The Beating of Our Hearts Is the Only Sound

Chapter 9: Final Words

"Number Four."

     Klaus turned around suddenly, unsure of where he was or what was happening or anything at all. Except for who was speaking to him.

     "Dad."

     Suddenly his father stood before him, an unreadable expression on his face. Not that he had ever been readable at any point that Klaus had known him.

     "What in God's name took you so long? I expected my son who can conjure the dead to have brought me forth days ago!"

     "It's complicated. Can we just–"

     "You were poisoning yourself."

     "Not anymore, Dad." He knew the man wouldn't believe him, so he sighed. "I mean, what do you expect? You'd just died."

     "Don't you dare try to use me as an excuse for your weakness."

     Something inside Klaus snapped. He didn't want this. Not now. "Oh, right, well, yeah. You had nothing to do with it. Locking me in a mausoleum with corpses when I was thirteen? No, you're right, it's irrelevant."

     Something shifted on Hargreeves' face. For a brief moment, Klaus wondered if he actually felt bad, but then he realized he didn't care. He didn't want the old man to try and justify his actions because Klaus knew that the man had been wrong and didn't want to ever even consider feeling any kind of forgiveness for him.

     "Let's just get this over with, okay? Who killed you? Tell me and I can leave you to your eternal life or whatever's going to happen to you."

     "You should know, Number Four," he said slowly, carefully. "Everything I did, everything I put you through, it was to prepare you, all of you, for something bigger than yourselves. You never understood that."

     "We were–" Klaus stopped himself. He felt like screaming. So he did. "We were just kids!"

     "You were never just kids. You were meant to save the world."

     He froze, staring at his father. "You knew about the apocalypse?"

     "I knew that I had to bring you all back together, one way or another. The fate of the world depended on it."

     "Well, we did it. Apocalypse is taken care of."

     "How did you–"

     "Five took care of it, mostly."

     "Number Five?"

     "Oh. Yeah, he popped in just after your funeral."

     Hargreeves didn't respond to that. He looked a little lost.

     "I think we're done here, dear Papa," Klaus said finally, "so if you're going to continue to be vague and mysterious and not tell me, then I think I'm going to wake up now. I've got another difficult day ahead, but so goes the life of the sober man."

He wasn't sure how, but he knew he could wake up. He started to drift away from everything, but, before his eyes opened and he was awake, he heard his father's final words to him.

You are my greatest disappointment, Number Four.