#drugs work fine on most ghosts and sometimes he takes vanya's pills just to spite him

[neuronary]

tua au where after five leaves (and stops helping klaus get out of personal training), klaus has a really bad panic attack in front of vanya. she offers him some of her pills to help because they're thirteen and stupid. klaus is like "these make the ghosts go away like... completely. they're all just gone. like they were never there." and it's different from weed which makes them look significantly more ghostly (translucent, silent/muffled, blurry, etc.). so vanya is like... "well, you take them then. i'll be okay. it's not like i have powers that need to be stopped."

[spongebob narrator voice] three days later...

so that was a fucking lie. vanya figures out about her powers and reggie figures out about the pill swap. he tries to get allison to rumour everyone into forgetting, but she can't rumour herself, so she creates a code phrase to snap them out of it and remember when she needs to. she eventually uses it but, once again, vanya's powers make themselves known very obviously (or, for spice, luther rats them out). this time, reggie just gives up and starts forcing vanya to take the pills and locks allison up in the vault downstairs to make sure she's scared enough of him that she'll do what he says next time.

things... sort of return to normal? aside from vanya trying to rediscover her powers every few months (aided very covertly by grace, who eventually helps her lower the dosage of the pills so she doesn't go through such heavy withdrawals). they keep going on missions, ben still dies, but this time klaus can't see him (angst time + outsider POV) so he doesn't spend as much time haunting them before he comes back to life. (no matter what, She needs the hargreeves alive.) vanya grows much closer to the rest of her siblings, particularly luther because they relate about a weird amount. they're still split apart a Lot by ben's death. klaus, who hasn't had steady enough access to vanya's pills to avoid his addiction (and they don't help with the trauma anyway), and allison both leave almost immediately after, followed by diego. vanya tries to convince luther to leave but he won't, so she goes without him. (they try to stay in touch but it's difficult what with reginald.) luther still goes to the moon, allison still becomes a movie star (although she never rumours claire because she's learned about the seriousness of her rumours much earlier on), vanya is in constant but friendly competition with helen cho for first chair but still teaches as her main gig, diego still becomes a vigilante, although he spends a lot more time getting patched up by vanya, who keeps trying to get him to go to therapy and get his shit together so that he can reunite with patch. (so sue her, vanya's invested.) klaus carries on with his drugs and is harrowing enough to know that his siblings don't do much more than fund his rehab attempts when he sends them the bill.

then, on march 24th of 2019, thirteen-year-old number five drops out of the sky, directly into his dad's funeral, to the excited yells of his six year old niece.