Chapter Text
On October 1, 1989, 43 women around the world gave birth simultaneously. This was unusual only in the fact that none of these women had been pregnant when the day first began.
Eccentric billionaire Reginald Hargreeves resolved to find and adopt as many of these children as he could.
He got 8 of them.
Picture yourself, when you're getting old…
In a household of eight children there was the good chance of twins. In this particular household, there was but one set- Numbers 4 and 8, or, as they preferred to be called, Klaus and Nathan, respectively.
Sat by the fireside, a-pondering on,
For identical twins, their powers were rather… different. Juxtaposed, you could say, for the younger, Nathan, was immortal, and the elder, Klaus, could see ghosts.
Picture book, pictures of your mama, taken by your papa, a long time ago,
The episode with which it had been discovered that Nathan- or Eight, as he was called in this period of time- couldn't die was a rather traumatic one for all those involved. Having taken a nasty spill down the stairs, Eight only realized he was dead when Four (Klaus) screamed in pure horror at the unnatural angle his neck was bent at.
This of course caused Eight to start screaming as well, not that the other siblings could hear him.
Picture book, of people with each other, to prove they love each other, a long time ago,
Reginald Hargreeves, the children's adopted 'father' had no misgivings about the situation other than losing an 'asset.' When he expressed this sentiment, it took Six and Five holding a tiny, 5 year-old Four back to stop him from pummeling his father, tears streaming from his eyes.
"You bastard!" He screamed, scrabbling at the hands that withheld him. "You- you-" More tears fell from his eyes. "Bring him back! BRING HIM BACK!" Reginald regarded the child with cruel disdain.
"Stop this foolishness at once, Number Four," he commanded. "You have an hour to get ready for the funeral."
Five and Six dragged their sobbing sibling away. Four didn't seem to notice, too busy yelling at his father to 'bring him back, please please bring him back…"
Na na na, na na na, na na na, na na na,
The funeral was small, and lackluster. Reginald didn't even bother to show up.
It was just Four, his siblings, his robot mother, and Pogo.
Oh, and the ghost of his brother, who was by his side, even in death.
"Cheer up, Four!" Eight's ghost said for what felt like the millionth time in a desperate attempt to console his inconsolable twin. "I'm right here, it's like nothing changed!" Four didn't respond. He just kept staring blankly at the patch of turned dirt, underneath which his brother rested.
Picture book, picture book,
Eventually numbers one through seven left, leaving Four to his lonesome. Unsurprisingly, Reginald himself eventually came out and dragged Four inside.
Pictures of you, in your birthday suit,
The next few weeks passed by in a blur. Their sixth birthday came and went. Four didn't care, because Eight wasn't there to celebrate with them.
Well. Not physically, at least.
You see, Number Eight was possibly more stubborn than Number Five, at times, and this stubbornness usually manifested itself whenever Four was concerned- Eight was quite protective of his older twin.
Case in point, Eight was glued to Four's side, much like when he was alive.
It was for this reason that when Eight started fading, Four saw.
You sat in the sun, on a hot afternoon,
At first, Four hadn't been paying attention. It was a gap from Eight that caught his attention, and when he looked up it was to see his twin rapidly fading before his eyes.
"Four- Four, I feel weird," the ghost said. "Four, what's going on?"
By the time the younger twin opened his mouth to reply, Eight was gone.
Picture book, your mama and your papa, and fat old Uncle Charlie out cruising with their friends,
Four freaked.
"EIGHT!" He screamed. "EIGHT, COME BACK!"
There wasn't a reply, but Six did burst into the room with all the grace a six year old could manage, so there was that.
"What? What?" He panted, then balked at the tears streaming from Four's eyes.
"Eight is gone!" He cried. "I could see him one minute, and then the next I couldn't, EIGHT COME BACK- mmft!"
Six glared at him from where he had his hand clamped around Four's mouth; "Shhh, he'll hear you!" There was no questioning who 'he' was.
Six sat back and tried to think.
Picture book, a holiday in August, outside a bed and breakfast in sunny Southend,
"Do you want to go… check his grave?"
Picture book, when you were just a baby, those days when you were happy, a long time ago,
"... Yeah, ok."
Na, na, na, na, na na, na, na, na, na, na na,
Together, numbers Four and Six creeped out of the house late at night to go check on Eight's grave.
What they found shocked them.
Picture book, picture book
"Do you… do you hear that?" Four asked, face pale with horror. Six nodded, face also incredibly pale.
"Yelling? Yeah, sort of. Come on, let's dig him up."
Picture book, picture book.
After much huffing and wheezing, they finally had Eight's coffin out of the ground, where, said yelling was much louder. Four choked on a sob, scrabbling for the edges of the coffin because; "he's alive, Six, help me, please, he's alive-"
"Number Four! Number Six! What are you doing?"
Six and Four froze like deer in headlights. After exchanging panicked looks with each other ("what do we do?" "I don't know, this was your idea-!") they slowly rotated on their heels to come face to face with a furious Reginald Hargreeves.
"D-Dad-"
"Eight is alive!" Four proclaimed. "He's alive, we can hear him!" Reginald frowned.
"Don't be ridiculous, Number Four, dead men don't… speak…"
Reginald's frown deepened when he too, heard the yelling from inside the coffin, and without any further ado he stormed over to said coffin, pushed aside his children (never mind that they nearly fell in Eight's grave) and, much to the collective shock of everyone there, proceeded to pull the lid off with his own two hands.
(This was unusual only in the fact that Reginald wasn't one to get his hands dirty, and ripping open the coffin of his recently deceased 'child' definitely counted as getting one's hands dirty.)
But lo and behold, the minute the lid was removed Number Eight surged upwards with a gasp, chest heaving. Reginald barely had enough time to get out of the way and even then Eight still headbutted him on the nose.
Normally that kind of behavior would warrant them a cane to their hands, but Reginald just stared at Eight in amazement as he sobbed into Four's arms.
"Immortality," he whispered. "Incredible."
And thus, their fates were sealed.
Picture book, pictures of your mama, taken by your papa a long time ago… a long time ago.