As The World Caves In [Five]

Seventeen

How many hours of sleep do you get on average a night?

Six hours.

Was it too much to ask?

Apparently so. And apparently, it had been a lot later in the night— or earlier in the morning—that they had fallen asleep because Klaus was rousing them in the morning, gushing and clapping his hands together when he found Emery and Five in the same room together without looking like they wanted to kill each other. His joys were soon cut short when Five groaned in pain, tossed aside some leftover blood-ridden tissues from the bed, and shooed him out saying he wouldn't be the only one with a shrapnel wound by the end of the day if he didn't hurry his ass up.

Emery smirked as he remembered the event. Even as he sat at the dining table with a glass of tap water while Five downed the coffee that was supposed to be for Luther who looked like he had just gone through hell and back. Maybe he did, apparently, Klaus time traveled back to the war so anything was possible at this point. Hell, he just summoned light from nothing the night before.

"Jesus, who do I gotta kill to get a decent cup of coffee?" Five asked, still in his pajamas. Come to think of it, this was the first time Emery had seen him in anything other than his uniform and the too-big suit from when he was an elderly man.

"I believe the saying is 'what do I have to do' not who do I have to kill. The answer is no one." Emery rubbed at his temples, sleep tugging at his still too heavy eyelids. "You are not killing anyone today, Five." He thought of Harold Jenkins. "At least not yet." He amended.

"Look, can we just get started?" Luther asked tiredly.

"Anyone seen any of the others? Diego? Allison? No?" Klaus asked, receiving blank stares from them all. "All right then, this is the closest thing to a quorum-" he started banging a metal spoon on the table "-that we're going to get. Now- listening up... There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just gonna spit it out." A pause. "Yeah," Klaus said to himself. Or maybe he was responding to something Ben had said. Curiously, Emery let his gaze flit across the room to see if he could see the dead brother.

"Klaus," Luther said, bringing back the attention to the issue at hand.

"I conjured Dad last night." Klaus admitted.

He was treated with an almost comical silence. If not for the weight the words carried, it would have been. They all exchanged looks among themselves before Luther spoke.

"You said you haven't been able to conjure anyone in years." Luther said.

"Ah, yes, I know. But I'm sober. Ta-da!" Klaus did jazz hands, lifting into his tiptoes in excitement. "I got clean, yesterday, to talk to someone special and then ended up having this... conversation with dear old Daddy himself."

Another pause as everyone soaked in Klaus' words.

"Has anyone got some aspirin?"

"Top shelf, next to the crackers."

So maybe the pause wasn't entirely to soak in what Klaus was telling them but to also dismiss the idea and claim he was still high.

"Hey, hey, hey. This is serious, guys, all right?" Klaus said. "This really happened, I swear." Luther groaned as he sat back down, sad that there was yet another obstacle in the way of him and some aspirin.

Emery elbowed Five in the ribs. Where he knew it wouldn't hurt but would still hold an edge.

"Okay, fine." Five relented with a side flare to Emery. "I'll play. What did the old man have to say?"

"Well, he gave me the usual lecture about my appearance and my failures in life. Yada yada yada. No surprise there. Even in the afterlife couldn't soften a hardass like dad, right? But, he did mention something about his murder, or lack thereof because... he killed himself."