A Wonderfully Hallucinogenic Gas

"The Heterodynes are back!"

Klaus's first hazy thought was, "Oh, good, what took so long?" - the second was a heart-hollow "They mean her."

He had to move. He couldn't. He tasted dirt and blood; he smelled burnt oil and flesh. Nameless colors burst behind his eyelids. He could hear voices around him - he could hear her voice - and he had to get up. They were all cheering for her and they didn't know.

He tried again, to no greater avail. There didn't seem to be enough pain to account for this weakness. Nerve damage? Maybe he'd lost some pieces of himself again.

He lost his grip on consciousness. He must have, because he woke again to someone rolling him off his face, and as his back hit the ground he changed his mind about there not being enough pain.

Distant cheering, still.

"Sorry, Klaus. Keep still, we'll have you taken care of in a jiffy." That voice, that voice, familiar enough to make his heart leap, with the resonance no one could duplicate and a Mechanicsburg accent nobody tried. Could it be real?

Klaus pried his eyes open. Blurred vision, and the figure was limned in wavery rainbow hues, but - yes, an old friend. "Bill?"

His mouth felt awkward, too battered to form words correctly, but Bill seemed to understand anyway. "It's me. We're back." He pressed a hand to Klaus's clavicle, and Klaus gritted his teeth as the bone grated back into place. "You're messed up, but you'll be fine."

"Barry," he managed, "thinks-"

Bill grimaced. "I know. He's been doing his best. I haven't been able to- I'll talk to him. Oopsie-daisy."

Klaus managed not to roll his eyes at what Bill called a warning for rolling him over again. One-handed, at that. Had Bill been injured too? Whatever Bill did next hurt worse still - probably cleaning the wounds. Klaus ignored it. Necessary. "Your daughter-"

"I know." A wealth of pain in those words. "You've probably realized by now, the attack on Castle Heterodyne came from inside. Lucrezia gave birth among her revenants. We got Agatha away. We thought she was all right, at first."

"You hoped she was all right." Klaus turned his head and tried to smile. Going by Bill's expression, the attempt looked ghastly. "I hoped so too."

"Sometimes she seemed to be." A sigh. "Barry made the locket to try to give her a chance to be herself instead of the Other."

"Too bad." Klaus squinted up at him. "It broke. I tried to fix it." He sighed, in his turn. "Amazing actress."

"She is, isn't she. But we'll... take care of it, now."

"Where have you been?" It was something of a non sequitur and came out distressingly plaintive.

"It's a long story."

They'd still been dealing with aspects of the Other's forces he hadn't known about, Klaus reasoned. Other aspects he hadn't known about. Besides the revenants... and he was one of them now. Maybe he shouldn't let DuMedd tell stories anymore. No, that was absurd. Anyway, Bill and Barry wouldn't have abandoned Europa if they weren't doing something important. Even distrusting him, especially distrusting him, they would have done something if they'd had the chance. "Isn't it always?"

Bill smiled faintly. "Usually." He clapped a hand - lightly, very lightly - on Klaus's shoulder. "You'll be fine now," he said. An improbable claim, but hard not to believe. It was always hard not to believe Bill. The accent thickened, roughened. "Just get some rest."

Klaus let his eyes slip shut, under the weight of exhaustion and dizziness. The Heterodyne Boys were back. That meant he could rest.

When he woke in Mechanicsburg Hospital, Gil was there. Klaus hurt all over, but his head was clear enough to understand that he must have imagined the encounter, even before the chemical reports from the battlefield came in.

Sun did mention that his rescuer testified Klaus had already received some basic medical attention before he found him.

Klaus decided to hold his tongue.