"Here we go. This'll fix ya," Klaus said, carefully pouring Luther a cup of coffee. Before he could even touch the mug, Five was already drinking from it, leaving Luther to stare at the table in defeat.
Klaus had gotten us up at an unreasonable hour in the morning for a family meeting. Whatever he had to say, I had no idea why it couldn't have been covering at the meeting of the previous day, with more of the family there.
"Nice, okay." Klaus finished pouring a cup for me, and stood back to look at us as Five took a long slurp of his stolen cup. A disgusted face came soon after the liquid hit his lips.
"Jesus. Who do I gotta kill to get a decent cup of coffee?" he asked, setting the cup down.
"No one, you just have to not live here," I told him, stretching out my sore limbs.
Healing him had taken a lot out of me. My body was completely exhausted, and to make it worse I had gotten maybe five hours of sleep. I was ready to go back to bed.
"Can we get started please?" Luther was hunched over the table, his hoodie pulled to cover his head. If I didn't know him better, I would say he was hungover.
"Anyone seen any of the others? Diego? Allison? No?" Klaus asked. I shook my head, and he picked up a spatula. "All right, then, this is the closest thing to a quorum-" he banged the table with his utensil, the metal and wood combining to make quite an ugly noise- "that we're gonna get. There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just gonna spit it out. Yeah."
He didn't continue.
The three of us sitting at the table stared at him.
"Klaus," Luther encouraged.
"I conjured Dad last night."
We continued to stare at him, this time more confused than expectant.
"What?" I questioned, wondering if he could do it again so I could exchange a few choice words with my father about his parenting tactics (mainly how he shouldn't torture children to see how their powers work).
"You said you haven't been able to conjure anyone in years," Luther stated. I knew that wasn't true, he was able to conjure Ben, but decided not to drop that on Five and Luther alongside whatever Klaus was going to tell us.
"Ah, yes, I know, but I'm sober. Ta-da!" he exclaimed, gesturing excitedly with his spatula. "I got clean, yesterday, to talk to someone special, and then ended up having this... conversation with dear old Daddy himself." We sat in silence, processing the new information.
"Has anyone got some aspirin?" Luther asked, moving to get up.
"Top shelf, next to the crackers," Five told him.
"White bottle, purple label," I added, standing up to get water.
"Hey, hey, hey. This is serious, guys, all right? This really happened, I swear!"
"Okay, fine. I'll play. What did the old man have to say?" Five leaned forward, a patronizing smile on his face.
"Well, he gave me the usual lecture about my appearance and my failures in life."
"Sounds pretty typical for Reggie." I grabbed a glass and turned on the sink.
"Yeah, no surprise there. Even the afterlife couldn't soften a hardass like Dad, right? But he did mention something about his murder, or lack thereof, because..." I finished filling up the glass and turned to look at Klaus. "He killed himself."
"I don't have time for your games, Klaus." Luther stood, and Klaus hurried to reassure him as I hopped up onto the counter.
"I'm telling you the truth, Luther. I'm telling you the truth."
"Why'd he do it then?" Five asked, frowning.
"He said it was the only way to get us all home again."
"No. Dad wouldn't just kill himself," Luther protested.
"You said it yourself, he was depressed. Holed up in his office and room all day and night," Five said, looking down at the table.
"No. There weren't any signs. Suicidal people exhibit certain tendencies, strange behaviors."
"Like sending someone to the moon for no reason?"
"Luther, you were gone for five years." He looked down at me, pain clear in his eyes. "I went months here without seeing the bastard, and when I did, he was weird. The last time I saw him, he was actually nice to me, or at least his nice. Didn't yell at me for being drunk under his roof as per usual. The signs were there, you weren't here to see them. I- I think he did."
He stared at me for a moment, then the table, then Klaus.
"I swear to God, Klaus, if you're lying..."
"I'm not! I'm not."
"Master Klaus is correct." Pogo -solemn and sorrowful- slowly walked into the kitchen. "Regretfully... I helped Master Hargreeves enact his plan." My heart sank, and I'm sure I had the same look on my face as my brothers had on theirs. One of betrayal.
"What?" If words could kill, Pogo would be dead after Luther spoke.
"So did Grace. It was a difficult choice, for both of us. More difficult than you could ever know."
"But you chose it." I met Pogo's gaze, and he looked down.
"Yes. Yes, we did." He sighed. "Prior to your father's death, Grace's programming was adjusted so that she was incapable of administering first aid on that... fateful night."
"Sick bastard," Five muttered. I couldn't agree more.
"So the security tape we saw?" Luther asked.
"It was meant to further the murder mystery. Your father hoped that being back here, solving it together, would reignite your desire to be a team again."
"And to what end?" Five asked.
"To save the world, of course." Klaus laughed, shaking his head.
"First the moon mission, and now this? You watched me search for answers and said nothing. Anything else you want to share, Pogo. Any other damn secrets?" Luther demanded.
"Hey, calm down, Luther," Klaus tried.
"No, I won't calm down. We've been lied to by the one person in this family we all trusted."
"It was your father's dying wish, Master Luther. I had no choice."
Luther moved to loom over the chimpanzee, who seemed close to breaking his stoic appearance.
"There's always a choice."
He left.
Pogo sighed, then hobbled after him.
Five thrust his hands into his hair, then sighed.
"I gotta-I gotta think." He jumped through space, leaving Klaus and I alone.
"Well fuck, broseph. I didn't think our family could get anymore insane, but here we are." I jumped off the counter and went to sit, but Klaus stuck out an arm to stop me from sitting in the chair beside him. I rose an eyebrow.
"Uh, he's sitting there. Ben, I mean."
I turned and stared where I estimated my brother's head to be, then spun back to the living one.
"Yeah, we need to talk about that."
~~~
"Can you summon him? Like, make it so I can see him?" Klaus plopped down on his bed with a sigh, flinging his vest to the floor.
"I dunno. Maybe? I showed you that dead girl when we were kids that thought you were cute, so in theory, sure. It's been decades, though, so I don't know-"
"Just try it!" I exclaimed.
"It's extremely creepy when you do that," Klaus said, shaking his head and smiling.
"What?"
"You and Ben talking at the same time. It happens pretty frequently." I blinked a few times, then sat down beside Klaus on the bed.
"Can you please try?" He nodded, and took my hand then shut his eyes, concentrating. A faint blue light began to flicker around our hands, and after a moment I closed my eyes and joined him in darkness. I was praying to anything holy that the next time I opened them I would see Ben.
Knocking interrupted the quiet, and my eyes shot open to find Five barging into the room.
"Hey, get up. We're going."
"We're a little busy," I told him with a glare.
"With what, meditating? I think it's a little more important than that."
"Where are we going, then?" Klaus asked.
"To save the world."
"Oh, is that all? Great." My brother dropped my hand and slid himself off the bed, walking over towards his vest.
"So, Pogo said Dad killed himself to get us all back together, right?"
"Yeah, so?" I let myself fall back onto the bed, pissed that my father was thwarting my hopes of happiness even from the grave.
"So it got me thinking. I had to jump to the future to figure out when it happened but Dad, he can't time travel. So how'd the crazy bastard know to kill himself a week before the end of the world?"
"Well, you know-" Five cut Klaus off.
"Don't answer, that was purely rhetorical." The mattress underneath me sank as Klaus sat back down on the bed.
"Truth is, our whole lives, he's been telling us we'd save the world from an impending apocalypse."
"Yeah, but I always thought he just said that to scare us into doing the dishes," Klaus said. I used his shoulder to help myself sit up, and bent over to grab my shoes.
"Me too. But what if the old man really knew it was going to happen?"
"Yeah, but knew how?" Klaus asked.
"No idea. But the fact remains, his fakakta plan worked. We all came home. We're here, and we might as well just save the world."
"Oh yeah? What, like, the three of us?" Klaus smiled, standing.
"Uh, well, ideally, no, but... gotta work with what I've got."
"What, you don't think we can kick some serious butt?" I slid on my second shoe, and followed my brothers out the door.
"Eh, maybe."
As we headed down the hall, Diego came sprinting towards us, out of breath as he pulled off his jacket.
"Where have you been?" Five questioned.
"Jail." Diego turned and went into his room.
"How wonderful," I commented.
"Long story. Where's Luther?"
"Haven't seen him since breakfast," Five answered.
"Yeah. Two days until the world ends, he picks a great time to drop off the grid," Klaus added.
"Shit." Diego came out of his room and stood in the doorway, tugging on his fighting vest. "Allison is in danger."
"Where?" I demanded, jogging towards the stairs. I'd be damned if another Hargreeves was hurt on my watch.
"Harold Jenkins' grandmother's house, but we should get Luther first," Diego called after me.
"Well let's go find him, shall we?"
~~~
"Look!" Klaus gestured inside the bar (the third one we had checked) to point out our brother.
Luther was sitting alone at a small table, his massive frame hunched over a cup, looking absolutely miserable. He looked up, saw us, and frowned, letting his gaze drift back down to his drink. We filed in the door and stood around him as he avoided eye contact.
"Trying a little hair of the dog, are we?" Klaus asked, leaning an arm on the table.
"Leave me alone," Luther grumbled, taking a swig from the cup.
Diego sat beside him, sighing as he settled into the chair.
"Give us a minute."
"Okay, come on. Maybe they'll brood themselves to death." Klaus joked. I flashed Diego an encouraging smile and thumbs up, then walked over to a nearby table and hopped onto it. Five and Klaus followed, standing on either side of me, and we stared at the duo as they conversed.
"You know, I never thought I'd see the day when Diego put his pride on the back burner and talked to Luther without fighting," I quietly commented, watching as Luther ranted.
"Yeah, if they could just hurry it up a bit that'd be great." Klaus' leg was bouncing up and down like a hyper child on a pogo stick.
"Eh, give it a second."
"You should have led with that!" Luther shouted, shoving his chair back from the table and stumbling towards the door. "Jesus Christ!"
I jumped off the table and followed Klaus, pausing for a moment as I watched Luther break the door off its hinges in his eagerness to get it open, then continued on outside and to the car.
Five claimed the driver's seat, and I slid in between him and Klaus, leaving Diego and Luther in the back. The car started up, and we sped out of the parking lot.
Half an hour of driving later, we pulled up to a cabin, just as the last trace of sunlight left the woods. Luther was the first out of the car, with the rest of us following him as fast as we could. He let us up the stairs, and burst open the door.
His shout told me something was off, but when I came around the corner I was in no way prepared to see Allison laying on the floor with her throat sliced open, a pool of blood surrounding her.
"Oh fuck." I stepped back into Diego, who gripped my arm as Luther crumpled to the ground, pulling Allison into his arms and sobbing for her to stay awake, to look at him.
I couldn't lose another sibling.
Then I realised that I didn't have to.
I ran forward, pushing Five to the side, and dropped to my knees beside Luther, whose body was bent over our sister's.
"Luther, sit up, I need you to hold her steady."
"Viv, wha-" Klaus started.
"Shut up. Luther, do it." The broken man did as I instructed, and I breathed in shakily before placing my hands over the cut spilling blood from Allison's neck.
"What the hell are you-"
"Trust me, please."
I closed my eyes, and my hands grew hot as I imagined Allison's body knitting itself together. As the heat increased, I kept my focus on stopping the bleeding, stabilizing more than healing. As it had with Five, the temperature of Allison's skin became unbearably hot, and I lifted my hands from her neck. I opened my eyes and found that my efforts had brought fairly substantial results.
"I stabilized her well enough, but we should get her to Grace as soon-" I stood, and my vision blurred. "Oh shit."
My legs gave out, and the world turned into darkness.
Passing out seems to be a strong suit of mine, doesn't it?