He usually bought in smaller batches, but that last time before he'd gotten caught he’d decided to stock up. Which was why he was carrying so much on him when he’d been arrested.
Klaus had tried to argue that he wasn’t going to sell, but given the quantity found on him, no one had been inclined to believe him. Even if it had actually been the truth.
He hadn’t bothered contacting dad or Pogo to try and bail him out, and Ben was sure it was at least partially out of spite because Klaus wanted to tarnish the name a bit rather than allowing Reginald to sweep it all under the rug.
And here they were, only a few weeks out, still on parole, and Klaus’s pockets loaded to the brim with narcotics. Because of course while he’d been locked up he’d made even more connections and had even more names to turn to for what he wanted when he'd gotten out.
“It’s like you want to go back to prison,” Ben said angrily. He did not need that much on him.
Klaus shrugged, “Relax Ben, it’s not going to happen. And if it does, free room and board and another mark on dad's reputation. So silver linings.”
“Why the hell did you even buy that stuff?” Ben hissed, “You’ve never used needles before, why are you doing this now?”
“Thought I should start branching out a bit,” Klaus breezed, “Expand my horizons. You heard what Jess said, apparently it's an entirely different experience to pills.”
“I swear it’s like you’re doing all of this to just piss me off personally,” Ben shot back in frustration.
“How very self-involved Benny, you know not everything is about you.”
“Except, yeah it kind of is,” Ben snorted, “Because you’re the only one who can talk to me and we’re stuck with each other!”
Klaus stopped moving. They were right in the middle of the alley, and there was a cool chill in the air in the shade of it.
“You could just leave,” Klaus said suddenly, turning to actually look at Ben with a sharp grin, “You don’t have to be stuck with me! You could just leave me alone!”
“You damn well know I can’t do that!” Ben yelled back. “Just get rid of the damn drugs before we get caught again! You don’t need that much on you to begin with, holy shit! Why are you like this?”
Klaus was looking at him with that awful defiant look that Ben had become familiar with. It was interesting, Klaus had always been one of the more passive siblings. Klaus, Vanya and Ben were always the first to fold or back down when faced with most conflict as kids. It had changed as they got older, and Klaus had become increasingly erratic and unpredictable as a teen. But with just Ben and Klaus together constantly the last few years, any remaining passivity had cracked on both sides for them a long time ago. And it seemed like prison hadn't helped either of their moods, even if Klaus was playing it all off as a damn joke!
"Klaus," Ben said in warning. He hated that look in his brother's eyes. And he just knew that it wasn't going to end well.
"Well if you really think I have too much on me, I'll just have to fix that then!" Klaus said brightly.
He sat down against the wall in the alleyway abruptly, pulling things out of his pockets with slightly shaking hands.
“Klaus,” Ben said warningly again as his brother fumbled inexpertly with prepping the light brown powder and tying off his arm, figuring it out as he went. "Don't you dare."
Klaus was looking uncertainly at the quantity, before measuring out more. He was pretending not to hear Ben as he dissolved the powder.
“You have no fucking right to do this,” Ben yelled, “Seriously, fuck you, Klaus!”
Ben really wanted to punch his brother right now.
He didn’t think he’d ever hated his brother more than he did right then. He refused to stick around and watch this. He was done!
Ben huffed in anger and walked out of the alley and to the sidewalk in frustration, leaving his brother to ruin his life without him.
He took a look at the people and ghosts on the street. People going about their day, some of them being followed by ghosts, others walking through the ones that seem stuck in death loops, unaware of their surroundings.
Sticking close to Klaus tended to make the visibility of other ghosts inconsistent. When he was mostly sober they would slowly end up being drawn to him, but especially during the day, there were many out in the city that just passed for normal people, until you realised other people weren’t ducking around them the way Klaus would.
When Klaus wasn’t sober, how it affected the ghosts tended to vary with what he was taking at the time. Cannabis seemed to mute the ghosts somewhat, but also seemed to make Klaus less concerned about the flickering shadows and figures that remained.
Amphetamines were a strange one. Because Ben was pretty sure Klaus could see and hear him with more clarity than usual while taking them, and yet he didn’t seem to be bothered by other ghosts. He wondered if it was a focus thing, because Ben had been intentionally summoned originally while all the other ghosts just existed.
Benzos and opiates knocked the ghosts away entirely, and while Klaus could always see Ben to some extent, he was pretty sure they muted him from Klaus too. Although it could be difficult to tell if Klaus really couldn’t hear him or if he was just too high to react to anyone at a certain point. And it might also explain why he'd decided to go with heroin of all things today. If he was alive he was sure he'd have a lump in his throat at the thought of that.
Klaus knew heroin and coke addicts, like Jess. He knew the toll injecting those drugs had done on her, with the awful infections that had hospitalised her for ages. Klaus had never really shown an interest in injecting drugs before. He'd always said it was about duration, not intensity, and that the high from needles seemed too fleeting.
But they'd been hanging out with Jess on the steps of the derelict Hotel where many addicts drifted to. She was waiting on an appointment with the doctor there when Klaus had shown up and recognised her. Ben hadn't, at first. He hadn't seen her in the twenty months they were in prison, and during that time she had gone downhill quickly. Her face sunken in and her usually sharp eyes cloudy and distant.
Apparently, while they'd been in prison, she'd found out she had HIV and was waiting on getting an antiviral script.
The doctor worked out of a small room on the ground floor of the Hotel. He would volunteer there three days a week for free. He was an older man, with a tired face and kind eyes. He gave free appointments to the numerous addicts who lived at the hotel and on the surrounding streets. Making sure people had access to antivirals, methadone and clean needles. Klaus had only seen the man twice, once after getting a bad lung infection his first winter on the streets, and once when someone had found Klaus overdosing in time and the man had been called to help.
Klaus had asked Jess how she was holding up, and she'd just shrugged and said she'd feel fine once she was done waiting and could go shoot up. Klaus had been curious then, and that was what really baffled Ben. Klaus could see, had to see, just what a bad idea this was from just looking at the people he knew. He shouldn't look at Jess, wasting away still unable to stop, and see that as something he wanted to try!
Ben shook his head. He needed to stop thinking about Klaus. He needed to stop thinking about Klaus and drugs. Which was pretty damn hard when that had been most of his life after death so far! At least the prison had mixed that up a bit. But not in a good way. Prison had been horrifically boring. Except for when it wasn’t. Then it had been much worse.
Ben wished he could really feel the warm sun streaming down on the city today. Because it was a beautiful day out. He decided to try and focus on that. He sat down on some nearby steps and watched the streets around him, trying to forget about his brother who was shooting up for the first time just a few metres away.
A person, a mousy-looking man in maybe his 40s, was walking down the sidewalk in their direction. Ben narrowed his eyes slightly at the ghost that was following him.
It was one of those ghosts.
Ben didn’t know how to describe it. They were humanoid but didn’t actually look quite human. They were desiccated and almost shredded looking at times, and their heads were almost always misshapen or deformed in some way.
He saw them sometimes around the city in the years since his death. He’d asked Klaus about them once, but either he didn’t know anything or refused to talk about what he did know. It could be either. Klaus wasn’t exactly an open book outside of his flashy cover, Ben thought with no small amount of frustration.
He glanced up and around the streets, there was one other ghost like the one following the mousey man on the edges of the crowd. It wasn't easy to tell if they were following someone as well given how busy the street was becoming, but they were moving. It must be lunchtime for all the workers in the area, Ben thought as he looked up at the sun. It was directly above in the sky.
His mind briefly returned to Klaus and he had to choke down another wave of bitterness.
That bitterness was disrupted when he felt a sudden shift in the world around him.
It felt like a cloud had blotted out the sun and dropped his soul into shadow. But the sky above was as bright as ever.
“What?” He muttered as he looked around to see if anyone else, ghost or human had felt what he’d just felt.
And if he still had a heart pumping blood his veins would have filled with ice when he saw all of the strange ghosts had frozen and were staring in his direction.
Ben scrambled back up to his feet and his eyes flickered between the ghosts. The closest one, with the mousy man, was what made him realise they weren’t actually looking at him.
They were looking behind him.
Towards the alley.
“Shit, Klaus!” Ben hissed.
Of course! These things were ghosts. And ghosts were drawn to Klaus like a moth to a flame. But there’s no way he would be sober enough to pull their attention right now! Especially not with the narcotics he’d decided to use!
He thought of that cold feeling that had come over him. And he realised that the feeling hadn’t actually left him yet. A sinking feeling of slow realisation started to come over him.
“No…”
The man with the ghost had stopped nearby as well, and he briefly glanced up at the apparition before peering down into the alley as well.
And that startled Ben, “You can see it?” He blurted out in surprise towards the man. There were other people who could see ghosts?
The man didn’t respond, and didn’t seem to register Ben’s presence at all.
The cold inside of Ben kept growing, and he tore his eyes away from the two figures and jogged back down the alley towards where he’d left Klaus, worry overwhelming his previous anger and frustration.
He rounded the corner of the dumpster Klaus had been using as cover while he shot up and the ice that he’d felt inside of him finally froze him solid.
Klaus was white and looked washed out from where he was propped up, his lips had gone blue, his eyes half closed and unseeing. And he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing.
He was so, so still.
In a way that went against everything Ben knew about his brother.
He could hear a tsunami in his head as waves of indescribable emotions rolled over him, and he rocked back before collapsing down next to his brother.
He’d known, deep down, that this had to happen eventually. He couldn’t even pretend to hold onto denial at what he was seeing. His brother was dead. It wasn't a surprise. It shouldn't be a surprise.
And Ben felt his world break. He didn’t know it was possible to cry as a ghost, he hadn’t done it once since his death. It turned out it was possible, and Ben’s face twisted up as his vision blurred.
“You absolute idiot!” He tried to yell at his brother, but the words cracked on their way out.
He wondered if Klaus would stick around with him, or if he would just leave, the way Ben had been too afraid to. Had Klaus already moved on? Decided that after their argument he wasn’t going to bother hanging back for Ben? Had Klaus wanted to leave Ben behind? Wanted to escape the constant judgement and bickering? Was it Ben's fault?
He was so far gone, so lost in his crashing emotions that Ben hadn’t realised that the man had come down into the alleyway as well. Not until a voice very nearby spoke quietly.
“Oh, oh dear,” came a very soft voice, and Ben’s head shot up to look at the man.
He’d found Klaus! Holy shit, someone had found Klaus! He hadn’t been dead long, maybe…
“You!” Ben cried, not caring that the man couldn’t hear him, just so filled with a sudden desperate hope knowing that Klaus had been found, “You can save him! Call an ambulance! Please!”
The man crouched down next to Klaus and stuck two fingers against his neck, feeling for a pulse as he fumbled in a pocket and pulled out a flip phone. He’d started dialling when suddenly he paused.
“What are you waiting for?” Ben pleaded to the man who couldn’t see or hear him, “He doesn’t have time for this, call for help already!”
“Ah, yes,” the man said quietly, “given the reaction we felt it might not be the best to draw unnecessary attention to him, not if he is...”
“What are you talking about?” Ben yelled, “He needs help now! Please, my brother is dying!”
My brother is dead.
He’d been telling Klaus for years that he was killing himself. Klaus had known he was killing himself. He just didn’t care. And now, Ben felt something shudder inside him, now his brother had gotten what he’d wanted.
He was dead.
And he’d left Ben alone.
Ben wasn’t sure how much time had passed since the man had first come into the alley, since Klaus had died.
Because he was dead.
Too much time had passed, and the man was just watching his brother’s corpse like some fucking creep. The ghost with him had started to break into an ashy smoke at some point, dissolving into thin air.
“You let him die,” he hissed at the small man. The grief warped into anger at the small balding man who was just staring at his brother calmly.
The man glanced down at his watch in concern, “Most usually don’t take this long,” he hummed to himself, or maybe he was speaking to the vanishing ghost that stood over him.
"Maybe I was wrong…" He said, reaching back for his phone.
And then something happened.
Flecks of something black and pale seemed to bubble over Klaus’s skin for a moment before it dissipated upwards and evaporated into nothing, the way the ghost had.
Klaus twitched a finger before blood seemed to rush back into his gaunt face. He gasped and lurched forward, vomiting up bile and coughing.
The mousy man squeaked and moved to the side to avoid the mess, reaching behind Klaus and awkwardly patting him on the back.
Klaus’s eyes looked hazy and distant and he blinked at the man, “You don’t look like a paramedic?”
“Oh, no! I’m not,” the man said cheerfully, he seemed entirely unsurprised by Klaus’s miraculous resurrection.
“Didn’t know random businessmen carried Narcan with them, not that I'm judging, I don't know your life,” Klaus muttered, as he stumbled up and pulled away from the man quickly, as if the contact was burning him. His eyes barely glanced at the barely remaining shadow of the ghost behind the man with the practised ease of someone who was very good at ignoring things they didn’t want to see.
“Thanks for the help or whatever,” Klaus said as he started stumbling away, pushing past the man, his steps becoming more stable as he went, “I’m just gonna get out of your hair now.”
“No, wait!” the man called after him anxiously, “I need to speak to you before–”
Klaus waved him off with a shaky tattooed hand, “I’m sure I’ve heard it all before but I’ve got people to do, things to meet. Life goes on, y’know how it is?”
Ben was still frozen, even as Klaus disappeared around the corner quickly and out of sight.
“I don’t think he even realised he died,” the man said quietly to himself.
Ben glanced at the man. Who was this guy? How had he known Klaus would come back? How had Klaus come back?
And then it hit him.
Demi-humans.
How had he not made the connection sooner?
They’d had some missions involving demi-humans before, back when they were all still under their father's thumb.
Dangerous immortals who needed to be captured and taken to specialised government departments. People who looked human, could pretend they were human... until they died for the first time.
He looked at the small man.
He looked about as harmless as anyone could.
He thought of his brother.
Klaus, the only member of their family who actively chose to make himself as harmless as he could. Who refused to kill even while the rest of them fell in line with their father’s orders and did what they were told. At the time the rest of the family had seen Klaus as weak for being unwilling to cause harm, even though he was trained alongside them to kill. Ben had mostly felt jealous of his odd resolve on the matter, and bitter that Klaus had gotten away with not killing anyone, unlike him.
Klaus, who was only ever really a danger to himself.
He looked at the small man one last time, before he jogged after his brother, following the light warmth that felt like life that emanated from him.
Because Ben knew that was what it was now, after feeling it snuff out as it had earlier. Klaus shone like a beacon. When Ben was alive he, and everyone else had commented on how Klaus had an aura that felt like death. He hadn’t felt that aura come off his brother since Ben’s death, and he'd assumed it was because he was dead.
But now, after having Klaus dead for those awful, long minutes, he recognised just how alive his aura felt.
Klaus felt like death to the living, and like life to the dead...
“I had the most amazing dream,” Klaus said as Ben caught up, “I can’t remember it, but…”
Ben stayed silent, unable to speak.
“Wish I could remember it. You know those dreams you wake up from where you just have a bunch of leftover emotions and ennui? Like you finally managed to figure everything out? Only you wake up and all you have left is the feelings and nothing else.”
“I haven’t had a dream in a long time,” Ben said eventually. When he felt like he could talk normally again, “I don’t really remember having one like that. I get the idea though.”
Klaus hummed, and they fell into silence.
“I don’t think needles are for me,” Klaus suddenly spoke again. ”Like, I took how much and it barely even lasted in the end, right?”
Ben felt a tension inside him lift slightly.
“Oh?” Ben said, trying to sound casual.
“Hmm,” Klaus hummed, not elaborating further. “Do you want to go to the library? I can flip pages for you or something.”
It wasn’t raining, and the weather was still clear and warm. Klaus usually didn’t go to the public library unless there was a reason not to stay outside. Even then it was hit or miss, when they first ended up on the streets Klaus had stayed out in the rain, and had only stopped when he realised his spare socks had gotten soaked through too and he’d ended up with the hypothermia that had lead to his eventual chest infection.
Was..? Klaus was apologising, Ben realised suddenly. The comment about the needles and now this, Klaus was trying to offer some sort of olive branch without actually saying it.
“Sure,” Ben said, keeping his tone equally casual. Neither of them wanted to draw attention to the apology for what it was. Doing that would break the attempt at a truce quicker than Ben rejecting it outright. “Sounds good.”
They were quiet for most of the walk. Klaus was clearly sober now, something that probably wouldn’t last long. Because Klaus never went to sleep sober. He couldn't sleep sober, is what he would say. But maybe Ben could pretend for the next few hours that it could last.
And then there was the other elephant in the room.
Klaus had been dead.
Ben felt the shudder of that reality run through him. Klaus had been dead. He had actually died.
That was not a good thing. For a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it stripped him of his basic human rights. Because legally, demi-humans weren’t human. That was why they’d been sent on one or two retrieval missions as kids. Because the government wanted all known demi-humans under their 'observation'.
And that situation had not improved over the years he was pretty sure. It wasn't something Ben had bothered really thinking about before, since it hadn’t really been something that affected him personally.
Now, it suddenly did.
And he was going to have to think about that, and how he would have to keep his brother safe from being found out. He didn't know if he should tell Klaus. He knew his brother, and especially after today, he could just imagine how far off the rails he would end up going if he really felt like he was free from consequences.
It should be fine, as long as his brother doesn’t die again.