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Klaus Hargreeves is not an artist, but he likes to think if he’s mastered anything in his life, it’s The Art of Bending and Breaking.
Okay, if he’s honest, he has referred to himself as an artist, but only because he likes to tease his siblings. Ben has heard this particular spiel before: I don’t need to create art when I am art. He’s positive if his sister Vanya heard him refer to himself as an artist, she’d castrate him (or, more likely enlist Five to castrate him) which would suck because he needs his dick. Not that he’d ever like to think about either of them in the context of his dick, because, uh, gross.
He does, however, think of them both in other contexts. Not that he’d ever tell them that. He thinks Five might never wipe that stupid smug little smirk off his face if he ever found out Klaus started crying the minute he sobered up long enough to realize his long-lost brother was long-lost alone at the fiery end of the world. 13 years old is way too young to be dropped into that kind of hell. Fuck, any age is too young for that shit. When little Number Five dropped out of the sky, the same 13-year-old superhero his dear old dad had created slipped back onto Klaus’ skin easy as breathing. Protect the weak and misfortuned, was the thesis of Hargreeves' lessons, at any cost. Five may not need protecting, but the urge to do so is still ever-present.
Vanya, though—his feelings pertaining to Vanya are a different breed entirely.
When Klaus left home after Ben got killed, he stayed in a lot of hostels for a while, mainly because they were the easiest and cheapest place to score dope. He found himself drawn to the artists when he was there. There were musicians and poets and painters and sculptors, and all of them had a unique story to tell. Granted, most of those stories were boring as shit, because Klaus knows sheltered when he sees it, but some of them weren’t. There was one girl at the place he stayed the longest, Maya, who was as tough as she was vulnerable, and Klaus adored her. She was 15, traveling through Brooklyn looking for the cheapest place to stay that wasn’t just as abusive as the place she’d escaped from. She reminded him a lot of Vanya, actually—like she’d seen too much of the world despite having never really been a part of it.
Klaus considered Maya his sister. He felt guilty for considering Maya his sister when he had two perfectly good sisters back at home. He did so anyway.
She was into tattooing when Klaus met her, but poetry was her first love. None of the boring, stuck-up assholes who were into bullshit like 'backpacking' and 'staying in the moment' at the hostel were willing to let Maya practice on them aside from Klaus, so they spent a lot of time together. At first, it was merely a business arrangement, but that didn't last long; Klaus ended up adoring the little blonde with frightened eyes, a nervous smile, and boots that looked like they could kick God's teeth in.
Maya, for whatever reason, liked Klaus, too; but more than that, she trusted him. She told him his was the first skin she touched that wasn’t the orange peel she practiced tattooing on that didn’t make her nervous. He took great pride in this, and dubbed himself her Honorary Protector, even though she didn’t really need it. The grief of Ben's death was still fresh, and he just wanted to believe that all the training did at least a little. Maya didn't seem to mind.
They’d shake down people in the closest Subway station to score cash with her poems that she’d write out for him to perform. Performance lives in Klaus’ blood—it's all he knows of how to exist in the world, really, always finding the most garish clothes and the most wild makeup, feeling like he isn't really living if nobody is looking at him—but he’s admittedly pretty shit at creating. Maya supplied him with words, he would perform them, and they’d split the loot straight down the middle. Klaus tried to insist she take more, considering she was doing all the leg work by actually making the art, but she spat back that she didn't want his or anyone else’s pity. He could understand that. Besides, the system worked just fine. He could buy dope, she could buy food, and they could both buy rent and time. It was a fantastic way to survive—enjoyable even—and it worked, until it didn’t.
Before Maya got snatched up by an asshole from the CPC who caught them at Christopher Street performing for a group of drag queens and businessmen, she would try out her newest work on him while she inked him up. Klaus didn’t need the distraction—loved the pain of the needle on his skin, and that for a few blissful hours, the Voices would subside—but Maya said the blood she’d bring to the surface made her nervous, made her feel too powerful to fit in her skin. Klaus tried to convince her to keep going, partially because he didn't want “GOO” inked onto his hand, but mostly because he didn't like to see anyone give up. He's done enough of that in his life to realize it doesn't really solve much of anything.
To cope with the anxiety, she’d recite her poetry while she stuck his palms, sat between his legs so she didn’t get the angle wrong. Klaus regretfully doesn’t remember a lot of her words, too doped up most of the time for anything to stick but ink. He didn't ever need to remember her poems, considering she wrote them down. He used to have a few slips of yellowed paper with her teenage scrawl on them, but they've all been lost after years and years of refusing to stay in one place too long. However, one of her lines has run itself ragged through his brain from how many times he’s recalled it between ages 19 and 30:
Rebirth is one thing—anyone can shatter, and anyone can put themselves back together again. The real art is learning how to stop bending before you break.
Sometimes, Klaus remembers that line with spite and bitterness. All his siblings endured so much shit from their dear old dad, but none of them have so utterly and completely ruined themselves because of it in the same way that Klaus has. He feels so fucking weak for needing to be high just to survive. He’s been smoking weed since age 12, snorting cocaine since age 15, and shooting up since age 17; he doesn’t know who he’d be without it at this point. He thinks if not for the next high to chase, he might’ve never left the mausoleum.
Rarely does Klaus ever use Maya's line as something other than a baseboard for self-pity. Maya was 15, and already had more ambition and talent than Klaus has been able to muster up in his entire life. All of his siblings are success stories in coping with the trauma of their upbringing, but none more so than Vanya. Klaus doesn’t think he could ever have the dedication or drive to be able to even carry a tune, let alone perform the way Vanya can. Despite the terror of the Apocalypse Suite, he was still so impressed by her talent. If Klaus has performance in his blood, then Vanya has it in the very marrow of her bones. Klaus and Vanya rarely talked when they were young, but in one of the only conversations Klaus can recall they had before they left home, she expressed to him that she always feels itchy; like she’s trapped in her body, and she doesn’t know if she’s ever going to find a way out. Klaus wasn't able to express it back then, probably said something stupid, or mocked her for being honest and vulnerable like he was taught to, but that's only because he couldn't admit that he knows the feeling better than anything else.
He’s never told her this. They’ve been in whatever strange pocket dimension Five brought them to in the hopes of rehabilitating Vanya enough to go back and try to stop The Concert From Hell for 19 endless days, and Klaus has barely done so much as look at Vanya, let alone speak to her. The only ones that are able to be around her without swelling with guilt are Five and Allison. Only one of them has the ability of speech, and the loneliness of the apocalypse didn’t exactly soften Five's already abrasive demeanor. Despite this, all of them have at least tried to get Vanya to open up again. She hasn’t spoken at all since their arrival in Pocket Time, and Klaus knows it’s his turn up to bat. His other siblings keep shooting him looks, looks that say things like, c’mon Klaus get your head out of your ass god you’re so useless can’t believe you deign to call yourself one of us when you refuse to help at all that’s all we’re good for and you know that coward coward coward.
Okay, so the looks probably aren't saying all of that—at least, Ben’s not. He’s the only one who’s had a conversation with Klaus more than a few words long since they came to whatever not-time Five accidentally dropped them in. Klaus has had a bit of trouble adjusting to time traveling again in addition to still detoxing—and by a bit, he means shaking so hard his vision gets blurry and vomited at least once every hour for four days straight. He knows he looks weak to the others, and none of them have experienced his detoxes up close in the same way that Ben has, so he can’t expect them to understand or be at all sympathetic, especially when they’re all on Vanya Duty until further notice. Five’s expressed his worry a number of times about the White Violin having the ability to shatter whatever weird temporal home he’s found for them. So Klaus gets that Ben’s the only one who’s paid any sort of attention to him aside from those Hey, talk to Vanya looks he keeps getting.
Still. It’s hard.
Because, more than any of his other siblings, even Ben, Klaus gets Vanya. He understands feeling invisible in your own skin. He wears outrageous clothing and makes outrageous jokes and does outrageous things in the hopes that someone, anyone, will notice him—and still, he was kidnapped and tortured for three days straight without so much as anyone even noticing at all. Worse, he didn't even expect them to. Why would they? He's useless to them. Just a liability. Klaus wants to talk to Vanya, reassure her that, hey, I get it, and I’m here. But there’s still some sort of wall that’s keeping him in, like he never managed to find a way out of the stone walls of the Hargreeves Family mausoleum. Even though the shakes have all but disappeared and those moments of sheer blinding panic that he’s never going to be able to smoke again have (mostly) abated by now, he still can’t find a way to reach out. Klaus is the first to admit that he has been and will always be a coward.
So it only makes sense that when he finally does talk to Vanya, it happens by accident.
When they crash-landed in the Pocket Dimension, Vanya’s violin and bow were still cradled in her lap. It was a miracle the fragile thing wasn’t completely destroyed (points to Luther for keeping her safe, Klaus supposes). Once Vanya finally woke up after two whole days spent on bed rest with Allison waiting patiently by her side, her violin was the only thing she felt safe touching. Day in and day out, they hear the same few morose melodies over and over again, and if Klaus were a crueler person, he’d smash the damn thing to pieces. He doesn’t though, because the way Vanya looks like a caged animal whenever someone gets close reminds Klaus too much of Maya. Orange peels and violin strings. His heart hurts thinking about how Maya must've been destroyed along with everything else. He hates that he'll probably never be able to introduce her and Vanya; and even if, by some miracle, he could, Maya probably wouldn't even remember him. He hasn’t seen her since she was 16, and Klaus' endless affection is always a pitstop to bigger and better things. Still, he never stopped thinking about her. He hopes she’s safe, even if that safety comes at the cost of everything else still left on Earth. Klaus never claimed to be a selfless person.
The worst part about the Pocket Dimension, Klaus thinks, is that all his powers are rendered useless. (Well, all the powers he knows of. Sir Reggie Hargreeves’ warning is still ringing in his ears, and he knows he should try to figure out what the hell he meant by that, but he’s been a little fucking busy. Sue him. Getting clean is fucking hard.) Since there isn’t time here, there’s no death, and no life, which means even though they have the memories of the dead, there’s no way to contact them. Klaus never thought he’d see the day when he missed the dead, but a few days ago, he figured he was finally clean enough to try communing again.
Of course, the first person he tried to find was Dave. (Beautiful Dave, whom none of his siblings will ever know, not even Ben; Dave, who never got to take Klaus apart like he so desperately wanted him to, and who never knew that Klaus had had so many faceless men inside of him, but none of them could ever hold a candle to his perfect dichotomy of soft and strong, and who Klaus doesn't ever think he'll be able to forget, even if one day, he does get the chance to; Dave, who stayed up with Klaus all night when he was detoxing in the trenches, helping him through the shakes and the sweats, despite how badly they both needed sleep to stay alert the next day; Dave, whose blood has stained Klaus' skin forever; Dave, who may just be a blip in Klaus' screwed up timeline, who he never got to do more than kiss, but whom he will love forever regardless).
Klaus had cried for hours when all that came back after trying to find him was silence. White noise. Static. Loneliness. He doesn't see a point in sobriety if he can't see the man he loves, and it's taken a lot of effort on Ben's part to keep him straight, the goddamn saint. Diego asked if Klaus had seen his Eudora four days into their stay, and he was still too fucked up to give him more of a response than, “If I do, I promise to let her know you’re still jacking off about her,” but he doesn't know if he would’ve given Diego a serious answer anyway. Klaus knows his only worth to his siblings is being Number Four, but he doesn’t exactly enjoy being reminded of it.
Well. All of his siblings except for Vanya.
See, even as kids, Vanya understood that Klaus’ power came at the cost of his sanity. She always seemed to want nothing more than inclusion, while Klaus wanted nothing more than peace. The two, Klaus now realizes, were far more similar than either of them gave each other credit for; it made them both listen, despite the pain that listening comes with. So when Luther brought the rest of them to the basement to show them Vanya’s cage, Klaus was pissed, because it seemed Dear Old Dad had a thing for locking his kids in tiny rooms, and Luther was becoming the monster they’d always feared Dad turned him into: Number One. The look on Vanya’s face as she silently screamed for release was bone-chilling and all too familiar. Seeing Vanya locked up in that tiny barricade was like getting thrown into the mausoleum all over again. Like maybe neither of them ever left the cages they were forced into as children.
Klaus has had no intention of telling Vanya any of this until Luther barges into Klaus’ room on the 19th day of their stay. This strange, uncanny version of their childhood home Five dropped them into has no creaking floorboards or squeaky door hinges, and nothing beyond the windows but smoke. However, everything else is identical, down to the empty baggies hidden inside stuffed animals under Klaus’ bed, and the old drawings depicting correct forms for murder on the walls of their hallway at eye level for their tiny, 12-year-old bodies. He supposes it makes sense; it’s not like any of them really ever left this house at all. No matter how far they ran, they’d still be the same superheroes their father engineered them to be.
Luther barging into Klaus’ room unannounced isn’t strange or unheard of; Luther has never been one for boundaries—none of them have, really, at least with each other. The strange part is that Klaus is alone when it happens.
He and Ben have been spending all their time together since Klaus’ haunted ghost brother became his corporeal ghost brother. Ben spent all his time with Klaus since his death anyway without being able to reap any of the benefits (ie: banding together to tease their siblings, complicated handshakes that infuriate Diego because he can’t ever fully memorize the steps, etc.), so their friendship is stronger than Klaus would lead any of them to believe. After all, they’re the only ones who stayed in touch after leaving home (even if it wasn’t really their choice; Ben didn’t want to live out the rest of time in solitude, and Klaus would rather die than be alone).
Klaus didn’t really notice that Ben isn’t in his room until he isn’t there to make a snarky comment about waking them up from a nap when Luther bangs open the door. Klaus barely remembers a life before drugs, but he’s pretty certain not everyone spends sobriety sleeping so goddamn much. He startles awake, bowling over whatever bullshit Luther is trying to grunt out in his caveman-speak.
“Goddamnit, you’re gonna kill me before your old exploding abode gets the chance to. Exboding? Exblode? What sounds best, Spaceboy, we’ve gotta workshop this one until it's—”
“Shut up, Klaus, this is serious, so sober up and pay attention.” Okay, it makes sense that none of them know the difference anymore between Sober Klaus and High Klaus, but it still stings like a motherfucker when Luther snaps at him about it, when he hasn't noticed that Klaus has been clean for two weeks to the day. Klaus didn’t do shit to him, so if Luther wants to take out whatever annoying brooding he's got pent up on him, Klaus is gonna hand it right back in spades.
“Oh, why yes of course, because everything you say is so fucking important that everyone in the world should drop everything in their lives to cater to you,” Klaus laughs, sitting up and scrubbing his palms roughly over his face. “Please, dear brother, bless me with thy good wor—”
“Seriously, Klaus, you need to shut up and let me talk before I say something stupid,” Luther growls, which makes Klaus laugh again.
“Wouldn't be the first ti—”
“Vanya's missing.”
That shuts him up real quick. “Well, why didn’t you lead with that, asshole?” Klaus hisses. He stands up, stretches (which makes Luther need to avert his eyes because he’s a prudish, virginal idiot who clearly can’t bear to see the sight of the nether regions of a worldly lady such as Klaus so exposed), and adjusts his skirt so it’s covering his jiggly bits once again. He kicks off the bowling shoes he’d worn here that he now sports as a fashion statement and shakes out his shoulders. He cracks both sides of his neck. Luther sighs harshly. Klaus cracks his knuckles, too, just to piss him off. “When was the last time you guys saw her?”
Allison appears at the doorway, seemingly out of nowhere (seriously, did her throat getting slashed make her develop Five-esque spatial jumping?) and holds up her notebook, the answer already written on the page for the last person who asked. PARLOR, 4 PM. “And what time is it now?”
“Klaus,” Luther sighs, disappointed.
“What!? It's a good question! It’s not like there’s a sun and a moon here to tell time by here anyways, and I was too cool to invest in a clock as a young, impressionable teen. I had more important things to purchase, like magic mushrooms and Mountain Dew.”
Luther sighs (again, the absolute asshole), pulls out a pocket watch from his jacket, and flips it open. “8:26.”
“P.M.?”
“Yes, idiot.”
Klaus snorts derisively. “You guys didn’t notice our sister has been missing for four and a half hours. The whole reason we're in this mess in the first place is because we stupidly thought we were too good to notice her, which is conveniently the path you've just repeated. But sure, I’m the idiot. Right.” Luther’s silence speaks volumes, and Allison shoots him a look that says, you’re right, but not the time. “I’ll take the first floor. You guys find Ben?”
“Yeah, he’s been on the case for a half hour now.”
“On the case? Careful now, or you’ll invoke the almighty, vengeful spirit of Diego Hargreeves.”
Klaus turn to Allison as she scratches on her pad with a smirk. We don't need to, he’s already been invoked on the top floor. Klaus grins as he pushes past them and starts skipping down the long hallway towards the endless spiral staircase.
“Ohhhh dearest Vaaaanyaaaaa? Yoo-hoo, Miss Vanya! You’ll be late for dinner, sissy dearest! We’ve made your favorite: chicken marsal—wait, no, that’s my favorite. What is Vanya’s favorite? Shit, we really are awful siblings.” Klaus falls silent, and only in that silence is he able to think clearly enough to realize exactly where Vanya went. “Oh, fuck. Ugh. Vanya, why me?”
Klaus sighs wearily and hops down the grand staircase opening up into the foyer, and then turns left to open the door to the basement. He grimaces at the darkness, and flicks on the light. There’s cobwebs everywhere, which Klaus thinks was a cruel addition considering there aren’t any fucking spiders here.
“Vayna, I hope you see this as a sign of how much I love you that I’m willingly going down here to find you,” Klaus mutters to himself, tugging at his fluffy cardigan and pulling it tightly around his shoulders despite the fact that it isn’t any colder down here than it was up in his room. His bare feet aren’t touching the ground. He doesn’t notice. He turns away from the storage area, and floats down the uncanny blue hallway that leads to Vanya’s cage. Luckily, it doesn’t seem to be locked, but the door is shut, and Klaus can see Vanya’s slight frame shivering in the fetal position in the center. He sighs, plants his feet on the cool metal wall to have a vantage point, and tugs hard at the door.
It doesn't budge at first, but after a few tries, it finally opens. He notices it’s the only door in the whole house that's creaked. However, Klaus doesn’t have enough time to figure out why that might be, because the moment it does, Vanya’s loud, shuddering gasp from where she’s curled up on the floor sends a wave outwards and pins Klaus to the wall opposite the room, just missing the huge metal spikes keeping her caged in.
“Agh! Vanya! Shit, it’s me, it’s Klaus! What the fuck!”
There’s a small, apologetic noise that comes from Vanya’s throat, and Klaus is immediately dropped back to the floor in a heap. This is the first time he realizes that he hasn’t been touching the ground for several minutes. He puts it on the back burner for now. They have time here; they finally have time.
“God. If I knew you were gonna freak out like that, I would’ve knocked.” He chuckles at his own joke, but Vanya stays silent, hanging her head in shame, now sat cross-legged with her arms curled protectively around her middle, as if to try to contain herself. Klaus can’t even imagine what she must be going through, trying to deal with an influx of new powers she hadn’t known about.
Well, maybe I can, he thinks, standing up and rocking up on his toes only to feel the ground give way beneath him.
“Hey, it’s alright. Didn’t mean’ta spook ya, kid. Can I, uh, can I—?” He gestures to the inside of her cage even though she can see him. She shrugs and nods in response, like it didn’t matter what he said—she was going to agree with him regardless. Bad sign. He grips the sides of the doorway hard, and is already shaking before he steps foot in the tiny, spiked room. “Man, fuck Reggie for putting you in here. He’s like a torture porn horror movie villain. Shoulda called him Leatherface. Jesus christ.”
He lets out a shaky sigh and is only able to put one foot in the room before a loud, high-pitched, terrified laugh escapes him unbidden. Vanya’s head shoots up, and her irises are white when they lock onto Klaus’, thinking she's being mocked. Klaus doesn’t really have the facilities to be able to talk her down the way they all agreed upon (gentle, encouraging words, lots of eye contact, as if she’s some sort of wounded animal), so instead, he says, “I fuckin’ hate him for doing this to us both.”
Vanya blinks in surprise, and when her eyes open again, they’re back to their normal shade of brown. Her mouth moves silently, her throat working. She closes it, licks her lips, and then rasps out, “Us… both?”
God. He really didn’t want to have to talk about this to anyone aside from the court-appointed therapist they made him see after he got busted for selling back in ‘91. He supposes, if he has to talk about it to anyone, Vanya’s the best person to do so with. She is so small on the ground, shaking and terrified of herself, swimming inside a huge button-down that would probably fit Luther better than her. Klaus feels a little bit like he’s looking into a mirror. Technically, they’re both 30 years old. But looking at her now, he thinks maybe neither of them ever left their cages as kids, and pieces of them got stuck in their own personal mausoleums.
He sighs, nods, and floats inside. He doesn’t think too much of it, though he knows he’ll probably freak out about a new power later. Klaus has always been incredibly good at compartmentalizing. Perhaps too good. He crosses his legs and settles down in front of her, body still not touching the ground. He feels like the ghosts that haunt him. He feels like he’s now haunting Vanya the same way his own brother haunted him for years. He felt so scared when Ben showed up, hood shrouding half his face in shadow so Klaus wouldn’t have to see how his cheek is caved in. Other than that, he looks virtually the same as the last time any of them ever saw him alive. Still, at the end of the day, Ben Hargreeves is just another ghost haunting the barren landscape of The Séance. Still, at the end of the day, Klaus Hargreeves is just another ghost haunting himself. He ignores the feeling, puts it in the same Deal With Later Box, and hopes Vanya doesn’t think of him as just another thing to be afraid of.
“Did you ever go out back to see that, uh, big-ass tomb in the backyard? Where Ben’s buried?” Vanya wrinkles her nose in distaste at the memory, but nods. “After Dad finally believed I was actually seeing, you know—” He waves his hands, wiggles his fingers, and hums like a theremin. Vanya cracks a smile, and Klaus lets out a little breath of relief at the sight. “He saw how scared I was of the ghosts. I guess he thought exposure therapy would be best. Wasn’t very therapeutic when I was trapped inside that tomb with a bunch of ghosts screaming at me.”
A crease forms between Vanya’s eyebrows. Her smile falls. “You never told me the dead scream at you.”
He nods and shrugs at the same time, a strange roll of his neck. “Yeah, almost always. They’re usually begging for help, and since they know I’m the only one who can see them... Well, suffice to say, the dead aren’t a very restful bunch. No wonder it took me like 15 years to get clean.”
Vanya shakes her head, confused. “Wait, I don’t understand. You mean when you’re high…?”
“Yeah, the ghosts pretty much go away. I still get nightmares—about them, about the mausoleum, about Ben—but it’s easier. Or, was easier. Uh, the ghosts are gone here and I'm clean now. Whatever that means. Who knows if it’ll last, though, I mean, it’s me we’re talking about.” He chuckles, but it’s a dark sound. He looks away and awkwardly clears his throat, still wholly unused to vulnerability around anyone but Dave. “Anywhoo, fucked-up story short, I get it. The claustrophobia, I mean. Which is why we should both go upstairs and put our sibs out of their misery tryna find you.”
“You guys... you all noticed I was gone?” Vanya asks, small once again, almost embarrassed anybody could care about her at all. Klaus hopes one day she can figure out how to find a balance between taking up space without exploding. He has faith. He thinks if anyone can do it, it’s Vanya.
“Of course we did, Van-yah dear.” He grins, reaching out his hands for hers. “We’re family, like it or not. We got your back, you little harbinger.” She smiles back, rolls her eyes, and puts her hands in his. The moment their skin touches, Klaus drops the few inches to the ground. Curious. Vanya's eyes widen, but they don’t go white.
“You've been levitating this whole time? Have you always been able to?”
Klaus shrugs, pulling them both up. “Nope.” He thinks about asking her if she wants to talk about why he found her down here. He doesn't; he figures she'll tell him about it eventually. He doesn't want to pry or push if she's not ready. He was vulnerable with her, and he knows one day that'll be enough for her to feel safe enough to do the same. They finally have time. He removes his shawl and drapes it over her shoulders, bowing slightly and putting an arm out. “After you, Miss Vanya.”
“Oh, why thank you, Master Klaus,” Vanya says, a cross between a giggle and the same serious pitch Klaus tried to use. She doesn't sound like herself, and Klaus immediately realizes that's because he doesn't remember the last time he heard her laugh. He’s struck suddenly with the urge to talk to Pogo. He knows now that he knew about both the mausoleum and the basement cage. Maybe he could’ve helped them make sense of it.
But the reality is—for now—Pogo is gone, and all they have is each other to get by. Once upon a time, the idea of relying on anyone, especially his family, was absolutely horrifying. As a kid, all he wanted was to leave the Hargreeves Mansion and never return. Now, at least for the foreseeable future while Vanya heals and Five works on the math to get them all back to the right place at the right time, they’re stuck in it. It doesn't sound like as much of a horror story as it might've when he was young.
Klaus has always been fond of the idea that people choose their families. He chose Maya in 1991. He chose Dave in 1968. He chose Ben in 1986. Klaus never thought he’d need anybody other than himself growing up; more than that, he didn't want to, not after the mausoleum. Gone was the sensitive, kind little kid who cried with Vanya when their siblings stepped on ants. After that, he stepped on ants with them. His father was a miserable, cruel-hearted man, and for a long time, he regarded his siblings as the same most of the time. But then he’d be reminded of lion-hearted Allison, or soft-hearted Ben, or mirror-hearted Vanya, or brave-hearted Diego, or bleeding-hearted Luther, or strong-hearted Five, or loyal-hearted Pogo, or ghost-hearted Mom. Whenever he was shown their true colors, and the kindness of them, he'd put them in that same Deal With Later Box he puts everything else. He thought the only people worth keeping were the ones who made him forget the Box even exists at all. Maya, Dave, and Ben: the only people Klaus never had to box up to survive.
But the more time he spends around his siblings without anyone to save, any domino masks to don, or any alarm systems to go off, the more he realizes that that same itching-feeling Vanya talked about years ago, the one he shared with her even if he couldn't admit it, is the same one that’s mirrored in the eyes of Luther when he looks at the moon and remembers he spent four years in isolation for nothing; or Ben’s when somebody walks right through him without even noticing; or Five’s when he’s spent too much time alone; or Diego’s when he fiddles with his rabbit’s foot, and tries to speak, but the world fall out of his mouth in broken pieces; or Allison’s when she tries to speak, and only silence comes out; or Vanya’s when she wants to speak, but can’t find the strength, or she hears a word that sounds too close to Leonard, or Pogo, or Mom, or when she realizes she’s been left out again, or forgotten again.
All of them are different sides of the same mirror. Klaus knows he and Vanya aren’t the only two with Hargreeves Horror Stories; hell, Ben died being forced to tell his. The Horror, even in death. And as Klaus helps Vanya step out of her childhood prison cell, shuts the door, and locks it, despite nothing being inside it anymore but ghosts, he takes the relief in Vanya’s smile to mean that maybe they’re all on their way to finding a nicer story to tell together.
For a moment, Klaus feels a bit vindictive. Eat your heart out, Dad; we made this place a home despite how hard you tried to make it nothing but an Academy. But then he realizes that the bitterness is really sadness in disguise; they've lost so many years to useless competition. He doesn’t think Diego and Luther’s relationship will ever recover from the strain their dad put on them to fight for the title of Number One. Even though Mom gave them names and they fought so hard to find identities of their own outside of the Umbrella Academy, at the end of the day, all the straining against their numbers ever did was make them even more reliant on them. Five embraced his number, and despite spending almost 40 years in an empty world, in the end, he still came out the most well-adjusted because of it. To Five, his number is just a number. A name is just a name.
Number Seven isn’t last, or worst, or forgotten. Number Four isn’t lost, or trapped, or ignored. They’re all so much more than just numbers, names, superheroes. They’re alive. They’re safe. They’re family.