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Klaus has a big mouth.
As he’d told Diego years ago, that concept is a truly shocking revelation—not.
It’s just that he so rarely thinks before he speaks, which is how he ends up accidentally starting this alternative spiritual community, or as Ben calls it, a cult. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, these people actually listen to Klaus, believing every single word that comes out of his mouth as the ultimate truth. It’s a foreign concept for Klaus, who has spent his entire life being called a lying attention-whore, and so he can’t say he doesn’t enjoy having followers who believe in him no matter what he tells them.
(Dave was the first person to ever always believe Klaus.
The vicious claws of war took him away, and the number of people who actually believed him dwindled back down to zero.)
When he accidentally lets it slip to Destiny’s Children that the world is going to end in March 2019, they all give him solemn nods, not even questioning his word. This infuriates Ben, but everything makes Ben mad these days—his brother is less than happy with the direction he’s taken in life, but hey—at least he has a roof over his head more often than not. Still, Klaus gets an entire lecture about being conscious about what he tells people, because not everyone is as uncaring and unphased by death as Klaus is, and “for the love of anything holy, Klaus, quit telling them so much about the future because the future scares people who haven’t seen it and you know what happens when cults get out of hand.”
Klaus does start to understand where Ben is coming from when he realizes Keechie has been writing everything he says down in a notebook, saying that he doesn’t want anyone to forget the “great words of the prophet.” Still, at this point, it’s too late to turn around and put a stop to this because they’re all too deep, and so Klaus has to run with it, act like this is what he’s wanted all along. He fills their heads with stolen song lyrics, and sure, maybe that means he’s a fraud, but he seems to be helping these people enjoy their lives and how can he turn them away now when life is so great?
However, one year turns into two, Klaus finds himself enjoying all the attention way less than before.
But he’s in too deep.
“Prophet?” Keechie’s voice asks one day while Klaus is meditating. “What… what do you think will happen after 2019? When we all die?”
Klaus cracks one eye open to see Keechie, and various members of their little growing community watching him, eagerly awaiting an answer.
“Do not fret, my child,” Klaus says in his soft prophet voice, hoping that a brief explanation will be enough for them to finally leave him alone. “Heaven is colorless, but it’s nice. God is a little girl on a bike who I personally found to be condescending and rude, but she’ll let you all in when your time comes.”
The people huddled around him gasp and murmur amongst themselves, and luckily, after a few more mundane questions, Klaus is left to himself, alone.
(But Klaus is never truly alone, is he? Never has been, never will be.)
He goes back meditating, working to block the voices so he can be at peace for just a few moments, and in doing this he doesn’t hear the scratching of Keechie’s pencil scribbling across paper.
“Is that really where you went when you died?” Ben questions later that night and Klaus realizes that he never told his brother everything about the trip he took when he cracked his skull open on that dance floor. To be fair, there were other problems at hand, such as the news of Dad’s suicide. God, that feels like such a long time ago. “That’s really what’s on the other side?”
Klaus glances at Ben as he shuffles around the kitchen of the Dallas mansion, wearing nothing but his underwear and a kimono. Ben seems genuinely curious, and there’s no sign of disbelief on his face, but then, is Klaus’ afterlife tale really too hard to accept? Ben knows he died at that rave, had watched wide-eyed and devastated as Klaus got thrown to the ground and didn’t get up.
“Yeah,” Klaus confirms, and Ben nods in understanding. “But… I was lying when I said it was nice. It’s peaceful and tranquil, sure, but it’s lifeless. You can hear birds chirping, but when you look up the trees and the sky are grey and empty.”
They fall into easy silence as Klaus puts the milk back in the fridge and leans back against the counter, clasping his dog tags in his hand.
“I still didn’t want to leave, though,” Klaus confesses, running a thumb over the engraved letters that make up David Katz’s name. Dave is the one person in this universe he wishes to be with, and yet, he’s the one person the timeline ripped away from him.
(How could God be so cruel?)
Klaus wonders if Ben ever considers going into the light these days. They’ve hardly discussed the topic since Ben’s funeral all those years ago when Ben said he would go and Klaus told him to stay. Selfishly, Klaus didn’t want to let his brother go, couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, and he hopes his brother isn’t miserable. The little girl will let Ben in, right?
How long will she hold Ben’s place until his golden ticket to heaven expires?
Sometimes, Klaus wishes he and Ben could switch places. It seems like they both yearn for what the other has—Ben longs to live his life with his family at his side, while Klaus wants to go into the light that he’s been forbidden from entering and spend the rest of his existence in Dave’s strong, loving arms. As Ben often says, though (or more accurately, lectures), life isn’t fair—as if Klaus hasn’t known that since he was a young child locked up in a haunted mausoleum.
Death, however, is fair, and it takes every single soul eventually, luring them to the other side.
Klaus is counting the days until the little girl will finally let him in.
She takes Ben, claims his soul after seventeen years of waiting.
There’s so much Klaus had wanted to say to his brother, so many feelings to convey, and he’s sure the desire is mutual, but he’ll have to wait until it’s his own time. He’s sure if he goes up to check he’ll be met with two angry faces instead of one this time. He just hopes his brother is happy now because that’s what he deserves.
But the world is just a little bit quieter without him.
Upon returning to 2019, Klaus and his siblings barely manage to escape the Sparrow Academy with their lives.
He thinks it’s rather ironic that his family were so quick to judge him for starting a cult, but at the end of the day, his mansion in Dallas is still standing and is currently the perfect place to lie low for a while, at least until Five figures out what to do. Klaus just hopes that the mansion is no longer in use, because if he runs into his cult still functioning decades after he left 1963 he may have a breakdown. From the outside, it seems empty, but he never really can be sure these days.
“Uh, do you have a key or something?” Allison questions wearily as they follow Klaus to the front door.
“It’s under—” Klaus can’t even finish his sentence before Five flashes into the house and unlocks it from the inside. “—the mat. But that works, too, I guess.”
The house is abandoned (thank Christ, because that would've been awkward if it wasn't), and it looks that way too. The furniture is once again covered in white sheets, and dust layers all the surfaces and even hangs in the air. His siblings hesitantly enter, their faces twisted with blatant disgust as they begin carefully looking around, touching nothing; Diego even has a knife out, ready to strike at any given moment. Klaus has no qualms about the place—he’s slept in way dirtier and places in his life—and begins wandering around the house, stifling a sigh when he sees that dumb painting of him that Keechie had commissioned hanging on the wall.
(The room is dark, and for a second, Klaus sees a dark figure standing next to the painting, and he almost expects it to be Ben until he takes a step closer and realizes it’s just a lamp.
Oh how he misses his brother’s smug face.)
The outside is almost as gross as the inside.
“Hm, I wonder when Keechie stopped blessing the pool water,” Klaus distinctly mutters to himself as he peers over the pool—the water has gone from beautiful blue to murky green. He faintly remembers Ben telling Keechie to do so when he was in Klaus’ body, and then also briefly wonders if Keechie also kept blessing the sex swing. (Actually, he should probably find that and take it down before one of his siblings find it and give him grief for it…
“Oh my God, Klaus! You perverted motherfu—”
Oops, too late.)
No matter how uncomfortable Klaus’ family may be living here, there are no other options, and the days begin to crawl by. Five begins feverishly working on equations, refusing to stop unless someone forces him, and Klaus wonders if Five will ever be able to stop moving even if they manage to get back to normal life—does Five even remember what normal life is like? Meanwhile, Diego, Luther, Five, and Allison all take turns training Vanya in her powers, who is making excellent progress.
During the first two weeks, the siblings work on cleaning the Dallas mansion up, doing their best to turn it into an actual living space, which isn’t exactly easy because Klaus’ cult had a weird way of living. There are many treasures Klaus remembers from way back when, and he’s most excited about the kimono that he left behind.
“What the hell is this?” Diego asks one day, about an hour after dinner, and Klaus glances up from his own box of knick-knacks and memorabilia, or what his siblings call it, trash. The whole family, even Five, is scattered around the room. In Diego’s hand is a black notebook, covered with dust and worn down from years of use. Klaus recognizes it as Keechie’s scripture journal.
“Keechie’s passion project,” Klaus gives Diego a brief explanation. “He liked to write down everything I said—it was kind of weird, but flattering nonetheless. You can toss it.”
Instead of throwing the journal away, however, Diego sits down in a chair and cracks the journal open, many of the pages sticking together.
“This ought to be good,” Allison grins from where she’s sitting on one of the couches, a glass of red wine in her hand.
“If you don’t swim, you’ll drown, so don’t move, honey,” Diego reads from one of the pages, and Vanya giggles—she’s sitting next to Allison on the couch, sunken into the soft cushions. “Wow, Klaus, so deep. How’d you think that one up?”
“Eh, the message might be stolen, but I still find it deep and profound,” Klaus shrugs with a lazy grin. He repositions his legs into a criss-cross position because he’s sitting on the ground, feeling too cool for an actual chair today.
Allison leans over Diego’s arm so she can see the journal and reads another line aloud.
“Tonight is the night, we’ll fight till it’s over, so we’ll put our hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us."
“So original, Klaus,” Five smirks from behind his glass of Brandy. “Or should I say, Macklemore? ”
“How the hell do you know Macklemore?” Klaus narrows his eyes, and Five gives him a look that says really, are you that damn stupid?
“I know everything,” Five reminds him smugly, and Klaus fights the urge to roll his eyes.
Diego flips through a few more pages, looking very amused, and he stops on one, taking the time to scan the page for anything funny enough to read to the rest of the group. Apparently, he finds something, because he snorts with laughter before sharing.
“Heaven is in all black and white, and God is a rude little girl who rides a scooter?” Diego laughs, flipping through the pages of Keechie’s scripture journal. “How did any of those morons actually believe this garbage?”
“Oh, well that part’s true,” Klaus absentmindedly corrects, getting more disinterested by the second because it’s not like he hasn’t heard all these sayings before. Then, he frowns. “Actually, she rides a bike, not a scooter. Not sure how Keechie misheard that part.”
“You’re bullshitting us,” Diego rolls his eyes disbelievingly. “C’mon, Klaus, how stupid do you think we are?”
“I’m really not, though,” Klaus furrows his eyebrows, because didn’t he already tell them this? He can’t remember for sure, but it must have come up at some point, right? It seems to dawn on Diego that Klaus is dead serious about this because a fraction of the humor in his expression disappears.
“Wait, you seriously believe God is a little girl on a bike?” Luther’s eyes are blown wide.
“I don’t just believe, I know, ” Klaus says frustratedly, shoving the box he was going through away from him. What’s so confusing about this?
“How the hell would you know that?” Allison questions him bewilderedly.
“Because I met her when I died, duh ,” Klaus reminds them, not sure how they could forget such a thing. Then again, they’re constantly forgetting about Klaus, so this isn’t really that much of a surprise. Still, it’s frustrating to constantly have to repeat himself.
The room goes quiet as Klaus’ siblings stare at him, no signs of recognition on their faces.
“Remember? I hit my head during apocalypse week and died—that’s when I talked to Dad,” Klaus elaborates, hoping that’ll jog their memories, but when nothing seems to happen Klaus frowns, thinking back to when he told them. He told them, right? Or… did he not? “Wait, did I not tell you about that?”
“I don’t recall that coming up,” Five answers, his voice low and tight, his eyes dark.
“Oh, damn,” Klaus frowns for a brief moment before shrugging, reaching for another unopened box. “Shit, I’ve gotta start keeping track of who all I tell things to now that my personal assistant slash babysitter slash conscience is gone. I thought I did tell you guys, but my brain was kinda screwy during that time—not to mention we had some bigger fish to fry.”
Diego grabs onto the box Klaus is reaching for, preventing him from pulling it closer so he can look through it. Klaus looks up at him, miffed by the action, but everything he’s currently thinking drains away when he realizes Diego has a deadly serious look in his eyes. He then looks at Allison and Vanya to see them both staring at him with horror written all over their faces.
“You told us you conjured Dad,” Luther’s voice shakes as his face twists in confusion. “Not—that!”
“Well, technically, I did,” Klaus nods slowly, tucking his hair behind his ear and noticing for the first time since this conversation started that the mood has drastically shifted into dark intensity. “I just had to take a few extra steps to be able to spend some quality father-son time with our dearest Papa, but it all worked out. Well, not exactly, I guess—I couldn’t see Dave and then the little bitch kicked me out—just because I “rub her the wrong way”! Can you believe that? She’s so pretentious, I don’t know how Ben’s gonna put up with her.”
More silence. Klaus fidgets uncomfortably.
“You have one more chance, Klaus,” Five leans forward, his fingers gripping his glass so tight that Klaus is surprised it hasn’t shattered yet. “One more chance to tell us you’re joking.”
Klaus swallows thick, shrinking back from Five’s intense glare.
“Um… I’m not,” Klaus tells him, hoping that’s the right answer. “Wait, what’s the big deal?”
Wet shards rain onto the floor as the glass in Five’s hand finally shatters under too much pressure. Vanya’s hand flies to her mouth as she gasps, tears welling up in her eyes, and Diego is staring at him with his mouth hung open. Damn, maybe he gave the wrong answer.
“What do you mean, what’s the big deal?” Five snarls and Klaus starts to worry he’s about to die again. “You died and didn’t bother to tell us? ”
“Whoa, okay, it’s nothing to freak out over, it didn’t even stick,” Klaus holds his palms up in surrender, subconsciously scooting backward away from his most murderous sibling. “Besides, don’t act like you would’ve believed me if I had told you—you guys didn’t even believe me about Ben for Christ’s sake!”
Five opens his mouth to argue, and then promptly snaps it shut, his shoulders deflating as he leans back in his armchair.
“S-S-Shit,” Diego breathes, running a hand through his hair, his jaw clenched tight.
“I mean, you believe me now though, right?” Klaus ventures and he gets a collection of nods in return. That puts a smile on his face because really, that’s all he’s ever wanted—for his family to believe him and take him seriously for once. “So no harm, no foul. Now you know and we can move on. You know, we should go get ice cream, whaddya say?”
He’s met with unamused stares, which he guesses means no ice cream for the time being.
“Would you ever have told us?” Vanya whispers, wiping a few tears away with her fingers. “If we hadn’t read that journal, would we ever have known?”
Klaus shrugs, nonchalant. “Maybe, maybe not. I dunno. As I said, it’s not a big deal. It’s like it didn’t even happen—but it did, I swear. I mean, I could prove it to you if you need—”
“No!” his siblings exclaim all at once.
“Jesus Christ, K-Klaus, what the a-actual hell is w-wrong with you?” Diego chokes out.
“Why would you even suggest that?” Allison demands through her tears. “Of course we believe you—I’m so sorry we didn’t believe you then but we do now.”
“Oh. Alright, cool,” Klaus nods good-naturedly, pulling the box Diego had been holding hostage towards him, opening it and rummaging around inside it for anything important or remotely interesting.
“Klaus?” Vanya grabs his attention, and Klaus glances up and realizes they’re all still staring at him with various mixes of sadness and horror on their faces—except for Five, who’s looking blankly at the floor, but he’s paler than usual. “You understand why we’re upset, right?”
And honestly, he doesn’t. Ben was always more perceptive than he was, and was usually able to translate other people’s feelings and intentions for him. Now that Ben’s gone, Klaus is left to bat blindly in the dark.
“Uh, I could use an explanation,” Klaus admits, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. If he’d known that stupid scripture journal would cause so many problems Klaus would have burned it long ago.
“Y-Y-You’re acting l-like its n-no b-b-big d-deal!” Diego exclaims around his stutter, clenching and unclenching his fists so hard his knuckles are turning white.
“Klaus, are you... ?” Vanya trails off, but Klaus thinks he knows where she was going with that.
“Suicidal?” Klaus finishes for her, and she nods, eyes wide. Klaus has to pause and think about that for a moment because while he certainly looks forward to the afterlife, he’s not actively pursuing it—but then, that’s just because it would be a complete waste of time to do so. “Hmm, good question. No, I don’t think so. Well—” his siblings seem distressed by his hesitation, so he just decides to go ahead and give them the answer they want to hear. “Nah, I’m not. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of dying permanently, I never have been, but killing myself isn’t worth the energy. Not when I’ll just keep getting sent back.”
“That’s… not exactly reassuring, but okay,” Allison purses her lips together, looking sad, which Klaus hates—he never likes seeing his sisters sad, especially when it’s about him.
“Don’t you dare even think about trying to off yourself,” Five warns him with a glare but there’s no actual heat behind it. “I didn’t put in all this effort to save your dumbass only for you to go prance around your black and white la la land on purpose.”
“We’re not losing anyone else,” Luther declares, and everyone else murmurs their agreements.
“I solemnly swear I will not actively go out of my way to die,” Klaus promises, raising a hand to his forehead in a mock salute. “But I’m just saying, I do really stupid things all the time, so if it’s by accident you really can’t be mad at me. Now! I’m gonna go get ice cream—there’s this little place a couple of blocks from here where my cult used to get ice cream from, we’d use it on the swing, and the few times the ice cream actually made it into my mouth it was really good. Anyone who would like to join me is welcome to come!”
Klaus jumps up, and his siblings don’t immediately move to follow, and as Klaus leaves the room he hears them start to murmur about “keeping an eye on him” and “watching the idiot to make sure he doesn’t choke on his ice cream and die”. The six of them do end up getting ice cream together, and it’s the most whole Klaus has felt in a very long time. Klaus can’t wait until the little girl finally allows him to stay, because he’d be lying if he said otherwise… but these moments here with his family make the wait bearable.