terriblymisguided (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
terriblymisguided) wrote2022-06-27 02:02 pm
terriblymisguided) wrote2022-06-27 02:02 pm
Entry tags:
death is but the next great adventure
Klaus has a funny relationship with death. Mostly, he's a little surprised that after a childhood spent being a rather worthless superhero, followed by over a decade of addiction and one stupid decision after another, death hasn't come for him yet. It's sort of a miracle that he's even stayed alive this long, given the circumstances .
There have been close calls, of course. Perhaps none closer than that night with Luther where he struck his head against a cement floor and went to wherever that was where he spoke with that bitchy child and his bitchier father.
It had even gotten to the point where Klaus thought that maybe he'd end up cheating death entirely, but it seems that he was wrong about that. Death will come for him. He thinks maybe it's coming for him now.
Death is at the front of his mind, but that isn't surprising. What else is there to think about when you're bleeding out on the sidewalk?
It all happens very fast.
Klaus is walking along the street, sipping iced coffee and gesticulating wildly as he recounts an embellished story about a drag king he'd befriended in Amsterdam, when suddenly there's a wild cacophony of sound. A peaceful afternoon is disrupted when a car runs a red light and crashes into the side of another car, sending it spinning wildly into the front of a bakery just a few yards from where they're standing.
Glass and metal explode outward and litter the ground, which startles Klaus enough that he drops his iced coffee. The plastic breaks as it hits the pavement and the coffee spills, sending the liquid outward to follow the patterns of cracks and grooves in the sidewalk.
"That was a close one, huh?" Klaus says to the person next to him, but his voice sounds strange. His throat tickles and when he tries to clear it, the taste of copper fills his mouth and he coughs a little in surprise, blinking as blood trickles out from the corner of his mouth.
He hears a scream and coughs again, starting to shake as he tips his head down to look at his chest. There's so much blood there suddenly, pumping out of a hole in his chest and staining the thin pink tee that he's wearing. It spreads outwards like the coffee on the ground, growing and taking over whatever dry space it can reach.
Klaus reaches up to touch his trembling fingers to the edge of the jagged wound, coughing again as he slowly turns to look behind him. There's a piece of metal on the ground, rebar shrapnel, and it too is covered in crimson red. “Fuck.”
It's only once he realizes what's happened that it starts to hurt, and he feels like a child that's fallen down but doesn't start to cry until he spots the blood on his knee. It hurts so bad that Klaus can't breathe, or maybe that's because his lungs are filling up with blood.
He gives the person next to him a panicked look and then stumbles backwards, collapsing back onto the pavement and staring up at the sky. There's blood in his throat, pooling in his mouth until he chokes, and a part of him wants to laugh.
All those dangerous missions, all those years ruining himself with drugs. Multiple apocalypses. Frontline combat in Vietnam. All of that and this is how he's going to go-- random happenstance. A horrible accident. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so fucking depressing.
"I'm sorry," he chokes out to the person kneeling at his side, because he loves them and he doesn't want them to have to deal with this. He doesn't want to leave them, but everything is getting dark and cold and he's being called away to somewhere else.
Death is pulling him away, sick of being cheated out of the chance to reap Klaus Hargreeves, and this time, he can't seem to fight it.
This time, he has to go, even though it's the most that he's ever wanted to stay.
There have been close calls, of course. Perhaps none closer than that night with Luther where he struck his head against a cement floor and went to wherever that was where he spoke with that bitchy child and his bitchier father.
It had even gotten to the point where Klaus thought that maybe he'd end up cheating death entirely, but it seems that he was wrong about that. Death will come for him. He thinks maybe it's coming for him now.
Death is at the front of his mind, but that isn't surprising. What else is there to think about when you're bleeding out on the sidewalk?
It all happens very fast.
Klaus is walking along the street, sipping iced coffee and gesticulating wildly as he recounts an embellished story about a drag king he'd befriended in Amsterdam, when suddenly there's a wild cacophony of sound. A peaceful afternoon is disrupted when a car runs a red light and crashes into the side of another car, sending it spinning wildly into the front of a bakery just a few yards from where they're standing.
Glass and metal explode outward and litter the ground, which startles Klaus enough that he drops his iced coffee. The plastic breaks as it hits the pavement and the coffee spills, sending the liquid outward to follow the patterns of cracks and grooves in the sidewalk.
"That was a close one, huh?" Klaus says to the person next to him, but his voice sounds strange. His throat tickles and when he tries to clear it, the taste of copper fills his mouth and he coughs a little in surprise, blinking as blood trickles out from the corner of his mouth.
He hears a scream and coughs again, starting to shake as he tips his head down to look at his chest. There's so much blood there suddenly, pumping out of a hole in his chest and staining the thin pink tee that he's wearing. It spreads outwards like the coffee on the ground, growing and taking over whatever dry space it can reach.
Klaus reaches up to touch his trembling fingers to the edge of the jagged wound, coughing again as he slowly turns to look behind him. There's a piece of metal on the ground, rebar shrapnel, and it too is covered in crimson red. “Fuck.”
It's only once he realizes what's happened that it starts to hurt, and he feels like a child that's fallen down but doesn't start to cry until he spots the blood on his knee. It hurts so bad that Klaus can't breathe, or maybe that's because his lungs are filling up with blood.
He gives the person next to him a panicked look and then stumbles backwards, collapsing back onto the pavement and staring up at the sky. There's blood in his throat, pooling in his mouth until he chokes, and a part of him wants to laugh.
All those dangerous missions, all those years ruining himself with drugs. Multiple apocalypses. Frontline combat in Vietnam. All of that and this is how he's going to go-- random happenstance. A horrible accident. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so fucking depressing.
"I'm sorry," he chokes out to the person kneeling at his side, because he loves them and he doesn't want them to have to deal with this. He doesn't want to leave them, but everything is getting dark and cold and he's being called away to somewhere else.
Death is pulling him away, sick of being cheated out of the chance to reap Klaus Hargreeves, and this time, he can't seem to fight it.
This time, he has to go, even though it's the most that he's ever wanted to stay.
no subject
Viktor, who looks wrecked and is apologizing for something Klaus doesn't understand. He still feels out of it, like his spirit is settling back into its skin suit, and he blinks a few times as Viktor lets go of his face. He looks down as instructed and lets out a surprised huff as the gaping hole in his chest seems to be closing in on itself, turning pink and knitting together at the edges.
"Tell me what?" Klaus asks breathlessly, arms flung out to the side as he stares up at Viktor's face. "What did you do?"
It's a fair question, he thinks. Viktor has brought people back to life before, after all.
no subject
"You're immortal." It's no small wonder, and Viktor is appropriately in awe -- and drowning in a shallow pool of rain, blood and guilt. "I saw it in that dream or alternate timeline." Viktor has purposely not brought this up too much until now. Nearly all of it is terrible, and the parts that weren't -- Klaus' inability to stay dead, for example -- are couched in awfulness.
Viktor offers a hand to help Klaus sit up.
no subject
It makes sense, given what he just saw. All those times, he hadn't come close to death. He'd died and come back, over and over again. And Reginald knew about it. The entire time, Dad knew and--
"Wait." He reaches out to take Viktor's hand and lets himself be pulled into a sitting position, wincing at the grating shift of his wound. He pushes his wet hair out of his face and looks up at Viktor, visibly confused. "You found out that I was immortal and you didn't tell me?"
There's probably a reason. It hasn't been that long and Viktor has been dealing with some major stuff of his own, but it still throws him for a moment. "How did you find out? Did something happen?"
no subject
What happened with Allison and the Sparrows doesn't matter, but this was something that was relevant, that could have saved heartache and pain. Will the truth cause Klaus more pain? Is that why Viktor never told him?
"Let's go home and get cleaned up. I'll tell you everything you want to know." That's a promise, and maybe Klaus will detect that, maybe there are things he won't want to know.
no subject
For a moment, Klaus feels a brief but very strong surge of anger because he's always the last to know something, even about himself. But then he looks at Viktor, his shorter hair and sharpened jaw, and deflates. Viktor was dealing with his own complications and, understandably, maybe didn't consider Klaus's newfound abilities to be at the top of the priority pile. It isn't as if he expected that something like this to happen.
"Yeah, okay," he says quietly, letting Viktor help him to his feet. "We can go home and talk all about how dad murdered me for silence." He lets out a dark, humorless laugh and wobbles forward on shaky Bambi legs, leaving a trail of blood as he goes. How absurdly macabre. "Does it still make you a serial killer if you're just killing the same person over and over again?"