So.
There was war. Chaos and death and mayhem and hell. He could attest that famous phrase to really be true.
He was very, very far from his home. Or better yet, very very far from his own time - he didn't really have a home per se back there (or forward there, or whatever the term was for all this time traveling shenanigans) so he probably should think 'far from his time' and not 'far from his home'.
There were probably those pills he'd traded with Williams that might have pumped up his not-too-healthy brain with a bit too much energizing chemicals.
There was the fact he was literally surrounded by dead people who'd come by for a visit if he wasn't considerably intoxicated, but at least that department was taken cared of with Williams' pills.
Klaus concluded these were all pretty understandable reasons for him to be awake for over 35 hours, but nope. Those weren't the reasons he was awake.
He was awake for the simplest and most stupid reason in the world: he was afraid.
He wasn't afraid of dying. He wasn't afraid of never going back to his own time. He wasn't even afraid of the corpses that were literally being sowed into the grounds around them. Klaus was just afraid of failing, and what that'd cost him.
What if they were attacked and Dave was injured? What if he could try to have an emergency stock of medical supplies? What if he could trade some of the pills and drugs for that? What if he could talk with someone to move them away from the front? What if he failed to do so and only put them in further danger? What if he tried to conjure up dead soldiers to learn the best way to keep him from suffering their dreadful ends? What if he tried to talk Dave out of... what? War? As if it were that easy. As if he was ever able to do anything right. But what if he had to do something, and what if he didn't, again, as usual? What if he failed?
He got to the extreme of trying to remember pages of history books he hadn't read, wondering if he had ventured through some veterans graveyard he'd never seen looking for names he couldn't possibly have memorized, for dates and events that would hardly hold much difference, mentally searching for any fragment that might give him a answer for that growing unease that turned into a full-out insomnia: what if he failed to do something that could save Dave?
What if, what if, what if, stretching beyond the reasonable due to exhaustion and stress and drugs and Klaus simply gave up trying to sleep, getting busy with whatever he could get his hands on: cleaning and oiling guns, helping to organize and prepare the miserable food rations they had, looking for holes in his uniform, trying out another pill to see how it worked to quiet those endless mantra voices in his head. He made some easy conversation with some folks as day started to dawn, he played some dice, he tried to eat something and felt it growl in his stomach. He tried to forget all those concerns and just pretend he had slept soundlessly through another night at war even when the left side of his head started to throb with a dull ache and his eyelids pushed down and blurred his vision.
Of course that, eventually, Dave realized he was had not slept, he had not eaten, he had been taking pills and was simply going on by sheer spite and exhaustion. Of course he dragged Klaus to their barracks and told him he needed to sleep. Of course Klaus laughed it off and lied and didn't have the guts to tell him why he couldn't. The remains of his brain were eating itselves by now, which was probably why his knees bunked from under him and he fell on the bed without really wanting to. While the conscious part of him was absolutely certain he would not sleep because he could not, he could not let go of that irrational but very real fear, Dave gently pushed his fingers through his hair and just turned that consciousness into mush.
"Nothing bad's going to happen while you sleep," he said, and of course he was lying, no one could know that for sure, but Klaus believed in him, he just wanted it so bad to be true he didn't even question it. Just like that, the simplest and most stupid promise in the world quieted down hours upon hours of doubts and fears: "It's going to be alright."
"Don't leave me, okay?" he mumbled before falling asleep. He never heard the answer.
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the end
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Author's Note: I couldn't sleep so this came up.
Disclaimer at the end but obviously don't own The Umbrella Academy
Thanks for reading.