Work Text:
How can I be lost
If I've got nowhere to go
Search for seas of gold
How come it's got so cold?
How can I be lost
In remembrance I relive?
And how can I blame you
When it's me I can't forgive?
Metallica- The Unforgiven III
The Commission was out of time. Not, like, running out of time the way Klaus and his siblings so often were, but simply, physically (possibly even metaphysically, Klaus wasn't sure and didn't give much of a shit), technically – Out of Time.
As in, it operated in some sort of pocket dimension or parallel universe or something, somewhere where their very existence did not threaten the Order of Things.
Klaus was a bit hazy on that one honestly, they'd existed with little to no consequence to the general public for years before any threat of apocalypse came to knock, and if Dad hadn't been such a massive asshole to everyone at large and to Viktor in particular, if he had simply not sent them on the Jennifer mission, then surely there would have been no reason for one. And Ben would be alive.
No shade to New Ben intended, though he was a massive douche, but he just wasn't the same. He was one of them, sure, but not one of them, in the same way it'd always been kinda weird for Luther and Allison to be that into each other, but it'd been fine for Luther to marry Sloane, and for Diego and Lila to get up to whatever thing Diego and Lila had going on, not that Klaus was one to judge. Love was love was love, and no one's babies would be messed up by any of them fooling around with each other. Not genetically anyway.
The thing was, the Commission was Out of Time, geographically. They could live there, all of them, Luther, newly wed and freshly widowed, Allison, all endless grief and bottomless rage, Diego, Lila, and their truckloads of mommy issues, Five and all the snark contained in a teenaged old man, New Ben and none of his original siblings, Viktor and his ongoing identity crisis, and Klaus.
Klaus and what though, he wasn't sure. He wasn't short on grief, really, between Dave and Ben, nor was he short on rage, though he didn't like to show it. He was angry, of course he was, who wouldn't be being what they were and who they'd been raised to be, but Dad was dead and that was that. Had to be, lest they start chasing every iteration of him through the Endless Subway, not that the idea hadn't been floated.
It had been Klaus and drugs for years, decades, nearly, to the eyes of the world at least, but to Klaus himself, it'd really been Klaus and Ben. How was he supposed to grieve a ghost? Dave was dead. Properly dead, had been since the day he died, and it had hurt like a bitch. It had rendered Klaus' heart into too many pieces to count, all of them as jagged and irreconcilable as grenade-torn flesh. Klaus would know, he'd fought in Vietnam.
So Dave had died, and Klaus had thought about raising him at first, about bringing him back as a ghost, just like he had Ben, turning him away from the light, away from whatever came after, that last frontier of knowledge, the one Klaus wasn't entirely sure he could ever reach. Could he die? Would he see Dave again in the afterlife? There seemed to be one, at least, but he'd never been allowed to stay long enough to know what his own would look like.
He'd changed his mind once he'd landed in Dallas. There was no point in looking for ghost Dave, seeing as the real, living, unwitting Dave was milling around, looking gorgeously young, selling paint and using words like 'latrine'. Despite Klaus' best efforts Dave had enlisted, and then they'd had to leave again, go back to 2019, though he was pretty sure Herb would have let them stay in segregated Texas if they'd asked. Somehow they hadn't, not even Allison, though she'd had most to lose. Both ways, now that Klaus thought about it, and apparently daughter trumped husband in the cosmic game of timeline picking. Not that Claire had been there on the other side.
After the Obsidian, and the dying and living and dying and living and dying and living and being harpooned by Diego's offspring who turned out not to be Diego's offspring but some sort of Lila flirting technique, at least until he got erased by the Kugleblitz. Anyway, after all of that and them barely escaping Reggie's new insane overlord plans to take over the human race or something, they'd exited the evil version of Klaus' favourite hotel into a bright brave new world and promptly started another apocalypse. Something to do with Marigold and some other alien substance, at least according to this world's Reg and his even more certifiable wife, something so bad New Ben nearly ended the universe touching his crush, which was a shame if you asked Klaus, because that boy really needed to unwind.
Still, New Reg said once he'd unlocked their memories of Ben's death (and how could Klaus not have known? How had he and Ben never talked about it? Had Ben not remembered? Trauma-wiped the slate of his ghost brain? Had he known what Klaus would have done to Dad if he'd remembered? Had he kept this last horror to himself to spare him, to spare Klaus the denials of his siblings and the daunting task of killing Dad on his own? Had Klaus brushed him away with a well rehearsed mantra? Had Ben lived his entire ghost life under the impression that Klaus thought his cold-blooded murder had been a heroical yet tragic accident? It haunted Klaus as surely as his brother had, with none of the associated perks), they couldn't stay in this timeline, or any other timeline, really, lest they blow it up.
Fuck Reg, had been Klaus' response to that one, but unfortunately Five concurred. He'd met himself again, in the infinite Subway of Jennifer's Christmas town, and all the Fives agreed, there was no way for them to live.
Fuck that, had been his Five's take on that, and now here they were. Living in the Commission.
When Ben died, his siblings had grieved, each in their own way. Whether by never mentioning him again (Luther, ever Daddy's little soldier), getting angrier (Allison, somehow, rumouring her way into fame with renewed rage), looking for justice (Diego, swearing on his badge he would never let another child die) or hiding deeper into himself (Viktor, breaking the hair of his violin bows, night after day after night, for years, until Dad snapped at him to be silent. He'd never heard from him again, not until the book), they'd all somehow managed to cope. Not so Klaus. Klaus had simply not coped. He'd pulled Ben up and never let him go. Or so he'd thought, until Viktor let him off the hook.
The point was, Klaus had lived with Ben his entire life. Ben had seen him through high (Dave, that one drag performance he'd really nailed back in '09, meeting Bowie in 2010) and low (withdrawal – '01- '63, on and off, denial – see withdrawal, step one, debasement – material enough for a truly acclaimed indie movie about the world of drugs, self absorption, betrayal – notable instances '02, '04, '07, '07 again, 2011, 2016, detachment – I wanna be numb again), and now Klaus had to deal.
The good thing about living in an Out of Time pocket of weirdly 50s tech somehow set up by your insane smartass of a brother to monitor the timeline of the universe (possibly implying other, parallel Out of Time nebulous agencies, one for each timeline? Klaus had given up), was that you got to live.
The bad thing about living in an Out of Time pocket of weirdly 50s tech somehow set up by your insane smartass of a brother to monitor the timeline of the universe (even though it had all already happened??) was that Klaus was shit out of drugs, and just as short of a dealer. He was going to have to grieve. Sober.
In this, as in most things, Klaus deferred to Five. Sure, they all had people to grieve, Allison and Diego and Luther and Viktor with their daughter, husband, ex-lover, wife, lover, sort-of stepson mishaps, and New Ben with the erasure and murder of his entire family, floating cube included, but none had grieved the way Five had, forty years alone in an apocalypse, fuelled by hope and a certain amount of admittedly warranted confidence in his own ability to come back to them. The hope was what made Five most eligible to Klaus' needs, the hope of getting to see them again and yet still having to grieve, to find a way to somehow keep on living with the absence, to find purpose anyway. Not that grieving was a contest.
Though of course, grieving was a contest. Everything was between them, never ever seemed to cease being one, not even now that they could all acknowledge Dad's fucked-up-ness, not even now they knew for sure that they'd been reared for competition.
(“Yeah, and we'd so win it too. Seventeen years haunting your ass, watching you dig at rock bottom again, and again, and again. I mean? The grief of that combined with your horrible ghosts? We'd so win.”
“Shut up, we're two different people anyway.”
“Are we, though?”)
Five knew what it meant, was all, to have to go on without someone you still hoped you'd see one day, which was exactly what Klaus needed to do. He needed to go on living without Ben, while knowing full well he would never be able to let go of the hope that Ben would come back to haunt him again, judge him from the side lines and pick him up, snark his way through Klaus' greatest hits (bargaining, begging, propositioning) in order to hide the pain. Klaus wasn't stupid, or naive, he knew what Ben had seen him do and he knew what it must have felt like, some amped up version of what he'd felt doing it, though he'd at least gotten a high out of it. Ben hadn't. He'd been impervious to drugs. They'd tried. Oh, how they'd tried to get him to share into Klaus' life, get him to really experience the world, but the best Klaus had managed to do was give Ben back his sense of smell, which hadn't changed much. (“Kinda made it worst, honestly, given your choice of scene.”)
He needed him here, Klaus did, and knew Ben would never be back, not really. But Klaus would die. And die. And die again, possibly ad infinitum, possibly through the heat death of the universe, Reggie hadn't known and Five didn't like to speculate. (Five loved to speculate, and if it hadn't literally cost Klaus his life, they would have experimented the heck out of it. Five wasn't Dad though, so they didn't.) Klaus would die, anyway, multiple times since it never seemed to stick, and every time he'd get a chance to see Ben. Or so he hoped. Ben had gone up in blue-lit ash (or so Viktor had said) to chill ever after in the after life, and Klaus could visit there. He could so visit Ben. Except he'd not seen him, not once in all the times Reggie'd killed him, and he'd sworn to the others he wouldn't go looking on purpose. They were afraid he'd die for good, hence the ban on experimenting.
Klaus had been good. He didn't want Luther's eyes to get any sadder, didn't want Allison to spiral further into her pain, didn't want Viktor to cry, didn't want Diego to stutter or Lila to kick his ass, and he didn't want Five looking at him with the weird mix of hurt and disappointment he'd perfected, somehow bringing his early-sixties inner vibes together with his seventeen year old face. He didn't want to hurt any of them, and so he would not throw himself down the Subway track in an attempt to see Ben. He'd live with the hope. He'd grieve with the hope. He needed to talk to Five. He hoped the answer did not lie with a plastic mannequin.
Klaus found Five in the bunker, where Lila said they'd met future Five, one-armed and dying of old age in an iron lung. Current Five was busy covering the walls with equations far beyond Klaus' SAT level, even if he'd bothered sitting them sober.
“Cinco!” The enthusiasm in his voice was halfway faked, force of habit after so many years playing up the air-head junkie part, but still about fifty percent genuine. Klaus loved Five. He was a snarky piece of shit but he hadn't seen him through the worst of his addiction, through the stealing and lying and plain old giving up, and maybe this was why he was less dismissive of Klaus than the rest of their siblings were, or maybe deep down Five was just shockingly soft hearted. Klaus' inexistent money was on that second option, though the bastard loved to lean into his annoyed old-timer persona.
“Mi hermano!” Klaus added for good measure, stepping inside the bunker.
Five didn't turn around from whatever formula he was frantically scribbling on the far wall, a raise of his left shoulder the only physical acknowledgement of Klaus' entrance.
“Wondered if I could pick your brain,” Klaus asked, though even he could see Five wasn't in the mood. Thing was, he never really was. Not since he'd come back from the Endless Subway, four years older than he'd stepped into it, and that much more damaged. They hadn't known. They'd all been running from over-geared Christmas aficionados went he blinked away, and no one had really worried about it. No one went looking for Five. Those who had noticed his three hour absence had simply assumed Five was off on a little side quest of his own, which was standard procedure.
“What?” Five dropped the stub of chalk he'd been dragging against concrete, finally putting a stop to the scratching noise that had been grating at Klaus' brain, not quite enough to fully register but definitely enough to annoy. (“Just like me.”)
“I... uh. It's...” Alright. Klaus should have planned this better, prepared some sort of intro speech that would land more smoothly than 'so, you're like, surprisingly well-adjusted for how deeply traumatising a life you've led, and, uh. Care to give me pointers? On how to cope? With like, the endless grief of absence?'. Seeing as he hadn't, Klaus kind of just stood there, trying to conjure up words that would not come. Ben would have known what to say.
“I can't help you Klaus,” Five said, cutting through Klaus' fumbling and finally facing him. Klaus could see now how exhausted he looked, wondered how long he'd been here running himself ragged on equations none of them could help with.
“I can't tell Viktor it's safe to go visit Sissy in 1970 California even though we do have the briefcases,” Five said, “can't say for sure that it won't absolutely fuck the timeline and kill us all, can't tell Allison how to grieve a daughter that's never been born, can't really let her go back to Dallas either, certainly can't tell Luther what to do about his dead wife and I can't tell Diego and Lila how to raise a baby out of time, can't even tell them for sure that it's gonna get born, what with the time travelling and timeline shifts, and frankly I'm not sure why it's on me to tell them, but here we are, they come to me. You all do, one after the other, whining to little old me, about how you don't know how to live.” Five seemed to come up for air then, breathing in deep, staring at Klaus with wide-open blood shot eyes.
“Why the fuck, Klaus? Why. The. Fuck.” Five pushed each word into Klaus' chest, hand flat against his bared flesh, rattling Dave's dog tags.
“Why. The. Fuck. Do you think I'm equipped to tell you? I spent forty years alone in a pile of junk, then four years working as a hitman, then about a month running around time trying to save all of our asses from yet another fucking apocalypse, and then an extra four years riding the Endless Subway. I don't know how to live!” Five's hands flew up in the air in manic exasperation, then he looked at Klaus like he'd been about to argue.
“I don't! You've all had more experience being normal than I ever will. There are thirty-odd copies of me milling about in a Subway café drinking shit coffee and under-mustarded pastramis as we speak, Klaus, as we speak, and yet, it is me you come to see, me, when I'm the only one of me still working on giving you a life. A real one, I mean, not one spent haunting the halls of the Commission.”
Five stood there, shoulders hunched the way they'd been ever since he'd made his way back to them, the way they'd never been when he was a child, not with how Dad had beaten good posture into them. He looked about ready to fight or collapse, so Klaus simply tilted his head to the side and said:
“Alright.”
“Alright?” Five asked, incredulity clear in his voice, though his face was leaning rather more into sarcasm.
“Yeah, Five, alright. My bad. I'll bring you a sandwich, yeah? Properly mustarded, I swear.”
“Thank you.” Five relaxed a touch, hands unclenching at his sides.
“No worries, Fivey. Why don't you like, sit down for a minute?” Klaus had worked on a ranch, a lifetime ago, fucking stable hands and stealing ketamine, and talking Five down from the edge wasn't far from un-spooking horses, if the horses had been geared towards homicidal rage. “Take a breather? I'll be right back.”
“I don't need a breather, Klaus.” And just like that, his hands re-clenched. “I need answers, and I need them yesterday.”
“Sure thing, Five, sure thing,” Klaus said airily, walking backwards towards the circular bunker door, “but, and I might be wrong, though we both know I'm not, you do have a body. And I know you despise it, and I get it, I do, I would not wanna do puberty again, really I wouldn't, but didn't you do most of that in the Subway? Like, your voice's all broken in now, right? And I feel that pimples wise, you know. Could be worse.”
Five's face had turned an interesting shade of angry red, his eyes now narrowing in juvenile rage, and Klaus felt like dancing. Teenagers. They were so easy. “My point is,” he said, dodging Five's first salvo of chalk, “my point is, ouch, fuck off.” The second salvo had definitely landed. “Point is,” Klaus went on, “you need sleep. You need food. You need fucking sunlight every now and then or you're gonna die of scurvy down here. Possibly, brother, you need to get laid.”
“Fuck off.”
“Gladly.” Klaus dodged yet another onslaught of chalk, then asked from the relative safety of the hallway, “want a drink with your sandwich?”
“Coffee. Black.”
“Nope.” Klaus popped his head back in, to find Five glaring at him. “Sleeping, remember?”
“Fine. Scotch. Neat.”
“That's so disappointing, Fivey. Sure you don't want a cocktail? Something frilly with a little umbrella? Dad sure would have appreciated the aesthetic.”
“Whatever gets you out of here, Klaus, just make it strong.”
“That's a deal brother, now sit your ass down until I get back.”
“No.”
“Lean against the wall a bit? Please? For me?”
“I despise you,” Five said, leaning against the doorjamb, and to Klaus it felt a bit like love.
Klaus changed gears after that. Five was drowning. Sure, they were all struggling, especially Allison, but Diego had Lila and Viktor had Luther, who had... (“A timeline-erased dead wife?”) Well, actually Luther was drowning too, but Diego was on it. Sort of. Anyway, Klaus wasn't equipped to deal with Luther, not that he was equipped to deal with anyone, but he and Luther had gone through the same shit and he had no idea what to tell him. It would not get easier. Klaus had been in love, really, properly in love only once in his life four years and half a century ago and he would never get over it, but at least he'd been with Dave a few months. Luther had loved and lost in the span of four days, and as far as Klaus was concerned, the poet could get fucked. It was not better than to have never loved at all. Not when it left crater-sized black holes where your brother's eyes used to be.
So he couldn't deal with Luther, not beyond making him breakfast and making sure he was moving every now and again, dragging him through useless walks in and around the Commission, just so he would see people, even if some of those people were of the opinion that they should have died to unify the timelines and undo their paradoxical existences. Which, mathematically, Klaus could not deny them. There was, however, the slight issue of his immortality, not to mention their general reluctance to die, which Klaus was pretty sure was shared by all the wrong timeline utterances of everybody else, not that timeline purists ever seemed to think of them. Klaus did. He would have loved to meet his niece, would have loved to keep his Ben, loved to see Sloane alive on the other side of the Obsidian doors, but here they weren't, disappeared through time and the infinite multiverse. Still, Luther was being dealt with by their general keeping an eye on him and pestering him to do things and so on, and Allison too, though it felt a bit like caring for a grenade, but no one was taking care of Five.
Granted he would probably have kicked Klaus' teeth in just for suggesting he needed taking care of, but that was beside the point. Something needed to be done about Five, and no one else was going to do it.
Little Five. Their genius lost brother, frozen in time at thirteen years old. They'd written him off. They had. No kid went missing seventeen years and came back alive, not even Five. The sick part, of course, was that after a while they'd all wished him dead. It had been a lot easier to swallow than abandonment.
But anyway, when Five came back looking like he'd left yesterday and talking like he'd been gone four decades none of them had quite known what to do with him. He would not be mothered, clearly, and yet he'd come back to them, back to his family and the one thing he'd clung on to all these years: his plan to save them all. They hadn't quite taken the time to learn what it meant for them to have Five back, or what it meant for Five to be back. What with everything happening (see Allison, organising Dallas, getting angry, Diego, conspiring to save Kennedy, getting pregnant, Luther, body-guarding, getting married, Viktor, ending the world, getting T, Five, saving the world, getting lost, Klaus, starting a cult, resurrecting, Ben, joyously rolling in the dirt, dissolving) they'd been too preoccupied but now they had time and zero places to go, and no one knew what to do with it.
Well, Klaus did. He would fix Five, and then he would grieve.
He was watching Five watching Lila watching Diego watching Lila's growing belly, all of them eating cereals in not-yet-retro orange glassware bowls when the realisation struck him. He watched the slight shine in Five's eyes, there and gone before he could be quite sure, watched the renewed vigour he put into munching down his Fruit Loops (Herb got them for them special from the future, in that one timeline where they still existed – and how the fuck had they put an end to Fruit Loops?), kept watching with squinted eyes and a furrowed brow until Five glared back, at which point Klaus casually turned to Lila to ask her about baby names, and did not miss the look of panic on her face when Diego said “Grace”.
“Fivey,” Klaus asked once Diego and Lila had gone, blatantly ignoring WBWD (What Ben Would Do) and going straight for the kill, “in all your time whoring yourself out as a killer for hire, did you ever happen to get laid?” (“Subtle”, said Ben).
“I,” Five said, wielding his spoon like a particularly deadly weapon, “am going to kill you, Klaus, and when you inevitably come back from the dead with more inane questions, I'm going to do it again. And again, and again. Painfully.”
“So that's a no then.” Klaus offered his nicest, most empathetic smile, a carefully composed mixture of pity and understanding. He'd been a terrific Guru.
Five glared harder.
There was a pause, and then Five poured himself another bowl, the fifth by Klaus' count, about what you'd expect from an hyperactive growing teenager.
“What do you care?”
“Me? I don't.” Klaus did. He cared that Five didn't seem to think about his own life at all, cared that his brother lived only to save them when they were honestly kind of already saved, cared about the deepening dark circles around his eyes, cared that Five looked roughly as alive as Klaus had at his age (physical age, that is) even though he was taking none of the drugs. “Diego, though, he might.”
“What's it got to do with Diego?”
“Well... If you're going for Lila, I'm thinking, you know, he might care.”
“I,” Five said, marking an entirely too long pause, made all the more threatening by a slight show of canine, “am not going for Lila. She's insane, and dangerous, and ridiculously in love with my brother, not to mention pregnant. I have eyes and she has legs, if you must know.”
“Hm. Fair points, Five, all of them, and yet,” Klaus grinned, anything to get Five to react to something other than apocalyptic contingencies, “you blushed.”
“My body's seventeen! It blushes! It sneaks a glance at Lila because she's there and she's objectively hot, and apparently she enjoys very tight tops! What do you want me to say?” Five stood, bowl still in hand but with the clear intention of getting away from Klaus, which he had to admit might have been on him. (“Might?”)
“I don't have time for this,” Five said, “I've got work to do. “
“No you don't.”
See Ben? Ben would have approached this better. Let Five down gently re: the fact he did not actually need to run himself ragged trying to save people who were, by-and-large, fine. Safe. They were safe, at least, and the rest was up to them, not Five. However, Klaus being Klaus and not Ben, Five turned a deeply unimpressed look on him and sighed, a world-weary thing that betrayed his elderly nature.
“Yes, Klaus, I do. I'm not gonna sit on my ass watching all of you wither and waste away in this place.” He blinked before Klaus could argue, presumably back to the bunker and its equation-covered walls, back to the unwavering certainty that it was his job to fix their lives, and that the only way to do so was to take them back. By that point Klaus wasn't sure what back meant anymore, whether Five intended for them all to de-age back to teenage-hood, back to before Five jumped and Ben died, or if his plan was more convoluted than that, wondered if Luther would get to kill Dad, thought maybe that would fix him. (“There are rules to this universe, as well you should have learned by now, Number One. I've only ever had seven children, and here you all are... Would you rather I'd kept Sloane and let Five go? He's the best of you all, insolence aside, his survival was the most logical choice.You'll find someone else, I'm sure.”)
“What Would Ben Do?” (WWBD) became Klaus' metric and mantra, a vain attempt to keep himself on track and away from bad decisions. The problem was, on a good day Ben had been a sarcastic asshole, not unlike New Ben but with a softer core, and on a bad day he'd been closed off and angry, even as a ghost. Still, for the nearly two decades he'd haunted him, Ben had been the voice of reason, not that Klaus had listened. He was trying to now, too little too late, maybe, but Ben, Klaus was sure, would have been on board with his plan to save Five. Klaus made a habit to drop in on Five in the bunker, negotiating food offerings for breaks, bargaining with his brother for an hour of distraction here and there, insisting Five attend Family Gatherings, never mind that he then had to convince all the rest of them to attend too, cajoling and pushing, negotiating and threatening, whatever he needed to do to make them all come. Klaus had pulled someone's tooth out, once, deep in a Vietnamese jungle, and it had been miles easier than getting them all in the same room. (Now, Klaus thought, the heroin had probably helped, but he couldn't see his way into suggesting that one to the team).
His siblings literally had nowhere to go and still they persisted in making things difficult. Allison would come and spend the entire time glaring daggers Viktor's way, Viktor would sit there looking halfway pissed and all the way sad, Luther happily tagged along wherever Klaus pulled him, if you considered quiet and subdued happy, Diego was generally easy to convince too, though he brought Dad-to-be energy to everything, including things that did not require Dad-to-be energy, and Lila came too, tried very hard to hide her joy at being included behind an endless stream of snark. New Ben. Well. New Ben came, provided there was anything to drink, which there was, seeing as Klaus wanted Five to be here. He wasn't quite sure New Ben needed to be included, really, but he felt like he owed it to Ben Ben to make him part of the team, however uncanny it felt having him around. Again, it was nothing against New Ben, per se, the dude was even kinda fun once he had a drink or ten in him, but he was an exact copy of Ben, and part of Klaus expected him to be Ben, to act like him and talk like him, and he just didn't. It hurt.
Ben, in all actuality, would have found a better way to fix Five than just forcing him to spend time with his siblings, but Klaus was all out of ideas. He had little to offer in the way of healthy coping mechanisms, and even less in the way of actual timeline solutions, but he was great for a good time and a distraction, so family dinners it would have to be. At least the Commission had decent food.
“Herb!!” Diego greeted the man with entirely too much enthusiasm, got up to complete an over-intricate handshake that made Klaus slightly jealous. He too would have loved a secret handshake, with anyone, really, but with Diego especially. Diego had been there, sort of, all the years Klaus had dedicated to numbing himself down, making sure he was alive, pushing him into useless yet well-meaning rehab programs, driving him around and buying him shitty breakfast. He'd missed him in Dallas, missed the direct approach his brother brought to things. (“You should tell him.”)
Lila smiled at Herb with entirely too much teeth, and the little man visibly paled.
“Lila,” he said, taking a slight step back, “good to see the baby's coming along well.”
“Yeah. Third generation Time Agent, I can feel it's gonna do great in training.”
“You want our child to train as an assassin?”
“Hum. Yes?”
“Are you insane?”
“Are you insane? You want my kid to grow up vulnerable? In this fucking place where half the people think we should just close our eyes and let the universe take us?! She's half Hargreeves half Pitts and her grandma terrorised this place for decades, plus there's a non-zero chance he's gonna get born with powers, Diego, you cant just expect..”
“Not that this isn't riveting,” Five cut in above Lila's increasingly heated rant about the child-to-be's need to be able to hold its own, “but I don't suspect you've come all the way here to enjoy a Hargreeves' family meeting?”
“Well,” Herb said, “it's not that far.” He looked slightly apologetic now, as if somehow they were going to blame him for the admittedly out of the way quarters they'd been assigned. The rooms had never been designed to be fully lived in, more a series of R&R suites for agents in between missions, but they'd managed. (No interior design atrocity couldn't be fixed by a spot of time travel shoplifting, not that Klaus had told Five that.)
“I guess it's not,” Five allowed. “Didn't mean to sound ungrateful for the aisle you've given us, Herb, it's very generous of you. Everybody say thank you Herb.”
Everybody said “thank you, Herb,” with varying degrees of enthusiasm, except for New Ben.
“You're not my Dad,” he said, turning to Five with an aggravated scowl.
“And thank fuck for that Ben, shit's complicated enough as it is. Anyway. Herb?”
“Yes,” Herb perked up, “hum. It's about... Well. It's come to my attention that there's a team still working on making you a new.. hum. That is, old. I mean. Age-appropriate. Huh. Body.”
“Is there?” Five shrugged. “I'd imagined that got tabled when the Handler kicked it.”
“When you let her die, you mean.”
“She shot you dead, Lila, we've been over this.”
“Still.”
“Fine. When I let the Handler get shot instead of allowing her to kill us all. Happy?”
“Thrilled.”
“Hum,” said Herb, wisely deciding to ignore that, “it wasn't. Tabled, I mean.”
“Alright.”
“So... Do you still want it? The team say they can have it operational by next week.”
“Ah.” Five stirred his drink with the tip of his cocktail umbrella for a second or two, like the swirls of tequila could answer for him. “No. Thank you, Herb. I'm sorry, I should have let you know sooner.”
“Oh it's no trouble, really,” Herb said apparently oblivious to the shocked silence that had settled around the table. “Anything I can do to help. Any of you, just ask.”
“Thanks Herb.”
“Yeah, thanks Herb,” Diego said, frowning at Klaus and darting concerned eyes towards Five, still deeply involved in the depths of his glass, “but I think maybe you should leave us to this now.”
“Oh. Of course, yes. Have a.. Hum. Have a good one.”
Allison turned on Five the second the door clicked shut behind Herb.
“What exactly do you mean, 'no'? You've been annoyingly vocal about hating this.” She gestured vaguely up and down Five's gangly teenage frame.
“He's allowed his own decisions, you know,” Viktor chimed in, pointedly talking about something else.
“It's called a discussion, Viktor, you might want to look that up.”
“Alright. Shut it, both of you, either fight it out or let it go, honestly, enough.” Luther cut in before Viktor could reply, and whatever hold he still had on Allison seemed to be enough to keep her silent.
“Allison's got a point though, Five,” Diego said. “What's with the change of heart?”
Five finally looked up, leaving the unfathomable mysteries of alcohol to his glass.
“Well it's occurred to me, Diego, that you are all idiots. You don't listen, you don't communicate...”
“Right. But you do?” Allison scoffed from her end of the table, which Klaus had to admit was fair.
“And,” Five carried on as always, “were I to regain my correct body, I would be dead in a decade or so. Considering the strain of flash travelling on an ageing body and the fucking stress I'm under dealing with you all, a coronary seems most likely, but we can't rule out cancer, not even in a manufactured body.”
“Well that's fucking bleak.”
“It is, Klaus, it really is, and while I have no doubt you'd do your best to keep my spirit tethered here, it's simply too big of a risk to take, at least so long as we're still stuck. Besides,” Five shrugged, “I kinda like being in better shape than all of you.”
“Hold on, Five. Do you... Is your plan to outlive us all?”
“Well I've survived missing you once, I believe I can do it again, and if it gives us a fighting chance, then yeah, Viktor, I'll outlive you all. Why not? I made this place after all, might as well see how it ends.”
“You won't be immortal though, asshole, just old. And alone.”
“Maybe. Or maybe your potentially powered up kid won't have to grow old on his own. You can see it as pay back for your parents. Not the Handler though, I stand by that one.”
Lila's face did something entirely unreadable that might have matched Klaus' heartbreak, then she promptly leaped out of her chair and slapped Five upside the head.
“Fuck you,” she said, and wiped her eyes.
“You know,” Klaus told Five a few days later, handing his brother a mimosa, “it really is a shame I'm sober.” (“Drug sober, at least.”)
“Is it?”
“I... “ Was it? Maybe. Not on good days, it wasn't. But still. The grief. “Not the point, Fivey, tonight is about you.”
“Is it?” Five raised an eyebrow that did nothing but confirm his little shit status, and Klaus had to smile.
“My point is,” he said, “I'm sure you'd benefit immensely from getting a little high. Just weed, you know, which is barely drugs at that point, it's been legalised in what? Half the country by now?”
“It's drugs to you, Klaus,” Five said, sounding horribly like Roger, one of Klaus' old NA supervisors, “everything is if you can't stop.”
“I know. I know, Five, believe me I do.” He'd sold himself for a few grams enough times and in enough ways to really learn that. “But you, though, you could relax a bit, I'm sure it would help.”
“That's what the mimosas are for, aren't they? And I'm plenty relaxed.”
“Debatable.” (Cue the ever present dark circles under Fvie’s eyes, the minute twitch of his eyelid from over-caffeination. Klaus was an addict. Took one to know one.)
“Can I ask you something?” Klaus asked, a couple of mimosas later.
“Is it gonna be about my feelings?”
They were hanging out on the Commission's rooftop, watching the sun disappear behind the trees. Klaus wondered how come there was even a sunset here, if they were Out of Time, but the out-of-timeness didn't seem to stop Lila's expanding belly or Klaus' hair growth, so he assumed time passed anyway. Just Out of Things.
“Maybe?” he said, meaning absolutely, “that's what the mimosas are for after all.”
“Fine,” Five nodded, “but I get to ask one too.”
“Okay,” Klaus agreed. “This is nice.”
They should have done this years ago. Sneaked up the academy's fire escape with a bottle of bad schnapps, Diego, Ben, Five and Klaus, getting stupid drunk and sharing secrets. Instead, it had been Klaus and Diego huffing paint in Mom's basement and trying to forget about the rest while the ghost of Ben cried because he couldn't get Diego to see him.
“Sure,” Five said, and maybe he was thinking the same as Klaus, or maybe he wasn't, maybe he'd gotten really drunk for the first time hidden under a pile of apocalyptic rubble in the company of a plastic mannequin, and Klaus wasn't sure he wanted to know.
“Why do you think it's your fault?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I'm talking about, Five. You're the smart one after all.” Too smart, maybe. Maybe this was why he couldn't let this go, couldn't just admit that this would be their life and that it wasn't actually that bad. There were people here, though they weren't meant to stick around, and they had each other. Still, Five kept looking for a way out, a way back, a way forward, even, looking now into jumping to the future, long after the memory of them would have faded, to find a place where they could live, and be part of the universe.
“Maybe,” he shrugged. “You're not that dumb, you know, when you can focus more than a half minute.”
“I know. But I appreciate you telling me anyway.” Klaus leaned sideways to bump shoulders with Five, who strictly didn't move.
“Don't get used to it.”
“Wouldn't dream of it. So? You owe me an answer.”
“It is my fault Klaus.” Five put his champagne flute down. “If I hadn't jumped... If I'd stayed. I could have helped you. Could have protected you, protected Ben and Viktor too. Would have made sure none of this happened.”
“Hm. Or you'd have turned into a psychotic little prodigy, like a tiny rabid Reggie.”
“No.”
“Yeah, you're right. Probably not. But you'd have left anyway, I think. You hated it just as much as we did, and you were the only one who didn't think he needed Dad.”
“Maybe,” Five sighed. “The old man was right though, I wasn't ready.”
“Maybe.” Klaus echoed, trying not to fidget too much, not to spook Five out of the conversation. “Still. Doesn't really make this your fault, does it? Viktor ended the world. Then, well Viktor again, then all of us together, with a little shove from Daddy dearest, not you.”
“I brought you all to Texas, and back. I should be able to fix it. I made this place for fuck's sake, I'll find a way.”
“You don't have to.” Klaus was the only one saying it. He would keep saying it until it breached through Five's resolve, and knowing the asshole, it was a good thing they had time.
“Anyway,” Five said, proving Klaus' point, “my turn.”
“Right,” Klaus sighed, wisely deciding to let it go. For now. “Ask away then, brother. I'm an open book.”
“Why did you help Reggie? In the Sparrow timeline?”
“Going for the throat, I see. I don't know, Five.” Klaus twirled his glass, watched the bubbles float up to the surface. “At first I think I just pitied him, you know?” Klaus had been drugged too, though usually not against his will, and the Sparrows had been cruel, and.. “And then I.. I. I wanted him to be nice. Fucked up, isn't it? Spent my entire life telling Dad he could go fuck himself, made public speeches against him, stole from him any chance I could get, even turned him into a drag act once.”
“Would have loved to see that.”
“Yeah. Got a monocle and all, it was grandiose. Anyway, I was always very clear about my feelings towards the old man, you know?” Except Five didn't. He hadn't been here. “But then I guess, we'd just lost our moms, and there was a Dad that wasn't Dad, and well...” He'd listened to Klaus. No one did. And he knew that was on him, partly, on the drugs and the lies and all the shit he'd rained on his siblings, but. Ben. Ben had been gone, and Dad had been here, willing to listen, willing to help even, and Ben wasn't there. Wasn't standing all aloof in a corner telling Klaus to be careful, to keep his distance, to remember who he was dealing with. So. “I helped Dad, and he helped me. Look at this shit now.”
Klaus flexed his hands and the ghosts that followed Five everywhere glowed up, half a dozen of them, all fully solid, mumbling or screaming, or just vacantly staring at Klaus, asking, always asking, for something he'd never been sure he could give.
“Impressive.” Five said, in no way acknowledging that he'd killed all these people himself.
“Yeah,” Klaus shrugged. “That's not the best part though.”
“No? What is, then? Immortality?”
“Nah. Best part is this.” In a flash of light the ghosts dissolved, burned away with a final cry. And then there was peace. Klaus hoped they got to move on at last, like Viktor said Ben had.
“I assume it makes sobriety easier,” Five remarked, voice gone just slightly soft. It might have been the mimosas.
“You have no idea.”
“Dad gave you this, didn't he?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. No wonder you helped him.”
“I'm sorry.” Maybe if he hadn't warmed up to Reggie, hadn't told him to make nice with the rest of them, then Allison would not have sided with him, and Luther wouldn't have trusted him enough to get close and get killed, and then. Then … Well then they would all have disappeared with the Obsidian, but still. Luther had been killed, and Sloane had been erased and Klaus. Klaus had been nice to dad.
“It's not on you.” Five said, looking up at Klaus (though barely up now, he'd grown about a mile somehow, surviving on subway rats).
“That, brother, is so my line.”
“You know,” Five told Klaus on the day Lila gave birth, “I read about Ben in Viktor's book.”
“What?”
They were holding fort in front of the delivery room, drinking steadily from a bottle of excellent whiskey, trying to ignore Lila's swearing and Diego's manic rambles, both clearly audible through the wall. (And how, and why did the Commission even have a delivery room? How many kids had been born here? Would be born here? Had ancient dead Five somehow planned for this in the blueprints? Remembered it? But no. It had been – would be- a different Five). Viktor was pacing up and down the hall, crossing paths with Luther every fifteen steps or so, and just watching them go round was making Klaus dizzy.
“Fuck,” he said, turning to Five's entirely neutral face, “shit. Of course. You came back and you knew. You were always such an annoyingly knowing little shit, I didn't even question it.”
Five snorted, apparently not willing to fake affront, and took another swig off their shared bottle.
“Shit.” Klaus said again, because, well. Shit. “What did you do?” He'd taken his brother's ghost to piss in Dad's fuel tank, and then he'd gotten black out drunk in the vague hope that things would be better in the morning. They hadn't. (“Still funny, though.”)
“We had a funeral.” Five said, looking vacantly ahead the way he did when he talked about his apocalypse, using 'we' as a matter of fact, which none of them had been brave enough to question yet. As far as Klaus was concerned, Dolores had kept their brother alive and relatively sane, and the rest didn't matter.
“I made a headstone next to the rest of yours, got extremely drunk. Made a speech, as I recall.”
Klaus blinked down into the bottle. Had Five buried them all? He'd said he found their corpses, in the rubble of the academy, but Klaus had never let himself think too hard about how that must have felt to an actually thirteen year old Five, having to deal with the dead bodies of his family.
“Yea,” he said, instead of addressing that, “you're good at drunk speeches. Dad made one too, for Ben.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. There's good people and bad people, and good people who fight evil, but alas, we were just a bunch of incompetent assholes who'd let our brother die, may it serve as a lesson to us all.”
“Fuck,” Five said on an exhale, “even for Dad...”
“Oh I know. You'd think he could have at least given a decent eulogy, he'd just fried our brains and shot his own son in cold blood.” (“I didn't know.”)
“Why are you talking about eulogies now?” Luther stopped in his tracks to frown at them.
“Honestly,” Five said, “I don't know. Cycle of life and such.”
“Uh. Bit bleak right now, though, isn't it?” Luther gestured vaguely to the door, at the exact time Lila wailed, and they all flinched.
“Fuck,” Klaus said, “I didn't remember births being that stressful.
“And you've got a lot of experience in births because?” Viktor had joined them, sliding down the wall to settle on the other side of Five.
“I'll have you know, brother, Destiny's Children were a very fertile commune.”
“Ugh.”
“I second that.”
“Yeah.”
(“They're right. You suck.”)
Klaus grinned at them. He'd enjoyed the cult, at first, before it started running without him. It'd been fun planning 'miracles' with Ben, making up mantras from future pop songs and swindling bored rich people. He should have left it at that, obviously, but by the time he realised the power he held over his followers it'd been too late to run. Not that he hadn't tried.
“Are you all drunk?” The door opened inwards to reveal Allison, wiping blood off her forehead.
“Barely,” Five shrugged as Luther shook his head, “is it over yet?”
“Yes.” Allison's face broke out into a genuine smile, “come meet the new kid then. Go wash your hands first.”
“Oh my god it's so small.”
“She.” Lila glared at Klaus from her bed, sweaty hair plastered to her face, none of the appropriate, movie-approved new-mother glow radiating from her.
“My bad,” Klaus placated. “She's so small.”
She was. Diego was holding her like he would never let her go and the baby's entire head fit into his hand, along with a decent quarter of her body.
“What's her name?”
“Ania,” Diego said, smiling like the world had been remade. (It was, Klaus had to admit, a nice kind of smile, he'd last seen it in a Vietnamese mirror, on the first evening Dave had kissed him.)
“Ania?” Vitkor asked with a trace of doubt, and it seemed to occur to Diego just as it dawned on Klaus that maybe this wasn't such a tactful choice.
“It's Sanskrit for fearless,” Lila supplied with a smile so predatory it made Klaus check around for prey. Luckily, Herb wasn’t here.
“Yeah,” Diego turned to Viktor, “and Hebrew for Grace.”
“Well she's all set, then,” Viktor said. “I like it.”
“Cool.” Diego smiled with obvious relief, and Viktor smiled back, and Klaus, feeling like the world was spinning for them for once, promptly wrapped his arms around both his remaining brothers so Five and Luther could share in the feeling, and got just as promptly shrugged off.
“Where's Ben?” Allison asked after a while, once they'd all brushed a cautious hand over little Ania's forehead, clapped Diego on the back and congratulated Lila (hug (Klaus, Viktor), awkward hug (Luther), intense and unfathomable eye contact plus begrudgingly respectful nod (Five)).
“Probably moping somewhere,” Klaus said, “I'll go find him.”
Ben was his to care for, somehow, even New Ben who got on best with Allison and did not know how to be around any of them. (“Well, would you? Dude got dealt a shit hand if you think about it.”)
He found him chain smoking on the roof, which was a classic move that Klaus had to concede, very cinematic and entirely appropriate (Lila should take notes).
“Benji!” Klaus exclaimed, for the sheer satisfaction of watching New Ben's eyes roll back into his head. “What are you doing here all on your lonesome? Come meet the new niece!”
“Why?” New Ben spat out, something genuinely hurt in his voice, “it's not like I'm family.”
(“Ouch.”)
“Oh,” Klaus said, “oh. Ben. We've been assholes, haven't we?”
“Though that was my job.”
“Well, yeah, kinda. 'Cause it comes so naturally to you,” Klaus plucked the smoke from Ben's fingers, took a long drag before handing it back, “but that's not my point.”
“Get to it, will you?”
“Fine. Look. There's no point pretending it's not unsettling, having you around looking so exactly like our Ben” (“I would have been much more handsome, you know. Rugged or something.”), but you're family,” Klaus pressed on. “Just as much as Lila.”
“How?” Ben asked, putting his cig out on the railing, “I'm not fucking any of your brothers, just so we've got that covered.”
“But Allison's fair game?” (“Dude.”) “No, you know what, don't answer that. Lila's not family because she's using Diego as a chew toy, Ben. She's family because she is. Simple as that.”
“We met like, eight months ago,” Ben argued, but he looked about fifty percent less mopey than he had when Klaus'd first found him.
“Sure,” Klaus granted, “but we share a Dad, mostly, and the mysterious alien element that's made us the maladjusted, timeline-less superheroes we are today, and, most importantly, trauma. What more does a family need?”
“Fine,” Ben sighed, “I'll go meet the kid. God knows she'll need someone sane around.”
“Fascinating that you think that's you, Benji, truly.”
“Okay,” Klaus said, inching closer to Five for moral support, “but what if she cries?”
“Feed her,” Lila shrugged, “that usually works.”
“Right. Yeah. But...”
“Relax, Klaus, you'll be fine. There's stuff in the bag,” she said, pushing an improbably cute duffle into Klaus' hands, “formula, and nappies and things, and Five is like, old as balls, he'll know what to do.”
“Again,” Five said, “forty years in a pile of rubble.”
“Tell it to someone who cares. Now would you please, please take her? Please, boys. I need to go be a person for a while. Maybe fight something.”
“Of course. Rookies have training in the west wing, makes for good target practise.”
“You do that?” Klaus asked, but Lila rolled her eyes as if obviously she knew all about rookie training and recreational ass kicking.
“Yes? I'm not about to let myself get out of shape with you idiots going around looting stores in every other timeline.”
(“Busted.)
“Right. Why us, though? It's not like we've got experience.” Not that Klaus didn't want to babysit little Ania, he loved the kid absurdly, considering she didn't do much aside from sleeping and feeding and babbling, but he had a terrible track record of fucking things up and he adamantly did not want to fuck her up.
“Well. Viktor plainly refuses to hold her, says he can't be trusted and might lose control and hurt her, Luther's honestly too big and too sad and I'm not feeling him for this, Allison's obviously more qualified but she also bursts into tears about half the time she sees her, and Ben... Well, Ben's working through something, I think, he keeps coming to watch her and then sort of freezes on the threshold and leaves.”
“He'll get there.”
“I guess. But anyway, that leaves you two cunts, and I actually like you,” Lila pointed her chin at Klaus, “and you,” she said, turning to Five, “have pledged your overly long life to my daughter's so you might as well get to know her.”
“... That's fair.”
“I'll be honoured, Lila.” Five straightened up next to Klaus.
“Don't make it weird.”
“Fuck you,” Five said, accepting the baby from her, “have a nice date.”
“Bye, Love,” Lila leaned down to kiss her daughter good bye, “be good for your uncles, yeah? Or you know, give them hell, see if I care.”
“She's right, you know,” Klaus told Five once he'd settled the baby basket in the middle of the couch (dragged to the bunker by Klaus in an attempt to get Five to chill, mostly unused), “whatever you've got going on with Lila is deeply bizarre.”
“No more so than the rest of our lives, “ Five shrugged, sitting on Ania's left.
“Well, of course, if you wanna see it like that...”
Klaus settled on Ania's right, watching her watching them with endlessly curious eyes, smiling up at nothing they could see, which Klaus could relate to.
“D'you really think she'll have powers?” If she didn't, Klaus thought, she might be able to go live in a normal timeline, just one more kid with a weird home situation.
“No clue,” Five said, “seems plausible enough, given both her parents have Marigold. Or are Marigold, possibly. So far Diego says there's been no sign.”
“Yeah well. How early did ours kick in?”
(“D'you think we traumatised nannies? Teeny tiny baby tentacles...”)
“Mom said she wasn't around early enough to know, and Dad never did give me a straight answer on that one, but judging by Viktor, at least as early as three years old.”
“Right,” Klaus said, “I hope she gets something cool.”
“Cool?”
“Yeah, cool. Like Diego, you know? Controllable. Easy to hide.” (Not horrible monster tentacles, not hurricane-like tantrums, strictly not ghosts.) (“Rude.”)
“Yeah,” Five agreed, “or Luther's strength. Hard to get wrong.” (The jump. The motherloving jump. In the way of teenage mistakes, even Klaus hadn't topped that one.)
“That, too.”
Ania blinked up at them from her basket, making spit bubbles, blissfully unaware of the shared pain in her uncles' eyes. Five smoothed back her jet-black hair, dragged a finger along her tiny earlobe and smiled stupidly when she grabbed hold of it.
“Fine,” Klaus heard him gripe, “you can have it for now but I'm gonna need it back, okay?”
Ania gripped harder, which could have meant anything.
“Fivey?” Klaus asked, watching Five's baby-face melt into something approaching peace, “d'you think... D'you think she could be it? For you, I mean?”
“It?”
“Yeah, it. A reason to live.”
“I'm not suicidal.”
“I know. Neither was I, you know. Just...” (“Reckless” Ben supplied from Klaus' subconscious. “Foolish”, Dad amended.)
“Shut up,” Klaus said, and Five was kind enough to ignore it. “Just, you know, careless with my life.”
“I know,” Five said, though in all fairness he hadn't really seen him in his heydays.
“Takes one to know one, is all I'm saying.”
Five sighed. He shook his head slightly before answering.
“I already had reasons to live, Klaus. Seven of them, if anyone's counting. Now, little Ania? She's just number eight.”
“No,” Klaus said, “no more numbers.”
(“I just want to be real,” Number Three had said,
“yeah, and I'm n-n-not always second best,” Number Two had told Grace, who'd soothed him with a smile.
“I just wanna be normal,” Number Six had added, putting a discreet hand on his stomach. “But won't Dad be mad?” had asked Number One.
“Dad's always mad,” Klaus had answered, though at that point he'd still been Number Four.
“I'm not in the Academy,” Number Seven had mumbled, “so I might as well get a normal name too.”
“Not me,” Five had told them, “I like Five, it's a good number.”)
“Fine,” he said now, “no more numbers.”
“Good,” Klaus said. “She deserves better and she can't live on the run. People don't want us to live. The universe doesn't want us to live, even. But we're safe here. She's safe, Five, she could have a life. So could you, you know? No one's hunting you. No one's trying to hurt you. No one's trying to hurt us, you can let go now.” Klaus waved a hand towards the wall, the overlapping calculations that were the fruit of Five's unhinged labour. This was usually the point at which Five blinked away or lashed out, but fortunately for Klaus' plans his finger was still trapped in their niece's grip, so Five stayed put.
“I”, he started, tone harsh and mean, looking at Klaus over the basket.
“Baby,” Klaus said, which was a coward move he knew would work.
Five deflated. “I,” he repeated, now whispering over Ania's quietly cooing form, “can't deal with this sober.” He gestured vaguely between them as if to indicate the untapped depth of their conversation.
“You heard that coming out of your mouth, right?” (“Hypocrite.”)
“Dolores did use to say I drank too much.”
“Wise woman,” Klaus said. “Can I ask, though?”
“I just told you..” Five said, a bit of testiness now back in his voice.
“Yeah, and I'm not enabling it. Time to grow up, old man, face your feelings.”
“Like you are?” Five scoffed, and Ben went “touché.”
“I'm trying, actually, if you cared to help.”
“That's outside my skillset Klaus. Now if you need me to, I'll happily kill a guy for you.” Five smiled his dangerous smile, the one Klaus assumed he'd acquired working for the Commission.
“Deflection!!” Klaus clapped his hands in mock delight, making Ania giggle, “a classic!”
“I find you deeply aggravating,” Five replied, but did not dispute it.
“Ben always said it was my best trait.”
(“Did not. But he's right, you are deeply annoying.”)
“Hush.”
“Maybe Dad was right,” Five said, “Ben really was the best of us.”
(“Was not.”)
“Yeah,” Klaus agreed, because it was absolutely true. “Back to the point, though. What's the plan, Five? Assuming you do find us a timeline to live in,” (or they stayed in this one, nice and safe and easy), “what will you do then?”
“Retire.”
“Five. You're seventeen.”
“Sixty-three.”
“Sure,” Klaus allowed, “but also seventeen. You can't retire a quarter of your life in. So what's the plan, brother? For yourself, I mean. What did you dream of all those years in the apocalypse?”
Five flinched. It was a deeply adolescent gesture, an aborted flight response that tugged at Klaus' heartstrings and startled little Ania. Her face scrunched up in the tell-tale preamble to crying, and Five visibly forced his body to relax.
“Shh,” he soothed, smoothing down her little frown, “it's okay sweetheart, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you. Uncle Klaus keeps poking at things much better left alone, he should just admit that they don't matter.”
“Uncle Klaus is actually pretty obviously right on the money, darling” Klaus told Ania in what he hoped were calming tones, “but I'm sorry we scared you. Now,” he added turning back up to Five, “answer the question, old man. What would be the dream?”
Five was silent for a while, finally mumbling, “I dreamt of home,” which obviously cost him a lot. There was more, much more in his eyes and in the tense set of his shoulders, forty years of apocalypse worth of more, but Klaus would probably never know the half of it.
“And then,” Five said, “then I found Viktor's book. Must have been what? Twelve years in? And so I could see. Ben was dead, you'd shot yourself up and out of any worthwhile existence, Allison'd finally been consumed by her ego, Diego'd found a way to be free of Dad by becoming exactly what Dad wanted us to become and Luther was on the moon for no discernible reason. At least, I thought, Viktor'd gotten out.”
“Harsh,” Klaus said, “but true. Wouldn't have blamed you for giving up on us.” Ben hadn't, but he'd been born a saint. (“Your mother was born a saint, you mean.”)
“Of course I didn't,” Five said. “It just became obvious that you needed me back more than I'd thought. I'd left you all to deal with Dad, and you were clearly paying the price.”
“Five...”
“What?”
“We. Are not. Your job.”
Five shrugged. “You're all fuck-ups, Klaus, someone's got to fix it.”
“Oh. Oh. You mean that, don't you?”
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Nope. Of course we're fucked up, Five!” Klaus whisper yelled. “Everybody is! Adults don't actually have their shit together and everyone's winging it all the time!” But Five didn't know, couldn't have known, really, seeing as he'd grown up alone. “That's just life, Five, you can't fix it. It's insane.”
“I am insane, Klaus. I spent forty years in a committed relationship with a plastic mannequin. She talked to me. I'm fully aware of my damaged psyche, but I'm still right about this.”
“Ben talks to me, too,” Klaus told Five, rather than allowing them to devolve into a wrong-right-wrong-right-wrong spiral.
“I know,” Five said, “you keep answering back.”
Fuck. “No one said anything.”
“We don't want you to feel bad about it.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” Five shrugged, the hint of a smile on his face.
“Neither do we. About Dolores, I mean.”
“I know. Thank you. For saying her name.”
“What was she like?” It wasn't, after all, that much more insane for Five's mannequin girl to have had a personality than it was for Brain Ben to exist.
This notwithstanding, Five levelled him with an accusatory glare. “Don't coddle me.”
“I'm not coddling you, Five, I don't think anyone's managed it, and I'm not sure anyone but Mom ever tried. It's a thing we call bonding, see? When you share a little bit of your beautiful soul, and then I do too, and then we're the bestest brothers to ever bro.”
“Fine.”
(“Didn't think that would work.”)
“Dolores,” Five told Ania, very obviously avoiding Klaus' eyes, “saved my life. She spoke Italian, for some reason, and she liked to sing. Rationally, I know I must have pulled the songs from somewhere, but I swear I only knew half of them. She liked fancy clothes, whenever we could find them, and she had a wicked sense of humour. You'd have loved her.”
“Yeah,” Klaus agreed, because anyone that could make Five's eyes go that soft was good in his book, “I would have loved to meet her.”
Whatever repressed answer Five would have given to that got dramatically interrupted by Ania's sudden and ear-splitting wails.
“Nononono,” Klaus told her intelligently, immediately alarmed by the angry red of her face, “it's alright. Like. Whatever this is, I'm sure we can work it out.”
“This isn't a hostage negotiation, Klaus,” Five barked at him, very obviously unsettled.
“Fine, let's see you do it, then.”
“Shhhh,” Five tried, meeting no more success than Klaus, and then turned to him with wide, panicked eyes. “Okay,” he said, “don't panic.”
“Right,” Klaus agreed, “yeah. People have dealt with this since forever, babies happen all the time, I'm sure we can do it.”
Ania wailed.
(“Ever think there's a non-zero chance you've got a bastard somewhere out there? It's not like you were particularly careful...”)
“Shut up, Ben, now's not the time. Now,” Klaus told Five, fully shelving the potential offspring issue, “Lila said food.”
“You do that,” Five agreed over the baby's cries, unsuccessfully attempting to rock her gently into calm.
Klaus dived over the couch's armrest for the bag he'd left on the ground, rifled through it until he found a bottle and a tin of formula, read the instruction on the side of it a good five times before any of it registered through the urgent screams of his niece.
“We need hot water.”
“Push on there,” Five said, pointing with the hand not supporting Ania's head. He'd taken her out of the basket and was now holding her close, not that she seemed to appreciate the effort.
“On the wall?”
“Yes. On the wall. Hidden compartment, there's a kitchenette.”
“You're such a drama queen,” Klaus told him, pressing where indicated and revealing an entire retro kitchen, fitted with matching appliances. Fridge, oven, toaster, all of it peach.
“I didn't build this,” Five replied, now attempting to distract Ania with one of the toys Lila'd left in the bag. “Look at the rabbit, sweet, isn't it... uh. Pink?”
Ania didn't seem to think so, she wailed harder somehow, relenting only for worryingly quiet seconds when she seemed to stop breathing entirely.
“You suck at this,” Klaus told Five, ignoring his fears and filling the kettle up, “and yes you did. Will have. I don't know, man, but one Five is behind this truly questionable peach colour, and so all of you bear the responsibility.”
“This isn't how any of this works.”
“Well, it was good enough for Dad, you know, once an asshole, always an asshole. Ania, darling, please, please, stop, I swear it's gonna be ready soon, just gotta...” Klaus stopped to read the instructions again, then spooned two measures of white powder in the bottle, topped it with water and screwed the cap on, “shake this thing a minute, and then check the temperature, and you'll be good to go.”
“Can't you shake this thing faster?” Five asked testily.
“Well brother, faster isn't always better.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah,” Klaus shrugged, pouring a drop of formula on his wrist, “that's usually what happens next.” He'd seen the wrist thing done in some TV show or other, and when his skin didn't burn from the heat he decided it was safe enough to give the baby.
“It's ready, I think,” he told Five, who sat back on the couch and reached for the bottle, settling little Ania down in the crook of his elbow. She grabbed hold of the bottle about as soon as she laid eyes on it, and immediately started to feed.
In the ensuing quiet Klaus sat back down next to Five, turned to him with intense relief.
“So,” he said, “kinda like putting the pin back in a grenade.”
“Wouldn't know,” Five grinned, “I only ever pulled them out.”
“Yeah,” Klaus nodded, “same.”
“You never talk about it.”
“What?”
“Vietnam.”
“Yeah, well.” (Napalm – burning jungle – burning fields – burning soldiers – burning children – the smell of it in your clothes, in your hair, on your skin – Dave.) “Would you?”
Something passed between them then, the horrors of war and bloodshed, some generalised, mindless approach to violence their siblings had not lived.
“Of course not,” Five said, and that was that. Ania fell asleep in his arms, letting the bottle go the second it was empty. Five didn't move. He stayed perfectly still on the couch, one arm supporting her and his free hand splayed against her heart, and Klaus figured now was as good a time as any.
“How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Grieve.”
“I didn't.” Five looked down at the baby in his arms, shoulders hunched like he was ashamed.
Ah. Shit. (“Yeah, nice going, Klaus, really.”)
“If I had...” Five said, “well, maybe the timeline would be right.”
“How d'you mean, right?”
“Not split up into infinite variations, I mean. This,” Five pointed his chin at the room at large, “shouldn't be, Klaus.”
“You mean we shouldn't be.”
“The universe isn't about us.”
“That's not an answer.”
“It's the rational one.”
“Do I look like someone who cares about the rational answer?” Klaus was getting angry now, trying to keep his voice level in deference to the baby sleeping in Five's arms. “Tell me you don't mean it. You've been busting your ass trying to get us to live, and now you're telling me you should have just let it all happen? Let Viktor blow up the moon and let yourself rot in the apocalypse?”
“No,” Five said. “That's the thing, Klaus! I should. I should tell you we're all better off erased, that the universe at large would be better for it and that in the end we don't matter, but I can't. I couldn't admit to it when I was thirteen, pulling your bodies out of the ruins, and I still can't. Don't you get it? This place. This place is me, or some peach-loving version of me, refusing to grieve. That I'll take credit for.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Hang on to Ben, Klaus, but keep living. It's what I intend to do.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“No more maths?”
“Less maths,” Five conceded, “more of this.”
“Deal.”