Sir Reginald Hargreeves was dead.

A heart attack in his study, on an unremarkable night.

The man who had bought seven babies and taken in one more, experimented on them, stripped them of names and replaced them with numbers, shaping them into his own brand of superheroes, was gone.

And you and Klaus had been among those eight.

No one truly mourned him. Perhaps Luther tried—clinging to that desperate, fractured loyalty he always carried—but even his devotion was a shadow of itself, strained and bitter at the edges.

Still, the Academy doors opened again. One by one, they returned to the place they had all abandoned. Not all of them, of course. Ben had died years ago, his ghost tethered only to Klaus, and Five had been missing for nearly seventeen years.

But the rest were there. Breathing. Present. Unsettled.

Klaus most of all.

He arrived swaying, wrapped in chaos as always. A long skirt that once belonged to Allison, swishing around his ankles; a black jacket shrugged over bare skin, necklaces glittering weakly in the low light, as if mocking the idea of modesty. He clutched a glass of whiskey with one hand like it was an anchor to this world.

No one expected you to come. You had been the sibling who cut all ties, who let the silence stretch between you and the others until it was too wide to cross. You’d disappeared, swallowed up by your own life—or lack thereof.

So when you walked through the Academy’s heavy doors, conversation faltered, concealed poorly behind tight mouths and sidelong glances.

Everyone was stunned.

Everyone but Klaus.

He saw you, and his face cracked into a grin—wide, warm, and almost boyish despite the kohl smudged around his eyes. He threw his arms out wide, nearly spilling whiskey down the front of Allison’s old skirt.

“Ooh, look at what the cat dragged in!”

His voice was bright, teasing, but beneath the humor was something else. Something real. He looked like he might have been waiting for this moment, for you, all along. His arms stretched higher, like he wasn’t just welcoming you, but daring the universe to deny him this reunion.