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angelicamerlinbarnes · 3 years ago

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THE GREAT GATSBY TUA AU

(please understand that by AU, I mean they share an incredibly small amount of things in common with the original source material which I barely remember BUT the “story” takes place in the setting of the film) (not to be misleading or anything :p)

(BEWARE: abuse, murder (including of children), gangs, violence, death, tragedy, drugs, alcohol, schemes, mentions of non-con, honestly if you can think of it it's probably in here, this one is very very very dark, be careful <3, okay guys, enjoy..., etc.)

(If you can handle watching Umbrella Academy, this will be fine for you.)

Is this entire thing based off that one interaction in season two when Klaus bails Ray out of jail?

No. No, of course not.

(DISCLAIMER: That photo is not mine.)

(Gatsby) Klaus Hellbyes is the mysterious and charming host of all the hottest parties of the decade, and the richest man on the American East Coast. He’s always playing Lana Del Rey (trust me, she wanted to live in either the 20’s or 60’s, I’m just doing her a favor) and Audrey Hepburn movies (let’s move her to the 20’s too, why not?). He fought in the first World War, and fell for Dave on the front lines. He had to leave Dave behind after he was severely injured, and he’s lived with the overwhelming regret and guilt ever since, constantly trying to distract himself with interesting people and pretty things. This has made him plenty of enemies, and even more people who consider him a lawless businessman, a prince of Satan, a lying rascal. He doesn’t care about manners, they say, he’s aloof, he’s naive, he’s unprofessional. Truth is, Klaus is dangerous - really fucking dangerous. He’s smart, far smarter than he looks, and knows how to use his experience with drugs and alcohol to his advantage, his hands shaky around a wine glass but never a gun. He’s poisoned plenty of people for getting in his way, or for daring to try and reveal his secrets, or for jeopardizing his carefully cultivated lifestyle. He’s savvy enough to use rumors to his advantage, and even stirs up and spreads a few himself. Everyone thinks he’s sleeping with a million women, because he’s always “away on a business trip” every time his lovely wife, Mrs. Floura Hellbyes, is home. (She’s just him in really, really good drag, honestly. What morons. He knows what people will say about him being unmarried at his age - he’s not an idiot.) Klaus lost Ben some thirteen years ago, separated from him in the craziness of the war’s assignments, and he’s been searching for him ever since, longing for his beloved friend’s company. But Klaus’ most well-kept secret is not his poison, or his habits, or his sham marriage or his business or even his Ben: his largest secret, by far, is Diego. Diego Towblaerman, who he met at one of his parties a few years ago and flirted with over white wine for hours. Diego Towblaerman, who wears salmon suits and dumb fedoras and probably plays the saxophone when Klaus isn’t around, to be honest. Diego Towblaerman, who Klaus keeps a secret apartment home with in the crime-ridden Bronx next to a hotel with too-thin walls that always smells like cigarettes. Diego Towblaerman, Klaus Hellbyes’ greatest love.

(Nick) Ray Chestnut has been a recluse ever since the war, writing novels in the privacy of his own home. He moves from Queens to the cottage next to Hellbyes’ mansion, desperate for further solitude, and publishes countless political pamphlets and exposés anonymously and under pseudonyms (which are getting more ridiculous by the year. God, he needs to find some inspiration). The cottage is at his disposal due to his cousin Jill’s husband Ben, whose groundskeeper Luther lived there until he left to join te police force in the city. Ray is known to be honest and forthcoming, always wearing what seems like his Sunday best no matter the occasion (hats, suits, manners, the works). He meets Klaus Hellbyes after being invited to one of his parties, and finds Klaus to be mystical, magical, mythical, mysterious… beyond this world. He can’t describe it, but he’s drawn to Klaus’ alluring company - he’s sweet as honey, yet his words sting like a bee’s poison. Klaus is crazy: Ray finds actual, real poison in his garden, harvested from the thorns of the rose bushes in the very back. Klaus once kills a man in front of him, shooting him in the head without a second thought, his eyes never flickering. And Ray is terrified, but damnit - Klaus introduces Ray to the most brilliant woman he’s ever met: Allison Charmors. And when Ray is one of the only ones left alive after the whole fucking mess goes down, he marries Allison and moves into Klaus’ mansion, left to him in Klaus’ alarmingly short will. With all of Klaus’ wealth the lawyer leaves a letter, addressed to Ray from Klaus, which explains that Klaus is on the run, but that he’s found love and is happy now, at home with his long-lost family, finally. Home at last, my friend, he signs the letter, and Ray thinks that the whole thing reads like a wink. What an odd, humorous man.

(Jordan) Diego Towblaerman is a cold and dangerous man - at least to anyone he won’t protect. He gets into brawls with Luther in downtown bars, Diego being the reason Luther left Ben’s estate, as he kept visiting and he and Luther antogonized each other so terribly that it was made clear one would have to go. Diego remains good friends with Ben, but is hesitant to help Klaus reunite with him, worrying that perhaps Klaus’ high expectations, built on tainted memories, will be shattered upon meeting the real Ben. (Impossible. A silly notion, really. One’s soulmate can never disappoint them.) Ray is unsettled by him, which Diego finds amusing, and Allison is undaunted, which he finds refreshing. Lila is his younger sister, but she ran away from home when they were seventeen and he evades her advances now, knowing the kind of black market business she’s involved in and wanting to steer clear. Too many rumors surround Diego already - he’s “part of a gang”, “the devil’s servant prince”, “in line with Al Capone” (I know Capone worked out of Chicago, I don’t care), “sleeping with Hellbyes’ wife”... there’s just so much to deny. (Though in a way - a sick, twisted, hilarious way - he kind of is sleeping with Hellbyes’ wife…) Eudora is his best friend, and presumed wife - they’ve never confirmed it, but they never deny it either, and Diego shows up to every single one of Klaus’ parties with her on his arm. But first and foremost, Diego’s time, attention, and love belongs to the effervescent goddess that is Klaus Hellbyes: his whirlwind romance, his unofficial husband, his angelic murderess… forever.

(Daisy) Ben Sixten is the alluring, sarcastic, kind, gentle, absolutely adored millionaire of the East Coast. He’s known as the Gentleman in White, or the Ghost, for disappearing at odd times and only really wearing white suits or gowns (though only in the privacy of his own home, of course, this does take place in the 20’s). He dances often, and laughs all the time, and fights bigotry and discrimination with passive-aggression, his eyes cutting and his smile mischievous. His wife Jill is a sweet companion, but prefers to keep to her own rooms, wearing only yellow as she writes countless stories, articles, and poems. (The Lady in Yellow, writing her debut novel Bodice of Blue. What a concept.) (Ben is sure to leave her a rich widow when he dies. She has plenty of green and gold to pay her way forward in the journalism business, and the last name Sixten to get her into any club or publication. Her civil rights work changes the world. Her protegé’s writings win the queer community rights and medical care before AIDS can kill even a thousand people.) Ben yearns for the sea, and to be reunited with his long-lost love Klaus, who he knows is now deeply involved with Diego Towblaerman, even if Diego refuses to admit it or introduce them. (When Klaus finds out Diego has been hiding Ben from him, the rift that opens between them is almost too monstrous to stitch back up.) (Almost.) As it seems, Ben and Klaus were not meant to have this lifetime together: Reginald finds Ben in Klaus’ bed, alone, and shoots him dead with six bullets to the chest. Ben’s last word is a hopeful cry of Klaus’ name, and Klaus kills Reginald in cold blood for it, never the same kind, laughing man Ben loved again.

(Myrtle) Sissy Cooper was the daughter of a rich family and betrothed to a kind man she genuinely cared for, but the night of her last ball as an unmarried woman, she got drunk enough to take off with some of her girlfriends. They ended up in a bar way down in “Ash Town”, and Sissy was taken advantage of by a man named Carl, becoming pregnant with his child. When her parents found out, they disowned her and sent her away, refusing her charity or kindness, and she married Carl without a wedding and had Harlan nine months later. None of her old friends stayed in touch, appalled by what had happened to her, and even those who she made friends with after the fact often giggled and gossiped about her misfortune (which they called her “stupidity” and other assorted demeaning terms). When she meets Vanya, who lives in Manhattan, she falls in love with her and the way she doesn’t look at Sissy like she was lesser for anything. They begin an affair, and fall even deeper, but that all ends when Vanya dies. After her death, Sissy goes mad, drowning her son in the bathtub in her grief and then hanging herself in the living room. It’s all over the papers, and Sissy Cooper becomes known as a “woman in white” (a kind of supernatural spirit borne of women whose husbands wronged them and so they killed themselves and their children in retaliation). Five pays for her and her son’s funerals, and they are buried beside Vanya in his backyard, together for eternity. Reunited, at long last.

Lila Pizzano (real name: Lila Towblaerman) joined the Handler’s gang when she was just sixteen, and ran away from home after her first kill at seventeen. She’s been doing shady business ever since, strutting around in tight black dresses and metallic suits that reveal too much, fedoras and diadems nestled in her dirty hair. She’s considered a mistress of poison, and often receives a supply from Klaus’ rose garden, who knows her as Diego’s sister and doesn’t mind offering a bit of support. (Diego doesn’t know this, of course. He and Klaus never discuss business. But Lila is all too aware of her brother’s choice to marry Klaus Hellbyes for secret, illegal love, and so she takes advantage of her generous brother-in-law and never considers him an accomplice in her many, many murders. Klaus is a good person, with a good heart. He doesn’t need Lila’s serpent-like nature infecting him like a venom.) She does deals with Five sometimes, when the Handler’s too distracted to watch her closely - she respects him a way most people can’t imagine feeling of a gangster, and he respects her in a way most men can’t imagine doing of a woman, so it’s all the same in the end. But she spends most of her free time at Eudora’s bar. She’s loved Eudora since she was nineteen, and they’ve been lovers for going on maybe seven years now, meeting up in hotel rooms Diego’s money pays for whenever they can. (Not that he knows of it.) When her brother disappears and she’s bloody and bruised from her last fight, she goes home, where she picks up the phone to call Eudora, but instead, the phone rings in her hand, and she picks up to Diego’s gruff voice telling her the love of her life is dead. Lila marches straight down to the station and turns herself in, if only to glimpse Eudora’s beautiful, perfect body one last time, even if her lovely, unbreakable heart is no longer beating beneath that once-unblemished chest, now forever scarred with bullet wounds. Bastards, Lila thinks. She wanted to be buried in a sleeveless red dress.

Eudora Patch is a bartender at Patch’s, a speakeasy where all the fat guys named Ted come to drink and smoke cigars while dancing with girls in tiny slips named Frances. She runs the place, and owns the place, but doesn’t tell nobody that, knowing none of them would buy drinks from a woman. She wears suspenders and collared shirts with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and the top few buttons undone, because guys always pay a bit more if they think they’re gettin’ something more with their whiskey (which they never do). She stalks around in tight khaki pants with two pistols on either side of her waist, her simple black heels banging against the hardwood floor like warning shots. Her hair is always perfect and she never smiles, and nobody asks her to because the last asshole who dared went home with three broken bones and a concussion. She’s a damn fucking good shot - she’s got a whole stash of different kinds of guns stashed beneath her counter and she always wins at darts. She likes wearing fedoras when she’s out, and trench coats when it rains. Whenever she goes out on Diego’s arm, playing the part of his perfect, sweet wife, she wears gold and white dresses and luscious furs and beautiful diadems and expensive gems. Her lipstick stains the cheek of everyone she greets, and she’s wondered sometimes if she should actually marry Diego just for the hell of it, just to get it out of the way, just to complete the fucking ruse, but then she sees Lila across the bar, eyes imploring and glimmering, and she shakes the fantasy away. She makes a series of different coded hand motions to help her figure out whose drink she should poison - a lot of mob bosses and criminals come round these parts. But eventually all good things must come to an end, and Eudora’s lovely little life is no different. Her bar serves Five’s unfettered alcohol, and when the Handler finds out about this she sends something like fifty men to burn Patch’s to the ground. Eudora stands tall until the end, taking down every single one of them gracefully, and is heading out the door leaving a graveyard in her wake when Hazel and Cha-Cha emerge from her bathroom and put twenty bullets in her back. (Diego’s the one who finds her. He swears he’ll end the Handler’s horrible reign, and kill her and all her fucking people, but then Klaus steps up behind him, having already called the police, and takes his hand. He tells Diego they have to run if they ever want to be safe, and Diego kisses him, knowing it to be true. He calls Lila on a payphone in the rain and tells her, through tears, the truth: Eudora’s dead. I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry. Goodbye.)

Vanya Blueseven plays violin for all the assholes who were lucky enough to be born with gold in their mouths instead of dust. Vanya grew up in Ash Town, and only got out because she was playing violin at the bar the night Sissy wandered in there and had Carl seal her doom, and Five saw her. He offered her a job, and she took the chance to get out, to get away from all that shit. (Five still pays her for her music, though Klaus already pays her plenty and Five never even stays long enough to hear her to play anyway.) She lives in a depressingly empty apartment of greys downtown, in Manhattan, and travels by ferry to Klaus’ house every weekend for his seventh party of the week. She always wears a pressed white suit with coattails, and a top hat like a fucking magician because Klaus thinks it’s funny and Vanya likes to make him laugh. She stays at Klaus’ house a lot, having a guest room of his that’s unspokenly her own ever since she showed up at two a.m. soaking wet and he pulled her into his arms and never asked for an explanation. She knows about his husband, has met him; Klaus has Diego over often enough. Vanya keeps his secret, because she has her own: Sissy Cooper. Vanya isn’t an idiot - she knows that the longer their affair lasts, the deeper she’ll fall, and the more painful it’ll be to leave. But she sets her eyes on the green horizon and hopes for a happy ending, Sissy and Harlan’s hands clutched in hers. False hope’s gotta get her somewhere, right? (She wakes with a start when Reginald raids the house, the sun barely peeking through the windows. She sprints for the backdoor in her nightgown, hearing Klaus’ sobs ring in her ears, and makes it as far as the woods before slamming into a hard, unforgiving chest. She stumbles to the ground, and looks up at a stone-cold Carl. No, she sputters, her shaking hands up. Please. Carl’s hands wrap around her throat and she doesn’t remember a thing, but Five reads about it in the newspaper after the fact: the murder of Vanya Blueseven and the suicide of her killer, Carl Cooper. He sighs, takes a sip of Scotch, and has her buried beside Sissy and Harlan in his backyard. It’s for the best, he tells himself, and tries to believe it.)

Allison Charmors is a famous actress, always in a red dress and smiling like all the world is alive at her beck and call. She wears flowers all over her and has enough sharp wit to intrigue a man, but never enough to intimidate him. (At least not at first.) She writes and directs every film she’s in too, but she keeps that a close secret, knowing that they’d never be successful if people knew a woman was producing them. It is the 1920s, after all. There are plenty of rumors surrounding her already - she nearly married politician Patrick Liesel before leaving him for a secret lover, who nobody ever found out the identity of. There were no prime suspects for awhile either, as she mostly hung around only her make-up artist, Natalie. (They’re in love, but never speak of it, and soon enough Allison loses Natalie to deportation, when the Italian girl is whisked back to her country after she was arrested in the Palmer Raids, though she’d done nothing wrong. Allison tried to write to her, but soon became swept up in taking care of her new baby, borne of either her lover or Patrick - there was no way to tell. She kept Claire a secret, and does still, even six years after this all went down.) She started frequenting Klaus’ parties some three years ago, and now considers him a good friend, leaving Claire with him as a niece sometimes and having tea with him, his husband, and his violinist (a lovely woman, that one). The two of them make business deals, beneficiary to both of them: he helps her cover up her film brilliance and involvement, and she never denies that rumors that her lover is the illustrious Klaus Hellbyes, as affairs are rampant nowadays and Klaus’ “wife” doesn’t convince every stupid brute who comes rolling through these parts. Klaus introduces her to Ray, his new friend and scheme, and Allison falls for him instantly, lured in by his kindness and passion, and the way he treats her like an equal both in heart and mind (and a superior in body, of course). She proposes to him the day Klaus disappears, and marries him in Klaus’ old mansion, moving there after he leaves Ray his entire estate in his will. Claire lives with them as their “adopted” daughter, and Allison stares out the window sometimes, wondering over her old lover, but never wonders for long - Natalie’s letters come daily now, her own husband Jamison and their own twin sons Mattias and Alessandro coming with her to visit. Eventually, Allison convinces herself, Claire will grow up and marry Mattias and Alessandro will become a pirate and travel the sea, and Natalie will move back to New York and Allison can see her every day again, in that incandescent way she can no longer see Luther, who still plagues her mind without rest or mercy. Oh, Luther. Luther. I’m sorry.

Luther Armstrong became a cop after he left his post as Ben’s groundskeeper, and he’s not sure he made the right decision, if he’s perfectly honest. He sees how corrupt all these policemen are, the way they talk sleazy about women witnesses even though they’ve all got wives at home, the way they treat the made-up men who come in here with limps and hickeys and too much lust in their eyes, the way they treat the tired old fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters with darker skin than the cops’ve got. He met Allison during a questioning after she got arrested for punching a director who allegedly assaulted her, and he was the only one who believed her, winning her respect. They had a whirlwind romance, though their affair remained intensely private, as she remained engaged to Patrick. She left Luther the same day he bought a ring, having received a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity all the way in California. He knows she’s got back since then, he does read the paper, but both of their lives have invariably changed, and no matter how much he adores her still, he knows their time together is over. Since their falling apart he’s married a jealous redhead named Stacey, who scoffs and bitches every time he watches all of Allison’s movies and cries, and who refuses to accompany him to Klaus’ parties every weekend, when he goes looking for the woman he still dreams of. He remembers how much she loved him - that was never in doubt. The morning of her supposed wedding to Patrick she showed up on his doorstep, soaking wet in her dirty and frumpled wedding dress with mascara running down her face. She kissed him stupid while Stacey played secretary at work, and they spent the night together, rekindling their passion with laughter and wine. But in the morning, she found his wedding ring and left him a letter saying she’d always love him, but he’d never see her again. Then she fled, and Luther slipped into depression and alcoholism, no longer watching her movies if he could help it. Now, he follows Reginald without question, despite his immoral code and brutish cruelty, and he goes to Klaus’ parties to get drunk and gets into fights with Klaus’ loyalest friend, Diego, who thinks he drinks too much. (Ha. What does he know?) Klaus puts himself between them often, always siding with Diego though he clearly cares for Luther, and Luther always leaves in a worse mood than he came in, though he still keeps coming. He meets Vanya once at a diner and never speaks to her again, though she acted as the violinist at his wedding to Stacey. He offers information to Five, who’s a good kid despite all his murders, and Five treats him like a child even though he’s the (far) younger of the two. When Luther is finally lucky enough to meet Allison again, it’s at one of Klaus’ many many parties, all of which have started to blur together for Luther at this point. She pretends she’s never met him, stunning in a tight red dress and standing proud beside Klaus’ friend Mr. Chestnut, and Luther hates him, even though he seems perfectly kind. Allison steps towards him, her skirt riding up just enough to show the knives hidden in her garters, and she smiles, shaking his hand. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Armstrong, she tells him, her eyes like steel, and Luther falls in love with her all over again. (Not that it matters. Her heart is Ray’s now, and probably someone else’s too if Luther thinks about it too hard, and Luther isn’t around to know anyway. He’s sent to Eudora’s speakeasy with a hoard of cops the same night as the Handler’s men close in on the place, and she shoots him without mercy along with all the others as the raid carries on, though they met at one of Klaus’ parties and hit it off. She has no time for his life; nobody does. At his funeral, Stacey is absent and so is Allison, having moved on with Ray and forgotten Luther ever existed. Stacey was having an affair with a mob boss named Rob anyway, and figures she may as well make good on her acceptable widow years, running off with him to be his sugar baby as he fucks over immigrants in Queens and the

Bronx. Luther isn’t missed. He’s just another casualty, just another face in the crowd. Will you remember him?) (No. Don’t lie.)

Five di Sappears is a mystery man - everyone knows his name, but he always comes to town under the ruse of a homeless child named Aidan rather than the ruthless killer of a businessman that he is. He’s been an orphan since the Handler killed his parents when he was five, which is when he claims to have been made who he is today, therefore claiming the name Five for himself and shedding any remaining reigns of childhood. He runs the Handler’s largest rival gang, and his cronies follow him because he’s a cold-blooded murderer and they know it. He plays beggar mostly, hanging outside of Agnes’ bakery, but stays at Lila’s when it’s too goddamn miserable outside to survive. He protects who are known as the Six, and no one else - no one knows why, least of all him. But they matter in some sick, twisted way, and he won’t let anybody hurt them if he can help it. (At the very least if somebody does, they won’t survive.) (I think you can guess who the Six are.) He runs his business mostly out of Coney Island, where his parents met, and hides his alcohol in the pink prize bunnies there, his guns in the blue and his drugs in the purple. He has a rainbow bear named Dolores that he carries everywhere; she fits right in the pocket of his trenchcoat or under his hat. He has killed people who have dared to insult or comment on her… It’s a problem. Five sneaks into one of Klaus Hellbyes’ parties once for a business deal, and finds himself in conversation with the man himself, and his affectionate friend, Mr. Towblaerman. Klaus and Diego end up acting the part of Five’s surrogate parents, quite by accident really, and for the last few weeks of his public existence, Five parades as Aidan Hellbyes, the adopted son of Klaus and Floura Hellbyes. His own mansion is unsafe, for now - people have found out where he lives, dangerous people, and he needs to hide away for awhile. His play-acting fathers have no issue with him inhabiting one of their bedrooms for as long as he needs, though they never ask him directly to stay. He sneaks Dolores into their bags when they go on the run, writing them letters for months that he never sends as they settle into their new home. He moves back into his own mansion, burying Vanya and Sissy and Harlan in the backyard beneath the daisies. He has Jill over for tea often after Ben dies, and she always seems confused as to why he has any interest in her company, but Five only answers her questions with cryptic phrases and useless idioms she can’t decipher, like a jackass. But he leaves her his mansion when Klaus and Diego return for him, having found Dolores in the folds of their bags and heading straight back home for their son the moment after. Half of his Six are dead, and he cannot bring them back or save those remaining, so he gives up, fleeing with Hellbyes and Towblaerman to wherever they wish to take him. His final act in New York is to bail Lila out of her jail cell, leaving her behind with only a nod of thanks and a smirk as he disappears without a trace, true to his name. (Lila takes up shelter at Klaus and Diego’s old secret apartment. She marries a soft gay man named Theo Peterson who doesn’t mind watching Allison’s films with her or holding her in the night when she whispers Eudora’s name through tears in her sleep. It’s not a good life, but at least she doesn’t have to kill people anymore. Dora would be so disappointed.) (In the Cayman Islands, Five stands on a marble balcony with a glass of wine and wonders if Eudora would be disappointed in him, then decides it doesn’t really matter anymore and dumps the glass of white into the sea for the skeletons below.)

Leonard Peabody-Jenkins is a shady businessman, the kind who’s involved in pyramid schemes and black market shit. He works with some of the biggest mob bosses in the world, having travelled all over the world for meeting after meeting. He’s a fierce alcoholic, and a violent one at that - he’s beat Vanya more than once. They were married when they were young, “in love” before he showed his true colors and she found her thoughts lingering on women’s bosoms rather than men’s packages, but they barely see each other anymore, as he’s always away on business and she hates him. They share an apartment, but never a bed, and neither of them minds it that way, though they keep the flowers in the sill of the closed window fresh and bright to keep up appearances of a happy marriage. When he finds out about Vanya’s affair with Sissy, he puts plans in motion to kill the wretched woman who’s stolen his wife from him, but when he shows up at her house with a loaded gun he finds the job already done, her husband absent and her son dead in the bathtub, the woman herself hanging from a noose in the living room. He calls the police and plays the part of the traumatized witness, fake-crying as much as he’s able, and heads home with the gleeful intent to tell Vanya the woman she loves is dead. Instead, he finds an empty house and a newspaper detailing that Mrs. Vanya Peabody-Jenkins has been found dead of strangulation in the backyard of Klaus Hellbyes’ mansion, the suspect being Carl Cooper, her lover’s husband. (Though that last part, of course, is left out.) Finally freed from the rusty and heavy shackles of his marriage, he throws some things into a suitcase and opens the door to flee, only to find himself staring down the barrel of a gun. At the other end is a pale skinny boy whose eyes glint like flares in the distance. “Who are you?” Leonard asks, and the boy takes the time to smirk before emptying the cylinder into his chest. (Seven bullets. How fitting.)

Grace Rehtomtoborlanoitome (she’s French?) is Diego and Lila’s mother - they’re adopted, obviously, because she’s unmarried and has absolutely no interest in any men or women whatsoever. No one’s questioned her for it, because they’re fucking terrified of her - and because she never sticks around long enough to be suspicious of anyway. Currently she’s grifting people in the Cayman Islands, housing Klaus and Diego in her sprawling mansion home. She’s thinking she’ll head to Italy next; maybe buy Juliet’s house in Verona, and stay there eternally. She used to live in New York, to be close to her son and his family, but it wasn’t for her. Though she loved her life as a Broadway star, Reginald would come over for tea too often, asking her too many questions about Diego and his (secret) husband that she never answered, instead offering him vague and aloof conversation. (She loves to be passive-aggressive.) (She also wears top hats and lingerie to these lunches, because Reginald always seems morbidly discomforted by it and she lives to make him as miserable as possible.) So she fled, not wanting to slip up and jeopardize her son’s carefully cultivated facade. (Not that he needed any help to fuck it up, apparently.) She writes him letters as often as she can, telling him he will always have a home with her, should he wish it. Ben would often write to her, asking after Klaus, because he knew about his and Diego’s involvement and had found nothing but deadends with Diego. Grace always told him that if he’d just come to visit her, she’d tell him where Klaus was, but he never showed. She doesn’t learn about his death until Klaus and Diego come home to her, bringing their trouble with them. She reaches out to Ben’s wife, Jill, and Jill spends a week at Grace’s home, listening to Grace’s cryptic advice and wise answers to Jill’s every befuddled question. When Jill leaves, Grace’s last wisp of advice is to have tea with Five di Sappears whenever he invites her, even if he does so under the moniker Aidan Hellbyes. Though Jill isn’t sure why, she agrees, and waves goodbye from her carriage while Grace stands stoic in the doorway beside her butler Pogo, pensive and kind. After Jill’s departure, Grace cuts her family off from every part of the world they’ve ever known, hauling them all to Verona and settling them there. There, Klaus and Diego settle with Five, who they’d retrieved from New York while Grace conversed with Jill, and adopt a daughter named Aidy, who is as dangerous as her parents and brother, her eyes glinting always. Grace locks herself in her study with her granddaughter at least once a day - she has much to learn, and Grace has much to teach her. God pray for the world.)

Reginald Hargreeves is New York’s police chief, and the cruelest man you’ll ever meet. He’s a childless widow, and has been having an affair with the Handler for years, one with absolutely no emotional baggage because both of them are absolutely incapable of feeling love. He enjoys drinks with Pogo on the weekends and always carries an umbrella, which is a disguised poison gun he uses for assassinations. He often has tea with Grace, and proposes to her at the end of every visit, though she never says yes. (And she never will, you absolute rat bastard.) But the reason Reginald terrifies so many is his unusual penchant for hunting queers. Not just arresting and beating those he finds, no - hunting and killing them. He murdered Ben, who didn’t sleep with his wife once and loved Klaus more than anything. He ordered the raid on Eudora’s speakeasy when he saw her and Lila kissing in the rain, even though he used to be a regular customer of hers. He once threatened Vanya so terrifyingly that Klaus actually bothered to show up at his doorstep to tell him off. He’s seen every single one of Allison’s shows and hunted down Natalie at one of her burlesque shows (she’s poor, she’s got side jobs) to bring her in after he found out that she loved Allison, but she got away from him just in time. (He would still be hunting her, if he had survived. Allison never finds out.) He hunted Klaus and Diego so ferociously and so cruelly that they nearly broke apart out of fear for each other’s safety, not that that would’ve stopped him - Reginald doesn’t believe in mercy. Neither does Klaus anymore, it seems, when he shoots Reginald in tears from the balcony, staring down at the still-warm body of the love of his life. (Leonard tipped him off. The slimy asswipe was willing to tell Reginald anything for a bit a cash.) The only person who ever scared Reginald was Five, who would never back down or give in to Reginald’s assault. Fat lot of good that did - Five’s family is dead, and all at Reginald’s filthy fucking hands.

The Handler (real name: Alusru Alleurc Dlawlednirg) (she’s German) is the leader of New York’s largest gang. Hazel (lazy alcoholic still pining after the wife who left him on their wedding night) and Cha-Cha (always knew her soulmate was violence, they’ve been together since she was eight and murdered her parents in their sleep with her dolls, the Handler likes her spunk and manipulates Cha-Cha’s psychopathic tendencies for her own personal gain) both work for her, and the Handler makes good use of that, sending them after anyone who threatens her in the slightest. She’s sleeping with Reginald too - hey. She’s just bored. The Handler doesn’t feel anything but sick satisfaction, and even then only when she’s crushing her enemies’ skulls beneath her stiletto heels. Lila is her adoptive “daughter”, and her little plaything - so easy to manipulate. All the Handler has to do is call her “sweetheart” and the thick child comes running. How moronic. Anyway - Five is her mortal enemy. The one she stays up late killing things for. The one she has a million different ways to torture. The one she’s chased ever since she found out he was still alive. Five di Sappears. Disappears. What a fucking joke. Look, okay, here’s the story: Aidan Alone’s parents owed the Handler some money. And the Handler didn’t know they had a son, okay, but she didn’t mind - she took him in, tried to raise him as her own. She trained him, called him Five when he asked for it, didn’t argue when he insisted he was a boy despite his body, she - she spoiled him. But he didn’t take to training. He was volatile, violent, and not in the fun way - he’d killed half her men before she finally gave up. That night, at dinner, he leapt across the table with a savage war cry and tried to kill her with a fork; he managed to carve out her eye and fuck up half her face before Lila tugged him off. The Handler shrieked, telling her to kill him, kill him, and Lila nodded, dragging the catatonic Five away. The Handler thought that was that, that it was over… instead, she finds out eight years later that Lila had let Five go. (She won’t kill kids, she says. The Handler rolls her eyes. Bullshit.) Five, as it seems, is the Handler’s demon: she’s stuck with him, and he’s intent on dragging her straight to hell. He’s changed, apparently - she sees him begging outside a bakery one day and steps inside to ask the baker who he is; Aidan, the baker tells her, and smiles. He’s a very kind boy. The Handler’s head whips around just in time to catch Five smirking at her through the window, ten years old and holding the hand of a soft-looking girl in a plaid shawl. He smirks, and winks, and the Handler boils with rage; he’s gone when she blinks. The Handler shoots the baker dead in frustration and storms out the door; five months later the baker’s alcoholic husband came asking for a job. (Hazel, the Handler thought, huh, and gave him one.) But Five, the little bastard, he just doesn’t stop. By the end of the year he turned thirteen, her gang is in shambles at his hands, most of her followers dead or deserters after the Patch Raids. She’s sipping straight from a bottle of aged red wine with her mascara still running down her cheeks in spades when Five shows up, his hands in his pockets and a comfortable smirk on his face. Five, she greets him, and his eyes twinkle. He pulls out a gun and points it at her head. The name’s Aidan Hellbyes now, he says, and she grins, defeated to the point of derangement. She leans up, pressing her forehead to the barrel of his gun. Shoot, she says. He smiles, tilting his head. No thanks, he answers, and drops the gun to the ground nonchalantly as he starts to walk away. She screams, his insolence the final straw, and has her own gun out in a flash, the trigger halfway pulled when barbed wire wraps around her throat from behind and she shrieks, spasming with pain. She collapses to the ground, clawing at her throat and lost for air. The last thing she sees is Five, smirking as he stalks back towards her with a fork… and Lila, standing at his side with barbed wire

scars on her hands.

Dolores Quinmanne was a poet and a dreamer, and Five’s partner in all things. They met on the streets as children, and had been banded together ever since, sticking it out no matter how cold or miserable they got. She always wore a shawl and her hair was always in tatters with her dress; Five stole her a moonstone necklace once, and she wore it every day. He was always kind to her, always her favorite person - he’d always give her the bigger portion of whatever food they lucked into and cut her hair when she needed it. He’d curl around her when it rained and she’d hold him when it thunderstormed, and she kept him close to her heart, her name stitched over his own in permanent ink. Sometimes Agnes would let them sit inside her bakery when it was too cold and they’d play cards in the corner; Dolores was always, without a doubt, known as Aidan’s greatest companion. She gave him a rainbow bear on his tenth birthday, and he never named it, at least not while she was alive. She died in front of him, writhing and in pain. It lasted five minutes before she was cold in his arms, her eyes wide open and her mouth a gaping maw, like The Scream. Five has vowed revenge on the Handler for her death - the doctor said it was sickness, a seizure, but Five knows better. Though not enough, it seems - he’d know the truth if he’d only taken the time to take a closer look at the last soft bun Dolores ever ate, still warm from Agnes’ oven. Arsenic isn’t so easy to smell, but he should’ve known that sprinkle of white dust wasn’t sugar. (He keeps the moonstone from the necklace in the sweetheart grip of his favorite pistol. When he leaves to make a home with his family in Italy, he leaves the pistol behind, but puts the moonstone in the rainbow bear, stitching it back together over the heart. He thinks that maybe they can speak now, like this. Maybe Dolores, angel that she is, can hear him still.)

PLAYLIST: "Reach me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there crystal glass." (title from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby)

BITE - TROYE SIVAN

LET ME GO - HAILEE STEINFELD, ALESSO, FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE, WATT

IMMORTAL - MARINA

BROOKLYN BABY - LANA DEL REY

CHAMPAGNE PROBLEMS - TAYLOR SWIFT

LOVE - LANA DEL REY

BACK TO YOU - SELENA GOMEZ

AFTERLIFE - HAILEE STEINFELD

OFF TO THE RACES - LANA DEL REY

FINALLY // BEAUTIFUL STRANGER - HALSEY

FOREVER (... IS A LONG TIME) - HALSEY

BACK TO BLACK - AMY WINEHOUSE

MONTERO - LIL NAS X

TULSA JESUS FREAK - LANA DEL REY

SHAMELESS - THE WEEKND

HIGH SCHOOL SWEETHEARTS - MELANIE MARTINEZ

LOVER OF MINE - 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER

LOVE STORY - SARAH COTHRAN

COSMIC LOVE - FLORENCE + THE MACHINE

BABY - MADISON BEER

PARTNERS IN CRIME - FINNEAS

NUMBERS - THE CAB

HIM & I - G-EAZY, HALSEY

EARNED IT - THE WEEKND

STRANGE LOVE - HALSEY

GOLD RUSH - TAYLOR SWIFT

QUEEN OF THE NIGHT - HEY VIOLET

SHAMELESS - CAMILA CABELLO

HOW TO DISAPPEAR - LANA DEL REY

SIX FEET UNDER - BILLIE EILISH

I CAN’T GO ON WITHOUT YOU - KALEO

UNSPOKEN - WELSHY ARMS

COWBOY LIKE ME - TAYLOR SWIFT

BROKEN BONES - KALEO

VOR Í VAGLASKÓGI - KALEO

ARSONIST’S LULLABY - HOZIER

AU VOLANT - ELSA & EMILIE

DON’T BLAME ME - TAYLOR SWIFT

EVERY DAY A LITTLE DEATH - FROM “THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO”

MORAL OF THE STORY - ASHE

ALL EYES ON ME - BO BURNHAM

YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL - LANA DEL REY

CONEY ISLAND - TAYLOR SWIFT, THE NATIONAL

WILLOW - TAYLOR SWIFT

TOLERATE IT - TAYLOR SWIFT

NO BODY, NO CRIME - TAYLOR SWIFT, HAIM

GOOD 4 U - OLIVIA RODRIGO

WAIT FOR ME - FROM “HADESTOWN”

EPIC II - FROM “HADESTOWN”

CINNAMON GIRL - LANA DEL REY

HURTS LIKE HELL - FLEURIE

GIRL WITH ONE EYE - FLORENCE + THE MACHINE

EVERYBODY KNOWS - SIGRID

CASUAL AFFAIR - PANIC! AT THE DISCO

SEVEN DEVILS - FLORENCE + THE MACHINE

LIKE LOVERS DO - HEY VIOLET

BURY A FRIEND - BILLIE EILISH

DYNASTY - MIIA

RED - TAYLOR SWIFT

CAN’T PRETEND - TOM ODELL

START A WAR - KLERGY, VALERIE BROUSSARD

LOVE IS BLINDNESS - JACK WHITE

THE DAY BEFORE YOU CAME - MERYL STREEP

LOVELY - BILLIE EILISH, KHALID

SNOWMAN - SIA

1950 - KING PRINCESS

TIME TO SAY GOODBYE - ANDREA BOCELLI, SARAH BRIGHTMAN

HOAX - TAYLOR SWIFT

SAME SOUL - PVRIS

AFTER YOU - MEGHAN TRAINOR

DANCING WITH YOUR GHOST - SASHA SLOAN

THE LAST OF THE REAL ONES - FALL OUT BOY

ARE YOU TEN YEARS AGO - PVRIS

GOT YOU ON MY MIND - NF

SUMMERTIME SADNESS - LANA DEL REY

CHEMTRAILS OVER THE COUNTRY CLUB - LANA DEL REY

LOLITA - LANA DEL REY

WILD AT HEART - LANA DEL REY

NEVER BE THE SAME - CAMILA CABELLO

FOLLOW YOU - BRING ME THE HORIZON

IS THERE SOMEWHERE - HALSEY

BEAUTIFUL - CAMILA CABELLO, BAZZI

OUTLAWS - ALESSIA CARA

EASY - TROYE SIVAN, KACEY MUSGRAVES, MARK RONSON

CORNELIA STREET - TAYLOR SWIFT

COME WHAT MAY - FROM “MOULIN ROUGE”

SEVEN - TAYLOR SWIFT

YELLOW LIGHTS - HARRY HUDSON

OH MS BELIEVER - TWENTY-ONE PILOTS

PLEASE NEVER FALL IN LOVE AGAIN - OLLIE MN

ACHILLES COME DOWN - GANG OF YOUTHS

BLOOD // WATER - GRANDSON

HURT INCANTATION - ANNAPANTSU

GOD KNOWS I TRIED - LANA DEL REY

WHERE’S MY LOVE (ACOUSTIC) - SYML

I HAVE QUESTIONS - CAMILA CABELLO

THIS LOVE - CAMILA CABELLO

HEATHER - CONAN GRAY

WILDEST DREAMS - TAYLOR SWIFT

KISSAPHOBIC - MAKE OUT MONDAY

LOVER. FIGHTER. - SVRCINA

PSYCHOTIC KIDS - YUNGBLUD

ALL OF THE STARS - ED SHEERAN

WICKED GAME - DAISY GRAY

HOTEL CALIFORNIA - THE EAGLES

FROM EDEN - HOZIER

DIE A LITTLE - YUNGBLUD

LOVE AND WAR - FLEURIE

TALES OF DOMINICA - LIL NAS X

ANYONE - CAMILA CABELLO

HAPPINESS IS A BUTTERFLY - LANA DEL REY

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