Backstory: Rin is a 20-year-old punk girl born with a strange power that she uses for illegal work: she can teleport, make herself invisible or intangible. Over several nights in police custody, just over a year ago, she met a strange cellmate named Klaus... also endowed with an extremely invasive power: that of communicating with the dead.
TW: References to drug use - Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - Sexuality (non-explicit) - Illness of a loved one.
The sky was really blue on that day in 2009, I remember because I know that the brightness that had returned - after the winter months - had changed my mood all of a sudden. Dullness and rain can be extremely stubborn here in The City, perhaps because the ocean isn't far away. It was as if the high pressure system had coincided with Klaus's release from rehab. The second in just over a year. I stopped counting at around his sixth or seventh, I think.
I hadn't been told he'd been sent there this time. I realized this from his silence, and by the fact that he no longer knocked at my sticker-covered window. I didn't want to believe that anything worse could have happened to him. I'd already realized, I think, that no matter how risky his behavior, Klaus was always coming back from it, one way or another.
Once again, he had been sent there for thirty days, as every time after that. And just as many evenings - when night came - I shuddered at the thought, looking toward the fire escape through which he wouldn't appear. At least on his first rehab, last year, he hadn't really known what to expect. This time, on the other hand, he'd been forced to go in knowing exactly what was going to happen. That after twenty-four hours, he'd have to face the assaults of the beyond, managing the symptoms of withdrawal all at once. That the first week would be tough, despite the substitution medication, which would give him side effects he hated, as well as dooming him to sleepless nights.
The social services, the voluntary workers and even Dr. Milligan, who was and still is - I believe - an admirable woman, had no real awareness of what they were inflicting on him in the belief that they were saving him: the more they sobered him up, the more they exposed him to what was destroying him and which he could no longer keep at bay. The ghosts were constantly harassing him, in dormitories of four, moreover. A situation unbearable enough that isolation was often the chosen option. He was often sent to a 'room' all to himself, fortunately with a window and a door they all understood not to close. But solitude is not, and never has been, anything other than a trigger for what Milligan called - in Klaus's case - PTSD.
By the end of the first fortnight, this time, I'd learned that he'd designated me as his 'representative of relatives', at the Lakeshore Hills rehab facility. When Milligan called me in to attend, delivering the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder that he couldn't listen to. I was already his reference contact at the cops' - how ironic - which also meant I had to go and get him quite often, when they got fed up of feeding and housing him. For my part, and to tell you the whole truth, my mother was dying of cancer, and my grandmother couldn't handle the hospital paperwork. At barely twenty, I don't think I was able to handle all that. And I think deep down, even if he couldn't express it, Klaus felt terribly guilty about being an additional burden.
Nevertheless, that day, I was magnificently happy that his thirty days were over, and that I could go and get him out. Even though I knew what his first move would be, the moment he'd step out, even before eating. A blink of the eye, and he would have 'relapsed'. It wouldn't matter what would've happened there: to go out and be able to get chemicals flowing in his blood again would be an almost orgasmic relief for him, and I think that's all I wanted to see.
Looking back, I know I should have tried to give him the strength to fight, rather than let him get numb that way. Although I helped him to cope with himself, I acted as a catalyst for what he was drowning in. I even encouraged some of his behavior, I think so. But I was young, overwhelmed, and maybe I was trying to run away from it all myself.
Anyway, it was with an unusual smile that I walked through the doors of Lakeshore Hills, and went up to the 'reception' desk in the hallway, where the guy scanned me from the crest to the Dr Martens. His name was Gavin Cromwell: I remember it because the next guy was named Alvin Campbell, which always made me laugh. I looked back at him and, despite his nonchalant air, he seemed to perfectly know who I was. When the rehab staff starts recognizing you, it truly means your life has changed.
"You came to pick up Klaus," he said, and I nodded.
"He's been ready since 6am. We're sick of hearing him sing Beyonce."
I burst out laughing, a sound probably not often witnessed in this yellow-walled hallway that's never been repainted ever since. From the back doors, Klaus probably heard me, too, because even before Gavin called his name, he appeared, waving a final goodbye to one of the guys he'd shared his month of misfortune with. He was wearing a pair of lilac tartan pants and a wide-knit sweater, underneath his usual worn-out coat. He looked as happy as ever, even if his face betrayed a cruel lack of sleep.
"Gavin, buddy of mine," he chuckled, "I left my bag in the locker for the next time."
The man sighed as he placed his check-out sheet on the counter. He returned him one of his favorite granola bars - red berries flavoured this time - along with a glossy peach lipstick and his little multi-purpose knife.
"You think we've got nothing better to do than babysit your pajamas?"
"If I keep them, I'll lose them. I have no use for that thing except for here."
Gavin grumbled, but tossed him his sobriety coin. Klaus had used the first one to sabotage a cigarette vending machine, and this one would certainly not meet a more glorious fate. He stuffed it into his pocket, along with his crumpled discharge form, before turning to me, literally exulting in joy.
"Rin-rin! You dyed your crest a different color!".
As Gavin was nibbling on chips picked from behind his counter, Klaus squeezed me so hard I coughed.
"Get your studs and glitters out of here, both of you. Klaus, don't forget your follow-up appointment in two weeks."
Oh, he'd forget, that was certain, but he replied in a honeyed voice:
"I wouldn't miss my cozy fifteen minutes with Clementine for anything in the world."
Gavin corrected for form's sake:
"Caroline. But for you it's Dr Milligan".
Klaus gestured to him that it didn't matter, and was already dragging me towards the glass doors that would definitively seal his exit.
"Adios, burritos!", he told Gavin and the few voluntary workers. And as the door closed behind us, he added: "Catch you later, cauliflower!"
On the doorstep of the facility, in the February sunshine, I looked at him, realizing that it would probably take him less than a year to be back for another thirty days, all over again in a never-ending cycle. He was aware of this too. But right then, the only thing I said to him was:
"Damn, I missed your bullshit again."
He cracked a light laugh, as if everything he'd just been through had already been exorcised by the simple fact of being out. And also, perhaps, because he was happy that someone had noticed his absence.
"I'm like the snow," he told me as we descended the four steps and walked into the tiny park bordering the building. "It's exciting when it's falling, but you get fed up with it in two days."
I shook my head and followed him, thinking he was perhaps in the mood to enjoy this patch of greenery now that he had more than just pale neon lights over his head. But of course I was dead wrong.
"Probably," I replied, playing along with him. "If it annoys me, I'll kick it out with a shovel."
"Really?", he froze, somewhat worried, and I immediately rectified:
"Of course not."
So he laughed lightly.
"You're my favorite human, you know that?"
"Oh, yeah? It's not David Bowie anymore?"
He knelt down next to a condemned gutter, replaced by a more modern one further on. There, he removed the grate that blocked the drain, and stuck his whole arm inside, while looking up at me.
"No, he fell somewhere down on the tier-list."
I noticed that his hands weren't trembling, which was really rare. It was somewhat painful for me to see that rehab was doing his body some good, even if it was eroding his soul, apart from the lack of sleep. Today, I know that what Klaus did to himself year after year was only sustainable because his power was keeping him alive, as if by a thin thread, the whole time. And yet, he was eroding himself. And at twenty he was worn out already.
He smiled broadly as he reached for what he'd come for, and pulled out of his cunning stash a small, transparent ziploc bag, filled with his treasure. Some weed, rolling paper, a lighter, a small bag of meth, thirty dollars... and some LifeSavers candies.
"Klaus, you hid dope in the wall of the rehab building?"
While checking if everything was there, he smiled beamingly at me.
"That's the last place anyone would check. Am I not splendidly clever?"
I knew he wouldn't make it through the evening without taking a fix. But this was so massive that I giggled:
"Milligan would go ballistic."
As I mentioned, I've always thought that Dr. Milligan did 'the best she could' with Klaus, which doesn't mean she didn't make mistakes. If there's anything I've come to understand, it's that it's very difficult to want to help Klaus without failing at some point.
Even if Milligan knew who he was and still had some form of memory of the Umbrella Academy's mediatized days, I don't think she ever had the capacity to distinguish between what was related to his power, his life trajectory and his addictions. Because it was inextricable, actually. And the option she chose was unfortunately to pretend that the ghosts didn't exist. In order to hold on to the therapeutic approaches she was familiar with, no doubt. To Milligan's credit, she realized over the years that she would see him come back again and again. That he would always take a step forward without wanting to, only to relapse relentlessly. She ended up simply trying to give him a space to breathe, over the years, without really trying to 'wean' him off for good. I think that from 2017 onwards, even though he was always happy to get out, Klaus was no longer reluctant to go to rehab. Milligan helped him to cope with this 'formality' as best he could, and condoned the fact that he was managing to stay off his meds.
"There's something more, come have a look," he said, stuffing the ziploc bag into his pocket, then standing up. Then he trotted over to the level of a bush, under one of the barred windows.
"I've been saving those for us to share, look at that loot."
There, behind the bush, was a small stack of Twinkies, neatly wrapped, which he must have dropped out of the window in order to capitalize on them, day after day.
"You really made the most of your month".
"I've also read Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness', and all the Sponge Bob comics".
As he extracted a crumpled plastic bag from his pocket and gathered his haul, I asked him more seriously:
"How did you handle the situation this time?"
I was well aware that his seemingly radiant attitude of the moment was possibly in no way representative of the way he had lived his 'stay'. At the half-way appointment and diagnosis, he'd literally been a rumpled old rag. He wouldn't talk about himself. But I knew that - if I asked - he'd share it with me. He shook his head, looking down at his Twinkies, his smile just fading.
"I was allowed to keep my music..."
His headphones were around his neck, and for - all his subsequent rehabs - this remained an absolute constant. Music helped him isolate himself from his power. The one on his walkman, the one at concerts, even the one I sometimes hummed. It wasn't a miracle cure, of course not. But it at least kept him in touch with reality and gave him a kind of endorphin rush capable of briefly damming up the spirits. And similarly, he added:
"...and I always had the option of banging one of those junkies".
It took me a long time to realize that Klaus's power was not only linked to death, but also to life. That this part of him would always be prominent, and that what may seem to the outsiders to be perverse frivolity was in fact as much a part of who he was as being a ghost magnet. One seemed to be able to counterbalance the other, for a while anyway, as if life's impulses could transiently take over: when he was having sex with anyone and for a while afterwards, the effect wasn't that different from a shot of ketamine.
You know how he is. He sought this effect, having undoubtedly rooted one of the many facets of his pansexuality. I always used to say that the 'P' in 'pan' stood - as far as he was concerned - for 'Pleasure', the A for 'Attraction' and the N for 'Necessity'. Unfortunately, we could have continued the list and added that the next S was all too often for 'Sustenance", when he was negotiating a place to sleep or funding for his dope. The final letter L for 'Love' - unfortunately for him - didn't enter the equation until years later, in its romantic meaning anyway. And that story didn't end well.
"Seriously? You're allowed to do that in rehab?"
My question was asked in a stupid way. I still wonder why I phrased it that way.
"Oh, it's - how can I put this - allowed if you don't get busted. But you know me, I'm very creative."
He slung the bag full of Twinkies over his shoulder, with nonsensical innocence considering the conversation we were having.
"Between the risk of being lectured a little and keeping my sanity, the choice was easy, you know".
He stopped, he ran his 'Hello' hand in my crest. Clearly, there were still details he was capable of not forgetting.
"So finally it's purple?"
I smiled, and said:
"I'm planning to go to the Nexus tonight. Ingrid can sneak us in."
"Ingrid, huh? I thought you were still with... that big beefy Jamaican guy who made you look like a Chihuahua next to a St. Bernard dog. I adored him..."
"Malik. In the end he was a jerk."
"You're right. In the end I couldn't stand him either. But the Nexus, that's good, that's... really good."
The Nexus Bar was - and still is - a staple of The City's underground scene. A huge room in the basement of West-Argyle, only accessible via a staircase in a hipster bar serving spirits from all over the world. With a single emergency exit: probably an outrage in terms of fire safety. But a flagship of rock and electro music, where both Klaus and I loved to go and binge on sound, bass and black lights. We'd let the night take us away from everything: free and ghostless. The last thirty days didn't matter, and neither would the next thirty.
"That's what I need tonight," he whispered. "Exactly what I need."
Today - looking back on all this - he would certainly describe his mindset then as that of his beloved Ariana Grande in 'No Tears Left to Cry', which he turned into a Veda in 1962: getting into a positive, if possibly blind, state of mind, forgetting everything for a while, and picking it up, living it up.
That night, he wouldn't think about rehab, or all the reminiscences Dr. Milligan had stirred up. He'd take the fix he'd been stocking up on, let his nervous system vibrate to the sound of tracks that would never make the charts, then find a new couch to crash on or sneak into Granny's apartment. That night, I wouldn't think about my mother and the tubes that kept her alive. Of the new industrial spying job PezziCola had offered me, which I'd decided to turn down to put this life behind me. To the money I no longer knew where to find. To the real job I was thinking of looking for, and the crest I might have to shave. That night, we'd possibly find the P, the A and the N. That night, we'd feed on Twinkies and drink on whatever Klaus could negotiate.
And once again, until dawn, we would party our lives away, unaware that we were actually consuming them even more.
Notes:
This chapter is less light-hearted than it appears, in many ways, as often, beyond Klaus's laughter. These are topics that the series, and especially the comics, address between the lines for one, and more frontally for the other. Here, I've chosen to tackle them through Rin's eyes as she looks back on her youth.
We've jumped a year in time, compared with the first three one-shots. These snippets of memory are also a bend in space-time. I hope they will shed some light on questions you may have had while reading the main fic, and perhaps - who knows - while watching the series.
Any comment will make my day!