terriblymisguided

When Klaus opens his eyes again, all he can see is blinding white. With a groan, he puts his forearm over his eyes and forces himself to sit up, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light.

"Oh. Great," Klaus says flatly as he drops his arm, looking around at the beach that he's found himself on. It's completely devoid of color, and when he looks down at himself, the mess of blood and jagged flesh has disappeared, and the hot pink of his shirt is the only color he can see.

"No, you know what? I'm pissed," he says as he gets himself to his feet, wobbling in the sand as he looks around, waiting for that little girl on the bike to come by and judge him some more, because he has things to say now. He has a very long list of complaints. "Get out here, you little Blossom looking pain in my ass!"

Klaus stomps down the beach, but the girl on the bicycle never comes. No one comes and Klaus lets out an angry yell, eyes squeezing shut as he bellows out toward the sea. Last time, he was resigned to it. He had very little will to live when he last found himself here. He was ready to move on, but not now. He has too much to live for now. Things are good.

"Send me back!" He screams out, throwing a temper tantrum there in the sand. "You don't like me, right? You don't want me in your precious little heaven? Well, screw you. Send me back because people want me, okay? They want me now! So please send me back."

He's started sobbing at some point, stamping his feet in the sand, and he's about to open his mouth to unleash a curse-laden rant when there's suddenly a soft giggle from behind him. He whirls around, expecting to see that little terror on her bicycle, but instead there's a young blonde woman in a white cotton dress that flutters in the breeze.

"Klaus, what are you doing?" She asks, and Klaus stares back at her. She looks so familiar, but he recognizes her after a few moments of searching his brain. She looks different now, cleaned up of blood and wounds, smiling instead of crying. Back in the city, her family was finally able to bury her. They asked Klaus to come to the service, because they couldn't have done it without him, they said. He found her.

"Taylor," he replies, letting out another heaving sob because if she's here, then he must really be dead, and he's never getting back to his family or Obi-Wan or this wonderful little life that he's cobbled together for himself. It's all gone. "No offense, but I was really hoping to never see you again."

"Then why are you here, silly?" She asks, still smiling at him in a serene, affectionate sort of way. Klaus does not return the sentiment, still too angry to think rationally.

"Because I fucking died, Taylor!" He yells back at her, throwing his arms helplessly up into the air. "And it wasn't even a cool death! It was bullshit!"

"Why do you think that was a death?" She asks calmly, and Klaus lets out a small squeal of outrage. "You know exactly what you have to do, Klaus."

"Uh, no. No, I don't," he replies, kicking up sand as he moves closer to her, falling onto his knees in front of her, because she's the closest thing to an angel that he's ever seen. "Tell me what I have to do."

"You've done it," she tells him, reaching down to cup her hand under his chin. She stares down at him and points her other hand at a spot down the beach. It looks like a door, and Klaus scrambles to his feet. "The only way out is through, Klaus. You have so much more work to do."

Klaus runs down the beach until the door comes into view and he realizes what it is. Almost instantly, he stumbles to a halt and backs up, because he never wanted to end up here. His worst nightmare was being put into this mausoleum and being stuck there with the rest of the ghosts, and he's afraid to touch the door, but it slides open for him.

He sees himself there, thirteen and too small for his age, slumped over and blue. Dead. He's very obviously dead, so he stumbles backwards out of the mausoleum door to find himself in the middle of a rooftop party at the Obsidian, drinking his way into oblivion, and Klaus watches as his teenage self goes tumbling back off of the roof.

Klaus falls backwards too, freefalling until he lands on a hospital bed. On the bed next to him, twenty year old Klaus is flatlining. He falls again and lands hard in a dirty alley, looking at a younger version of himself with blood on his face. Falls again and he's floating on the surface of a pool. He watches himself die over and over and realizes that he was never just lucky. They were never close calls. Klaus has made a habit of cheating death.

If he did it before, he can do it again.

Suddenly, Klaus is back on the somber gray beach and he runs towards the waves, breathing hard as he dives into them and swims and swims. Salt stings his eyes and his lungs burn, but he has to keep swimming until it gets darker and darker and just when he thinks it's all over, feeling like somehow he's going to die again, Klaus tumbles through black nothingness. Instead of panicking, Klaus spears himself downwards, determined to find the bottom.

Klaus crashes against it, digs his way through, and finds himself tumbling again. Only this time, he lands exactly where he's supposed to be.

His heart sparks back to life and Klaus's eyes snap open with a sudden gasp.

He's back in his body, and he's alive.