Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Klaus Hargreeves did not remember much of his childhood.

Fortunately, according to Ben, it seemed that was a good thing.

He knew some things, usually the good things, but when Ben would bring up things like training or Reginald or anything particularly damaging to their psyche, Klaus with just go along with it after a brief search of his mind that came up empty.

Don’t get aem wrong, ae believed Ben. Klaus didn’t think he’d make any of that up, because what’s the point? Freak aem out more than the hundreds of bloody, torn-apart ghosts around aem already do? Ha! Fat chance.

There were a few times, of course, when Ben would mention something from their childhood and he’d get a response about it. Extra details about the event or however Klaus remembered it. Klaus wouldn’t remember these times later, because the moment Ben said anything he blacked out.

When they’re 27, sitting on a damp cardboard box alone in an alleyway with Klaus smoking god-knows-what, Ben lets them in on a little secret.

Klaus appears to be part of a system.

Of course, Klaus had no clue what that meant but when Ben began explaining it in more detail things started falling into place. In a terrible way.

Klaus Hargreeves would not be seen or talked to for a week after that.

Ben had been terrified he’d fucked up. Thought he had erased Klaus or something, had frantically apologized to Four when it finally came to blinking blearily and then turning to glare at whatever caused it to front.

Three years later, after yet another overdose and a long night in an ambulance, Klaus Hargreeves is finding out Reginald Hargreeves is dead.

He doesn’t stay in the front for long after that, either.

…

Four hates dealing with the aftermath of Klaus’s addictions. Hates that he’s suddenly coming to while inside an ambulance with blurry eyes, a growing migraine, and an oxygen mask firmly planted on his face. It’s all quickly forgotten when he sees what brought him to the front.

“Holy shit,” he whispers, before breaking out in a grin.

Showing up outside the Umbrella Academy ten minutes later is… a feeling. Not a particularly good one, either. This was probably a bad idea.

“You going in?” Ben prompted, materializing on top of the tall iron fence.

Four sighed loudly, dramatically, and adjusted the black coat around his shoulders, “I guess,” he frowned, pushing open the gates and heading for the doors. Chances were nobody else was here yet, as Four had literally hopped out of an ambulance on the way to the hospital to get here.

“Klaus?” a familiar voice called. Maybe he was wrong.

“Luther!” Four spun toward him, pausing for a moment to take in the absolute monster of a man he was looking at, “Well, you certainly changed, didn’t ya’ big guy?” he chuckled, watching Luther roll his eyes.

“Why did it have to be you that got here first?” he grumbled.

“Well I did come straight from an ambulance, and I’m sure you were already here,” he shrugged, “I’ll be on my way then, I simply must see how my old room faired.”

Luther didn’t even say goodbye.

Rude.

Sigh, oh well. Four continued toward the stairs, strolling up them with a hand on the railing and the other in their thick, black skirt’s pocket. The hallway they walked into was disconcerting, with the gross beige walls paired with brown and dirty tiles that make it feel like a haunted mental institute, not an academy.

“I don’t think I remember this place being so creepy,” Four comments, pushing open their bedroom door and kicking it shut behind them with a grossed-out expression.

“It isn’t that bad,” Ben says, reappearing on their bed, “...Your room hasn’t changed much, has it?”

Four spun around, taking it all in, “Hm, I think Klaus moved a couple things since I was last in here…” he crouched beside the end table, running a hand along the now painted and chipped away wood, “I still can’t believe he never took the fairy lights down.”

Ben chuckled, “Yeah. Who put those up again? I think they went up before I died.”

Four paused a moment, looking over to Ben then up at the lights above him, “You did, actually. Well, not you, yaknow, you,” it tapped the side of its head, “The one we’ve got up here. Absolutely terrified of the dark, you were. That or it was Ryleigh, but I don’t remember if he’d formed that early on. You’d have’ta ask June.”

Ben hummed. He knew the system had a version of him, but it was still strange to hear himself being talked about in the context of a different person. Plus, June never really fronted due to being non-human and not able to act like Klaus particularly well, so that was out the window as well.

“Well, let’s chillax, brother mine!” Four flopped on the bed, causing Ben to quickly dissipate and reappear on the edge of the frame with a laugh. Four, while more reserved than Klaus, was still a ball of chaotic energy at times. It’s taken a while to get him to this level of relaxation again, since he used to be a protective roiled up force of anger and pain.

…

Klaus sat up quickly, face falling into an uncommon frown.

“Klaus?”

“Ben?” Klaus looked up at the ghost on his bedframe, tilting his head to the side, “What’d I miss, hm? Four go on another adventure without me?”

“Dad’s dead. We’re at the academy for his funeral.” Ben filled in, watching Klaus move to get out of bed only to wince when he put his weight on his arm, “Yeah, Four jumped out of a moving vehicle to get here.”

“What a little freak,” Klaus grinned, shaking out aer hands and moving to the door with little caution for aer own body and any injuries it may have sustained, “Let’s see what we can find here! Maybe something in daddy dearests study, hm?” he leaned back dramatically toward Ben, who just rolled his eyes with a small smile.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna go look around. Have fun stealing from him, or whatever it is you’re off to do.” and then Ben was gone, and Klaus was left to wander the halls of a childhood home that he barely remembered.

It didn’t seem like anybody was around, not yet at least, so he shoved open Reginald’s study with a dramatic flair that was certainly unnecessary and headed straight for the many collections of books and various nicknacks on the shelves.

Nothing expressly useful, although that lockpicking Klaus learned early on in life came in handy when ae found the liquor cabinet. Easily, ae pulled out two bottles and hid them in aer coat. Mumbling random thoughts to aerself all the way and occasionally waving off a ghost in aer way, Klaus finally made it behind the desk.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing, ooh that looks expensive,” Klaus grinned, tugging out a small box and stashing it in aer coat quickly, before getting back to work.

“Klaus? What are you doing in here?” ah, a new voice! Klaus jolted, bonking his head on the bottom of the desk.

“Son of a biscuit!” ae squawked, falling onto aer bottom and reaching up to rub the back of aer head. He looked around for the owner of the voice before his eyes finally landed on Allison, “Allie? Hey!” he grinned, “Wow, is that really you? Oh my, come here! Come here, gimmie a hug,” he pushed himself off the ground and held his arms out, tugging his sister in.

The look on her face made it pretty clear she wasn’t anywhere near as happy to see him as he is to see her. He barely remembered the last time he spoke with her before things really started to go sour and he fronted less and less until they ran away and suddenly he was one of the hosts again.

“Long time, too long,” he patted her on the back, surprised when she copied the motion, before finally pulling back so as to not make her more uncomfortable than she already was just seeing him, “Hey, I was hoping to see you actually, yaknow? Get your autograph added to my collection.”

Allison's eyes flickered down, raising a brow, “Just outta rehab?” she commented, and Klaus quickly pulled away to try and cover it with his sleeve.

“No, no, no, I’m- I’m done with all that!” he sighed faux-tiredly, “I just came down here to, y’know, really prove to myself that the old man is really gone.” Klaus gestured to the desk, before perking up, “And he is! He’s dead, yay!” he did a little cheer, before clapping his hands and grinning, “You know how I know? Because if he were alive, we wouldn’t be allowed to step foot in this room! He was always in here, our whole childhood. Plotting our next torment, right?” he flopped down into the chair, kicking his feet up on the desk and chuckling sardonically.

Allison began looking at some of the books, the papers, still strewn about his desk, before turning and looking around the room instead of at him.

“You remember how he used to look at us? That scowl? Thank christ he’s not our real father, so we couldn’t inherit those cold, dead eyes!” Allison finally turned back around to look at him, smiling only the smallest amount. Klaus brought aer hands up to pull aer eyelids away and make aer eyes look wider, “Ahhh, number three!” he mocked, pitching his voice up and causing it to crack.

“Get out of his chair,” Luther demanded, Klaus jolting and pulling his hands away.

“Bossy, bossy,” he mumbled, doing as told anyways as Luther gets into the room, “Wow, Luther,” he nodded, “You really, uh, you really filled out over the years, huh?” he posed briefly, looking him up and down.

Luther stared at him, almost looking confused for a moment. Ah, had someone already talked to him? Or maybe he forgot he looked like that somehow, “Klaus.”

“Ah-ah-ah! Save the lecture, I’m already leaving!” he held his hands up, heading around the desk and heading for the door, “You two can… talk amongst yourselves.”

Luther put a hand out, effectively stopping him, “Drop it.”

“...Ex-squeeze me?”

“Do it. Now.”

Klaus stared, looking generally disbelieving, before rolling his eyes and tugging out of the loose grip on his arm, “Alright, alright,” he grumbled, tugging out the two bottles he’d pilfered and setting them on the desk loudly, “Just an advance on our inheritance, yaknow?” he giggled a little madly, “That’s all it is!” he tugged out a few random nicknacks he’d grabbed, turning around to drop them all at Luther’s feet. “No need to get your little panties in a bunch!”

He slammed the door on his way out.

…

Ah, skirts, skirts, and lacking shirts were superior to the many scarves and the thin shirt and tight, vaguely uncomfortable leather skinny jeans. With four different necklaces, a thick coat, and one of Allison's old skirts he’d easily yoinked from her closet, Klaus felt much more at home.

In the body, at least, maybe not in this building. Nothing was really home for them at the moment.

Ben, finally, reappeared. This time sitting on the end table with a lamp half in his thigh, “Luther’s calling for a family meeting.” he announces. Klaus spins around, startled, before breaking into yet another grin.

“Wonderful! I can grab a drink while I’m down there,” he grabs an unlit cigarette off the end table, a lighter and strolls back out of the room and down to the living room/bar or whatever you want to call it.

It was awkward.

Really, really awkward.

Klaus poured himself a drink and smoked in the background while all the rest of them sat around each other in silence.

Until, finally, Luther stood and sighed, “Um,” he began, “I guess we should get this started. I figured we could have some sort of memorial service, in the courtyard at sundown. Say a few words, dad’s favorite spot.”

“Dad had a favorite spot?”

“Yeah, yaknow, under the oak tree?” Luther frowned, looking around at the confused looks of his family, “We used to sit around there all the time, none of you ever did that?” Klaus rolled his eyes, finally strolling toward the seating room with a glass of whatever he could scrounge up.

“Will there be refreshments?” he asked, ever so good at prioritizing, “Tea? Scones? Cucumber sandwiches are always a winner.”

Luther, looking so done with Klaus’ entire existence in such a way Klaus couldn’t help but snicker, “What? No.” he sighed, “Put that out, you know dad didn’t allow smoking in here.” Klaus didn’t put it out.

“Is that my skirt?” Allison pointed out, gesturing towards Klaus who perked up, swishing the skirt around when he turned back toward her.

“Oh, yes! I found it in your room. A little dated, I know, but it’s very very breathy on the… bits,” he gestured, grinning around the cigarette in his mouth.

“Listen up.” Luther commanded, causing Klaus to startle and step back with a sigh, “There are still some important things we need to discuss.”

“Like what?” Diego prompted, sounding thoroughly done with being here. A sentiment Klaus could get behind.

“Like the way he died.”

“And here we go,” Diego sighed.

“I don’t understand, they said it was a heart attack.” Vanya frowned, fidgeting from her place beside where Klaus had dropped onto the couch.

“Yeah, according to the coroner.”

“Well, wouldn’t they know?”

“Theoretically.”

“Theoretically?”

“Look, I’m just saying. At the very least, something happened. The last time that I talked to dad, he sounded… strange.”

“Ohh, quelle surprise!” Klaus gurgled, already tired of being around this family. They were annoying when Klaus was little, and that certainly didn’t change now that they’re thirty.

“Strange how?”

“He sounded on edge. Talking about how I should be careful who I trust.”

“Luther.” Diego started, finally standing from his shady little chair, “He was a paranoid, bitter old man who was starting to lose what was left of his marbles.” he said it like he was talking to a young child. Klaus almost choked on his drink holding back a laugh.

“No. He must’ve known something was going to happen.” Luther refuted, before turning to Klaus who raised a brow, “Look, I know you don’t like to do it, but I need you to talk to dad.”

Huh. Looking to the family fuck-up for help. Fuck-ups?

Either way, Luther really was desperate. Funny.

“Man, I can’t just… call dad in the afterlife and be like ‘Dad, could you just… quit playing tennis with Hitler for a minute and, take a quick call?’ ae mimicked, waving aer hands around as ae spoke.

“Since when? That’s your entire thing, Klaus.” Ah, Luther sounded irritated. It was honestly a mystery that none of their siblings seemed to know how their powers worked.

“I’m not in the… right, state of mind!” Klaus replied, almost baffled.

“You’re high?”

“Yeah!” he grinned, laughing, “Yeah! I mean, how are you not? Listening to this… nonsense.”

“Well sober up, this is important!” Klaus sighed, this family was full of morons, “Then there’s the issue of the missing monocle.”

“Who gives a shit about a stupid monocle?”

“Exactly.” Luther turned to Diego, who looked like he was seconds from throwing a knife at Luther’s face, “It’s worthless. So whoever took it, I think it was personal. Someone close to him, someone with a grudge.”

“Where’re you goin’ with this?”

“Oh, isn’t it obvious? He thinks one of us killed dad!”

There’s a moment of silence, where Luther almost looks like he’s going to refute the idea, but he just turns to Allison like she’s going to back him up. Klaus barks out a laugh, “You do!”

“How could you think that?”

“...Great job, Luther. Way to lead.” Diego remarks sarcastically, watching Luther continue to stumble over an excuse.

“That’s not what I’m sayin’.”

“You’re crazy, man. Crazy.” Klaus waves a hand around the top of his head to make a point, standing and heading to leave. He had a date with a stash of whatever he’d left in his room twelve years ago.

“I’m not finished.”

“Okay, well, sorry, I’m off to go murder mom real quick, be right back!” ae laughed, waving the hand holding his cigarette as he strolled straight out of the room.

God, this family was exhausting. No wonder he dissociated for most of his childhood.

Chapter Text

Later, much, much later, Klaus is standing in front of Reginald's urn sighing, “Listen up old man.” he shook his hands out, kicking off his shoes, “You know, if I was murdered and one of my kids– adopted kids!-- happened to be able to commune with the dead. I might think about, I don’t know, maybe manifesting!” he threw his arms out as if he hoped something would happen.

“Really? That’s all you’ve got?” Ben mocked.

“Watch your mouth, Bentacles,” Klaus stuck aer tongue out at the ghost, before turning back to the urn and waving a hand in Ben’s direction to try and shoo him off, “Do the whole big angry ghost lecture!” he crossed his arms, glaring at the urn, “Tell everyone who done it, and find eternal peace!”

Nothing.

“...Eternal peace is probably overrated anyways,” he sighed, spinning in a full circle a couple of times looking for Reginald’s ghost amongst the crowd of others, “Come on now, Reggie. Any time now,” he huffed, leaning against the counter.

Nothing happened.

Waiting, waiting, waiting, getting bored of waiting, more waiting. Nothing.

“Come on, come on! Chop chop!” aer clapped their hands, “You always were a stubborn bastard!” Ah, where’d that come from? Someone’s getting antsy up in the ol’ noggin. Aer sighed, “I dunno about you, but I need a drink.”

And now, he’s reaching over the counter.

…Probably should’ve thought about moving the urn over a little more.

…

Oliver, one of the system caregivers, did not like fronting.

She did her darndest to avoid it, because the body was almost always gross and in pain, uncomfortable, high, drunk, or all of the above. Not to mention the waking world was much too loud for her tastes.

But, today was apparently an emotional day, whether Four or Klaus would ever admit it, so one little mess up (Which happened to be knocking Shittiest Dad Of The Year’s urn off the counter) and suddenly she’s taking control to let them all cool off for a few.

“Klaus?” bollocks.

Right, how does one do an American accent again?

This is another reason Oliver hated fronting.

“Diego!” she spun around, throwing her arms out and projecting as much Klaus into her movements as she could, “Mi hermano, how have you been, hm?”

Diego stared for a moment, “We were just talking… Do you need me to go get mom? How much did you take?” Oliver pulled her arms in toward her chest, taking a step back when Diego took a step forward.

She looked around the room in search of Ben, seeing the ghost sitting on the coffee table with that same ghostly book he randomly pulls out and rereads over and over and over again.

He looks up at her as if he knew she was looking, raises a brow, looks her up and down, then frowns, “Diego walked in on Klaus trying to put dad’s ashes back in his urn, ae kinda fucked up on trying to distract him.”

Oliver blinked, “Nope! No, no, perfectly fine!” she waved the edge of the jacket around like it was helping her make her point, “Just tryna’ summon ol’ pops!” she hated this voice so much, the accent, the deepness, it felt wrong and she hated it.

Diego eyed her, frowning, “...If you’re sure,” he sighed, “Can you do it somewhere else at least?”

Oliver nodded, definitely a bit too fast if the way her head began spinning was anything to go by. She didn’t dare say anything else as she grabbed the urn, popped the top on, and rushed out of the room.

Ben reappeared by her, falling into step, “Oliver?” he prompted, her nodding in confirmation, “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Kinda?” she kept her voice low, not wanting anybody to overhear her. Unlike Four, Klaus and Bubba, she didn’t exactly like the idea of people seeing her talking to ‘herself’, “Dad’s clearly dead, if Diego’s here it means that most of the family is probably here, when’s the funeral?”

“Tonight, at sundown.” he informed, “The kitchen is empty.”

“Thanks. Where is everybody?”

“Uhhh,” Ben vanished, reappearing only once Oliver had already made it into the kitchen and set the urn down on the table, “Allison and Luther are in their rooms, Diego is still in the living room and Vanya is sitting on the stairs, as of the last thirty seconds.” Oliver chuckled.

“Thanks,” she pulled out one of the chairs, leaning on the table and staring at their father's urn, “I’m glad I never really met him.” she sighed, leaning back, “I think I saw him, maybe once, before he turned to look at me and Four took over. He seemed like a right prick though, so I can only be thankful.”

Ben hopped up onto the table, crossing his legs and looking down at the urn along with her. She always found it amusing how he would sit on the most uncomfortable-looking surfaces purely because he couldn’t feel it, so why should it matter? He was very cat-like at times.

“Sometimes I wish I could’ve had that,” he sighs.

“Have what?”

“The ability to just… leave. Let someone else deal with it.” he leaned back, laying across the table and throwing his arm down so a mug was sticking through it, “Of course, it also sounds awful, having so many gaps in your memory and dissociating and all of that but… yeah, our childhoods sucked, and you guys just,” he waved a hand, “Weren’t really there for most of it.”

“Yeah, fair enough,” she hummed, and they fell into a moment of silence before the music started playing.

Music?

It was a wonder how sound traveled through this house. Nobody heard their screaming through nightmares, but music playing two floors up was audible all the way in the kitchen.

“¿Que?” she looked up, brows scrunching.

Ben sat up as well, looking toward the ceiling, “Oh, god,” he rolled his eyes, “Luther used to play this song so much when we were kids.”

Oliver grinned, pushing the chair back and standing, “It’s not bad,” she pointed out, swaying her hips along to the beat. Ben gave her a flat look, “Come on, hermano! Dance with me!” she did a little spin, the skirt Klaus had been wearing before flaring out and briefly tangling around her legs when she stopped to hold a hand out toward Ben.

Ben barely hesitates, only rolling his eyes again and hopping off the table to take her hand, “I hope you’re a better dancer than Klaus.”

(It wasn’t a surprise to her that he could touch her, he always could. He theorizes that the different alters have different grasps on their powers, but doesn’t have much to the theory other than that.)

Oliver gasped, offended, “Rude! I’ll have you know I’m a brilliant dancer!” she laughed, easily taking the lead in dancing. It wasn’t any real dance, more something made and mashed up. It was fun though, they both had to admit.

At least until the power goes out, something similar to lightning flashing outside. The entire house seemed to shake, Ben and Oliver letting go of each other just in time for Reginald's urn to fly directly at Oliver’s chest, “Dios mio–!” she squawked, clutching the thing so it wouldn’t go flying again.

“Oliver, move!” Ben warned just in time for her to dodge several knives flying past her head.

“What’s going on?!”

“Something’s in the courtyard!” Oliver turned toward the windows, before setting Reginald's urn back on the table and rushing out into the hallway. She caught up with the rest of the family, following them toward all the activity.

“What is it?!” Vanya and Oliver both called, the latter barely remembering to mask her accent.

“Don’t get too close!”

“Yeah, no shit!” Diego remarked, Oliver mumbling a ‘Language’ under her breath.

It was a strange sight to see, all five (six, if you counted Ben who was standing in the doorway still) of them huddled up watching some sort of anomaly in their courtyard.

“Looks like some sort of temporal anomaly!” Luther pointed out, “Either that or a miniature black hole, one of the two.”

“Pretty big difference there, Paul Bunyan!”

Oliver glanced around, spotting the fire extinguisher just inside the door. It probably wouldn’t do anything, but on the off chance throwing something into the weird hole in space changed something, she was gonna try it.

Besides, it’s totally something Klaus would do.

“Outta the way!” she called, pushing through the group and yeeting the fire extinguisher at it.

Nothing happened.

“What’s that gonna do?!”

“I don’t know, ya’ got a better idea!?” she threw her arms out, barely glancing back at Allison while she responded.

“Klaus, everyone, get behind me!” Luther practically commanded, reaching forward to grab Oliver's arm and guide her back. She flinched at the contact and shook him off, getting a good distance from both the group and the hole.

“Yeah, everyone get behind us!”

Ugh, cringe much, Diego?

“Should we really be staying so close to it? Why aren’t we running?” Oliver threw her arms out, “Or at least getting some shelter in case it goes boom?”

She watched Vanya and Allison share a confused look at that, but nobody responded to her. Rude, as per usual.

Gods, why couldn’t Klaus have a better reputation?

And then there was someone in the hole.

And holy shit, was that Five?

…

Nobody likes funerals.

Just generally, but in the system as well.

Six and The Horror minded them the least out of the system, so painfully accustomed to death they could stand there and stare at the ground the entire time until it was all over.

Six always found it awkward to be fronting in his sister's body, especially when his source is usually tailing said body around like a stray puppy. But if he didn’t take the front, then the body would probably just end up sitting dissociated until the funeral was over, and leaving this body unattended never worked well for anybody.

Ben, the ‘real’ one that is, scoffed from his place sitting on top of his own statue. Nobody seemed particularly broken up about the death of their abusive father. Go figure.

Except maybe Luther. Moon boy.

Six did not like Luther very much.

He still cringed sympathetically at the embarrassing display of him simply dumping the ashes onto the ground. Ben did practically the same expression.

“Probably would’ve been better with some wind..” he commented, causing Six to scoff.

“Does anyone… wish to speak?” Pogo prompted, looking around as all the siblings stared back at him in silence, “Very well.”

Six really didn’t want to listen to Pogo’s speech.

“In all regards, Sir Reginald Hargreeves made me what I am today.” Gag, “And for that, I will forever be in his debt. He was my master… and my friend. And I shall miss him very much.”

It’s a moment of silence that Six thinks Pogo will finally stop talking and let them all go back inside. This rain was terrible, he was still in that stupid skirt Klaus was wearing earlier, and the tiny little pink kid's umbrella was doing nothing from keeping him wet.

“He will leave behind a complicated legacy.” If Pogo didn’t stop talking Six was just going to leave, at this point.

“He was a monster.” Diego cut him off. Thank god, someone said it. Six can’t help but laugh, “He was a bad person and a worse father. The world’s better off without him.”

“Diego.” Allison warned, as if he wasn’t saying what was true.

“My name is Number Two. You know why? Because our father couldn’t be bothered to give us actual names. He had mom do it.”

“Would anyone like something to eat?” Grace offered kindly, seemingly unaware that she was listening to her ‘son’ talk shit about his father at his funeral.

“No, it’s okay, mom.”

“Oh, okay.”

Sweet little Vanya.

“Look, you wanna pay your respects? Go ahead, but at least be honest about the kinda man he was.”

“You should stop talking now.”

“You know, you of all people should be on my side here, Number One.” He kept saying their numbers like he was spitting them. Six was glad that, though it probably wouldn’t come down to it because Diego always had beef with Luther a ignored anybody else, if it came down to it he wouldn’t have to hear that from anybody but their own system.

He briefly wonders how Four would feel. Probably a combination of offended and elated to be called by the right name.

“I am warning you.”

“After everything he did to you?” Huh, Five was looking at him. Wow, it was weird to see him after everything. “He had to ship you a million miles away.”

“Diego, stop talking.”

“That’s how much he couldn’t stand the sight of you!”

And now they’re swinging.

Six, Five, and Ben all sighed at the sight, everybody moving back a couple of feet to be out of the punch zone. Anybody trying to stop them didn’t do much good, and Pogo didn’t even bother beyond a small handful of words before he went back inside.

Five followed pretty soon after.

And then Luther punched his statue straight in the balls, Ben’s ghost vanishing and reappearing on the ground next to six with wide eyes.

“Sorry, man,” Six mumbled, as if it wasn’t his statue too.

“You too.” Ben replied, knowing who was out just by the way they spoke and stood.

“Thanks.”

“And there goes Ben’s statue,” Allison commented, turning to head for the doors. Six followed just behind her, barely bothering to glance back when Vanya yelled something, and the sound of Diego’s knives flying through the air followed.

Yeah, nobody likes funerals. At least this one was a little more entertaining.

…

Today was a whirlwind of switches and Oliver was getting kinda tired of it. It's not surprising, since they're with a family they haven't seen in around a decade that are all tied to trauma and generally not the healthiest to be around, but still.

A small headache was forming by the time Oliver was brought out after the funeral, left to wander back to the kitchen for something to eat only to find Five there, “Five?” she tilted her head.

Five glanced back at her and blinked, before frowning, “...Yep.” he turned back to whatever he was making.

Oliver's not sure what she said to cause that expression.

“Watcha makin’?” she stretched, before tugging out a chair

“I am trying to make coffee.”

“Good luck,” she chuckled, “The only stuff that’s here is like… Luthers from a few years ago.”

“You drink coffee?” he raised a brow, blipping from the counter to a stool that let him reach above the fridge.

“Sometimes, here and there.”

“Where's Vanya?” Allison, wonderful, another to the party! Oliver figured she'd run off to her room after the funeral.

“I think I heard her tell Pogo she got a cab, so she's probably on her way home.” Oliver filled in, offering a small smile from where she was leaning on the table, trying to avoid touching her bare chest to the cold surface.

“That’s unfortunate,” Five huffed, “An entire square block. Forty-two bedrooms, nineteen bathrooms, but no. Not a single drop of decent coffee.”

“Dad hated caffeine,” Allison pointed out.

“Yeah, he hated a lot of things,” Five rolled his eyes.

“Besides, he’s dead now, what does it matter?” Oliver added, “Griddy’s is still open, 24/hr business, bay-be!” she grinned, throwing her arms out.

Five sighed, “I’m taking the car.”

“...Do you ever know how to drive?” Allison snarked.

“I know how to do everything,” Oh, okay, so somehow Five got more egotistical throughout an apocalypse. Guess there isn’t much else when you’re isolated for… what was it, 58 years? No, that’s his age, it’d be… 40-something. Who knows, Oliver was never good at math.

“I feel like we should try and stop him,” Oliver started after he blinked away, “But also I think he would try and kill us if we did.”

Allison says nothing, glancing toward the window when the car outside revs up and starts driving away. The silence is nothing but annoying when Oliver gets up, ready to go take a bloody nap.

“Alright,” Diego walks in sighing, “Guess I’ll see you guys in… what, ten years? When Pogo dies?”

“Not if you die first.”

“Yeah, yeah, love you too sis. Good luck on your next film! Hope it turns out better than your marriage.”

Oliver waits for him to walk away before rolling her eyes, “What a wanker,” she mumbles. Allison's eyes linger on her for a moment, before she turns the other way and leaves her more-or-less alone in the kitchen, “Were they always like this?”

Ben tilts his head to the side in thought, “...Yeah, pretty much.”

“Brilliant,” Oliver replies with as much exhausted sarcasm as she can muster, and then turns to follow Allison up the stairs so she can go pass out in their old room.

Chapter Text

Six is woken the next morning with a growling stomach, a raging headache, and a disdain for the world.

And a knock on the door, of course.

“Master Klaus?” Pogo called from the other side, sounding tired. Six groans, rolling over and attempting to bury himself underneath the heavy blankets, “Master Klaus, I can hear you awake.”

“Go away, Pogo,” Ben snarked tiredly, only getting a loud sigh and the sound of keys jingling in response. Their door is pushed open moments later, and Six is forced to roll over and glare at the chimp.

“My apologies for waking you, Master Klaus, however I have a query for you,” Six stared on with ros everlasting resting bitch face (Ben, who’s sitting on their dresser, always finds his alter counterpart so much more hostile and wonders if it’s a result of being surrounded by the chaos that is their system, or if that’s just what they thought of living Ben as.), “Items from your father's study have gone missing. In particular, an ornate box with a pearl inlay.”

Six stared for a long moment, before rolling back over, “I didn’t take it,” he grumbled into the pillow. It was true, Six didn’t take it, but Klaus probably looted their father's office if he had to guess.

Pogo sighed, “The contents of that box are priceless. Were they to find their way back to the office, whoever took it would be absolved of any blame or consequences.”

Six rolled back over, “I’ll let you know if I see it, Pogo,” he relented, “Did I miss breakfast?”

Pogo shook his head, “Grace is making it up now.”

Six nodded, throwing a thumbs up to him, before attempting ro’s best at getting up while Pogo left the room.

They stretched out, grunting when their shoulders and back strained from the movement, “Morning,” they greeted their ghostly counterpart.

”Morning,” Ben replied, ”Mom and Pogo are the only two still in the house.”

Six gave a thumbs up, heading for the closet to change into the loosest pair of skinny jeans Klaus owns, a t-shirt, and some kind of jacket.

Knowing their luck, someone would be back home eventually.

Breakfast was fine, Grace briefly greeted him with a smile and a plate of smiley-face eggs and bacon. He managed to keep it down despite the now swelling nausea (Six felt fine when ro woke up, but then ro started moving around and now ro’s stomach is a swirling pit of agony).

Curse withdrawal for being such a bitch.

Five shows up sometime throughout the day when both Six and Ben are reading a book together curled up in a chair (or perched on it, in Ben’s case).

“Klaus, I need you to pretend to be my dad,” is what comes out of his mouth first. Not a hello, not a please, just a demand and an annoyed expression. Six scowls at him, yet he rolls his eyes and concedes nonetheless.

The trip goes poorly, with The Horror cocooning when Five starts really getting on his nerves, he ends up threatening the poor guy behind the desk into showing them what’s going on; even going to the extent of using the pathetic excuse that is the body's untrained powers. Summoning the mangled woman in the corner whose head was half melted off, eyeball hanging from its socket, right arm dangling by a literal gory thread and a growing pile of blood to the visible world seemed to do the trick; all without Five noticing.

Five spends a while just kind of… looking at him, after that. But they don’t figure anything out, and that irritates Five, so Six is content for him to fuck off so he can do literally anything else.

Probably would’ve been nice if he had fucked off after calling Six a cab or teleporting him back to the Academy, but whatever, the walk back was only twenty minutes. The clothes Five made him wear are terribly uncomfortable because nothing in their closet could be considered ‘nice’ under normal terms so they had to raid the old man's closet.

Safe to say it doesn’t fit him.

Ben chatted with him on the way back at least, getting into a rather avid discussion about the clouds (that cloud looked like a duck, not an owl and he will take this argument to the grave. Wait–) before they finally made it back and cut the conversation short before somebody yelled at them and triggered somebody else to the front.

Back at the academy, Six went and found the book Five had them leave behind and resumed reading with Ben. Ro curled up in an armchair in the seating room, Ben perched on the back of the chair and leaning way over ros shoulder to see the words.

There was one time where Ben and Six had tried to read a book just sitting in the same chair because, well, Ben can’t touch him so taking up nearly the same space wouldn’t be a big deal, but it got uncomfortable for both of them fast. Unfortunately, Six hates sitting on couches, so chairs it is.

The day went by terribly slowly, with only Junebug coming close to the front to check on him. Apparently, Four and Klaus have been asleep the entire day, and nobody else particularly wanted to take the front and deal with the family. Six was already there, so things were probably going to be fine. At least the system knew they wouldn’t wake up high or sleep-deprived tomorrow.

It was a little funny, that yesterday they switched every hour or two because of everything going on, and today Six and The Horror are the only two who’ve seen the light of day. Whatever, the less the merrier.

…

“I’d ask what you’re doing but then I remembered– I don’t care,” Five sighed, coming down the fire escape to find Klaus sifting through the trash yelling at someone he can’t see.

“Hey!” he greets, blowing out a breath of smoke, “You know there are easier ways out of the house, buddy.”

“This one involved the least amount of talking,” his feet clicked on the dirty concrete as he hopped off the ladder, “Or so I thought.”

“Oh, hey, wait!” Klaus fumbled, “Need any more company today? I could, uh, clear my schedule,” he offers- all too bored in the giant house and somebody yelling at him in his own head any time he tries to have a decent time.

Five looked him up at down judgingly, “Looks like you’ve got your hands full,” and walked straight out of the alleyway without acknowledging the rest of Klaus’ efforts.

The medium sighed, flopping back into the dumpster, “Well,” ae turned aes head toward the trash bags, desensitized to all the smells, “At least I’ve got this.”

He grabs a somewhat moldy bagel and sticks it in his mouth, grinning partially chewed food at Ben who cringed from his spot on the fire escape.

When ae finally made it back inside, Luther asked if he’d seen Five. Ae told him he took off in the van, then strolled right past the big guy to wander the halls before he could drag aem along on an adventure.

‘What’s going on now?’ a voice that Klaus hasn’t heard since there was a fistfight in an alleyway a month or so back, begins pressing itself towards the front. He lights up, ducking into their room and locking the door.

“Aiden, nice to hear ya’!” he calls happily, tossing his now dirty jacket off to the side, “Where ya’ been, buddy?”

‘Helping Monarch understand human emotions again. What’d I miss?’

“Hey, Aiden,” Ben greeted, appearing on the vanity/desk with a book in hand.

“Xe says hi!” Klaus grins, “So basically– dad’s dead, the original Five is back and also he went to the future, experienced the apocalypse, and now is fifty-eight or something but his body is still thirteen. He’s a real dick, but surprisingly similar to you!” he lists off, “Oh, and since dad’s dead we’re staying in the Academy until Luther or Pogo kicks us out.”

‘...I see. I suppose this is what happens when you don’t keep track of time.’ Aiden hums, ‘Wait– hang on, you said my source is back? He went to the apocalypse?!’

Klaus snickers, “Yep! Sure did, he’s real jaded now, total dick. Whatever he saw made him lose whatever touch with emotions you managed to preserve.”

‘Fascinating. Maybe I could talk to him at some point?’

Klaus frowned, “Maybe one day.”

They both knew that day may very well never come.

Klaus sighed, “Watcha readin’, benny-boo?” he called, not recognizing the cover as it had been totally burnt to a crisp in their journey to kill it.

“Same as always, Klaus,” he replies blandly.

“Booo~ring! We should find something fun to do. I can’t believe you and Six actually spent all day yesterday reading a book!”

‘We went on a side quest for Five too, if that makes you feel any better.’ Six interjects, sounding like he just woke up.

‘Morning, Ben.’

‘Morning, Aiden, nice to see you again. Any progress with Monarch?’

‘Not much. She likes cats though. Also, I don’t know if the cat is an NPC or an alter so somebody should probably ask Agria sometime soon.’

“Good morning, Six! You wouldn’t happen to want to take over the front for a bit, aye pal?” Klaus turns away from Ben, facing his bed as if there were someone there, “The real world is so boring!”

Six sighs, ‘I’d rather not, Klaus, we finished our book and I have nothing else to read. Maybe someone else will.’

‘I can,’ Aiden offers, ‘It has been too long since I’ve seen the family.’

Six replies before Klaus can jump at the offer, ‘You can’t reveal the system. You’d give June and Will a heart attack and make the current situation a whole lot worse.’

‘Yes, yes, Ben, I know,’ Aiden pushes closer to the front, ‘Klaus?’

Klaus lets the wave of dissociation pull over aem without a fuss, Aiden pulling xemself to the front.

“Good morning, Ben,” Aiden greets, straightening out Klaus’ poor posture and cringing at his clothes, “He wouldn’t happen to have any nice clothes left behind?” he sighs, turning toward the closet.

‘I resent that!’ Klaus calls, he and Six still near the front for the time being.

“These clothes are literally covered in trash, Klaus,” xe scowls, sifting through the skirts, skinny jeans, and leather in the closet, “Forgive me for not wanting to wear them anymore.”

He tugs out a velvet skirt, one stolen from Allison as expected, and the only dress shirt he owns (black with a deep v), and makes his way towards the bathroom to shower.

Luckily, he got out of the weird feeling of being in his sister's body a few years ago, desensitized to it. Which is lucky since he knows Ben hasn’t, which means he’s constantly uncomfortable while fronting.

The shower itself went fine, as did getting dressed. He scowled when he realized Klaus owns exactly two pairs of shoes and one is falling apart (ew, ew, ew TERRIBLE texture, why is the sole squishy and moist??) while the other is this tall knee-high leather platform boot with too many buckles, so he settles for a pair of black socks instead.

“Klaus!” Diego’s voice shouted, stomping down the hallway, “Family meeting!” his voice didn’t quiet, even as he pounded on the bedroom door. Aiden scowled but relented nonetheless.

“Coming, Dee!” he called back, straightening the dress shirt and strolling out of the room. He tried to break the habit of keeping his back straight, slouching and letting the body loose. The family may be slightly used to their ‘mood swings’ but he should at least try to keep close to the original.

Xe half expects Diego to make a comment about xer nickname, but when xe opens the door xer older brother is already stalking away without a word. Xe hurries to follow, nearly tripping over the body’s long legs along the way.

He’s led downstairs and into the sitting room where an old tv and VHS player have been brought out on a wheely table. “Everbody here?” Luther asks, not bothering to turn away from whatever is on screen.

Aiden looks around, himself, Diego, Ben, Allison, Luther, Vanya– it all checks out. Allison responds first though, affirming their appearance.

“Good,” Luther grunts, pressing play on the player. A black-and-white video starts playing, and from what Aiden can tell from where he’s standing, it’s showing mom possibly poisoning Reginald.

Interesting.

“...Do you really think mom would hurt dad?” Vanya asks quietly when they’ve replayed the video three times and Aiden has gotten a bag of pretzels.

“You’ve been away from home a long time, Vanya, maybe you don’t know Grace anymore,” Luther responds, barely looking at her when he turns back.

“If he was poisoned–,” Diego starts, only to be cut off by Aiden.

“It would’ve showed up in the coroner's report. Maybe it was just convenient timing.”

“Or someone paid off the coroner,” Diego added, before turning back to Aiden with a confused look like he hadn’t expected him to say anything.

He probably hadn’t.

Oops?

“Yeah, well–,” Luther starts again once he stops staring at Aiden, “I don’t need a report to tell me what I can see with my own eyes, Diego.”

“Maybe all that low gravity in space messed with your vision,” Diego counters, stepping forward and rewinding the tape, “Look closer.”

Aiden, out of curiosity, leans forward, slightly invading Vanya’s personal space before shooting her an awkward smile and stepping to the side.

“Dad has his monocle–,” he hits play, “Mom stands up, monocles gone.” he steps away, meaning Vanya and Aiden both have to move as well, “She wasn’t poisoning him, she was taking it. To clean it, I assume.”

“Then where is it?” Luther sighs, shutting the tv off and looking back at him, “I’ve searched the house, including all of her things; she doesn’t have it.”

Diego makes a weird face, looking down instead of at Luther, “That’s because I took it from her. After the funeral.”

“You’ve had the monocle this whole time? What the hell, Diego?” Allison snaps, saying the first thing since Aiden came downstairs.

‘Wow, she got bitchy,’ he thinks, getting a snort from Six.

“Give it to me.”

“I threw it away.”

Six pushes forward a bit, smirking, “Nice,” he inputs, before stepping back. Aiden rolls his eyes but can’t help but agree.

“You what?!”

Allison makes this weird wheezy-sigh noise and puts her drink up to her face, like this isn’t totally something Diego would do.

“Look, I knew that if you found it on mom you’d lose your shit.” he points his knife at the larger sibling, “Just like you’re doing right now.”

“Diego, you son of a bitch.”

And that’s a fight brewing, Aiden sighs and turns away, off to set the half-empty bag of pretzels down on the bar. There’s a brief moment after it’s placed where he attempts to call on his powers and blink (as he’s been calling it for years, it sounds nicer than teleport) back to Klaus’ room– or even his own room– and nothing happens.

That then turns into a much less brief moment of fuck that’s right I’m powerless out here.

He puts both hands on the bar counter and hands his head, taking in a slow breath before the panic fully sets in and he’s dragged away from the front, shoving that burden onto someone else.

‘Woah, chillax, man,’ Six’s voice comes, sounding echoey and disrupted (he must’ve backed up from the front before, fuck, Aiden didn’t mean to bring him back–), ‘What’s goin’ on?’

He pushes his panicky feeling at the alter, and then turns his attention to the slightly more physical Ben who’s trying to remind him how to breathe. He gives an awkward smile, and starts following the four, three, two, ones he’s being guided with.

‘Shit, sorry, I forgot about that, just keep listening to Ben, Ai.’

Well, at least we know he cares.

“What about you, Stoner Boy?” Diego grabs his attention, and Aiden looks up blinking tiredly.

“Uhm, sure, yeah, fuck Luther,” he gives Luther the middle finger for effect, before giving Diego a shining (disconcerting) grin.

“There, that’s three to two.”

“Votes not final yet,” Allison points out, “Five’s not here.”

Aiden tries to pretend that doesn’t sting, knowing his counterpart is alive and maybe-well now.

“--The whole family has to vote, we owe each other that.”

Aiden takes the quick change to leave the room now that a decision has been made, heading straight for the stairs and back toward their room.

Fuck this family, he’s too tired for this shit.

…

Much, much later in the night, Klaus just wanted to take a bath.

A nice, warm, comforting bath with his headphones and his loud music to drown out all the ghosts and noisy thoughts and the yada, yada, yada.

He’s got a cigarette lit, blowing smoke out along with the tune in his headphones. It’s nice, it’s dark, nothing but moonlight shining in.

And then he’s done bathing, and his music is still blasting in his ears, so when he closes his eyes to dance he’s none the wiser to the damn ghosts.

He even had an amazing outfit set aside to wear, with a hot pink crop top and some skinny jeans; he was going to look amazing.

And then there’s an exploding pain in his head, he blacks out, and wakes up only She knows how much longer later in the trunk of some psycho’s car with duct tape over his fucking mouth and hands.

He takes the time to try to scream when they open the trunk.

Chapter Text

Four was… not having a great time.

Which is perfectly understandable, as there’s currently a hot wire being wrapped and yanked around his throat. He’s still wearing nothing but a towel, except now it’s adorned with blood stains and hot water.

He’s being tortured for information he doesn’t have.

Luckily, he’s found some way to make it fun. Making sex jokes clearly makes them uncomfortable, or acting like he likes the torture. It’s funny to see their faces afterward.

“What is so funny asshole?” the blue-masked one comes up and smacks him across the forehead. He hadn’t even realized he was doing his creepy giggle thing he does when he’s panicked; oops.

“Well,” he starts, shaking so hard he’s like the last leaf clinging to a tree in autumn, “You spent the last ten hours beating me senseless and… you learned absolutely nothing,” he giggles, the kind of giggle you make when you’re so beyond fucked up in the head that it sounds like you’ve crossed the barrier into insane, “I mean– nobody tells me shit! The truth is, I am the one person in that house nobody will even notice is gone.”

And unfortunately, it’s true. Excluding the fact they’re not exactly ‘one’ person. The family will assume he’s off to get high again.

Which, I mean, is fair, but like also rude and slightly hurtful.

Despite the depressing statement, he throws on a manic grin and hunches over, more giggles shaking his shoulders.

“You assholes kidnapped the wrong guy!”

Blue mask smacks him upside the head again, “Please make him stop talking.”

And then they waterboard him. He pretends to drink the water off the rag, grinning at them when they’re done. They leave him ‘alone’ in the room, off to the bathroom where he can’t hear what they’re saying.

“You alright?” Ben asks quietly. He’s sitting on the dresser in front of Four, unfortunately having to watch all this torture go down. For most of this experience, he’s been looking away, staring at the door.

“Fine,” they snarl, squirming in their restraints and trying to loosen them. It was no use, of course, but he might as well try. Who cares if his wrists are becoming raw and hot?

“I think you’ve got some friends,” he points out, nodding his head towards a woman rapidly speaking Russian staring out the window. Klaus got high last night before he got kidnapped, so they have to go through withdrawal again, and the ghosts are only just now coming back.

Four strains his head to look at the woman, “Fuck if I know,” it mutters, “She’s driving me crazy though. Bitch won’t shut up!”

“Hey! Watch your mouth!” blue mask scolds, like he’s some kid. He turns his head and snarls at him, eyes focused on the ground.

“Try to stay calm, Four,”

They come back far too soon, grabbing the jacket he was going to put on when they picked him up and beginning to rifle through the pockets. Inside many of them they find pills. Klaus pushes his way to the front when they start pulling them out.

“Hey, no no no no no!” he squawks, squirming in the restraints and then looking down at them in confused shock, “Be- be careful with that! It’s my- uh, my asthma medication!” he fibs, quickly redirecting his attention to his only active supply of drugs.

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” blue mask grins, throwing the baggy on the floor and stomping on it.

“Hey! No, hey, woah! Hold on! We can have a conversation– we’re adults!”

“Okay, you want more?” he drops another baggy on the floor, and Klaus goes so far as to start rocking on the chair, slamming its legs into the ground.

“Stop, stop, stop! Please, listen! Listen, I can get you cash! Amputee hookers, whatever! Just please, please, don’t- don’t…”

His begging goes on, even as they start eating his weed chocolate. Which really was unfortunate, because it’s one of the few things the rest of the system won’t chew him out for having these days.

“You gonna tell him that it’s special chocolate?” Ben asks, voice no longer the caring worry he had for Four and instead the slightly-concerned mostly-irritated voice he typically takes with Klaus. Honestly, that was a pathetic and depressing display, so he’s lost care pretty fast.

Besides, they’re not really torturing him anymore, so what’s the harm?

“Not until they’re high as kites!” he whispers, grinning and blinking the sweat that dripped into his eyes.

Pink mask dangles one of the baggies in front of his face, “This could all be yours for the low, low price of tellin’ us everything!”

“I don’t know where Five is, I wasn’t lying about that!” Klaus replies, certain Four had already told them everything he knew which was nothing, “But I can tell you that he’s– hasn’t- hasn’t- hasn’t been making much sense since he came back.”

Blue mask sounds irritated when he waves a hand and goes, “Elaborate.”

“I, uh, he’s just- he’s been acting like a- a lunatic! He’s been sitting in this van in front of a lab or something, and looking for the owner of an eyeball! One of those fake ones, yaknow what I’m talkin’ about, right?”

“That makes no sense.”

“Hold on, just hold on–,” Pink mask interjects, making her way around to the front of him, “Tell us more about this eye and why it’s so important.”

“He said it had to do with the End of Times or… something.”

The two torturers share a look, and then grab their coats, shove Klaus into the closet and leave.

He spends the next twenty minutes having a panic attack, until a particularly nasty flashback sends him careening out of the front and back into the headspace.

At least while he was still out, hyperventilating through duct tape in the tiny closet, Ben was there to keep telling him how to breathe.

Ben perks up at the sound of a vacuum cleaner, “Klaus, make noise!” he exclaims, “She might hear you!” he peaks through the door, only to come back in when he hears nothing from his sister. Klaus’ head is dangling back, eyes half-lidded, and breathing shallow, “Klaus? Four? Anybody home?” he waves a hand in front of their face, only to sigh when he got no response.

The cleaner had her headphones on anyways.

Ben sits and keeps watch, the body not once moving the entire time. It’s a little disconcerting, to see nobody in the front. It’s more like they’re asleep with their eyes open than anything else.

Sooner, or later– probably later, the door to the closet opens and the two masks drag the body out, making snarky comments about how fucked up he looks.

“Hey, wake up!” blue mask smacks the body upside the head, and Ben flinches at the way their head lolls to the side, “Fucks sake,” he mutters.

“Whatever, we don’t need him anymore,” Pink assures, turning away to start shutting off lights and take cover in the bathroom for when whatever they’re waiting for comes.

When someone finally comes too, it’s with a loud gasp and then the body going limp again, nothing but quiet pleas falling from their lips.

“Welcome back,” Ben mutters, and whoever's front looks up at him without lifting their head.

They spit blood at his feet and snarl, lips curling up in a distasteful grin.

“...Cheshire.”

“Ben.” the alter replies, eyes darting to the side when the Russian lady starts talking louder, this time at the kidnappers.

She turns to him when he looks at her, a hole from a gunshot on the side of her head. His grin falters briefly, more in irritation than fear.

“Where has this train taken us, on its path of greed and cruel death?”

“You got kidnapped. She’s one of their victims, can you talk to her? Find something to use against them?”

He glances back to Ben, before rolling his eyes and turning back to the woman, “West ways does this one go, your name, I wonder, might follow your throw?” he asks, voice tired and irritated. He keeps his voice down and pretends to not notice the kidnappers sitting on the ground with guns.

She looks at him like he’s crazy for a moment, before answering, “Zoya Popova.”

He nods, sighs, and asks, “Your head–,” he jerks his arm, only to find it tied, “it’s gashed, broken, and bruised. How will you fix it, if you’re long since overused?”

“What the fuck is he talking about?” the man asks quietly, getting a hissing shut up in response from the woman.

“If you don’t shut up,” the woman leans forward, looking at him now, “I’m gonna cut your tongue out with a grapefruit spoon.”

Cheshire turns to her, grin still present and much too large for his face, “Zoya Popova.”

The two share a quiet question, while Cheshire lazily describes her in his riddilish tongue.

He whistles, tilting his head far enough to the side that something cracks and the human body disagrees painfully, “Most everyone is mad here, you are just… another flavor.”

They avoid talking to him for a while after that.

Since Cheshire spoke to the first ghost, things only went downhill for the next couple of hours. Neither of the kidnappers spoke to him again, but new people began appearing, speaking frantically about how they were killed.

He jerks in his chair, startling the ghosts into shutting up, he snarls through his grin, “Abandon your hope, a new law reigns in this Wonderland, Alice, and it’s very rough justice all around. We’re at risk, you–,” his head snaps around to look at the two behind him, “Be on your guard.”

The two, who have since stood up and sheathed their guns, walk over to him and turn his chair around.

“Hazel, or Cha-Cha? Interesting names, I must admit. Real or fake, who is who?” he maintains eye contact with the man, who frowns but replies anyways.

“Hazel.”

His grin widens.

“Jan Mueller, forward… reverse. Tire tracks do leave marks, you know, nobody gets away with a crime. Every adventure requires a first step; even here, it’s true.”

“I remember,” Cha-Cha turns to her partner, “Forward, reverse! The swiss alps job.”

“Haste makes waste, so I rarely hurry. But if a ferret were about to dart up my dress, I'd run. She thanks you kindly, your generosity she was unworthy of,” he tilts his head in Hazel’s direction.

“What the hell is he talking about?”

“I don’t know.”

“There may be hope for him yet, I do believe, keep watch and lower your guard,” Cheshire turns back to Cha-Cha this time, enough to see her irritation take hold.

“Bathroom.” She snaps, turning and stomping away, “Now!”

Hazel stares at him a moment longer, before turning away and following her.

“Nicely done,” Ben compliments, “Even if your riddles continue to suck.”

Cheshire turns and spits at his feet again.

They come back a few minutes later, shoving a fresh piece of tape over his mouth, then leaving him ‘alone’ in the room again.

With fresh duct tape over his mouth and the bathroom door shut and locked, Cheshire began to squirm. He wiggled the chair all the way over to the door, just in time to hear footsteps outside.

His eyes widened, and he turned the chair, slamming the top of it into the door. The footsteps outside stopped, so he hit it again.

And again.

And again.

And- and then the door opened. Cheshire let out a heavy sigh of relief through his nose, staring at the woman in front of him. She gave cop energy, so she was probably a cop.

“Are you Diego’s brother?” she asked quietly, kicking the door shut so it didn’t make a sound. Cheshire resisted the urge to roll his eyes, nodding. “I’m Detective Patch.”

He nodded back towards the bathroom, but she just held a finger to her lips and pulled out a pocket knife, beginning to cut his restraints away.

The moment one hand was free, he reached up and yanked the tape off his mouth, “To the royal guards of this realm, we are all victims in waiting,” he whispers, pointing towards the bathroom and then turning and rushing for the vents.

The gunfire started just as he tugged the cover off and squirmed inside. Thank the Mad Hatter that the body was so skinny.

…

Once safe on a bus, Cheshire scowled down at the briefcase in his lap. Surely something in it was interesting, or at least worth something, he knew they were hurting for money so he may as well take a look before he dumps it.

A flash of blue light caught him off guard when he popped the locks open, moments later finding himself no longer on a bus but rather in a tent-like structure at night. Loud bangs sounded all around and Four made eye contact with a man. A gorgeous man.

Chapter Text

Their time in the war was… surprisingly fun.

Somehow?

Because despite the fact that it was war and they were in hell (practically), they had Dave. And they had their squad. On the nights or days when they weren’t fighting for their country, it was so much fun.

They had stories, they had dreams, and they had kindness. Despite the system freaking out too much to hide themselves, the troops took it in stride.

When Klaus went by another name, or acted like another person, then it was fine, they didn’t care. They were just part of the group. Part of the squad. So long as they made themselves useful, they wouldn't get discharged, and they would be happy.

They started calling them Spook or Kay, even a few of the troops called them Azrael (as a reference to Dave calling them an angel of death), and while they’ve collectively agreed (kinda, some people are missing, but that’s fine) that Spook can be their system name; they ended up splitting off an alter named Kay,

(Kay, who’s sweet and nervous, but still pretty badass. He’s mischievous and loves pranks, and is almost always fidgeting with something, whether that be a gun or just his hands. He loves jewelry, and fuck, he loves Dave.)

And an alter name Azrael.

(Azrael, who’s quiet and seemingly emotionless. Who takes on the title of the Angel of Death and holds it strongly. Who’s expression never changes unless she’s talking to a child, where she’ll smile gently and crouch down. Who seems so hard and cold and hateful, but is actually so sweet and kind.)

It was fun, it was fine, even with the trauma and the explosions and the three (or was it four?) times they died during their time there. Even with the new tattoos and the time travel and the scars, it was practically heaven.

And… and then Dave died.

Kay was the one on the frontlines, because he, Azrael, or Four are usually the ones out there, and a shot goes right over his head. He laughs, because what else can you do in a time like this but try to pretend things aren’t going to shit, and calls out to his (his, his, his, theirs, everybodys, because even if they aren’t dating him the entire system adores him) maybe-boyfriend about how close that was.

Dave didn’t respond.

Kay took a minute to shoot some more before he glanced over. Dave wasn’t usually as happy on the frontlines, but he’d always give a quiet laugh or a kind smile when they joked around. When Kay turned he found Dave face down in the dirt.

He’d called his name a few times, before grabbing the man by the shirt and tugging both of them down into the trenches. He kept calling his name, as he flipped him over and saw the massive bloodstain on his shirt.

He

Wasn’t

Breathing.

.
.
.

The medic didn’t come.

So they didn’t stay.

…

They can’t breathe.

Who are they? Who’s fronting? Right, breathing, how do you breathe again? They can’t remember. Everything hurts. They hurt right down to the heart. It feels like someone tore out their heart and ripped it to tiny shreds then blew up every individual piece before sticking it in a blender and then into a tiny plastic bag before shoving it back inside them.

It hurts.

They let out a sob, a shaking, broken, heart-crushing sob and then they scream. They scream and they slam that stupid fucking briefcase into the ground until it smokes and it sparks. Their face is wet with tears and there isn’t a single part of their dirt and blood coated body that isn’t shaking.

Somewhere they can hear Ben, asking what the hell is going on, who’s out, why are they crying?

They don’t answer, staring at his, his, his, his, HIS blood on their hands and sobbing, they scream again, falling to their knees. Someone save him, please, please, please please bring him back they– they can’t live without him.

Their head hits the concrete, and a hand lands on their shoulder what could've been hours later, “Are you alright?” a worried voice asks, and they turn, tears still running freely, “Klaus? Wh-what happened, what’s going on?”

“Vee?” they let out a breathy sob, “He’s gone. She took him, I- I can’t get him back,” they croak, curling in on themself more.

“Who? What happened, Klaus? Why are your hands bloody?” there’s a series of questions that leave her mouth, all panicked and worried, but they can’t do much other than stare just barely to the left of her head and try not to fall apart again.

“Klaus!” she shouts, drawing their attention back just barely, “C’mon, I’m taking you back to my place so you can shower, alright? We’ll figure it out then, I promise,” she grabs their hands, uncaring of how her gloves get dirty, and they grip them back a little too tightly. She doesn’t wince though, helping them stand and beginning to slowly walk them back to what they assume is going to be her apartment.

The walk between the bathroom and bus stop is a blur, the occasional fuzzy-sounding words from Vanya peaking in but going uncomprehended. They’re ashamed to admit that she had to start undressing them for them to realize she wanted them to shower.

“Do you have a bathtub?” they ask quietly, not bothering to look around the bathroom they were already in, her holding their vest and glancing between the squad tattoo Klaus got and their face.

“Uhm, yes, but it’s not very big; not like at home. I never use it, did you want me to run you a bath?” she offers, looking away presumably at the bath.

“Yes, please,” they practically whisper, taking the vest from her so she can do just that.

“There’s towels and some clothes on the counter, it’s an old dress I don’t wear anymore that should fit you, alright? Call if you need anything, I’ll be just outside.”

They give her a teary smile, and she leaves them alone to clean themself. It’s more of a struggle for them than ever before, the sounds of gunfire and explosions and images of Dave’s death raging in their head even when they plunge themself underwater and forget to breathe.

But still, when they come out of the bathroom, now dressed in a loose black dress that they didn’t even know Vanya owned, they feel a lot cleaner and a little bit clearer.

Their identity is still a mystery, but when Vanya helps put together the couch, tucks them in, and leaves the light on when she retires to her room, they don’t really think it matters all that much because sleep is calling and She’s made a fine bed.

…

Viktor quite enjoyed cooking, so long as it wasn’t soup or anything particularly sludge-like. Things like what he was making now, french toast and bacon, were a dream. He had to wear gloves, the kind doctors wear, or else he’ll freak out over the sticky syrup, but without that sensation it’s just fun.

Klaus hadn’t woken up since he came out and started cooking, even when he threw on some quiet music, nor when he slowly started turning it up without really realizing.

He sang vaguely along to the tune of Stranger by Spence Bare, words not actually coming out as words, while he plated out the last of the syrupy toast and took out the tray of bacon from the oven.

The metal tray slipped from his hands when he tried to set it down, landing with a loud, metallic crash and nearly spraying him with hot grease. He squawked, looking up at Klaus as if his brother not waking up was a priority over not getting second-degree burns.

Unfortunately, that definitely woke him, as he shot up from his comfortable cocoon so fast he got tangled in the blankets and crashed down onto the ground beside the couch. Viktor watched as he fumbled, twisting around in the blanket until he was free, only to reach for his belt where Viktor assumes a gun was maybe meant to be.

Or maybe a knife, a knife seems a lot more Klaus’ speed, honestly.

When he finds nothing, he looks down at his belt-less hip and then up and around the room with a confused expression. Eventually, his eyes land on Viktor, and he just looks even more confused.

“⍙⊑⟒⍀⟒ ⏃⋔ ⟟?” is what he says, something in a language Viktor doesn’t understand and hasn’t even remotely heard of. He just blinks at his brother, trying to comprehend what he just heard, “⍙⊑⟒⍀⟒ ⏃⋔ ⟟, ⌿⌰⟒⏃⌇⟒?” he repeated what he last said then added something on, this time sounding more irritated than confused.

“Sorry, Klaus, I don’t… understand?” Viktor frowned, looking down at the grease that’s now been splattered on their counter and floor. He sighs and reaches for the paper towel roll, glancing between the mess he’s about to clean and his brother.

“⍜⊑, ⎎⎍☊☍, ⎍⊑–,” Klaus starts muttering in whatever language he was just speaking, before a very disjointed and poorly pronounced, “Where am I?” comes out.

Viktor stands quickly from where he was wiping up the floor, looking at Klaus in alarm, “Uhm, you’re at my apartment? I brought you here last night when I found you… crying at a bus stop.”

Klaus blinks, frowns, and then looks down at himself, “Mirror?”

“Mirror? Uhm, yeah, follow me,” Viktor steps out from the kitchen, watching Klaus to make sure he doesn’t fall somehow on his way up (he doesn’t, if anything the way he’s walking is concerningly graceful for Klaus.)

The bathroom mirror is the only mirror Viktor has up, at least since his dysphoria started getting particularly bad. There are two tucked away behind everything in his closet, but other than that, it’s just this one.

Klaus stares in the mirror like he’s just been slapped across the face, turns to Viktor, and says, “Something is wrong.”

It’s starting to freak him out that Klaus is talking like he learned English as a second language, honestly.

“What? Are you gonna be sick?” he frowns, knowing that isn’t the case but kind of hoping that’s all it is.

Klaus gives him a weird look and shakes his head, “Not me,” he points at the mirror, then gestures at his chest, “Not Klaus.”

Well.

Either he’s just that high, possessed (which is a terrifying thought that Viktor is pretending isn’t logical), or… well, what is the other option?

Instead of accusing him right out, or them– Viktor should be saying them, if it actually isn’t Klaus and they don’t use he/him–, he offers an awkward, nervous smile, “What do you mean? If- uhm, if you aren’t Klaus, who are you?”

They look back to the mirror, then down at themself, “I am Jester,” they seem to decide after a moment, “I do not look like this.”

Viktor is trying very hard to come up with any answer that isn’t holy shit my brother is fucking possessed.

It isn’t working very well.

“Okay, do you know how you got in my brother's body?” he asks next, gesturing for Jester to follow him out into the hallway. Standing awkwardly in the bathroom is not comfortable for him, to be honest.

Jester hums, letting him guide them away without a fuss, “It’s normal?” they guess, “Word comes to mind, ⌇⊬⌇⏁⟒⋔, not English.”

“Nope, that is not English, you’re right,” Viktor jokes, glancing back to throw them a smile, “Can you translate it?”

“Sss-ister-ym?” they say slowly, “Sys-tem? We are a syst-him.”

Viktor tries very hard not to trip over his own feet at that.

System.

The thing where you have multiple personalities? What’s it called again, “Like, as in, an identity disorder system?” he comes to a stop on the other side of the living room, taking his own seat in a chair and gesturing for Jester to take the couch.

Jester stares at him for a long moment, before they nod, “Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

It is the most clear-sounding English sentence they have said since they woke up.

He almost wishes it wasn’t.

He takes a moment to think on it, to remember everything he knows about the disorder, before he offers Jester a smile and offers her some of the breakfast he made. She (because he asked, and she uses she/they, which means it was a good idea to stop using he/him in his head) gives him a weird look, before she agrees.

He learns a few things, such as Jester being new to the system. Something happened recently (she wouldn’t say what, so he didn’t push) and so she formed. They’re a demon from another dimension, which is why they don’t speak English very well (and also why they’re always walking on their tippy-toes, because they don’t normally have feet. Apparently.)

“What did you want for lunch?” Viktor asks, stretching as he stands from the couch. They just finished watching a movie, the third of their movie marathon, so it was snack time.

Jester hummed, “What do you have?”

“Uh, well,” he pulls open the fridge at the same time someone knocks on the door. He frowns, he shouldn’t have anybody coming by today, right? “Jester, why don’t you go to the bathroom so I can answer that, alright?”

Jester hesitates, but nods anyways, getting the feeling that was about a little more than her using the bathroom for its intended purpose.

“Who is it?” Viktor calls, cracking the door open, “Oh, morning, Allison.”

“Hey, can I come in?” Viktor shrugs, stepping back and pulling the door open.

“I guess? Sorry, I was about to make lunch.”

Allison starts whatever she was going to say despite this, so Viktor just sighs and grabs some bread and cheese to make something simple before she drags him off for something, “Uhm, look, I know you’re not gonna want to hear this, but I was just in the library looking up Leonard–,”

“What?” Viktor scowls, of course that’s what she’s here for, “Why?”

“Vanya, there are records of literally everything. I mean, you look me up there are miles.”

“You’re one of the most famous people in the world, Allison,” Viktor retorts, flicking on the burner and setting down a pan.

“...Okay, bad example, my point is that there should be at least some record of him. All I could find is his photo and his name in a phonebook. It’s like he didn’t exist-,”

“You are unbelievable,” he sighs, the pan sizzling at the buttered bread he set into it, “Seriously, Allison, you’re trying to dig up dirt on a guy I like? Who does that?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Jester comments, coming out of the bathroom, “Y- uhm, our family is… paranoid,” she gives him a lopsided grin, waving to Allison.

“Klaus? What are you doing here?”

“They spent the night,” Viktor sighs, flipping the sandwich, “They’re not exactly wrong, you’re all paranoid.”

“Look, Vanya, I’ve had my fair share of stalkers and creeps. I don’t trust him.”

“You mean you don’t trust me,” Viktor drops the sandwich on a plate and holds it out to Jester, “Here, try this, you can eat in my room,” he points down the hall with the spatula, and she offers him a reassuring smile and leaves the siblings alone.

“What?” Allison actually sounds taken aback, and Viktor feels a little bad, but if she was worried for his safety she could’ve gone about it another way, right? He would’ve listened (maybe). “That’s not what I’m saying, Vanya.”

(He almost wishes he hadn’t come to the funeral, getting deadnamed all the time is really getting old.)

“Allison,” he sets another sandwich on the pan before turning around to look at her, sounding so beyond tired, “This is not about you. For the first time someone thinks I’m special, and you’re trying so hard to ruin that.”

She looks down, “I’m just worried about you.”

“I can take care of myself. You’re not my mother, if you need someone to worry about then maybe you should worry about your own daughter. Or maybe even someone who actually needs it in this family, like Klaus, who I found dissociated and crying on the street last night. You know they’re trying to get sober, for this family?”

Yes, he is pulling that out of his ass, but they do appear to be sober, and they haven’t been frantically popping pills like every other time they’ve been at his house.

Allison frowns, glancing toward the hall to his room, “...What?”

“You are famous, Allison. Five and Luther live in the academy still, I have my own apartment, Diego has a place, but Klaus lives on the streets. Even if they’re a junkie, if you need someone to worry about let it be them. Leave me out of your mission of justice, Allison.”

She looks like she’s about to cry when she looks back at him, “That’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” he mutters, “I want you to leave. I need to finish cooking, and we were just about to start another movie.”

His sister doesn’t say another word as she turns and leaves his apartment. He tries very hard to stay angry, to stay pissed off because how dare she? How dare she waltz into his apartment, interrupting his day, to tell him that she dug up dirt on her maybe-boyfriend.

Jester peaked back into the room, “Will I be kicked out if say I agree?” she asks, gesturing towards the door.

“Excuse me?”

“That it is suspicious, Leo-nard has no records.”

Viktor stares for a long moment, and sighs, “I know it is, Jay, I’m just… angry that she doesn’t trust me to have decent judgment.”

“Do you have decent judgment?”

“...Probably not.”

“We go to library, you look yourself, then we decide.” Jester suggests, “Also: good,” she holds up the sandwich, or what remains, and then sets her empty plate in the sink with a smile.

Viktor just nods, turning off the burner and setting his sandwich on a plate, “We can go after the next movie, alright?”

Jester beams.

…

Their trip to the library did in fact teach them nothing. Well, nothing about Leonard, because Allison was right: there’s next to nothing about him anywhere. Viktor is currently pretending he never learned this, because he has an audition.

Jester is outside the room he’s in with the judges since she wasn’t allowed to watch. The people in the stands seem unimpressed with his appearance or previously shown skillset. He closes his eyes and lets the music flow nonetheless.

It feels like he can feel the music, like if he were to open his eyes he could see it. Waves and lines in the air, enchanting anybody who hears it. It feels like nothing he’s ever played before and it feels amazing.

“That was amazing, Vikkie!” Not-Jester applauds when he comes out of the room, more like golf-clapping, giving him a winning grin.

“Klaus?” he asks, double (triple) checking that his violin case is latched shut.

“The one and only! Thanks for pickin’ us up last night, by the way, real lifesaver that was. Bet I woulda had to deal with space cadet and BDSM, agh,” he rolls his eyes dramatically.

Viktor offers a gentle smile, “Yeah, you’re welcome. And thanks, I’m glad you liked the song.”

Klaus grins, “Where to next, brother mine?”

“Well,” Viktor tilts his head to the side, beginning to guide Klaus toward the front of the building, “I was going to visit Leonard but after our- er, Jester and mys trip to the library, I think I’m gonna call him and cancel. Did you want to come back to my place? I could cook up some food, we could watch some more movies.”

Klaus seems to hesitate, before his back straights out and he offers her an uncharacteristically kind smile, “We’d love that.”

The call Viktor made to Leonard was stunted, carefully letting him know that he couldn’t come by because his sibling needed somewhere to stay for the night (“Are they okay? What happened?” “Yeah, they’re just getting out of the Academy for a bit. Don’t worry about it.”), and then telling him about the Audition.

Oliver and Klaus listened from the living room because he was right next to it in the kitchen on the phone, and gave silent claps when he announced that he got first chair and that when he played it felt amazing.

He also knows that Klaus and Oliver turned away and started talking amongst each other when he and Leonard started getting mushy, because while he has that inkling of doubt about the man, he’s still so happy someone is happy for him.

Chapter Text

Aiden groaned when he woke up, bones popping and cracking uncomfortably from the couch they slept on. If they were going to stay at Vanya’s any longer, he needed to get a damn air mattress.

(And it would be really nice to stay with her, because going back to the Academy sounds like hell, and going back onto the streets is even worse.)

“Morning.” Vanya greeted, “I’m meeting up with Leonard to get coffee this morning and then we’re gonna head back to the Academy to check up on everybody and invite them to my concert. Did you want to come?” she offered, walking in and handing him a steaming mug.

He blinked at the drink, “What is this?” he asked first, because priorities.

“Coffee? Shoot, sorry, you don’t drink coffee, do you–?”

“No, I do.” Aiden grabs the mug before his sister can escape, “Klaus doesn’t, so I didn’t know if you knew and brought something else. Thank you.” he offers a smile, pretending he doesn’t know it’s awkward and forced (even when genuine, his smiles look forced. He’s just not used to expressing emotions).

Vanya nods, “Who are you, if you’re not Klaus?”

“Oh, right, I’m Aiden, he/xe.” he offers a hand.

“Aiden, like– the name mom gave Five?” Vanya takes the hand, shaking it with that same soft grip she’s always had.

“Yep, I’m a factive of him. I’ve been around since a few months before he left,” xe takes a long sip of xer coffee, “You’re sure it won’t be intruding if we come along on your date?”

Vanya rolls her eyes with a small smile, “Yeah, it’s fine, Aiden, I already told Leonard I might be bringing my sibling. I guess it’s just a different one than I thought,” she joked, “Oh! Klaus and Oliver already knew, but do I need to come out to all the alters, or–?”

Aiden blinked, “Considering I have no idea what you’re talking about, I guess it’s safe to assume not all of us know.”

Vanya chuckled, setting her now empty mug on the coffee table (Wow, she drinks fast. Interesting.), “I go by Viktor now, he/him. The rest of the family doesn’t know because I don’t exactly… want to tell them?”

Aiden nods, taking this in stride, “Okay. Proud of you, Viktor,” he sets his own, half full, mug beside his brothers, “If this is rude feel free to be upset, but you don’t look like you’ve done any physical changes relating to this?”

Viktor hums, “I just don’t know if I’m ready, yet. I might get a haircut sometime soon... Plus, until I pay the next thing of rent I can’t afford much more than groceries, so I can’t do anything unless I do it myself,” he grabs the two mugs as he talks, taking them to the kitchen, “Did you want to get changed? You might find something that fits you, even though I’m shorter all my clothes are oversized.”

Aiden looked down, for the first time realizing he’s wearing a black dress that’s just a bit too short. His face scrunches up, not that he doesn’t like wearing skirts, he just doesn’t like wearing dresses, “Yeah, that’d be a good idea.”

…

Aiden, now dressed in a loose black hoodie, a tight-fitting black t-shirt and some uncomfortably tight and short jeans, is trailing behind his brother. Xe felt a little bad, because since xe woke up xe hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Ben, so he’s just wandering along with them, occasionally strolling into the street and dodging cars like it’s a game.

He’s trying very hard not to laugh every time Ben gets ‘hit’.

“And you must be Klaus! It’s so nice to meet you,” Leonard smiles, Aiden having not even noticed that he’d stepped outside the cafe to greet his boyfriend.

Aiden looks him up and down and tries to stuff away the gut feeling of bad (..and ignore the ghosts that are surrounding him, screaming their genuinely bloody heads off at him. He almost wonders if the hammer sticking out of one will fall out, but he knows it won't.) and offers a strained smile, “Of course! You as well,” he does a bow, trying his best to mimic his headmate/brother.

“Well, I already got a table inside, so let’s get out of this cold, huh?” Leonard smiles, then turns to hold the door open for the two of them.

The cafe they’re at is nice, if a little out of place in a big city. Filled to the brim with plants, all the furniture wood or cloth, very cottage-y.

“Oh, this is cute,” Viktor smiles, following his boyfriend to the boot he picked up, “How’d you find it? I haven’t seen this place before.”

“They just opened, actually! A few days ago, I was on a walk through town and saw it, thought maybe I could take you.”

Aiden was strongly resisting the urge to fake-gag at them. Romance was such an unnecessary experience, in xis opinion. It just wasn’t worth it. Xe had to watch half the system fall for Dave just recently (Dave- Dave, Dave, Dave-), xe doesn’t exactly want to watch Viktor fall for Leonard-who-doesn’t-have-any-personal-records-and-is-followed-by-murdered-ghosts-Peabody.

Wow, that’s a mouthful. He should consider changing his middle name.

Anyways, Aiden is busying himself with stacking the little containers of jam and butter on top of one another, making a 2D pyramid for him to knock down.

Thankfully, breakfast goes by quickly. Aiden gets a coffee and nothing else (despite Viktor’s protests, he refused to eat the pancakes, so Viktor got a box and plans to take them home so Klaus can have them). Leonard got a hot chocolate and a plain pancake with a single slice of butter, and Viktor got a stack of chocolate chip pancakes with whip cream.

So much sugar, but they enjoyed it, so what is he supposed to say?

Anyways, Aiden lagged behind the couple when they started walking back toward the Academy, only piping up when the building is within view, “Viktor?” he calls, waiting for his brother to show some acknowledgment, “Do you want us to say Vanya and she/her while we’re in there, to not out you?”

Viktor blinks, then frowns, probably not having thought about it. He hesitates before he nods, “Yeah, I can come out to them all… after things have settled down. Or never, if they all go home after this.”

Aiden can’t help but snort a laugh at that, coming to a stop with the rest of the group outside the looming gates. Looking up at the building, xe can already feel the pull of another alter trying to take the front. He doesn’t bother with resisting, knowing it’s going to be unpleasant, to say the least, inside the academy.

Besides, he’s been out for a few hours anyways. Give someone else a turn and all that.

Four grins, stepping forward and throwing the gates open, “Onwards and upwards, people!” he shouts, opening the set of doors next, “Oh, family~!”

Diego peaks out of the sitting room, looking thoroughly disgruntled, “Where have you been?”

“Oh, Vi- uhhh, Vanya here let me stay over at her place! Just for a little bit, yaknow, get back on my feet and all that.” it waves its hands around lazily, turning back to Viktor and Leonard with a cheerful expression, “Oh, oh, Vee, introduce your hunk of a boyfriend to the family!” he throws a wink Leonards way and pretends he doesn’t see how uncomfortable the man looks.

“Right, uhm,” Viktor eyed him briefly, before flashing an awkward smile at the family, “Guys, this is Leonard, my boyfriend,” he gestured at Leonard, shifting his weight and avoiding eye contact.

Diego stared, and set his jaw, “Nice to meet you,” he grunted, like it pained him or some BS.

“Who is it-?” Luther comes out behind his brother, before his face sets in an irritated expression.

“Uhm, what’s going on?” Viktor frowns, untying and then retying his scarf.

“We’re having a family meeting, c'mon,” Diego waved a hand for them to follow, before the two returned to the sitting room.

Viktor hesitated, before smiling at Leonard, “Thanks for breakfast, I’ll see you soon, alright?” he reached out, taking Leonard's hand.

“Are you sure? I can wait out here if you want me to,” he offered, but Viktor just shook his head.

“I can take care of myself, alright? I’ll see you later,” They shared a kiss before he waved goodbye and left. Four pretended he didn’t notice the way Leonard looked strained, or even angry, about this turn of events.

“Wonderful! Let’s go see the family, then!” Four held an elbow out for Viktor to link up with, and the two entered the room of their fucked up chaotic family.

“Vanya, I didn’t think you’d come!” Allison smiled, standing from her seat.

Viktor takes a step back when he’s approached, “I just wanted to check on everybody before we went back to my place. What’s going on?”

“We’re trying to figure out the cause of the apocalypse.”

“Diego!” Luther whisper-shouts, as if this wasn’t a family meeting and the entire reason everybody is here. He groans, before turning back to them, “Yes, fine, we’re trying to figure that out. It could be anything, nuclear war, asteroids, but honestly? I’m thinking this is about the moon, right? Dad must’ve sent me up there for a reason.”

Four sighs, guiding Viktor over to a chair and letting him sit in the seat so they could sit on the arm. At least, based on everybody except Viktor’s expressions, Four isn’t the only one sick of hearing about moon boy’s obsession with the moon.

“I was giving him daily updates on the conditions, I sent field samples. The first thing we need to do is find his research.”

“Hold on, hold on–,” Four sighed, “We all died fighting this the first time around, remember?”

“Klaus, shockingly, has a point.” Four grins, gesturing towards Diego, “What gives us a win this time?”

Right as he finishes saying that, a flashing vortex of blue light (Oh, Five–) starts shaking above the bar before it spits out their littlest-oldest brother.

“Je-Jesus!” Allison squawks, at the same time Viktor and Four both exclaim and scramble off the chair further away from the light, effectively sending both of them to the floor.

“Uh, am I still high, or are you guys seeing him too?” Four asks carefully, one arm over Viktor’s front and the other holding him from falling back onto the rug.

“Five, where have you been?” Luther asks as if Five doesn’t look like shit and isn't actively falling off the bar like he’s been fatally wounded in battle.

“Are you alright?” Allison rushes forward, helping Luther steady the old man with one hand instead of setting her coffee down on the bar that’s like one foot beside her.

“Who did this?”

Five takes her coffee, “Irrelevant.”

Four really wants to laugh at that.

He stumbles his way into standing then takes a few steps away from the group, a little bit past where Viktor and Four are still on the floor, then guzzles the stolen beverage.

“So the apocalypse is in three days.” he sounds like he’s been through some shit, man, christ, “The only chance we have to save the world is, well, us.”

“The Umbrella Academy.”

“Yeah, but with me, obviously.”

“Aren’t you part of the Umbrella Academy?” Viktor points out, “So, that statement is kinda… never mind.” he cuts himself off when he realizes Luther and Five are both glaring at him.

“If y’all don’t get your sideshow acts together and get over yourselves, we’re screwed.”

Rude.

“Who cares if dad messed us up? Are we gonna let that define us?”

Considering the fact dad messed them up is the entire reason Klaus’ entire personality is made up of over 15 people, yeah, they kinda are gonna let that define them.

“No. And to give us a fighting chance to see next week, I’ve come back with a lead.” He holds up a slightly crumbled but still folded, dirty, yellowed piece of paper, “I know who’s responsible for the apocalypse.”

Allison steps forward in an instant to take the paper, and Four takes the chance for him and Viktor to stand up so they can see what’s going on a bit better.

“This is who we have to stop.”

On the paper it reads: ‘Reassignment: Protect Harold Jenkins’

“Harold Jenkins?” Allison reads out.

“Who the hell is Harold Jenkins?”

Chapter Text

So, things are happening. How thrilling.

The world is ending in three days, Five wasn’t lying about that when he told Viktor.

(At least, he most likely isn’t- because if he is then this is just a weirdly elaborate scheme to scare the shit out of them for some fuckin reason.)

The cause of the apocalypse is a ‘Harold Jenkins’ (And Four swears he’s heard that name somewhere, but has no idea who from), Luther still thinks the moon mission wasn’t an excuse to be rid of him, and Viktor has been benched from helping.

Which is so fucking dumb, by the way.

When Diego shut down his offer in an instant to help, the two had a long, angry glare-off before he stood up and left, slamming the door behind himself.

Klaus and Four haven’t seen him since, but since he got back to the Academy the ghosts have been so loud, so he benched himself from helping. Which, unfortunately, means he’s on Luther babysitting duty.

Which, considering Luther is actively pouring way too much brandy into a way too tall glass, might be a little harder than he thought.

Nearly half the bottle is depleted, and Klaus can’t help but let out a laugh when he walks into the room, “Are you drinking?” he takes in the area, and then his face lights up, “Holy shit, you’re drunk! And you busted into dads liquor cabinet, he’s gonna be so pissed,” he half-stumbles his way forward, his own gait nowhere near as coordinated as some of the other system-members.

Luther stands, looking thoroughly pissed off and bringing his drink with him, “Get him.” he says, swaying and leaning against the bar, “Dad. Do it, now.”

Klaus stares for a moment, wondering if he should try to be polite about this, before sighing, “I told you already, big guy, I can’t, alright?”

Maybe he should’ve tried to be a little nicer, because Luther surges forward, wrapping his meaty claws around Klaus’ throat and shoving him across the room into a pillar, “You little shit!”

In what feels like an instant, Kay is thrown to the front. His brain barely takes a few seconds to go into soldier mode, tensing his neck and pulling his hands away from his assailant’s hands in search of a gun.

Fuck.

No gun, just uncomfortable as shit leather pants. Alright, new tactic. He cycles through an array of different escape options, deciding which ones are and which ones aren’t useful (He can’t use most because he’s being dangled in the fucking air and because his opponent is much bigger and definitely much stronger than him.)

He stops thinking when the first one that might actually work comes to mind, arms snapping forward and clapping down over the man’s ears.

With his hands cupped and sealed, the man abruptly stops glaring to gape. His hand lets Kay fall to his feet, where he promptly starts coughing and gasping, rushing to get away from his attacker. There’s the loud sound of glass shattering (Glass? Why is there glass? Why is there wood flooring? Shouldn’t he be in the jungle? Fuck, what’s–), and then a loud thud.

“Shit, man, are you okay?!” a new figure worries, Ben, presumably, since he just kinda appeared out of thin air.

“Fine,” Kay wheezes, keeping wide, surprisingly focused eyes on the big guy (He reminds Kay of what he’s heard about Luther, their brother, uhm so we’re just not going to consider the consequences of double ear clapping his maybe-brother)

(Oh, and, despite still being hella wound up on adrenaline and panic, Kay has come to the realization that oh my gods they’re back in 2019, this is the Academy??)

(What happened to Dave?)

“Are you sure? Jesus christ, Klaus, that’s bruising!” Ben squawks, eyes looking at what Kay assumes is his now rapidly bruising throat.

Luther(?) makes some goofy ass growling noise, drawing Kay’s fully attention to him and away from Ben, “Get sober, Dad needs to answer for what he did to me,” Luther replies, and Kay takes a second to realize that wow, he’s drunk.

“What? What’d he do this time?” Kay furrows his brows, going straight into problem-solver mode while trying to get the shaky body to stand.

“I sacrificed everything to him, my entire life, I never left this house. I never had friends, and for what? For nothing!”

Kay stares for a moment, absolutely baffled because wow this is a weird first encounter with Luther, before he slowly makes his way forward, “Hey, it’s okay, alright? Hey, hey, look at me, our dad was an asshole, yeah? Just relax for a minute, we can talk about this.”

Despite his attempts, Luther sits down heavily onto the couch and starts chugging what's left of his drink, even when Kay starts reaching for the cup and protesting.

“It’s okay, Klaus, just go,” Luther mutters, and Kay shakes his head.

“Why don’t we find the others, huh? I’m sure Allison could help!” he’s heard about Allison and Luther's relationship and, while slightly suspicious, it was kinda cute, and if anybody could help it was probably her.

Luther shakes his head loosely, “I don’t want her. I don’t want them to see me like this. Besides, I- you know, I’d just hold them back. What they’re doing is too important.” (What are they doing? What could Luther possibly think is too important that even he shouldn’t be helping?)

“Huh?” Kay frowns, before realizing Klaus probably knows what’s happening, “You’re our Number One, remember? ‘O Captain, my Captain!” he fakes solutes and grins, walking around to the other side of Luther so he can sit. Luther, thankfully, starts laughing and Kay relaxes a bit more, only for the laughter to turn to crying as quickly as it came.

Kay’s attempts at comfort were... A little awkward, to say the least.

“You know, Diego was right,” Luther mutters into his vest, “Dad sent me up to the moon… because he couldn’t stand the sight of this.” he sighs, and Kay resists the urge to cringe at his breath, “Of what he did to me. Of what I’ve become.”

“No, no, no, that’s not-! It’s-,” he groans, irritatedly, “Damnit, Reginald was such an asshole, right to the end. Ya’know, if- if there’s anything else, that I can do, or-,”

“I wanna be like you,” Luther whispers, “I wanna do... Whatever it is that you–.”

Kay cuts off this train of thought real fast, “No, no-no-no, you don’t.”

“Yeah, I do, I really do.”

“You don’t. You absolutely do not.”

“Yeah, I mean, c'mon, Klaus. Cause you… you always seem so carefree, and I just need it, I… I wanna be Number Four.”

“Trust me, Luther, you Do Not Want That,” Kay turns, grabbing Luther by the shoulders and looking him in the eyes, “You do not want to be like me.”

“I do.”

“You don’t want that, Luther. What you do need is just some sleep, alright? Sleep off all this alcohol, okay? You’ll feel better in the morning, I promise.”

“Fine.” Luther switches to aggression, starting to get up, “I’ll go by myself.”

“What? No. No, no, no, Luther! Luther, I can’t let you–,” his attempts to chase after Luther are foiled when the super-strength wielding monkey-man shoves him so hard he goes flying. His back slams into the ground and he curls up, closing his eyes and baring the pain that floods him.

He gets up as soon as his body will let him, only to hear the door open and shut, “Oh, fuck,” he mutters, flopping back onto the ground.

“Klaus?” Ben frowned, crouching next to Kay, “You alright?”

Kay groans, throwing a hand over his eyes, “What a dick,” he mutters, “Fine, we’re fine, Ben,” he waves his spare hand at the ghost lazily, cringing under his arm when he feels it pass through him, “Sorry.”

“Okay, not Klaus, are you sure you’re alright?” Kay hums, holding up a thumbs up.

“Never better.”

“...Fine, are you going after him?”

Kay sits up in an instant, glaring at the ghost, “Why the hell would I be going after him?”

Ben gives him a deadpan stare, ”You’re really going to let our brother wander the streets looking for drugs when he’s barely even been out of this house?”

“...Fine, whatever.”

…

Klaus groans, he was already feeling like shit tonight, but now he’s gotta chase after Luther in the worst area for someone like him. Luther, who doesn’t even want his help. He should just be letting that old ape get high and then go home and let Number One be the family disappointment for once.

“C’mon, Klaus, you’ve got this. Luther needs you.”

Klaus rolled his eyes and waved a dismissive hand, “Yeah, yeah, Ben, I know, I just…” he groans, leaning over when the sound of a car goes whirling by and a ghost starts wailing down the street, screaming bloody murder. Everything is so damn loud and he’s surrounded by temptations, “This is pointless. Ben, I’m going home,” he sighs, “This is pointless, everything is so loud.”

When he turns around to start walking home, because he’s been walking around at night chasing his stupid-ass brother for a few hours now, Ben stands in his way.

“You know I can just…” Klaus gestures, chuckling a little, “Walk right through you, right?”

“I’m well aware.”

“Ta-da!”

“You need to keep trying. Help Luther.”

“He could be anywhere, right now, doing She knows what.” he turns around, stopping his journey home, “You know what? This is probably a good thing! The big guy needs a life, and tonight he’s out experiencing the real world!”

“He’s not ready for it!”

He laughs, a little deranged-sounding he’s sure, “Well, who is?! Was I? Were you?” he pauses, then droops, “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know, you weren’t-,” he pauses, flinching at another scream at the mouth of the alley, “You weren’t ready to die so violently at a young age.” he groans, reaching a hand up to rub away the sweat despite the cold night, “Oh, sobriety isn’t easy.” he mutters, as if he hasn’t been sober for at least three months and is going through withdrawals again.

When he looks back up, Ben is just looking at him, and he throws his arms out, “What? Why are you looking at me like that? It’s not my responsibility, I didn’t sign up to save you or him!”

“You’re right, you didn’t. But if you were in trouble, there is nothing in this world Luther wouldn’t do to save your scrawny little junkie ass.”

Surely, Ben knows that isn’t true. He’s the fuck up of the family. Nobody would try to save Klaus.

Okay, Diego might, but maybe he wouldn’t try that hard. Luther, on the other hand, probably thinks he’s totally expendable! If Luther found out that Klaus was overdosing in an alleyway and the only way to save him was to see his big brother one last time, he wouldn’t bother coming.

Still, he sighs, and relents to his brother's insistence, walking around him to continue the journey.

…

When they’re still walking around, he has to listen to Ben continue to motivate him, which is slightly driving him nuts. Luckily, it only takes another twenty minutes of Klaus’ legs feeling like molten jello before they hear, “That is the biggest, hairiest guy I have ever seen!” from a woman laughing with her friends.

He shares a look with Ben and then turns to find a way inside the building. It’s certainly a rave, one he is most definitely not dressed for which totally stinks, and Klaus kinda wonders how Luther found his way into a back alley and then into a club without rethinking his choices.

One of life's many mysteries, ae supposes.

The rave itself is so bright, everybody waving around lights and the music thumping so hard he can feel it in his bones. It takes everything in him to stay both in the front and in the present, reaching up to cover his ears and squint his eyes while still keeping an eye for his brother.

“God this is torture!” he groans, not hearing exactly what Ben says but assuming it was something snarky. He barely makes it another ten steps before he spots a shirtless Luther fist-pumping to the music.

“Do you think he knows?” Klaus asks, eyeing the girls around him.

“I don’t think he cares.”

“Luther!” he shouts, stumbling his way forward, “Luther!”

“Brother!” Luther grins, leaping off the table he’s on and wrapping his smaller sibling into a hug, “Isn’t this amazing!?”

“Yeah. We need to get you home, come on!”

“Home?! This is my home now!” Luther grins, and before Klaus can say anything else a girl comes up and wraps her arms around him. She’s got a glow-in-the-dark fluffy hood that drapes down with paw-like scarf wraps and a matching tutu.

“Huge fan of furries!” she compliments, grinding up against him when Luther starts dancing again.

Luther turns back to him, “See?” he gestures to her, as if that cemented his appreciation for this joint, “Have you ever had one of these?”

He holds up a white pill to Klaus, like he isn’t testing his hard-earned sobriety in such a simple gesture, “Yeah.”

“I’ve never felt so alive! But I’m so thirsty!” Klaus barely listens as he grabs the pill, contemplates it for a second, and then chucks it. Luther tracks it, then turns back to him, “Why’d you do that?!”

“I have no idea!”

Luther pays him no mind after that brief interaction, turning back to the girl who’s caressing him like he’s made of silk. Klaus closes aer eyes, trying to focus on anything but the music, the smell, the lights.

“Come on, Klaus, you can do this!” Ben encourages from his side, “Stay strong. Don’t give into the temptation.”

It almost helps, too, but then a wave of dissociation hits Klaus so hard ae goes down, hands trying to cover aer ears and body spread out to make sure someone notices before they trample aem.

‘Klaus?’ a voice calls, ‘Oh, bloody hell, what’s goin’ on now?’ she calls, pushing her way forward, ‘Do you need some help?’

Klaus groans, “Nope, no, it’s fine,” he mumbles into the floor.

‘...If you don’t let me take the front I’m getting someone who can, Klaus, you’re not in the right mindset for this,’ she warns, and he just sits there until she does something to prove it.

Fuck he wants that pill, where’d it get thrown again?

…

The next time Klaus is waking up, he’s in… not the rave, that’s for sure.

The sky is gray, the trees are gray, the ground beneath him feels(?) like dirt, and when he sits up he finds his shirt in the only thing with color.

He slowly stands, looking around in confusion. There’re another couple bodies on the ground next to him, of which he recognizes as Oliver and Four.

As those two come to, a little girl slowly rides up to them on a bike, and he groans. “Great, I died, wonderful,” he waves a hand around irritatedly, “I get to meet the infamous little girl,” he crosses his arms, and she glares.

“It’s not like I wanted to see you either, Klaus,” she replies.

“Great! Then you can send me right on back, or- well, them, I don’t really know who was… fronting,” he sighs, gesturing at the two alters. Four has stood up now, dressed in his standard cowboy hat and trenchcoat, while Oliver is just sitting up, ruffling her curly orange hair like it personally offended her.

“As much as I would love to, you have somebody waiting for you.”

His brows furrow, and he looks back to Four.

“Who?”

She points, over to a shoot-off path that leads to a little rickety old cabin.

“Dave?” Four and Klaus ask, in that same excited-puppy sounding voice.

She says nothing when they ask, so they both rush off, jokingly shoving each other to try and get there first. They can hear Oliver trailing behind, much slower and much more hesitant, but trailing behind nonetheless.

Unfortunately, as they burst into the shed, they find a barber shop. There are three chairs out of five pointing at the door, so all three of them slowly take a seat, like it’s their purpose.

The moment Klaus’ ass hits the chair, someone wraps a hair apron around him and he hears Four whisper, “Dad?”

No Dave, then. Fuck.

“Reginald?” Oliver frowns from her own chair, where he’s wrapping the final apron around her.

“Hello, dad,” Klaus sighs when he’s turned around to face the mirror.

“I expected my son, who can conjure the dead, to have brought me fourth days ago.” he reprimands, and Klaus rolls his eyes.

“Oh, yeah, well, ya see,” Klaus looks over towards Four.

“It’s complicated, old man,” Four adds sternly, “We tried.”

No, they didn’t. Not very hard, that’s for sure.

“You were poisoning yourself.”

“Well, what’d you expect?” Klaus rolls aer eyes, “You’d just died, we were beside ourselves with grief,” ae mocked.

“Don’t you dare try to use me as an excuse for your weakness.”

“Hey, there, Reggie, you don’t get to talk to him like that,” Oliver scolds, standing from her seat, “Not while we’re here, and especially not when it is your fault. Really? Locking us in a mausoleum with corpses at thirteen?”

He sighs, ignoring her entirely and reaching forward to begin shaving Klaus’ face.

“You children like to blame everything on me.”

“Well, you were a sadistic prick,” Four mutters, leaning into his seat.

“Not to mention the world’s worst father,” Klaus adds, looking forcefully away and toward a mirror across the room.

“I just wanted you to live up to your potential. You especially. You’re my greatest disappointment, Number Four. You only scratched the surface of what you were truly capable of.” he lectures, expertly shaving Klaus’ scraggly facial hair, “If only you’d focused.”

“What potential? All we can do is see ghosts so they get to harass us.”

“Well, we’re also clearly immortal,” Four points out.

“and Four might’ve levitated that one time,” Oliver added, unhelpfully proving dad’s point.

“No, instead, you were too busy pumping yourself full of poison because you’re afraid.” Reginald continues, returning to ignoring the alters in the room. “Afraid of what? The dark?”

“Y’know, I’d suggest you get down off your high horse there, dear papa. You never had our best interests at heart. Look at your precious Number One!” he would’ve gestured if he could, but he doesn’t exactly want to listen to more lecturing, “Luther found all those unopened letters he sent you. He knows you sent him up to the moon for nothing!”

“That was foolish of me.” Reginald admits, and Klaus can hear Four dramatically gasp, “I should have burned it all.” Four’s noise of disappointed-but-not-surprised followed soon after.

Oliver and Klaus both giggle, a little manically, “That’s your takeaway?”

“Oh, yeah, of course it is.”

“Not an ideal solution, I confess, but I knew the world would soon need him, need all of you, and I had to do what was necessary.” There’s silence for a moment, before, “Is he okay?”

All three alters reply quietly with, “Do you care?”

“Everything I did,” Reginald responds, leaning back slightly to look between Four and Oliver then back to Klaus, “Everything I put you through, it was to prepare you. All of you. For something bigger than yourselves. You never understood that.”

“We were just kids,” Klaus mutters, grabbing his hand and stopping him from continuing to shave his beard, “Little kids.”

“You were never just kids. You were meant to save the world.”

…

So yeah. Reginald knew about the apocalypse. Surprise, surprise! The old man had a few more tricks up his black-and-white sleeve. Amazing. Great. Wonderful.

He killed himself, too, and Oliver and Klaus both teared up at that (which Oliver will say just because she hates hearing about people who took their lives, and Klaus won’t have an answer as to why because he’s so emotionally stunted he doesn’t know what’s happiness and what’s pain).

The walk home, which had all three of them huddled up to the front in silence, was still hell. Shivering, cold and hot, sweaty, and feeling like death grabbed their head and yanked it off (which it did). Ben trailed behind them, not exactly looking guilty but not saying anything either. Not trying to get them to go back and try again. So that’s something.

They got back to the Academy, because when they stopped at a payphone and fished out some loose change, Viktor wouldn’t pick up. Only She knows now where he went off to after he stormed out, so back to walking they went, eventually stumbling up the stairs and into their room.

“Everybody okay?” Oliver asked, sitting the body down on the bed and reaching to tug off their boots.

‘Fine.’ Four and Klaus replied, Four more hostile and Klaus more exhausted. The caregiver sighed.

“Why don’t you two head back, alright? I’ll make sure we eat something and get some sleep,” she offers, pulling off the sweat-soaked shirt and tossing it into the dirty clothes corner (she should do some laundry while she’s out, too.)

‘Alright, mom,’ Klaus teased.

‘Thanks, Oli,’ Four followed, before their presence slowly faded from the front, and the dissociation Oliver was dealing with lessened (at least started to, bit by bit), even if the raging headache didn’t.

Oliver sighed, looking around the room. Ben had made himself scarce, which was a good choice because she would’ve ripped him a new one if he hadn’t. She grabbed a dress from the closet, a tan cotton thing with puffed sleeves and a cinched waist, threw it on, and then picked up as many clothes as she could fit in her arms and headed for the laundry room.

She barely succeeded in keeping everything from falling, dropping the pile into the open washer and then turning around to pick up the trail of socks, underwear, and bras that had escaped her arms, as well as the second half of the pile.

The laundry machines are loud, which sucks, but once she gets to the kitchen they’re almost completely muffled. Grace isn’t in there right now, probably in the kitchen upstairs preparing food, so Oliver has free reign to make a quick sandwich.

The rest of the family is out, doing She knows what, too, which is a nice bonus. There’s always Pogo who can catch her, but he probably wouldn’t try to hold too much of a conversation.

Sandwich consumed, water drank, Oliver settled in for a night of nightmares and restless sleep.

Chapter Text

Oliver brushed down the brown skirt and cream-colored sweater she was wearing, before she knocked on Luther’s door in the hopes he was awake. After she got his attention she had to knock on all the other closed doors, but making sure he was okay after last night was her priority.

“Luther! Family meeting!” she calls, knocking again. There’s no response for a minute, and she’s about to just open the door before there’s a loud creak and footsteps, “There you are!” she grins, stepping back.

The moment she sees him both herself and someone else are resisting everything in them (kinda) to not lash out at him, or panic and run away. It hurts her to know that their own brother is now considered dangerous to them.

It terrifies her to be standing here in front of him.

She clears her throat and smiles, leaning to the side and waving to the woman in the room before Luther even gets a word out, causing him to shut the door and shush her, “What do you want, Klaus?” he grunts.

Oliver flinches, before anxiously smoothing her dress out again, “Family meeting! Meet me downstairs, preferably in the kitchen so we can get you something for that hangover, huh?” she grins, laughs, and then turns and heads towards the stairs. Diego’s and Allison’s doors are both wide open, showing no signs of life, so Five’s is the only room she has left to check.

Five slammed the door in her face right after she said ‘family meeting’, so she took that as a sign to just head down and hope they both showed up.

Sure enough, surprisingly, by the time she’d brewed a pot of coffee Luther had come and sat down, bundled up in a hoodie looking like he just had the worst night ever. Which is ironic, considering how much he insisted it was the best night ever at the time.

“Here, you are!” she sauntered over, pouring coffee with shaky hands into his cup, “This should help.” The moment five teleported into the room she had her hand there to slap his away. “You’ll get your own cup if you’ll wait two seconds, Five,” she scolded, filling his cup while he rolled his eyes and sat down.

She filled her cup, and then Ben’s cup, watching with a cheerful face as Five didn’t insult her coffee and Luther silently drank his, “Alright, well, have either of you seen the rest of the gang? Allison? Diego? Vanya?”

There’s silence from the group, and she sighs, “Alright, sure, fine, this is the best we’re going to get then. So, there’s no easy way for me to say this, but!” she gestures, like she’s about to present something actually decent (while strongly ignoring Ben going “This is a bad idea, Oliver,”), “I… conjured dad.”

There’s silence all around, Luther looking disbelieving and Five looking intrigued. They share a glance before Luther says, “I thought you said you haven’t been able to conjure anyone in years?”

“Ah, yes, yes, but! One funny little detail about that is that I’m sober, so!” she does jazz hands, “I got clean! Uh, well, like yesterday, to talk to someone specific,” she lies, because they got clean around three months ago in the hellscape that was Vietnam when they ran out of supply and Dave decided to try and convince them to stay off the drugs forever, “But, uh, despite my intents, all I found was Reggie, so.”

And unsurprisingly, they didn’t believe her.

“Anybody got some aspirin?”

“Top shelf, next to the crackers.”

Oliver groaned, “Come on, guys, this is serious! Literally why would I lie about this?”

Five rolled his eyes, “Okay, fine, I’ll play. What did the old man have to say?”

“Uhm,” she tilted her head to the side, trying to remember what was relevant, “He insulted- uh, me, a lot, said I had a lot of untapped potential or something, then told me he killed himself to get us all back together to, well, stop the apocalypse,” she fidgeted, knowing how crazy that sounds.

When you’ve already been labeled the failure, the attention-seeker, things like this just… aren’t going to sound realistic.

Luther stared, open-mouthed, before turning and standing from his chair, “I don’t have time for your games, Klaus.”

“I’m telling you the truth!” Oliver exclaims, “Gods, why don’t any of you ever believe me,” she mutters, running a hand through their unfortunately-not-long-hair.

“Master Klaus is correct.”

Ah, Pogo, thank you!

“Regretfully, I helped Master Hargreeves enact his plan.”

Luther, somehow shocked and appalled as if he shouldn’t be happy Reggie is dead, turns and gapes, “What?”

“So did Grace. It was a difficult choice for both of us, more difficult than you could ever know,” he approached the table, keeping his attention on Luther, “Prior to your father's death, Grace’s programming was adjusted so that she was incapable of administering first aid, on that… fateful night.”

“That bastard,” Five sighed, taking another drink from his coffee (Yay, he likes it!)

“So, the security tape we saw…”

“It was meant to further the murder mystery. Your father hoped that being back here, solving it together, would reignite your desire to be a team again.”

“And to what end?”

“To save the world, of course.”

Didn’t she just tell you that? You absolute jerks, gods.

“First the moon mission, and now this. You watched me search for answers and said nothing,” Oliver almost feels bad for Luther, but she’s still constantly shoving back whoever wants to claw his throat out, so, “Anything else you want to share, Pogo? Any other damn secrets?”

“Luther, calm down,” Oliver sighs, only to get yelled at (as expected).

“No, I won’t calm down, we’ve been lied to by the one person in this family we all trusted!”

“It was your father's dying wish, Master Luther, I…I had no choice.”

Well, that’s understandable. Even if he was a total jerk, Pogo served Reginald to the bitter end.

There’s a moment of tense silence, before Luther steps forward, “There’s always choice,” and then he leaves.

Well, that’s that, her duty here is done, “Thanks, Pogo!” she calls, knowing he’s not going to respond and that she sounds far too cheery for what just happened.

“I gotta think,” Five mutters before he turns and blinks out of the kitchen, leaving Oliver alone in the room with Ben, who sounds just as exhausted from that conversation as Five did.

“Well, that went well!” she grins, before sighing and sitting in the chair she designated as her own, “Did you want your coffee, or am I drinking it?” she asks, chugging her own tiny cup.

“I can’t drink, Oliver, you know this.”

“Ah, right, my bad!”

…

Despite Lizzy’s general excitable and childish personality, one of her hobbies was in fact knitting. Didn’t mean that right now, in a body that’s shaking like it’s holding a gun for the first time and not some dainty knitting needles, she wasn’t particularly enjoying it.

She wasn’t really supposed to be out, especially not with the door wide open in the Academy of all places, but nobody stopped her, so, it’s fine! Besides, she’s ten now, she’s big enough to handle their family!

She scowled, retying the slip knot for the fourth time, messing it up again. She barely managed to finally get it on and start the first stitch before Five strolled in limping, “Five?”

“Hey. Get up, we’re going,” he practically demanded, and she looked up at him with wide eyes.

“Where?”

“To save the world.”

“Oh, is that all?” she grinned, “Great!” she shoved the yarn and needles to the side, standing to find something to wear. She’d taken off the sweater Oliver was wearing but kept the skirt (mostly just because she didn’t feel like changing), and really you can’t save the world in a brown skirt and no shoes, now can you?

“So, Pogo said dad killed himself to get us all back together, right?” Five started, beginning to pace. Of course, this was news to Lizzy who’s not included in any of the meetings the big alters have, but she nodded anyways.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“So it got me thinking, I had to jump to the future to figure out when it happened but Dad, he can’t time travel. So how’d the crazy bastard actually know to kill himself a week before the end of the world?”

Lizzy opened her mouth to respond, only for Five to point at her and cut her off, “Don’t answer. That was purely rhetorical.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

Five huffed and rolled his eyes, pausing in his pacing when Lizzy stood to rummage through their closet for the outfit she knew was in there, “Truth is, our whole lives, he’s been telling us we’d save the world from an impending apocalypse.”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t that just be like a story to scare us into doing the dishes?” she asked, pulling out the black sweatshirt and pleated leather skirt she was looking for, “Aha! Shield your eyes, old man!” she grinned, already reaching to unbutton the skirt.

Five groaned, covering his eyes and turning around (thankfully. She is still a minor even if her current skinsuit was not), “That’s what I thought too, but what if the old man really knew it was going to happen?”

“How?” she frowned, tugging on the skirt and then tugging it down so it covered a bit more, “Oh, wait, he picked us all up as kids too, right? Knew exactly who had a child and knew it would have superpowers, right? Clearly, he’s got some know-how.”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know how he did that either, but the fact remains; his fakata plan–,”

“Fakata?”

“Nonsense.”

“Oh, got it! I’m decent now, by the way!” she grinned, smoothing out the black sweater and tugging the skirt down again. She reached into the closet while he continued talking to grab some thigh-high black stockings.

“Like I was saying, his plan worked, and we all came home. Since we’re here we might as well save the world while we’re at it.”

“Oh, yeah? Just us?” she grinned, pulling on a pair of boots that were most likely Jasper (R.I.P Jasper may you rest in peace wherever the frick dead alters go) got when they were teens. They’re leather with way too many metallic buckles, and he probably sold something of dads to buy them.

Either way, they look awesome.

“Well, ideally no, but,” he sighed, turning and starting to walk out of the room once she buckled the last piece and grabbed the bag off the nightstand, “Gotta work with what I’ve got.”

“Oh, way to inspire confidence in your team, Fivey!” she grinned, attention turning to Diego as he ran down the hallway actively tugging off his coat, “Di!”

“Where have you been?” Five frowned.

“Jail.” was Diego's quick and easy response, causing Lizzy to snort openly, “Long story. Where’s Luther?”

“Haven’t seen him since breakfast,” Five replied, the two of them peering in through the doorway.

“Yep! The world's ending, great time to fall off the grid, huh?” she rocks back on her heels, thumbs hooking into her front pockets.

“Shit,” Diego’s vest of knives clicks into place (and isn’t that pretty cool, it’d be a lot cooler like, under a jacket though, instead of so open. He’s practically asking to be arrested at that point.), “Allison’s in danger.”

Oh, well. That’s not… great.

…

Lizzy, actually, had no idea where Luther was. However! Klaus pushed himself towards the front (not all the way, because aes like the cool aunt to Lizzy and ae would never tattle) and gave them the Hot Gos (that Luther was probably at a bar or pub, and to check a specific one they remember the directions to but not the name of) and then yawned and said ae was going back to sleep.

Which was perfect! Because it meant nobody was busting them for fronting!

“Tada!” Lizzy ‘presented’, gesturing into the barren pub to a very sad-looking Luther. They stepped out of the way so Diego and Five can get into the pub and they can trail behind like a lost puppy.

“Leave me alone,” Luther mutters when they approach, and before Five or Lizzy can sit down, Diego waves his gloves at them.

“Give us a minute.”

Lizzy pouts, but relents anyways and follows Five to the other side of the establishment to watch the encounter. They won’t deny that they were very restless while waiting, dancing from foot to foot, rocking on their heels, tapping out a rhythm on the table behind them.

They also won’t deny that they burst into giggles when Luther leaps up at the mention of Allison, despite Five’s look of directed curiosity at them when they did.

Then, they’re all rushing out of the building after Luther, who yanks the door off its hinges on his way out.

The drive to the cabin in the woods where Allison is potentially getting murdered (And Vanya too, and she’s like an aunt, so Lizzy definitely doesn’t want her getting hurt!) is long and grueling.

It’s silence for maybe half an hour or an hour, where Lizzy may have just left the front empty the entire time. They kept an eye on it, they promise! And nobody caught them, so it’s fine. Anyways, when they came back to check what was happening Diego and Luther sounded like they were fighting over the music playing.

Which is fair, because the music was kinda crap, but they listen to nightcore and hyperpop (and other stuff, but mostly things like that; fast and loud) and they know none of them would like it.

The arguing they actually try to pay attention to goes on for way too long before Five finally tells them to, “Shut the hell up, we’ve got more important things than your shitty music tastes,” and then turns the radio off.

They’re content to sit in the car in silence for the next twenty minutes because uncle Klaus came back toward the front when his nap didn’t work out, and uncle Ben was sitting in the middle seat with occasional commentary.

(They go down a brief train of thought about how Viktor (because it’s Viktor, now, apparently! They told aunt Klaus about what they were doing and he corrected them, so that’s cool!), Ben, and Klaus are all their aunt and uncles, but Allison isn’t their aunt and Luther, Diego and Five aren’t their uncles. They know it’s just because they’re the coolest in the family, and the rest are meanies.)

(They try to pretend they aren’t slipping closer to their lower ages the longer they sit in the car, kicking their feet and biting at their lip, trying not to respond to their uncle and aunt out loud without realizing)

“We’re here.”

Chapter Text

Diego’s gruff voice drags them away from Ben’s rant, which is about the book he’s been reading for the last few months since Klaus(?) probably found it in a dumpster and burned at a homeless camp (If they had to guess, they don’t actually know), and out toward the street.

Well, ‘street’ is a bit of a poor descriptor, considering they’re on a dirt road in the middle of a forest outside a wooden shack. The wind here is weirdly strong, the trees violently swaying. Lizzy watches them with slack-jawed awe for a moment, because it definitely wasn’t that windy twenty minutes ago.

“Let’s go, Klaus,” Five snaps, tugging open their door for them to partially stumble from their un-seatbelted seat (Klaus gasps in the background, ‘Lizzy, you naughty child, not wearing your seatbelt?!’ ae calls dramatically).

“Coming, sorry!” they close the door shut, following the group up toward the porch.

Luther throws the door open first, and all Lizzy hears is a distant, “Allision, no!” before they’re treated to a full-on view of Ms. Allison in a puddle of her own blood. They let out a panicked squeaky breath, before Klaus swoops in.

‘Oh, holy shi-shoot, Lizzy, you should not be seeing that!’ he shouts, dragging her from the front, “Holy shit, holy shit,” he whispers as he rushes in, standing beside a panicking Luther as he picks Allison up by the shoulders.

Her neck is slashed, blood making her and the carpet below a gory mess. Her eyes are wide but unseeing, blinking too fast. He doesn’t even hear what Luther is saying before Kay takes the front from him, going straight into soldier mode.

“Luther, move,” he demands, grabbing number One’s shoulder and carefully starting to pull.

“No, no, Allison, look at me,” he’s full-on sobbing now, and Kay groans.

“Luther, move your fucking ape ass out of the goddamn way before she bleeds out in a cabin in the woods! She’s still alive and you hugging her while she’s in that much pain is doing nothing to help!” he shouts, yanking on his shoulder knowing it’ll do nothing.

He pretends not to see Five and Diego staring at him as Luther finally lets go. He cusses, grabbing a blanket off the couch behind him and holding it to her neck, “Okay, Luther, hold this. Five, start looking for a medical kit, a suture kit, and rubbing alcohol, it’ll hold until we can get back to mom.”

Luther takes over in an instant, and Five blinks off without a word. Kay leaps up, “Diego, start looking for a sewing kit in case Five can’t find a suture kit, I’ll look for gloves.”

It’s a little worrying when Kay pulls open the cabinet under the sink to a bunch of bleach bottles and an open box of latex gloves, but he’s kinda got other things to worry about aside from serial killers.

“Got it!” Five and Diego both announce as all three return to the room, and Kay takes the things as he runs by them.

“Alright, Diego, sterilize this needle and–,” he tugs out a long piece of the thread in the kit and yanks it off the thingy, “This thread with the rubbing alcohol,” he hands Diego a pair of gloves then pulls on a pair himself, cracking open the medical kit.

Inside it’s not particularly stocked, but it has gauze and alcohol wipes and that’s really all he needs for a sloppy patch-up job that only needs to last forty-five minutes, “Five, get me some paper towel and a glass of water.”

There’s a flash, and Kay briefly wonders why nobody has started telling him off yet, but then Five returns and he can start wiping away some of the blood to see how bad the cut is. Luckily, it doesn’t seem awful, of course, it is still a massive neck wound that’s steadily oozing blood, so that bar is pretty low.

Whatever, stitch it up so she doesn’t bleed out and Grace can take a look at it.

With a clearer view, he grabs the needle and thread he’s handed and carefully, oh, oh so carefully, starts piercing the skin once he’s got it knotted on. He barely remembers how to do this, but the skin starts closing so it’s going to be enough to get home.

“Okay, grab a towel–,” Five blinks away again, “--Once he’s back, Luther you’re going to carry her out to the car.”

It’s a very high-stress situation, but nobody says a goddamn thing until they’re home. The car is a silent experience of panic while Five drives, constantly telling Kay to look back and make sure she isn’t bleeding out again. Everybody is eyeing him like he’s just done something insane, but he’s pretending he doesn’t notice while the adrenaline keeps him awake.

Grace needs to take the stitches back out when they get back to see the damage, clean the wound and redo the stitches properly so she doesn’t get infected, but she compliments the job he did anyways and Allision didn’t bleed out so that makes it all worth it.

Diego gives blood despite passing out, and Allison is hopefully on the road to recovery. Kay lets themself collapse onto the couch with blood caked into the body’s arm hair and under its fingernails, soaked into the stockings Lizzy was wearing. (Which, by the way, this entire outfit is so uncomfortable and he’s upset that Lizzy was in the front At All, let alone in this situation and this outfit. He’s totally tattling to Leo when he gets back.)

“Klaus?” Ben’s concerned voice shows up, Kay doesn’t bother to look at him, just stares at the ground, “Hey, Klaus, anybody in there?”

Their ghostly brother crouches down in front of him, and Kay drags his eyes toward him just to give him some sort of response. He feels so tired, like every limb has turned to concrete and his voice box has frozen over.

“Good, alright, can you talk?” Kay blinks, slowly, like a cat, but says nothing, “I’d say Bubba, but doe still moves…” he starts mumbling, and Kay can’t be bothered to listen and pay attention to him.

“Klaus, what the hell was that?” Five practically snarls, blinking into the sitting room, “What kind of alien parasite has taken over my brother so he can do that?”

Kay doesn’t respond.

“Sterilizing a needle I get, but stitching up a wound and cleaning it efficiently is a whole other story, Klaus.”

He seems angry. Kay definitely should be responding, but even as he’s yelling at his brain to say something, to move, to turn and look at their smaller-older brother, nothing happens. He kinda wants to cry, but all that feeling does is make his eyes sting.

“Klaus!” Five yells, Kay does not respond. There’s a moment of more muttering, which makes Kay realize that Ben stopped at some point, then the sound of Five blinking away.

A few minutes later he comes back, and a pair of footsteps (too heavy to be Five’s, sounds like… Diego, probably.) approach. A new face takes over Ben’s spot, who moves out of the way when Diego almost crouches down inside of him.

“Klaus, man, you good?” he asks quietly, Kay focuses his eyes on Diego’s nose from where it was staring at his shoulder, “Alright, that’s good, are you hurt at all?”

No response.

“Is he high?”

Kay almost has the energy to be offended by that question, but not really.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Diego frowns, leaning closer, “I’ll keep an eye on him, go make sure mom doesn’t need any help.”

Five blinks away, and Diego stands to take a seat beside him. He doesn’t bother moving his eyes from the spot they were fixated on, just refocusing on the table now. He distantly hears the tv turn on, which is kinda weird since he was pretty sure they didn’t have a tv in this room but maybe he was wrong.

Ben kinda tries to talk to him, even if Kay doesn’t really know what he’s saying anyway. It isn’t until he watches Ben return to his spot in front and accidentally step on his toes and he feels it that he finally reacts.

Jester’s eyes shoot up to the ghost’s face, who’s staring down at his feet with a gaping mouth.

“Klaus?”

Her attention turns to Diego sitting to her left, and she blinks, confused. Ben, a ghost who can’t interact with the living world, just stomped on her foot, she’s sitting in the sitting room with a crick in her neck, a movie on the TV, and Diego to her left.

“Diego?” they frown, doing everything they can to mask their accent and mimic the one they heard on Viktor.

“Hey, man, you back with us?” he reaches for the remote, turning off whatever was playing on the tv, “What the hell happened?”

She keeps frowning, not entirely sure what he’s talking about. Who was out last?

“I don’t know who was fronting, if anybody, but you guys were kinda just… not responding unless someone stood right in front of you. Didn’t say anything or move, you really freaked Diego out.”

Ben’s input is greatly appreciated, so she turns her head to him as he speaks to acknowledge it. His voice sounds a little awed still, and he’s continuing to stare at the ground where he stepped on their toes.

“I guess?” she replies slowly, “Do you know what happened?”

Diego gives them a weird look, but they keep a blank expression that he seems to take as them genuinely asking, “You got all weird, stopped responding to anything once we got back. Five got me so I was just waiting for you to get your shit together.”

“Why didn’t he stay with me instead?”

“Have you met Five?” Diego snorted, “Besides, he’s keeping an eye on Allison.”

“Why?”

There’s another moment of silence and judging from Diego, before he frowns, “...Because she’s in the infirmary after surgery.”

Huh. Jester really wants to ask more, but considering Ben is telling her to stop before she reveals everything at the worst time possible. Besides, he can fill her in later, she probably shouldn’t make a mess of things. Klaus is probably supposed to know what’s happening.

“Oh, right,” she turns towards the tv hung up on the wall, “What are we watching?”

“Uh, it’s called COPS, it’s a show that basically documents the working lives of cops,” his hand makes its way into her view, gesturing towards the still-playing low-volume tv, “I can change it, but if you’re good we still need to go find Vanya.”

“Van-? Oh,” Right, Viktor’s deadname. Okay, why do they need to find him? They probably should ask Ben when they're not around Diego. They already got a semi-polite lecture about accidentally outing the system to Viktor, “Yeah, I’m good now, we should probably find him– her.”

“Him?” Diego snorted, “Alright, I’ll go get Five and Luther.”

Jester frowned and watched him go, then turned her attention to Ben, “What’s going on? Many things happen in the last few minutes,” is what she says right away, letting her poor attempt at Viktor’s accent drop.

Ben stuttered for a moment, before beginning to explain the entire situation in one breath (considering he can’t breathe, that’s not saying much).

Basically: Viktor’s boyfriend Leonard is a serial killer, his real name is Harold Jenkins (or something), Viktor left with him to a cabin in the woods and everybody went after them because Allison went alone. They got there and Allison had her throat slit and was bleeding out, somebody patched her up so she would last until everybody got home and then proceeded to stop responding to anything.

Jester doesn't really know what that means, but it doesn’t matter right now.

Ben finished talking with barely enough time for her to thank him before Five and Diego reappeared in the sitting room.

“Alright, we’re gonna go to Leonard’s address here in the city again, see if Vanya’s there,” Diego announced, and Jester frowned.

“I don’t think I should come. I’ll stay here in case she calls or shows up. I bet she will have realized something is wrong with Leonard by now.”

Five and Diego share an unspoken conversation, before Five sighs, “Fine, whatever, let’s go Diego.”

Chapter Text

Spook is sitting on the stairs by the foyer because everybody else is busy (Diego and Five doing She knows what and Luther watching over Allison), and there is something terribly wrong.

Well, that sounds a little dramatic, but whoever’s fronting they know shouldn’t be fronting. They feel young and scared, and they don’t remember their name so that’s certainly not helping.

They’re completely zoned out staring at their weird-looking shoes when they hear the front door creak open. They look up, past the broken chandelier, and see uncle Viktor. (Well, at least it’s certain they’re a little. But that was kinda obvious.)

“Hello?” his voice is shaky, scared even, and the little stumbles to their feet.

“Uncle Viktor!” they beam, “Are you ‘kay?” they make their way forward on way-too-long legs, “Ms. Leo said that you in trouble an’ we was all super worried but you’re okay!”

Viktor stares, then laughs, then reaches forward and wraps them in a hug, “Yeah, I’m okay,” his voice is quiet, soft, while they stay in the hug, “You’re a little right?”

“Yep! I dunno which one, but yeah.”

“Okay, uhm, do you know if… if your aunt Allison is alright?” they scrunch up their nose, pulling away from the hug.

“She’s not my aunt!”

Viktor frowns, but nods, “Alright, we can talk about that later, is she alright?”

“I think so! Uhm, I dunno details, ‘cuz we’re not ‘llowed to see anything ‘cuz it’s too scary, but I think she’s with Ms. Grace!” they rock back on their heels, flashing a toothy grin that feels weird containing all their teeth.

“Oh, thank god,” Viktor sighs, sagging again with relief, “Is it alright if I just call you kiddo? Until… you know who you are, I guess?”

“Yep! I dunno if I will before someone takes the front from me, but y’know,” they shrug, “Anyways, what are you doin’ here uncle Vik? I heard-ed that you were hangin’ out with your boy~friend.”

Viktor winces, and they frown at the reaction.

“What’s wrong?”

“Uhm, nothing you’re old enough to worry about I think,” Viktor throws on a fake smile, and gently grabs them by the upper arm to guide them towards the stairs, “What are you doing out here by yourself? What if someone saw you?”

“Uhm, I dunno, somethin’ weird happened and we all kin’a blurred together and so we came out here cause everybody is busy, and we were pretty disso-dis-s,” they pause.

“Dissociation?”

“Yeah! So, you snapped-ed us out of it!”

“Alright, well, I think you’ll be–,”

“Vanya?” Luther’s gruff voice calls from down the hallway. He’s staring at the two of them, and the little practically hides behind Viktor despite being much taller at the sight of his brother.

“Luther?” Viktor frowned, reaching an arm back to block the little from him, “I’m just taking Klaus back to their room, they said Allison’s okay. I can explain everything in a minute, I promise.”

Luther looked at the little behind Viktor and squinted his eyes into a glare, before he nodded, “Family meeting, then.”

Viktor nodded, shifting from one foot to the other while they both watched him leave.

“Scary,” the little mumbled, and Viktor let out a breath of amusement.

“You can say that again, kiddo. Alright, c’mon,” he strolled the last few feet down the hallway, the little’s hand in his, and pulled open the door that used to lead to his room but was now one of the two that lead to Klaus’.

“Have you got any toys? Coloring books?” he asked, leaving them to take a seat on the bed.

“Uhm, I think so, try in the closet?” they start kicking their legs, fidgeting with the edges of the leather skirt Lizzy was last wearing.

Viktor hums in acknowledgment, heading for the suggested piece of furniture. Nothing with the clothes, but when they try the drawer they find it’s locked, “Got the key?” they ask, gesturing at it.

The little stares, face blank, before nodding, “In the nightstand,” they reply, voice now quiet, and point to the nightstand drawer.

“Everything okay?” Viktor pulls the little black key from the drawer, hidden in the back under a baggy that probably needs to be thrown away.

“Uh-huh, jus’ tired,” they mumble, “Feels fuzzy.”

He sets the key down on the nightstand and crouches down in front of the little, grabbing their hands, “Are you switching, or just dissociating?” he asks, keeping his voice soft to not startle them.

“Dunno,” they pull a hand away from Viktor to rub at their eye, before it comes back and takes his hand again. He squeezes their hands to try and ground them, but they stop responding after that.

It’s another couple minutes, not long but still concerning, before they start blinking like they’ve got something in their eye and sit up straight. They grunt and reach up to their neck then look down like they expected something to be there.

“Viktor?” they frown, “What’s going on? …Why are you holding my hands?”

Viktor lets go in an instant and laughs awkwardly, “Uh, there was a little out, and they were dissociating so I was trying to… ground them, I guess, uhm, who’s fronting now?” he fidgets, standing to step back.

“Uh, Aiden, sorry, I don’t know who was out last. Do you know what happened since we last talked?”

Viktor looks away nervously, “Yeah, uh, well, kinda. Leonard might be a serial killer and also is very dead, which is… my fault, because I have powers–,”

“Powers?” Aiden straightens up, looking at Viktor as close to ‘in the eyes’ as he’s going to get, “What do you mean?”

“I can… kinda control soundwaves, I think? Uhm, Allison… rumoured me when we were kids and Leonard was ‘helping’ me learn to use the powers after he took me off my medication so they would activate. Which, speaking of Allison, she’s apparently in the infirmary because I… slit her throat.”

Aiden stares for a long moment, before, “...You slit her throat?”

“Not on purpose!” he waves his hands to try and clear up any misunderstandings as if they’re a physical thing you can shove away, “Not on purpose, I swear! There was just… there was so much going on, and she tried to rumour me and I had just had a panic attack over Leonard possibly abandoning me in the woods–,”

“Viktor, calm down,” Aiden interrupts, voice firm. It looked really weird on Klaus’ body, “It was an accident and she’s fine, right? We’ll get through this, we can find dad’s research on your powers and train them, and I’m sure Allison already forgives you.”

Viktor nods, looking like a gust of wind would blow him over, “We, uhm, Luther wants us to meet him downstairs for a… family meeting.”

“Just us? Is he calling everybody else?” Aiden stood, then looked down, “...I’m going to need to change, first.”

Viktor covered up a snort-laugh with his hand, “Yeah, probably,” he snickered, “I’m sorry, all I can picture is Five in that outfit right now.”

Aiden rolls his eyes, smiling nonetheless, “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Viktor.” he sighed, heading for the closet, “Let me put on something else on, I’ll be out in a couple minutes. Do not go down to Luther without me.”

Viktor nods, “I’ll be in the hallway,” and evacuates the room.

“Hey, Aiden,” Ben greets, appearing on the bed, “Good call on not sending her- uh, him, down there, Luther looks about ready to pop her-his head like a grape. Allison told him what happened.”

“Told? I thought her neck was slit.”

“It was, she got a pad of paper and a pen.”

“Ah,” Aiden nods, tugging on a pair of sweatpants. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than the leather pants and ripped skinny jeans that were designed to fit someone fifteen years younger, “Well, that isn’t ideal.”

“No shit.”

The black sweatshirt would do fine, it was frankly going to take too long to change it, so xe just kicked off their shoes (with way too much effort required) and pulled open the door, “Ready.”

“Great,” Viktor smiles, letting Aiden take the lead back downstairs. In the sitting room Luther is standing, arguing with both Diego and Allison (who is out of bed? Already? Which is a bit concerning?)

“Guys?” Viktor calls nervously, frowning. He and Aiden stand in the doorway to the room, like either of them will turn and run out of the house at a moments notice.

“Finally,” Diego muttered.

“What took you two so long? I told you to hurry up.”

“I had to change,” Aiden shrugs, waving to Allison and giving her a small smile. She returns it, despite the aura of I fucking hate this family why am I not home with my daughter already she’s exuding.

(Side note, wow, xe has a niece. That’s kinda amazing.)

“Whatever, Vanya has powers,” Luther drops, and Aiden just kinda blinks at him, then turns his attention to Viktor, falling into his Yes I am definitely Klaus Hargreeves. Please believe me. persona.

“So does everybody else in this room! What’s new?” he grinned, loosening his permanent tension and lolling his head to the side. He hears Viktor snort quietly to his side and resists the urge to (playfully) hit him for it.

“One here thinks we should lock her up, because she did this to Allison,” Diego gestures towards their sister, “And she killed Leonard.”

Allison held her notepad up, with giant letters in clear handwriting that read, NEW POWERS. VERY EMOTIONAL.

“Yeah! Look, tell me you guys didn’t fuck up a load of stuff when you first got your powers, hm? Diego, you almost took off my arm when we were four with one of your knives, Luther shoved Five when we were five and broke his arm. I could go on!” No, he couldn’t, these definitely aren’t memories he experienced they’re just stories he’s heard, “Point is, she just needs training. Which we can all provide!”

“Thank you,” Viktor says quietly behind him, “I… Luther, I swear, I didn’t mean to hurt her. I was scared, and I had just had an anxiety attack barely a few minutes before she showed up, and then she dropped the fact she rumoured away my powers and- and then she tried to do it again and I panicked,” he defended, stepping forward, “Please, I didn’t mean to hurt her, I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

Five strolls into the room behind them, “Let’s put it to a vote,” he suggests, leaning on the doorway to the side of Viktor and Aiden, who’s trying very hard not to stare at the real-life version of himself. Granted, Aiden’s a bit older physically, and would never drink alcohol because gross, “All in favor of locking Vanya up, raise your hand.”

Luther raised his hand, and after a hesitant moment so did Viktor. Aiden reacted by pulling his hand down, “We can train your powers, Vee, locking you up isn’t going to do anything but make everything worse. Luther, if we locked you up after you killed Mrs. Xira when we were kids and rumoured away your power, then ostracized you, how would you feel? You never would’ve learned to use your power!”

Aiden sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “Klaus has a point,” Diego adds, “Locking her up isn’t gonna do anything, Luther, so get over yourself and be a decent fucking brother.”

GO AWAY Allison writes out, hitting Luther in the arm, GO TO YOUR ROOM is written under it, which leads both Aiden and Five to snort-laugh.

“What?” Luther frowns, “Come on, guys! You can’t seriously believe she isn’t going to hurt someone else, she’s dangerous.”

“Luther,” Five sighs.

“You’re not winning this,” Diego adds, and that seems to be what did it for the big guy. Luther deflates, looks around at all of them, and then shoves his way out of the room.

“Asshole,” Aiden mutters as he leaves, knowing damn well he can hear xim.
-=-

“Viktor?” Klaus peaked into his brother's room, simultaneously looking like he’s ready for a night out and like he need to sleep for six months.

“Aiden? Klaus? Er- sorry, I don’t know if you have a catchall name– What’s up?”

“I’m Klaus, actually, good guess!” he grins, before snorting, “You can call us Spook if you don’t know who’s out, but I was actually wondering if my lovely, amazing, wonderful brother would play me something!” he requests, coming into the room and kicking the door shut behind him while talking, before dropping down onto the bed.

Viktor blinks, before cracking a smile, “Yeah, sure, anything specific?”

“Yes, actually!” ae clears aer throat, wrestling with aer pants to get their phone out and unlock it, before shoving it in Viktor’s face, “This is a song that, uh, Dave used to…” aer voice gets a little crackly, so they have to clear their throat again and will away the quick tears, “Used to sing to us when we were upset, so I looked up the sheet music for you!”

Viktor takes the phone so he can actually read it, while Klaus starts nervously picking at the shitty blanket he’s laying on. “Who’s Dave?” he asks absently, scrolling through it on the shitty, cracked, cheap phone in his hand.

Klaus hums, “He was… the only man I’ve ever loved more than myself,” his voice gets all teary and quiet, while he mentally curses himself- he said he wouldn’t cry! He just wanted to hear the song one more time without some stranger singing over it!

“Oh,” Viktor looks up from the phone, looking at his sister who’s refusing to look back at him, “Was?”

“Yeah, he, uh,” ae stops to take in a shaky breath, “He didn’t make it.”

“Oh, shit, sorry, I- shouldn’t have asked,” Viktor draws back into himself, “That sucks, Klaus, really, I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Sorry Leonard turned out to be a murderer,” Klaus retorts, “It’s fine, circle of life, right?” he shoves himself up off the bed, throwing his mask back on in a single fluid motion, “Can you play it?”

“Oh, yeah, right, I should be able to,” Viktor nods, “Let me pull it up on my laptop so I can read it while I’m playing.”

“Ohh~ fancy, fancy!” Klaus grins, “A laptop you say, you’re totally livin' the dream, lil’ bro!”

“We’re the same age,” he corrects incorrectly, pulling out the mentioned device. It’s a thick, old thing with cracks in the plastic and way too many stickers on the back, but it boots up (loud fans filling the silence of the room before they quiet down again a moment later) and it opens the internet, so it doesn’t really matter how old it is.

“If you say so!”

The song itself is smooth, probably Jazz when played on more than just a violin. Maybe ten seconds after Viktor starts playing, Klaus starts quietly singing along.

Unforgettable~
That’s what you are,
Unforgettable~
Through near or far,
Like a song of love that clings to me~
How the thoughts of you does things to me
Never before,
Has someone been more,

Unforgettable~
In every way~
And forevermore~
That’s how you’ll stay…
That’s why darling
It’s incredible,
That someone…
So unforgettable
Thinks that I’m,
Unforgettable, too~

Klaus looks away while he’s singing, but Viktor can hear the way his voice shakes and how during pauses in the song he sniffles. He’s crying.

His brother is… crying.

Over a song someone used to sing for him?

Not to mention he knows all the lyrics, and exactly how long each break is. He doesn’t mess up once during the entire song, never singing too early or too late. With the lyrics displayed right in front of him, Viktor isn’t sure if he should be impressed or horrified that Klaus loved somebody this much

And that somebody died.

…

“Alright, let’s go train those powers!” Klaus decides after the longest most awkward period of silence Viktor has ever experienced that happened once he finished playing, bouncing up into a sitting position and wiping at his eyes, “Wait, you do have powers, right? I’m not mixing something up?”

Viktor snorts, taking the sudden topic change in stride, “Yeah, I’ve got powers. Sound-based, I think?”

“Alright, what can you do with that? Super hearing? Sonic screams? Oooh, can you manipulate it and make someone explode with the vibrations their body is creating?”

Viktor cringes, “What the hell, Klaus?” he laughs, lightly shoving his sibling, “I don’t know! Uh, all I know is that I can break things and move things if I focus on one sound, and also the ever since I started going off my medication I can, like…” he reaches a hand out, eyes focusing on something Klaus can’t see, “I think I can see sound? And if I…” he closes his fist, and something in Klaus’ chest jerks, “I can grab it.”

Klaus makes a choked wheezing sound, and Viktor lets go so he can breathe and cough for a second, “Cool!” ae wheezes, laughing breathily and shoving away Four who came back to the front at the first sign of danger with a literal wave of aes goodbye hand, “Very cool, please never do that again.”

“Sorry!” Viktor winces, “I didn’t mean to, I’m still… figuring all of this out.”

Klaus shrugs, “No problem! We’re still figuring out our powers too,” ae rubs at their throat but sits up to give Viktor a smile nonetheless, “Anyways, so you’ve got the visual sounds, but then you can also manipulate it outside of those?”

Viktor hummed, “I think they’re connected? I just manipulate them from a distance, instead of grabbing them.”

“Makes sense, makes sense,” Klaus hums, “You need to learn to control it, right? And it’s relating to your emotions…”

“Yeah, so far as I can tell. Things just kind of… happen, when I get emotional, even when I’m happy.”

Klaus winces at that, “Sounds awful! But, uh, I don’t think I can help? The alters who might have touched other parts of our powers might be better for that, like Oliver or Ben– not you– but I can’t exactly summon them, yaknow?”

Viktor blinks, “You have a Ben alter? Wait– is Ben’s ghost here? Klaus, what the hell?”

Klaus glances out at the room, eyes locking on the bridge of ghost-ben’s nose, “Yep! To both, Ben– the ghost– is always here, or at least usually, sometimes he goes and spies on people for fun. I’m not exactly the best company?”

Viktor looks to wear Klaus was staring, and he looks like he’s about to cry, “Hi, Ben,” he greets, “I’ve missed you.”

“Oh,” Ben sounds a little shocked, with nobody believing Klaus for twenty-some-odd years being talked to by somebody who wasn’t a junkie playing into Klaus’ ‘delusions’ was… amazing, “You too, Viktor.”

“He says he misses you too,” Klaus relays diligently, “Viktor, I will do my best to relay your request for training onto somebody more qualified, but other than that maybe we can figure out what the different… visual sounds go to? So you know which not to touch and which to touch.”

Viktor nods, “Sounds good, uhm, I think if I focus on one it gets louder? Like, I can either focus on the sound or the visual version of it and it gets amplified, so, like, if I focus on this–,” he gestures at something Klaus still can’t see, “It’s orange and squiggly, like how someone might draw curly hair, I can hear, uhm, liquid?” he squints, leaning forward a small bit, “Ew, I can hear your blood moving!” he laughs, face relaxing and Klaus laughing along with him.

“Okay, so, until we have someone who can help with your emotional version of this, why don’t you train how to manipulate the sounds physically? Preferably with a sound that isn’t related to anybody’s bodily functions, of course.”

Viktor chuckled, “Yeah, sure.”

Ben reappears in the room from wherever he just went, “Mom made dinner, she told Diego to–,”

A knock on the door followed by it being opened interrupts him, “Mom made dinner, she wants everybody to eat together,” Diego informs, voice gruff, before he shuts the door without waiting for a response.

Klaus blinks, then looks to Ben and snorts at the look on his face, “Well! Shall we?” ae stands, reaching a hand toward aer brother.

“We shall,” Viktor grins, grabbing aer hand and letting aem guide him downstairs to the kitchen.

Chapter Text

The kitchen itself is bustling with movement already, Allison is helping mom set the table, Five blinks into the room at the same time they walk in and there are old-fashioned love songs playing from the speakers on a high shelf.

The moment Five appears his face scrunches up like he’s just bitten into a lemon, “What are we listening to?”

“It’s called music, Fivey, did they not have that in the apocalypse?” Klaus jokes, slipping around Allison with Viktor in tow and releasing him as they pass his seat.

The smaller-older sibling just rolls his eyes, “Yes, of course I still had music, a few records survived.”

“Then appreciate it!” Klaus grins, sliding into his own seat after pulling ben’s out just beside his, “Mother, dear, what are we having for breakfast?” he calls, leaning back in his seat so the front legs don't touch the ground and batting his eyes.

Grace turns back from where she’s cooking without stopping the motions and smiles, “Good morning to you, dear,” she greets, getting a lazy good morning in response, “I’m making a lot, because you all have such different diets now,” she turns back to the waffle maker on the counter, opening it and placing the last waffle onto the plate beside it, “Allison?”

“Got it,” Allison grabs the plate from their mom, setting it on the table with practiced ease.

Luther and Diego finally arrive in the room, Luther half-stumbling straight into his seat with a tired groan, and Diego joining mom in cooking without a second thought.

“Oh, wow, I didn’t know you could cook, Diego!” Klaus exclaims, his seat legs hitting the ground loudly so he can turn around and sit in it backward.

Diego rolls his eyes, “Shut up and eat your breakfast, Klaus.”

“Damn, snippy,” Klaus holds his hands up, spinning around to the table. Despite mom and Diego still cooking, there was already a load of food on the table. Cut fruit, waffles, pancakes, french toast, no eggs yet but he’s sure they’re on the stove.

Luther takes his seat across from Ben and beside Five while Klaus starts piling waffles up on his plate, pouring obnoxious amounts of syrup over them and grabbing the bowl of strawberries.

“That is so unhealthy, bro,” Diego comments as he passes, placing a plate of scrambled eggs on the table and then going for his own plate to fill with them.

“Tastes great, though!” he grins, “Vik-Va- fuck, Vee!” he stutters, leaning forward so he can see his brother past Ben who’s watching the family with a small smile, “Watcha eatin’?”

Viktor turns to him and chuckles fondly(?), “Probably just some french toast and coffee– actually, mom, do we have the stuff for mint tea?” he turns in his chair, arm catching on the back of it.

Klaus returned to his food, listening to conversations boot up around him. Ben was making comments about things people were saying, but Klaus was hardly listening. Not for any particularly bad reason, ae’s just tired. Especially after that morning with Viktor and practically everything else that happened that week.

Klaus really just wanted to go into hibernation until the rest of the family had sorted things out.

(He knows he probably could, in theory, disappear. Hide in the headspace, go dormant, come back in a few months– but even if he’s tired and a little miserable, he doesn’t want to miss out on this. He doesn’t want to leave life in the hands of someone else because he didn’t want to deal with his family for maybe twenty minutes.)

“What do you think, Klaus?” Five’s voice brought him back to the present where he was halfway through shoving a soggy piece of waffle in his mouth.

“Huh?” he responded, quick to chew and swallow the food so he could respond.

“Of course, he wasn’t even listening,” Luther rolls his eyes, and Diego smacks him in the arm for the comment, which Klaus kinda appreciates.

“Training Vanya’s powers, any ideas?”

It was certainly odd. Why was he being asked? Of all the people at this table?

“Awe, thanks for including me Fivey! Actually, yaknow, I did have this idea– we could all help train him! In different parts of his powers surely all of our training can come in handy, or at least we might have some advice from real life,” he shrugs.

There’s silence for a moment, before Viktor pipes up, “I think I’d like that, maybe we could make a schedule for it?”

“...Yes, I guess that could work. Good idea, Klaus,” Klaus beams, like he was just handed the world in the form of a compliment.

“Oh!” Klaus exclaims, interrupting Five’s continued planning, “Ally, do you know ASL?” he completely forgot about this, but he knows a few of the siblings learned it when they were kids (Including Klaus, for very different reasons), and it would only make sense for Allison to have.

Allison blinks at him from where she was mostly observing the conversation, before nodding slowly with a suspicious expression.

“You can sign, then! Instead of, yaknow, spending forever writing it.”

There’s another moment of silence, in which Klaus suddenly thinks somehow he crossed an invisible social line, before she brings her hands up and signs ‘I don’t think I will be helpful in training her, but I can be a second person to keep watch?’

Her signs are slow and she stutters on a few, like she hasn’t used the language in years (She probably hasn’t), but Klaus is quick to translate it at the confused looks on Five, Luther, and Diego's faces.

“I know sign language, even though I don’t remember learning it, maybe it was part of my training?” Viktor adds, “But, uhm, yeah, I’d be okay with Allison coming along with whoever's training me.”

His eyes find Klaus’, and he gives him a thumbs up.

“That’s fine,” Five nods, “The rest of us will have to start learning sign, then, but until then you two can translate.”

Allison smiles, and Klaus’ previous worries about overstepping disintegrate when he realizes he might’ve just given her a little bit more normalcy.

…

“So, I’ve called this meeting for two reasons,” Viktor starts, fidgeting from where he stands at the head of the family in the sitting room, “Reason one is that, uhm, I have a concert today. It’s this evening, and I already have tickets set aside for you even though I didn’t really think you’d come, but I thought I’d ask now that the apocalypse isn’t coming.”

“Ohmigosh, Vee, I never thought you’d ask!” Klaus exclaims dramatically, sprawled all the way across a couch with his legs over Allison's lap.

‘I’d love to come,’ Allison signs with a small smile.

Five sighs, “I guess I have nothing better to do.”

Luther and Diego look at each other, before Diego shrugs, “Sure, why not.” he concedes, Luther nodding in agreement beside him.

“Great! Great, uhm, that’s awesome, okay,” Viktor clears his throat anxiously, “Second thing is that– uhm, I’m trans. I go by Viktor, he/him.”

Allison shoves Klaus’ legs off her getting a loud protest in response that goes entirely ignored, rushing from the couch and dragging Viktor into a hug.

“Ah, I was waiting for you to say something,” Five smirks, “You know they have your name on the poster for your concert?”

Viktor and Allison pull apart, and Viktor blushes, “Glad I said it before we went then, huh?”

“That’s great, Viktor,” Luther offers, giving a small, if awkward, smile to his brother.

“Yep, glad you’re happy, can I go now?” Diego asks, already standing, “What time’s the concert?”

“Be there by 8:30, please,” Viktor requests, hand still in Allison's until she began pulling away to sign.

‘I’m so proud of you,’ she signs, and Viktor offers her a teary smile.

“Klaus, are you even paying attention?” Luther asks, voice already scolding.

Viktor’s eyes land on a zoned-out Klaus, and is quick to placate Luther, “He already knew, Luther, it’s fine.”

Luther looks between them, before nodding and leaving the room, followed quickly by Five.

Viktor offers Allison a smile, expecting her to leave the room as well, and goes to sit in her spot, picking Klaus’ legs up and sitting under them.

“We’re so proud of you,” Spook praised, popping themself up on their elbows and giving Viktor a soft smile, “Oh! Did you want to do some training before your concert? I heard I was supposed to help with that.”

“Allison has to come along,” Viktor informs, not entirely sure if this alter knows of that morning's conversation, “She’s supposed to come as a buffer on all training, so, unless you wanted to tell her.”

Spook frowns, looking away in thought, “I’d probably have to ask the others, damn, another time then. Oh! Instead, can we help you get ready for the concert tonight?”

Viktor visibly hesitates, and Spook is quick to inform him that they don’t have to, seriously, it’s fine if he’s not comfortable with it, but Viktor cuts them off before they can talk all the way until the concert starts, “As long as you don’t do anything… too crazy, then yeah, I guess that’s fine.”

Spook beams, and shoots up from the couch, “Perfect! Okay, I’m going to raid our room for anything that might fit you and then we can catch a taxi, okay? Okay!” they turn on their heel, spinning in a full circle before placing their full foot down in the other direction and sprinting off.

Viktor gets absolutely no words in, watching them go with baffled amusement.

…

“This is what we’re wearing?” Aiden frowns, scrunching his face up at the entire outfit. Of course, the black velvet skirt that reaches their ankles was his choice- it’s his favorite article of clothing they own, but the rest is… questionable.

There’s a black crop top of a different fabric, puffy sheer fabric attached to the top of the shirt and going down their arms, cinching at their wrists. They’ve got a pair of fishnet stocks on underneath and some ankle-high black boots. It really isn’t the kind of outfit that will look good in this particular situation, especially not with the black leather trench coat they’re wearing to avoid the April chill.

And Klaus did their makeup, with heavy black eyeliner, smokey eye, and black lipstick to boot.

“No, I wanted to go naked,” Six drawls sarcastically, brushing the skirt off with an irritated huff, “We look awful.”

“Well I was going to wear my fur coat but someone said it looks like it got it out of a dumpster!” Klaus retorts, looking in the mirror by their closet with a pout.

“Yeah, because it does, the fur looks awful!” Four throws their arms out, clearly exasperated by this argument.

There’s loud knocking on the door, but no words to accompany it- Five would’ve teleported in, Luther wouldn’t be the one to get them and Diego would be telling them to hurry their ass up, so it’s most likely Allison.

“Is our room still soundproof?” Four asks, glancing around the room as if he’ll find some sort of indicator of the answer to his question.

The knocking persists, a little more aggressively now.

“Coming!”

The door swings open with ease, the four coming face to face with Allison. She’s wearing a dress that only has one strap, stretched over her shoulder before coming down to frame her chest and flowing down to her feet. It’s dark green in color, with a slit down the leg opposite the single strap and a sparkly silver belt around her waist.

She’s got some jewelry on, nothing particularly special, much like Spook who’s got a ring on nearly every finger, 7 bracelets, and a choker on.

“Oh, you look amazing!” Klaus beams, “Come, come, let’s go!” ae grabs her wrist, dragging her down the hallway. She laughs breathily, even if she almost trips over her dress once they reach the stairs.

“Are we all ready?” Five asks, tugging at the tie around his neck. He’s still in that shitty school uniform, because none of them had the time to take him shopping (or thought to), which is fine, because at least it’s a little more formal attire than what Diego and Luther are wearing.

Luther presumably has no fancy clothes, since they would need to be tailored, so he’s wearing his stupid coat and casual wear underneath, while Diego doesn’t seem to have even bothered to change out of his fettish gear vigilante outfit.

“Yep!” Allison and Klaus smile, Luther and Diego just nodding.

“Alright, let’s get this over with,” Five sighs, turning towards the door and teleporting onto the other side, leaving the rest of them to open it. The car they’re taking is just outside, one that Diego is going to be driving but is big enough to house all six bodies.

The ride there was, surprisingly, not spent in silence. Of course, that’s mostly due to Four and Klaus signing with Allison for a lot of the ride. Diego would occasionally butt in when Klaus verbalized something, but Five just looked irritated and Luther seemed like he finally knew his place and kept his mouth shut.

Aiden had briefly complained about not being allowed to talk with Five, but Ben just reminded him why he couldn’t and they moved on with a slightly more pissed-off Aiden.

When they got there and got inside, they all saw the way the man at the ticket booth looked around at the entire group, eyes lingering on Diego, Five, and Luther with a confused/scared expression, before Klaus turned on aer charm and requested the seats reserved for the Hargreeves family.

Turns out, Viktor had gotten them near front-row seats, which was kind of amazing but also possibly just that this row and the one behind were reserved for family and friends. That made more sense, honestly, since Viktor didn’t seem like he expected them to actually come.

The lights flickered off, Klaus beginning to bounce his leg anxious in the dark, before the stage lights came on, showing Viktor Hargreeves in all his glory.

His hair is cut short, where it was shaved down on the sides, a thick stripe down the centered long and pulled back into a ponytail which was significantly shorter than Viktor’s hair beforehand.

He didn’t want Oliver to cut it all off, because he was afraid it’d be too much of a change, so she’d come up with a plan on the spot, and frankly it looks pretty handsome.

And that’s not even mentioning the outfit, a black tux with a long back to the shirt, a white undershirt and a patterned gray bowtie, and a fake white rose sticking out of his front pocket.

The white violin he’s holding in his hands, slowly beginning to play something gorgeous, really brings it all together.

Four and Klaus are both practically held back by themselves and Aiden and Ben, Aiden who takes the front away from them before they can do something stupid. A wave of dissociation hits, and the music suddenly feels distorted and haunting.

Aiden looks down at their lap, running his hands up and down the velvet fabric and trying to remember how to breathe, to push through this fog because damnit he’s here to support his brother and he will not sit here and lose a grip on reality.

It doesn’t go away, not fully, but he looks back up to the stage and tries to focus on the music, tries to hear it over the wave.

Before the four of them know it, the performance is over. They could’ve sworn that it was supposed to be half an hour, but it feels like five minutes come and go in an instant before everybody is standing and clapping, Aiden fumbling to follow so he doesn’t look out of place.

He sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles through them, flashing Viktor his very own awkward grin when he realizes the man is looking over at their family.

The rest of the ground is standing with him, Five acting near the same as him with slightly less encouraging yelling (Because Klaus and Four are in fact still here, and they’ve gotta keep their cover so they can’t half-ass this performance–

Even if nobody pays attention to them, especially now, at their brother's performance where they aren’t the center of attention stop being such a needy––)

The crowd starts to pack up, people standing and talking. Noise falls over the room, the violinists on stage packing up their instruments, the lights loudly flicking on and bathing the room in an orange-y light.

Aiden looks around the room, awareness slowly seeming to trickle back around him, around his ears, and over his cheeks. Xe looks around at xis family, seeing Luther looking uncomfortable, Diego and Ben still applauding, Five having sat back down with a small smirk-smile on his face and Allison picking up her bags, wiping at her eyes like she cried over the performance.

(Aiden doesn’t understand that– he wouldn’t even if he wasn’t out of touch for the show, why cry over it? It’s just music, not even music with sad lyrics or a sad tune, just violin. Sure, it was gorgeous and their brother was playing, but crying?)

Xe can’t help but notice that xe is alone in the front, too, the other three that had been determined to accompany xim and watch the show mysteriously missing. He ended up not dwelling on that for long, though, because Allison has started shuffling out of the seats, and with him and Ben just beside her they’re quick to follow behind.

(Aiden is thinking a lot right now, isn’t he? He should probably be enjoying the moment- or talking with someone, but he’s just noticed that Viktor got a seat for Ben without them even asking.)

Viktor comes half-stumbling out of a hallway once they’ve been in the entry room for a little bit, waiting for the crowd to thin, tripping over the heels Four had insisted he wore because it ‘would make everything look just perfect’.

“You came!” he calls over the chatter, and it seems only Aiden sees the way his eyes trace something that isn’t there, flinching back from something in his vision only he’s seeing, “I don’t know why I didn’t think you actually would, but– you came!” he laughs a little breathlessly, coming to a stop in front of them.

‘Of course we came!’ Allison pulls Viktor into a hug, quickly pulling away so she can continue signing, ‘That was beautiful, Viktor, thank you so much for inviting us.’

“Yes!” Aiden perks up, realizing that he should probably be talking when Five gives him a weird look. He surges forward and joins in on Allison's hug, getting a laugh out of both siblings, “That was amaaazing~ Vee!” he compliments, pulling from the hug when he feels Viktor shift.

The three of them separate and Viktor gives them all a small, nervous smile, “Nice hair,” Five compliments, “You did good, Viktor.”

“Yeah, man,” Diego steps forward, placing a hand on Viktor’s shoulder, “Proud of you, bro.”

Aiden sees both himself, Allison, and Five all turn to Luther, who shifts awkwardly, “That was, uhm, you did good, Va-Viktor.”

Diego scoffs, but Viktor just directs his smile toward Luther, “Thank you,” he nods, “Uhm, is everybody ready to go? I already got all of my stuff from my locker, so, we can head back to the Academy.”

“Oh, yes please!” Aiden perks up, raising his hand. What xe wouldn’t give to just be comfortably in their bed, burrowed into a cocoon until someone takes xer place. Maybe one of the hosts who’s supposed to be out the most– damn the Apocolypse week for fucking everything up.

‘That would be great,’ Allison smiles, ‘Loud in here, car is outside.’

“Cool! Cool, cool, cool, uh, Klaus and I will catch up in just a minute, okay?” Viktor grabs Aiden by the crook of his arm, gently guiding him away from the group who’s exchanging confused looks, before dismissing it and heading for the door.

“Did I do something?” Aiden asks, dropping his Klaus/Four persona now that the rest of the family isn’t around. His shoulders push back and his back straightens out, face dropping into one that shows no emotion.

Viktor shakes his head, “No! No, I just wanted to- uh, I guess check on you? Sorry, it’s dumb, I just realized it probably wasn’t Klaus in the front but I couldn’t tell who and I wanted to make sure nothing happened to, yaknow, trigger you.” he fidgeted awkwardly, and Aiden cracks a small smirk-smile at the honest worry from their brother.

“No, Ben, Four, Klaus, and I were all going to try and attend your concert but the dissociation got too strong, so they only saw the start of it and now I’m just waiting for someone to take the front back I guess,” he shrugs, “It’s Aiden, by the way.”

“Oh,” Viktor breathes out a sigh, before chuckling, “Okay, cool, thanks for letting me know. Are you sure you’re feeling alright? Dissociation kinda sucks.”

Aiden rolls his eyes, reaching forward to ruffle Viktor’s hair and pull parts of it out of the hair tie, “I’m fine little brother, let’s go before we have to deal with them trying to come get us and listening in.”

Viktor laughs, reaching up to pull his hair out of the style it was in now that Aiden had messed it up, the two of them making their way to the door.

Chapter Text

Thank you so much for reading!
This is not a chapter, it's just some goofy ass thank you message detailing my journey writing this and everything because I wanted to write it.

So starting this off saying thank you so much, so so much for reading and to anybody who commented or left kudos because I was terrified to post this since I don't have DID and I was worried I was writing it wrong or something and was going to get a load of hate. Not to mention the parts of the story I'm still not happy with that people still seemed to enjoy!

Book 1 of this series took me around a month or two to write I think? (The google doc for it was made December 29th) but I'd been brewing in this DID AU since July of 2022. It feels like it's been so much longer? Annd it's kinda nuts that it isn't. Uhh this fic is actually my first finished multichapter fic (Not including the two that have since been deleted because I wrote them in like 6th grade and were hella cringe and under 20k), so that's a huge achievement for me.

This book doesn't even showcase a lot of the effort that went into writing it. There's an entire google slides presentation detailing every single alter for this system, half of which you never got to actually see! There's alternate writings for certain chapters (Chpt 5 was originally going to have Diego discovering the system instead of Viktor, but one day I just couldn't keep writing it so I started something new and ended up liking it a lot more!), there's three different versions of the start of this fic (One actually might get posted one day, it's Oliver centric so it's great lmao)

There are like three different versions of the Kay and Luther scene before the rave because I originally wrote it for Kay to panic like Klaus does, but then I realized that he's a soldier and wouldn't take it lying down (figuratively, of course) and I wrote three different self-defense situations before settling on the ear clap one (I think- I might be wrong)

Oh! There's a little short unfinished piece that was gonna be Dave babysitting Lizzy while they were in the war because she forced her way to the front but I never finished it 3 and I spent a few days considering whether I should have the family kick both Viktor and the system out of the family meeting and have them discover Viktor's powers earlier than they should've, but decided I didn't want to change the plot that much ^^

I started a chat fic for this at some point during my chat fic hyperfixation, it never went anywhere but it's just chilling in my google docs.

What I'm saying is that a lot of work went into this stupid little rewrite, and I'm so glad you read it and possibly maybe liked it (I assume if you read 31k words you liked it lmao), and if not then hopefully you found some of it enough to make fun of and get a laugh :D

ALSO if that person who put my fic on their fricken tumblr fic suggestion for TUA is reading this oh my gods?? you made my day that was not what I was expecting looking at the Klaus Hargreeves tag haha

I'll see you guys in the sequel in a few months <3 or in a oneshot idk (Maybe never again who knows, life goes on ^^)