(Originally posted on AO3)

So, this story was meant to be a standard hurt/comfort one-shot. Somehow it morphed itself into a multi-chaptered monster. Fair warning - I've only watched the show once so far and I've never read the comics. Hopefully no one is too out-of-character!

Also, plot points pertaining to hospitals and drug labs are probably not entirely accurate. I will chalk that up to me being neither a doctor nor a drug lord. Sorry.

Chapter 1

Ben stared down at his brother's motionless form in growing despair, unable to fight the panic that was forming as he realized just how helpless he was.

Seeing Klaus in various states of unconsciousness was hardly anything new; from drugs and alcohol to bar fights and injuries, Ben had been an unwilling witness to countless misadventures that had taken their toll on the taller man. This, however . . . this was something entirely different.

Blood glistened on the side of Klaus's face as it slowly trickled down his cheek. He was covered in ash and debris from the explosion, his typically pale skin taking on the appearance of death with far too much accuracy for Ben's liking. It didn't look good, to say the least. Added to that was the fact that the building was on fire and the flames were licking closer and closer to where his brother lay unresponsive on the cold ground.

Brothers, Ben corrected himself with a flinch. It wasn't as though he'd forgotten, but he had even less chance of helping Diego than he did Klaus at the moment.

Diego was sprawled on the concrete ground several feet from the lanky medium, his features a bloody mess that made Ben's stomach twist in worry.

And there was nothing he could do.

There was no hope of Diego hearing his calls and pleas to wake up. Without a solid form, there was no way for Ben to shake him to consciousness or fetch help from someone nearby. No, Ben's only chance was to rouse the one man alive who could hear him, and even then he would have to hope that Klaus would be able to rally himself enough to save himself and Diego.

There wasn't much chance of that, by the look of things.

Klaus was out cold, not even flinching as Ben pleaded with him to wake up. Any attempts to touch the injured man had been met with similar failure. Ben simply couldn't gain substance without Klaus's conscious efforts.

He took a moment to glance up and down the alleyway again, hoping that Luther and Five would make an appearance.

Or emergency services.

Or anyone who would bother to call for help for the two unconscious men lying in the ruins of the exploded drug lab.

Ben wasn't picky anymore - he would take whatever assistance showed up at this point as long as they were quick about it. As long as the next people to come down the alleyway were not bad guys coming to investigate their burning drug lab, Ben wasn't going to complain.

He was all too aware that if trouble arrived before help, Diego and Klaus were utterly screwed.

Where the hell were Luther and Five, anyway?

It was supposed to be a cake-walk - more of an excuse for the uninjured of the Hargreeves siblings to stretch their legs rather than an actual mission. No one was eager to rush things after the apocalypse debacle. With Allison still wounded and Vanya traumatized and untrained, the Hargreeves brothers had promised to limit their activities to what amounted to a simple night out - stopping one little drug lab. Leaving their sisters behind wasn't ideal and probably not fair, but Five was getting antsy and Diego wasn't much better. Luther wouldn't let either go without him and Klaus was still testing out his newfound skills. Where better to do so than an easy drugs bust?

In and out, Luther had promised. Take down the drug lab and leave the mess for the authorities. Even Diego had agreed with Number One that it wouldn't be a hard mission.

They had both been mistaken. It had been decided that Diego and Klaus would take the alley entrance while Luther and Five covered the front. Even before the call to move in, something had gone horribly wrong and the building had gone up like gasoline exposed to an open flame. The force of the blast had been enough to bring down Klaus and Diego, but Ben hadn't seen any sign of Five and Luther since before the explosion. Surely they hadn't gone in without telling anyone . . .

What if they had been in the building when it blew?

Ben turned back to the inferno behind him, horrified at the sudden thought that his brothers might have perished mere minutes before.

"Luther! Five!" Ben shouted into the flames, not caring that his cries were in vain. Even if he had a physical form, no one would have been able to hear him over the din of the flames. It was alarmingly loud in the alleyway and Ben couldn't hear anything beyond the roar of the fire and the ominous creaking of the remaining structure. The chemicals that had been inside were burning with horrific ferocity, threatening to devour everything in their path in short order. The heat coming off the conflagration would have been terrible to feel, but Ben was beyond such things. Luther and Five were not so invulnerable, though.

Ben wanted to go into the fire and check, to assure himself that the others weren't lying burnt and mangled in the disaster zone, but he couldn't bring himself to leave Klaus and Diego alone and vulnerable. He quelled his fears as best he could, forcing himself to concede that if Luther and Five had been inside when the explosion occurred, there was no hope for them at all. Certainly Ben couldn't do anything to save them now.

Turning his back on the ruins behind him, Ben fell to his knees beside Klaus, making himself focus on what he could do - he could call his brother's name until the stubborn bastard actually listened for once. He could keep watch over his fallen siblings until help arrived. He could hope, he could coax and he could beg - whatever it took to get them out of this alive.

Because as lonely as Ben's existence could be with only one man to talk to, he wasn't ready for his brothers to join him in death. He would do everything in his power to keep that from happening.

So Ben talked and begged and threatened, fighting against the despair that welled within him as Klaus bled silently, heedless of Ben's words and fears.

He didn't know how long they had been there, how much time had passed since the explosion, but Ben could have cried when he finally heard the sound of sirens in the distance.

"Hold on, Klaus," he ordered, not caring when his voice shook slightly. "Help is coming. Just hold on."

When he finally saw the first firefighters rushing towards the blaze, Ben rose to his feet, waving his arms as though there was any hope at all that he would be noticed. It didn't matter; it was all he could do.

And when the first man to reach the scene gave a cry of alarm at the sight of the injured brothers, Ben thanked a god he didn't fully believe in and let himself hope that everything would be all right.

Everything was not all right.

Klaus could tell from the way Ben was pacing. Ben never paced. Pacing meant nervousness, and Ben hadn't really been nervous since he died. It was one of the things Klaus liked about him. Ben was quite simply the opposite of Klaus himself, which meant that when Klaus was twitching, frantic, and high out of his mind, Ben was quiet, calm and sober. He was the medium's very own Jiminy Cricket, acting as a voice of reason in Klaus's chaotic world, but with the worry evident in his every movement, Ben certainly wasn't living up to his job description.

"Will you stop?" Klaus groaned miserably. Trying to follow his brother's movements was wreaking havoc on his headache, a truly epic throbbing pain that threatened to split his skull in two. He clenched his fists in the scratchy fabric of his hospital gown and tried not to think.

What he wouldn't give for something to take the edge off. Even as the thought crossed his mind, he dismissed it. He couldn't fall off the wagon now - not if he ever wanted to see Dave again.

Ben glanced at him apologetically, but he stopped beside Klaus's bed and frowned. "You shouldn't talk to me while the nurse is here. Just focus on not throwing up again."

His words made sense and Klaus closed his eyes. "Right. Sorry."

Klaus hated hospitals. Scratch that; hate wasn't a strong enough word. He loathed them. He despised them. They smelled funny, they were too bright, they had bad food, and they were absolutely jam-packed full of dead people.

It felt like a horrible dream when he regained consciousness in the absolute worst place he could imagine. Or was it the second worst place? It was too hard to think and he didn't really want to know, anyway. He just wanted to go back to sleep; he could barely stand to keep his eyes open. It wasn't as though the last nap had done him any good, after all. He had awakened only to find himself immediately tired again. He had apparently already slept through a brain scan and having his clothes cut off and replaced with a flimsy, formless gown. The loss of his clothes pained him. It wasn't as though he had closets full of things to wear. It meant that he was going to have to borrow from Allison again and she wasn't going to be happy about that.

What had he been thinking about again?

Right. Dead people.

Since he had realized where he was, Klaus had been trying his absolute best to avoid attracting the attention of any wandering spirits. Vomiting violently had taken most of his concentration at the time, but it was hardly a desirable way to keep himself under the spectral radar.

He needed distractions.

Deborah, his nurse, was proving to be an excellent distraction. She was stitching up a long gash in his leg that Klaus didn't remember getting. He'd met her before when he was recovering from one of his numerous overdoses and she'd always treated him kindly. She'd never judged him for being some junkie, which was more than Klaus could say for a lot of people. There was something motherly about her that made her instantly likeable, and she had a tattoo of a dinosaur on her inner wrist. That alone made her the coolest nurse Klaus had ever been stitched up by.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Hargreeves?" Deborah asked evenly. "I can stop for a minute if you need me to, but I'm almost done. It might be easier on you if I just finish up. No point dragging it out, right?"

Klaus sighed. His plea for Ben to stop pacing had probably sounded like he was asking the nurse to stop her stitches. "I didn't mean you, Deborah. My head is just pounding."

"Well, the doctor said your CT scans look okay - no skull fractures or brain bleeds - so that's a good thing." Deborah pointed out. "We're just waiting on your blood work to come back, and then we can see about giving you something to take the edge off."

"Blood work?"

Deborah nodded. "Just making sure there's nothing funny in your system that might cause problems."

Klaus opened his eyes and blinked until she was somewhat in focus. "Nothing funny in there, darling. My body is a temple now. I've been clean for weeks and weeks and weeks."

"Now, that's the concussion talking." Ben gave a small snort of laughter beside him. "I think you mean days and days and days. You just hit the two-week mark a couple days ago."

Right. Somehow, sober time had seemed to slow to an interminable crawl and the apocalypse-that-wasn't was only barely behind them. Sometimes it felt like it had happened years ago. Klaus frowned and turned to Ben. "Really, it's been two weeks to the day since the apocalypse and I was sober for two days before that . . . I think we can round that up and make it two and a half weeks, don't you?"

He was a little proud of his reasoning ability when it felt like his brains were leaking out his ears.

"Don't talk to me, Klaus. Talk to her, remember?" Ben grimaced. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything."

Klaus turned back to the nurse as Deborah's smile faded slightly. She finished up with the stitches and started covering the wound with a bandage. "I wouldn't know, Mr. Hargreeves. You'd have to tell me."

"Mr. Hargreeves was my father," Klaus said, "and he was a proper bastard. You can call me Klaus if you want."

The nurse finished with the dressing and stood, her knees creaking slightly at the movement. "Well, Klaus, I'll go give the doctor an update and we'll be back in a jiffy, okay?"

Klaus nodded and then instantly regretted moving as his head pounded in response.

He squeezed his eyes shut once more, breathing through his nose in an attempt to stop himself from throwing up. Again. He curled onto his side, drawing himself up as small as he could as though it would help stave off the impending vomit eruption.

"How are you doing?" Ben's voice sounded close, but Klaus didn't feel like answering. If Ben couldn't tell, then he clearly wasn't paying attention.

Ben, thankfully, didn't seem to require any kind of response. He fell into silence, standing absolutely still beside Klaus's bed like an intangible bodyguard.

Klaus couldn't help the snort of laughter that escaped him at the thought of Ben dressed up like Whitney Houston.

Wait . . . she wasn't the bodyguard; she was the bodyguard-ee.

That would mean Ben was Kevin Costner and Klaus was Whitney Houston.

"She had some pretty cool clothes," Klaus admitted. "I could pull those looks off."

"What?" Ben was clearly confused. "Who?"

His confusion made sense, really, because Klaus hadn't said any of that out loud and Ben wasn't a mind-reader. Thankfully. Explaining it to Ben seemed like too much work, though. Klaus just wanted to know what had happened to land him in the hospital in the first place, and this was likely the best opportunity to ask his brother without an audience. Klaus opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn't.

Directly in front of him, standing by the curtain into the hallway, was a bloodstained man. A long gash ran from his forehead down his cheek, but the man seemed oblivious to the ghastly wound. He just stood there staring at Klaus as he lay curled on his bed.

"No, no, no, no, no," Klaus groaned in horror, his voice breaking at the sight before him. It was only a matter of time before the man started screaming and Klaus knew he couldn't handle it. His head was already in agony and he was too sober to block out ghosts. And there would be more; there were always more.

Ben turned at Klaus's cry and swore as he saw the figure by the door. "Shit. Klaus, just close your eyes and don't think about him. You've been practising; you can do this."

Klaus did what Ben told him, shutting his eyes quickly as he covered his ears with his hands.

He couldn't do this.

He'd been sober for barely two weeks. The only times he had successfully interacted with ghosts other than Ben had been when he was being tortured in a motel room and when his dead father had lectured him on wasting his potential. Since he'd technically been dead himself during that last meeting, he wasn't even certain he could count that one.

"Make him go away," Klaus begged softly. His head was pounding, making him dizzy and nauseated. He needed to leave. He had to get out before more ghosts found him, but he could barely move without feeling like his skull was going to shatter or something equally distasteful.

"I can't," Ben replied, regret colouring his voice. "I'm sorry. I would if I could, you know that."

Klaus did know that. Ben had his back, as much as he could, anyway. It was cold comfort, though. He cracked open his eye and shivered at the bloody man's empty stare.

There was sudden movement at the curtain and the doctor walked in, an older woman in rumpled scrubs and a long white coat. "How are we feeling, Mr. Hargreeves?"

She stepped into the room and immediately cursed as she turned a shocked gaze to the bloodied man standing beside her. "What the hell?"

"You can see him?" Klaus asked in confused astonishment, letting his hands fall from his ears. "How can you see him?"

Even Ben was brought short by the exchange, standing as though frozen at Klaus's side.

There was a moment of stunned silence in the room as the doctor glanced at Klaus for a moment before leaning back out into the hallway. "Deborah!" she called. "Did someone lose a patient?"

There was a flurry of activity as several nurses descended on the man and guided him swiftly from the room. The entire event took less than a minute and Klaus was left wide-eyed and gaping in shock as the doctor turned her attention back to him.

"He was alive?" Klaus asked tremulously. His heart pounded as though he'd just run a marathon. He felt like laughing - like he'd just dodged a bullet, and he was intimately familiar with how that felt.

The doctor nodded, frowning down at him as she reached for her pen light. "He was in an accident earlier and I guess he slipped away somehow. I'm sorry if he startled you."

Klaus laughed humourlessly. "I've seen worse."

"Careful, Klaus," Ben warned. "Just answer her questions. Don't offer extra information."

"Is there anyone we can call for you, Mr. Hargreeves?" the doctor asked as she checked his eyes.

The pain wasn't any less than the last time someone had shone a flashlight at him, and Klaus pulled away from her. He couldn't get far, but it was enough to save him from the painful beam. "Why? Who do you want to call?"

"Someone who could come keep you company while you're here," the doctor replied, "or who can pick you up when we release you. We don't have an emergency contact listed for you."

"I don't know who . . . Diego?" Klaus guessed. It was hard to think, but who else would come get him, really? Allison was wounded, still unable to speak after the violin incident. Vanya wasn't the best choice as she was still reeling from her part in the apocalypse debacle. Luther would probably lecture him, and Ben was dead - they probably wouldn't release a patient to a ghost. "I should call Five. That would be funny."

The looks on the faces of the hospital staff when his older/younger brother came to pick him up would be priceless.

Ben cleared his throat. "We're going to have to wait on that one, Klaus. I'm not sure where Luther and Five are. Also, Diego is here already. He's a patient."

"What?" Klaus tried to sit up, but quickly gave up on the idea as his head swam. "What happened? Is he okay? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Who are you talking to, Mr. Hargreeves?" the doctor asked, dark eyes narrowing as she watched the wounded man look past her.

Klaus ignored her, his attention focussed solely on his brother.

Ben shook his head. "Not now, Klaus. Just look at the doctor. I'll tell you what happened, but you need to act normal for awhile."

"Mr. Hargreeves?"

Klaus blinked, trying to organize his disjointed thoughts. He couldn't remember what had happened; why he was even in the hospital. Why was Diego here, too? "Do you know why I'm here?" he asked the doctor. "What happened? Was anyone else brought in with me?"

She gently reached out and helped him settle himself back on the bed. "You were caught in an explosion. That's all I know. If you were with someone, it's possible that they were either taken to a different hospital or they were given to another doctor."

"It was a mission," Ben said softly. "Drug lab, remember? You and Diego were going around the back while Luther and Five took the front. I know Diego is here; they said they were bringing him here, at least, but I don't know about the others."

"Can you check?" Klaus begged him. "You need to find them."

"Talk to her, not me!" Ben reminded him again.

Klaus obediently turned to the doctor. "Please. I think my brothers were with me."

The doctor's gaze softened slightly. "What are their names?"

"Diego is here somewhere for sure. He's really angry, dresses in black, and he's wearing a lot of knives." Klaus paused for a moment, trying to think of a way to describe Luther that didn't involve mentioning the words ape-like. "Luther is a huge, hairy guy with a superiority complex and he's a terrible dancer."

There. No apes mentioned.

The doctor frowned.

"Five is an old guy in a teenager's body," Klaus explained with a pained groan. "It was an accident from the apocalypse. He dresses in shorts and he's got a bad attitude. Come to think of it, you probably won't find him because he can jump-"

"Klaus!" Ben's harsh whisper cut off whatever it was Klaus was going to say. He hadn't been entirely sure himself, but it was probably not great if Ben's expression was anything to go by.

"They sound like a . . . memorable group," the doctor said carefully. "I'll see what I can find out."

Klaus sighed, letting out the breath slowly. That was good.

The doctor moved to leave, suddenly giving Klaus a good look at the young woman standing behind her.

It was all he could do to avoid swearing.

The figure wore a short hospital gown that barely came to her knees. She was pale, with dark eyes that contrasted drastically with her ashen skin. She watched him with unnerving focus.

"I think you've lost another one, doc," Klaus said, hoping against hope that the figure was another wandering trauma victim and the hospital just sucked at keeping tabs on their patients.

"Excuse me?" the doctor asked. "Another what?"

"Patient?"

"She's not a patient," Ben said softly. "At least, not anymore."

"Fan-freakin'-tastic," Klaus breathed. "I need to leave."

"You can't leave!" Ben protested. "You can't even sit up."

"You can't leave," the doctor said firmly, unknowingly echoing Ben's words. "You've sustained some fairly serious injuries, and while your CT scans came back clear, we'd like to keep you overnight for observation. It's only a precaution and as soon as your blood work comes back, we can give you something for the pain. In the meantime, I can find out about your brothers, but you need to stay put, okay?"

Klaus wanted to cry. He was fooling himself if he thought he'd be able to leave on his own. His injured leg had more threads in it than one of Grace's cross-stitch pictures and he wasn't going to be able to drag his dizzy and nauseated body more than a couple feet before he'd be puking and/or passing out.

The dead woman watched him silently, but it wouldn't last for long. Soon, more would join her, drawn to whatever unseen force linked them to Klaus. Soon, they would call for him, screaming for help or vengeance on their behalf. Before long, Klaus wouldn't be able to block them out and he would join them in their screams.

"Please," he whispered. "Please find Diego."

The doctor smiled gently. "I will."

The words hadn't been meant for her, though, and Klaus ignored her. Only one person mattered right now, and that person was leaning into his line of sight with a look of deep concern.

"I will," Ben promised. "I'll find him and I'll be back. Just close your eyes, okay? Everything is going to be fine."

Klaus swallowed thickly and took a shuddering breath. "Please hurry."

He closed his eyes before Ben left, not wanting to see the dead woman now standing vigil at his side.

And he waited for the screaming to start.

tbc