Umbrella Academy fic: Somewhere in Time and Space (2/2)
Continued from part one.
-o-
A week passes.
This is longer than Five has intended, but he decides that time is the only luxury he has right now and he might as well use it to his advantage. Besides, there are a lot of reasons to take this slow. First, his siblings can use the time to bond. By spending their days together, they are becoming a more cohesive unit. They’re even a family, you might say.
More specifically, if gives everyone time to adjust to Vanya’s powers -- including Vanya herself. They’re nowhere near actually training her yet, but they are able to learn what triggers her powers and develop natural remedies to help her control them. By the end of the week, Vanya is still shaky but she’s not exhibiting unstable power shifts.
Mostly, it’s time for them to stop blaming each other and come together. It’s time to forgive, forget and move on. By living in the past, they are able to contend with their past so they are well and truly ready to face the future.
As for Five, it’s time to finish his calculations and to double check them. They are complicated -- extremely complicated. He has to account for the precision in his timing this time around -- not just down to a day but to a specific hour. Moreover, he must not only get himself through time, but all of them, and it requires distinct calculations to figure out how to merge each sibling with the past version of themselves without accidentally creating alternate timelines in the process.
All that could have taken several days, if Five is being honest.
He needs the week because he needs the week. His headaches persist, and he’s taken to dosing himself regularly with Tylenol to compensate. That does a little to numb the pain, but it is ineffective against the nosebleeds and dizzy spells. He probably needs to rest still, which is why he tells himself it’s not a big deal that he often falls asleep over his open notes, not waking for hours at a time.
They’re just side effects, Five resolves.
Because he’s got the cure.
-o-
Of course, all equations aside, there is still the small problem of stamina. Five works his way into spatial jumps easily, and he trains like he did when he was 13, building up his strength and focus by degrees. He practices so the others don’t see him; they wouldn’t understand and he imagines it would be disconcerting for them to see him struggling with spatial jumps when he’s supposed to whisk them all back to the future in a few days time.
He’s set the deadline, you see.
Two weeks.
Pogo confirms that’s when the old man and their former selves are due back, so Five figures that’s a good time for them not to be here. It’ll be a seamless, easy transition for everyone.
Everyone, that is, except him.
Doing the jumps, he tries to remember how focused he was. He’d been motivated by pride back then, a pressing, insatiable need to blow past his expectations and achieve his full potential. In his naivete, he’d been unstoppable.
13 again, he’s been dispossessed of his naivete. He understands his limitations, and he knows that everything stops sooner or later.
He jumps through a few walls. He jumps through the back door and back in again. He jumps into the kitchen and then up and up and up. He feels his head spin as he draws on his strength and jumps again.
The only person he has to prove anything to is himself. He has to believe he can do this, that he can get them back safely. He has to believe in this or… what?
What does failure look like?
A misguided past?
An uncertain future?
He hasn’t told them that.
He hasn’t told them that the side effects of time travel are unpredictable.
He hasn’t told them that he’s run the numbers, that there’s a good chance that his own foray into time travel is what caused so much of the problem. He hasn’t told them that he thinks all of this is his fault, that these are the actions he set in motion when he was 13 the first time, that he’s the one who doomed the world and he’s been living 13 on repeat ever since.
That’s why he has to get them back.
He has to free them from the loop.
He has to free them from his choices.
That’s why he’s 13 again.
Because this is his second chance to get it right.
With a rush of power, he materializes. He’s surprised to find that he’s not in his bedroom as intended. He’s missed by a few floors, and he’s in the medical wing.
His mother is standing there.
“Hello, Five,” she says with a smile.
“Mom?” he asks, confused. His equilibrium is faltering. His head rocks, and his stomach turns. The throbbing in his head is reaching unacceptable levels. “What are you doing here?”
“Your father’s orders,” she says. “He told me to be here, this particular time, this particular day.”
Five wrinkles his nose, but he can’t form the question. He can’t make his voice work as something coppery hits his top lip. He wonders how his old man saw this coming and he didn’t.
Without further motion, Five drops, crumbling to the ground.
In truth, it feels like he’s been falling all along.
-o-
Somewhere, in time and space, Five is still 13.
He’s trained hard all day, harder than ever before. Exhausted, worn out and angry, he stomps into his father’s office and demands the chance to prove himself.
“I know I can do it,” Five says. “I know I can travel through time.”
“You do, hm?” his father says, barely looking up from his work. “And do you think maybe there are a few things I know that you don’t, Number Five?”
Five makes a face, not sure why that matters. “Well, then tell me. What am I missing?”
Still writing away, his father sighs. “Why do you assume that you have to know?”
Five scoffs. “Because how can you make a good choice without all the information?”
His father looks up at him, quizzical. “And how can you make a good choice with all the information?”
Five scowls, shaking his head. “Just tell me!”
His father sighs, going back to his writing. “You’re going to have to trust me.”
“But why?” Five demands.
With a shake of his head, his father sounds disappointed. “You always do have to learn things the hard way, don’t you?”
“I can handle it, I know I can,” Five says, bolstering himself up. “Just tell me.”
His father, however, flits his hand through the air. “Carry on, Number Five,” he says, the conversation clearly closed. “I don’t imagine that anything I say or do will stop you anyway.”
-o-
Five wakes up with a start. He’s lying on his back on the examination table. Mom is poised above him, holding an IV.
“I already told you that your body cannot handle this strain,” she says.
Groggily, Five sits up. He grapples with the IV line but can’t quite coordinate his fingers enough to pull it out. “I have to be ready to leave.”
“If you want to leave, then keep the IV in,” Mom recommends. “You’ll never have the energy for a jump of the magnitude you’re thinking about without some help.”
Five stills, and looks up at her. “You know, don’t you?”
“You asked me if you could perform another jump,” she replies.
But Five shakes his head. “No, you know,” he says. “You knew all of this. You knew we’d show up, and you knew I’d pass out today. Just like you know that I’m making the jump back to my siblings’ present tomorrow.”
She doesn’t try to deny it. Passively, she stares at him.
“But how?” Five asks. “I mean, Dad--”
He stops short, and blinks a few times.
“Dad’s always known,” he says. “He’s known since I was 13 the first time. He probably knew from the day we were born -- before that.”
He pauses, as the full weight of that sinks in. “This is still part of his plan, isn’t it?”
Mom smooths her skirt. “Your father has lots of plans, dear. I only do as I’m told.’
Five looks at her anew, fresh understanding coloring his perspective. “Right,” he says. “So if you knew that so many years in the future, on an exact day, at an exact time, that we’d be coming back, you could, in theory, be ready?”
“My memory circuits are infallible with regular maintenance,” she says.
He lies back, slowly working his way through this revelation. “Good,” he says. “Because there’s a date I want you to remember.”
“Okay,” Mom says.
“And I want you to be ready, just like you were ready now,” he says.
She looks just slightly disconcerted. “Medical alert?”
“Of the most extreme kind,” he says. “Life and death.”
“Oh dear,” she says, fluffing his pillow before sitting down primly next to him. “Then you better tell me everything, darling. I want us both to be ready.”
-o-
He rests for the remainder of the afternoon, letting the IV do its work. When Mom clears him to move again, he thanks her and heads out. Checking the time, he realizes it’s dinner time.
Of course it is.
Well, he decides, making his way to the kitchen, tomorrow’s the big day.
But he probably has time for one more family meal.
-o-
It’s not hard to get them together. That’s what they are now, after all. They’re together.
It’s hard to believe that this isn’t how it’s always been, that they’ve each chosen to leave in their own way, in their own time, just to be here together again. He wonders if their 13 year old selves realize this. Wherever they are, they couldn’t possibly know. That’s what you do when you’re 13: you take it all for granted.
Five preps and serves the dinner himself. When the others try to talk about what’s coming tomorrow, he makes every attempt to deflect them.
“But it’s a big deal, tomorrow,” Luther says. “I want to make sure it’s all in order.”
“No kidding,” Diego says. “If we screw this shit up--”
“We’ve worked so hard,” Allison says, her voice stronger than it was two weeks ago.
“I haven’t been sober this long in, like years,” Klaus adds. “If I can do that, then I think we might actually pull this off.”
“We better pull it off,” Ben says.
Vanya smiles. She’s changed the most of all of them. Yet, somehow, she’s still exactly the same. “If Five says we’re ready, then we’re ready,” she says. “That’s all there is to it.”
Five swallows a mouth full of food and doesn’t think about his nagging headache. He doesn’t think about how tired he is or the fact that he’s nervous. He doesn’t think how this could be the last time he gets to do this, to sit here with them, to be him
When he was 13 the first time, he assumed tomorrow would always be there.
He makes no such assumptions now.
Instead, he takes this moment for what it is.
For what it will always be.
“That’s tomorrow,” he says, eschewing the talk of work and planning and saving the world. “But for now, who wants dessert?”
There’s a rumble of talking and laughter, and they debate the virtues of ice cream compared to fresh baked pie before someone finally finds the donuts that Mom has inexplicably bought. They talk about the years they’ve spent together, the ones they’ve spent apart. They talk about the years they hope to build in the future they hope to save.
It’s sentimental, sure. A ridiculous and wasteful display with no inherent practical value and immense personal pleasure. Five’s never been one to indulge like this, not under normal conditions anyway. But Five can’t quite control it, just like he can’t control the headaches and the nosebleeds.
Another side effect of time travel, it seems.
At least, that’s what Five tells himself.
-o-
The evening is the best Five’s ever had, if he’s being completely honest.
The next morning, he feels his absolute worst.
He’d sent them all to bed early, reminding them how eventful the day would be. He’d retired to his own room to review his notes and get to sleep, but the equations had kept eluded him and he hadn’t managed to sleep. When he finally did pass out, it was slumped over his desk, and he wakes up with a crick in his neck and a gnawing headache that makes his vision funny.
His dry mouth refuses to be satiated, and nothing can help. Food tastes bad, and he decides that his stomach feels so weak that it’s best to forgo eating altogether. He’s never vomited during his jumps before, but he imagines it might be an unpleasant -- or catastrophic -- experience.
The others, at least, look must more prepared. In fact, they seem downright excited. They’re up as early as he is, munching anxiously on breakfast while they chitchat about what they think the future will be. They have plans, you see. They have lots of plans, and Five listens to them like one might listen to a fortune teller talking about things that sound beautiful but you can’t imagine coming to pass.
It’s real for them, though.
For them, it’s all real.
That’s why Five pushes away from the table and gets shakily to his feet. He breathes in deep, and seeks to steady himself. “Okay,” he says, feeling his resolve like a bowling ball in the very pit of his stomach. “It’s time to do this.”
-o-
It’s time.
Five gathers them in the foyer, stands them in a circle. They’re anxious, but they’re ready. He feels weak, a little woozy at the knees, but there’s no choice but to stand strong among them.
“This will work,” he tells them. “I know it will work.”
They look at him, and they don’t see his throbbing headache. They don’t see his blurred vision or his chalky complexion. They don’t even see the 13 year that never grew up.
They just see him and the promise he offers.
He smiles, reaching down deep, one last time.
“You will be fine,” he assures them. “Each and every one of you will be just fine.”
It’s not a lie, at least.
That’s his last consolation as he rallies himself, brings the power brimming and burning to the surface. He runs through the numbers, but this time it’s not speculation. This time it’s the real thing. He calculates the force; he equates the pressure. By the time the air around him starts to bend, he can feel it, pulsing in his head. He smells blood when he forces it to rip apart, and by the time he makes the tear big enough for all of them, the pressure is bursting through him, threatening to tear him apart at the seams.
It requires the total accumulation of his 58 years, all of his energy, all of his knowledge, all of his willpower and tenacity. It necessitates, beyond everything else, all of his hope and affection for these people, these people who matter to him more than anything else.
These people who he’ll rip the universe apart to save.
These people who he’ll rip himself apart to redeem.
It’s time to go home.
Five uses the last of his focus and concentration to fling them forward.
It’s time.
-o-
Somewhere, in time and space, Five is still 13.
Harrumphing, his father gets out of the chair. “I’m raising heroes, not martyrs,” he says with disapproval. “I never expected you would be the one confused on that point.”
He rips his way into a future he can’t imagine and is terrified. Somewhere, he’s still that 13 year old boy, turning on his heel, running for home, calling for his father.
He yells until his voice is raw.
His father, however, flits his hand through the air. “Carry on, Number Five,” he says, the conversation clearly closed. “I don’t imagine that anything I say or do will stop you anyway.”
This time, someone answers.
-o-
They come back hard -- harder than Five has planned and anticipated. He hits the ground with numb legs, and it’s only by some kind of miracle that he doesn’t collapse immediately. As it is, he’s not sure he’s quite conscious, and his vision is tunneling dangerous as the rip around him closes itself back up with a zap.
Belatedly, he remembers to breathe, but it doesn’t do much. The oxygen only amplifies the suddenness of his disorientation, and he experiences a burst of vertigo that keeps him frozen in his spot. His head is on fire now; it’s the worst headache he’s ever experienced. It seems like his brain is literally trying to melt out of his ears.
That’s not hyperbole.
If anything, Five would liken it to understatement.
But as he stands there, he’s dimly aware that he’s home. He’s back in the mansion, standing in the foyer. He can see the tile beneath his feet, stretching across the expanse. It’s bigger than he remembers. The tile; the foyer. Everything’s bigger.
Alternatively, he’s smaller.
As he contemplates that dumbly, he lifts his eyes. In a distorted view, he can see his siblings. They’re still in a circle around him. Five has to count them one by one to be sure.
Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Ben and Vanya.
Luther moves first, scooping Allison up in a hug while she chokes on a cry. Diego whoops, walking over to give Klaus a punch to the shoulder. Klaus does a jig, something impromptu and silly, and he knocks hips with Ben, who laughs loud enough that it rattles Five’s chest. Vanya is staring at her hands, like she can’t believe she’s here.
Five wants to tell her to believe it; it’s real.
His mouth isn’t working, though.
In fact, nothing is working.
His consciousness is fracturing, and he has no means left to stop it. His energy reserves have gone dry; his motivation is seeping out of him because there’s nothing left to work for, nothing left to try. He’s done it. He’s done what he set out to do. He’s saved the world. He’s saved his family.
All the rest.
Well, those are just the side effects.
His hearing is gone now, and his vision has gone to gray. He sees Luther and Diego hug while Allison scoops Vanya up and Klaus jumps on top to join the embrace. Ben beams, flashing the thumbs up sign.
Five smiles.
It’s his last act, he decides.
A show of affection, of contentment.
The pain envelopes him, and his consciousness flees. He doesn’t even feel himself falling.
This is what it’s like, then.
This is what it’s like to finally get things right.
It feels like Five’s waited a lifetime.
Funny, though, Five’s still 13.
-o-
Somewhere, in time and space, Five is 13. He walks out of the house and doesn’t come back for a couple of decades. When he comes back, he’s still 13.
All the years he’s learned, all the years he’s worked. He’s grown, he’s hurt, he’s killed. He’s become someone he hates, and he’s sacrificed more things than he thought possible. He’s endured tragedy and loss, and he’s been formed by a world far harsher than his father’s cold parenting. The future is shit; the past is, too. All that matters is this moment. This singular moment.
Time is static and dynamic all at once. It’s evolving and ever present. It will remain constant and always change. Time is a joke, for the record. It’s a fallacy. A year, a day, a month, a lifetime. It doesn’t mean anything without context.
People are context.
People are meaning.
That’s what transcends the ages. That’s what transcends everything.
You see, in time and space, Five will always be 13.
-o-
After everything, Five is duly surprised when he wakes up. True, he’s spent most of his life approaching disaster with relatively indifference, but going into dangerous situation with nothing to lose is not the same thing as going into one with everything to lose. In all of Five’s long life, he knows what he’s putting on the line.
When he wakes up, he’s sore, he’s weak, he’s disoriented, he’s 13.
He’s also, most importantly, not alone.
Of the myriad of things he’s experienced lately, somehow, that strikes him as the most relevant.
Or, maybe his age is showing now. Maybe it’s just the most comforting.
In his defense, he is long for comfort. He’s spent years licking his own wounds, and these wounds are more serious than any he’s had before. He can’t know this objectively, but it’s still a truth he holds inside himself, a small revelation that appears to him as self evident.
It’s more than the headache, which is severe, to say the least. His senses are equally deadened and heightened. He feels like the entirely of his body has been swathed in cotton, and though he experiences things acutely, it’s distant. He’s distant. Hearing, sight, smell, touch -- him. His awareness has been disconnected somehow, and though there’s clearly been some effort to put him back together, it’s not entirely clear if it’s worked just yet.
That is the part that is truly disconcerting. It’s a pervasive sort of weakness, wherein he’s not sure he’s capable of sitting up or standing, much less kill someone as necessary. It’s a weakness that goes beyond the physical, one that permeates the mind. Though his thoughts trip over each other wildly, they are uncontrolled. His thought processes are truncated, and it’s like looking pieces of a puzzle and knowing exactly the picture they are supposed to make but he can’t put the pieces together to save his life.
That analogy is either very poor or very apt. He knows, in the apocalypse, with the Commission, whatever has happened to him would leave him for dead.
He’s not in the apocalypse, though.
He’s not with the Commission.
And he’s not alone.
Five is lying in the bed, but around him, his siblings are situated. They’re seated, perched anxiously on the edges of their chairs. Five can’t know for sure -- he’s been out of it too long -- but he gets the distinct impression they’ve been waiting like this for awhile.
This isn’t knowledge or observation. This is more than instinct, even. This is just the kind of thing you know. The kind of thing -- the very special kind of thing -- that transcends time and space. Some things in this universe, you see, just are.
Maybe you have to be at your weakest to see it. Maybe you have to surrender your control to know you’ve never had it all along. Maybe you have to concede to the darkness before you realize that there’s always been light if you know where to look.
All of time and space, Five is 13, and he knows that this is where he’s simply supposed to be.
Swallowing back, he tries to muster some moisture in his throat. He licks his dry lips and tries to clear the haze from his vision. Neither is quite successful, but he still forces himself to speak.
“Hey,” he says, the word barely audible and jumbled. “You’re here.”
“The bigger surprise is that you’re here,” Luther quips lightly, and his smile does little to bely the worry he’s clearly experiencing.
“Not for a lack of trying,” Diego adds, and he says it like a joke but Five knows he’s not kidding at all.
Allison is the one who manages to smile in a way that looks real. She reaches over, her hand on the edge of his bed. “How do you feel?”
The question redirects Five’s attention back to his physical state. Which is, still, horrible. He breathes through the pain as best he could and does not attempt to hide the pain. “Like shit,” he says.
Klaus snorts, both incredulous and amused. “I should think so, little man,” he says. “You tried to turn your brain to mush and you didn’t even bother to get high doing it, which to me, really defeats the purpose.”
Ben rolls his eyes, and interjects softly over Klaus’ answer. “You had a hemorrhage in your brain,” he says. “A pretty big one. You’re lucky Mom was here so fast.”
Five contemplates the full scope of what they’re saying. He thinks about what he’s ready in the medical journals, about how quickly a brain bleed can kill. He thinks about the percentages, the long term survival rates, the need for fast treatment or else the risk of death or permanent impairment skyrockets. This is the kind of injury people die from, the kind they don’t recover from.
But it’s not lucky, he remembers dimly. He remembers the instructions he’d given Mom, about this time, this date, this injury. Clearly, despite tampering and degradation, she hadn’t forgotten.
His siblings mistake his silence as confusion. Vanya sits forward, her expression shaky. “You’ve been in a coma for a week,” she explains gently, as if this is a revelation that she is worried might upset Five. “Mom put you in one to give you time to heal.”
“After the surgery, anyway,” Luther says. He shrugs, like he’s apologizing. “For what it’s worth, she says it went really well.”
Surgery had been a given, though Five had not truly considered it for what it would be. Tentatively, he reaches a hand up to his head. He realizes now that the feeling of being wrapped is not all psychosomatic. There is a large batch of gauze wrapped and pressed tightly. Only now can Five feel the line of stitches hot and itchy along the skull beneath it.
“Dude, leave it alone,” Diego advises, making a face. “I mean, it’s not pretty and it’s still healing.”
Five puts his hand back down, too tired to attempt moving it farther anyway.
Allison sighs a bit. “I know you like knowing the full story, so you might as well know it now,” she says. “It was a craniotomy, but the swelling’s down and there’s a metal plate in place. It’ll take some time for your hair to grow back, but Mom really outdid herself. I mean, I had no idea she was trained for brain surgery.”
Five can’t say for sure she was, initially. With all these years to plan, he knows she would make sure of it by now. This takes too much effort to think about, much less explain, so he doesn’t bother.
“Besides, you’re on strict bedrest for awhile now -- a long while,” Klaus says. “I’m sure by the time you’re back up on your feet, your hair will have grown back and you can go back to murdering people in style.”
Ben rolls his eyes. “The important thing is that you’re okay. You’re still you.”
“You scared us, Five,” Vanya says. “You really scared us.”
Five’s not even sure what that means. He stares at her, looks at each of them, and says, “Huh.”
They look back at him, the colored drained from their anxious faces. Finally, Allison brings her brows together. “Huh?” she repeats. “That’s all you can say?”
Five does his best to muster up a shrug. He’s not sure if it works or not, but it’s no matter. “What do you want me to say?”
Klaus laughs, short and brittle. “What do you think we want you to say? I mean, you are the family genius, I thought.”
Five’s head hurts too much for this. Klaus is hard enough to understand when Five’s not recovering from brain surgery.
“Try an apology,” Diego says, cutting to the point. “That would work.”
“An apology?” Five asks. He draws his brows together but it hurts like hell, pulling against the stitches and intensifying his headache for a moment. “What for?”
“For scaring us, for one thing,” Luther says. “I mean, we got back, just like we planned, and the next thing we know, you were passed out on the floor, bleeding out your nose and ears. We thought you were dead.”
Five imagines it was terrifying, though he can’t remember why he didn’t think of that except only that it was inconsequential. A side effect. “A necessary risk,” he muses softly.
“You shouldn’t have taken that risk, Five,” Ben says. “Not if you knew it was that bad.”
“But it worked, didn’t it?” Five asks, no guises involved. “Luther said it himself, it went entirely as planned.”
“Almost working? Five, you nearly died,” Allison says. “That’s not almost working. That’s abject failure.”
His ability to understand irrational emotion has never been particularly keen. It’s even harder right now, with his senses as mixed up as they are. “But you got back. The world didn’t end,” Five explains. “That was the goal. Everyone lives.”
“Everyone except you,” Vanya says, and she sounds a little hurt by this. “Five, everyone includes you.”
This is a fact he’s not sure what to do with, honestly. It’s not a context which he’s worried about. He’s always existed outside of time and space; the idea that he is a static player in a given moment defies his understanding of his own purpose.
It’s a sense of perspective he had stripped away from him when he was 13 years old.
Funny enough, he’s still 13.
“And don’t think we don’t know you set this shit up,” Diego says, and he sounds annoyed a little. He mostly sounds hurt. “We know you had Mom on standby. You told her to be ready for this in the past.”
It had seemed inconsequential at the time that they might find out. It’s not that he thinks his siblings are complete idiots -- though, in some ways, they well and truly are. It’s just Five’s learned to prioritize in his life. He’s learned that the ends will justify the means. His attention can be ruthless, cutting out all the things that don’t matter to truly focus on the things they are necessary.
Saving his family, saving the world: the only priorities.
Everything else: background noise.
He is too tired for denial. He’s too weak for equivocation. “I thought it would at least give me a chance of surviving this,” he says plaintively. “A hail mary, if you will.”
Luther looks downright appalled. “So you did know the risk, the full extent,” he says, like he’s been trying to talk himself into another explanation. “You knew it would probably kill you to bring us back.”
Five lifts one shoulder meekly. “Side effects.”
“Five,” Allison says, nearly aghast. “Side effects is a headache and a bloody nose. You nearly died. What on earth were you thinking?”
He looks at her, a little befuddled. “I was thinking about saving our family and making sure the world didn’t explode in the process,” he says. “As long as those two criteria were met, everything else was within acceptable measures.”
Klaus laughs, and he sounds a little irrational. “Saving the family? Minus one, I guess,” he says, and then he tips his head toward Ben conspiratorially. “And he’s supposed to be the one who’s good at math.”
His headache being what it is, Five has no energy to put together a pithy reply. “The math was good. Six for one.”
“I don’t think you know just how close you came,” Ben ventures, somewhat more diplomatically than his siblings. “You had a massive bleed in your brain. You’re lucky that you’re alive, that you’re you.”
“But that’s why I told Mom,” he says. “I didn’t leave it to luck.”
“That’s bullshit,” Vanya says, and the wounded look on her face is the first and only reason Five’s had pause about this so far.
“But the side effects were worth it,” he insists.
“Still bullshit,” Vanya says, and her voice threatens to crack as she blinks back tears. “You should have told us. Why didn’t you tell us?
His mouth opens but the words don’t quite come out. He looks from Vanya to the others, taking in the earnestness of their stares. He’s hurt them, he realizes more acutely now. He’s saved them but he’s hurt them. In some way, some impossible way, he’s betrayed them on the most basic level. Quietly now, he admits what they already know. “I knew you’d stop me.”
“Damn straight we would,” Diego grunts.
“We do things together, Five,” Luther says.
Allison nods. “No one is expendable.”
“I just can’t imagine that you actually thought you’d get away with it,” Klaus says. “How did you think you’d get away with this?”
“Well, to be honest, I thought I’d be dead and thus it’d be a moot point,” he says. Then, starting to feel sheepish, he swallows hard against the pain that lingers in his skull. “And I couldn’t live with the idea of you not living. I had to do whatever it took.”
This much they understand.
Because they feel the exact same way.
It’s a somewhat surreal realization. It’s not logic. It’s not rational. It’s something more fundamental, something Five can’t quite explain.
“Well,” Ben says, his voice a little hoarse. “We know the feeling. That’s how family is, after all.”
Vanya’s eyes are all but shining now. “We can’t all be laying our lives down for one another. We can’t live like that. This family, we do it together. We live, we die. Together. No more secrets.”
The truth is something he can’t deny her, he can’t deny them.
He blinks his own eyes, surprised to find them wet. “I’m sorry,” he says when there’s nothing else for him to say. “I never wanted to hurt you, but I have to tell you the truth. If I had to do it again, I’d make the same choice.”
It’s not defiance. It’s not superiority.
It’s love, pure and simple.
Five realizes it only a second after they do.
Time travel is a powerful ability, after all.
Family, though, is more powerful still.
Luther sighs, a little put out. “Fine,” he says. “But maybe we can limit the time travel for the time being?”
“Or indefinitely,” Diego says. “I still feel weird and it’s been a week.”
“Also Five’s brain probably won’t survive another round,” Allison points out.
“You’re all amateurs,” Klaus says with a dreamy wave of his hand. “Though I suspect the briefcase version is a little safer.”
Ben raises his eyebrows. “Debatable.”
Vanya inhales and rallies them together. “We’re here, we’re back, we’re together,” she says, finally lifting the edges of her mouth into a smile. “What more could we possibly want anyway?”
Five, tired, weary and hurting, can only agree.
-o-
There are many side effects to time travel, as it turns out. Brain bleeds, possibly age regression, alternate timelines, and so on.
It just so happens that realizing your family cares about you (as much as you care about them) is just another one of them.
-o-
A week passes.
This is longer than Five has intended, but he decides that time is the only luxury he has right now and he might as well use it to his advantage. Besides, there are a lot of reasons to take this slow. First, his siblings can use the time to bond. By spending their days together, they are becoming a more cohesive unit. They’re even a family, you might say.
More specifically, if gives everyone time to adjust to Vanya’s powers -- including Vanya herself. They’re nowhere near actually training her yet, but they are able to learn what triggers her powers and develop natural remedies to help her control them. By the end of the week, Vanya is still shaky but she’s not exhibiting unstable power shifts.
Mostly, it’s time for them to stop blaming each other and come together. It’s time to forgive, forget and move on. By living in the past, they are able to contend with their past so they are well and truly ready to face the future.
As for Five, it’s time to finish his calculations and to double check them. They are complicated -- extremely complicated. He has to account for the precision in his timing this time around -- not just down to a day but to a specific hour. Moreover, he must not only get himself through time, but all of them, and it requires distinct calculations to figure out how to merge each sibling with the past version of themselves without accidentally creating alternate timelines in the process.
All that could have taken several days, if Five is being honest.
He needs the week because he needs the week. His headaches persist, and he’s taken to dosing himself regularly with Tylenol to compensate. That does a little to numb the pain, but it is ineffective against the nosebleeds and dizzy spells. He probably needs to rest still, which is why he tells himself it’s not a big deal that he often falls asleep over his open notes, not waking for hours at a time.
They’re just side effects, Five resolves.
Because he’s got the cure.
-o-
Of course, all equations aside, there is still the small problem of stamina. Five works his way into spatial jumps easily, and he trains like he did when he was 13, building up his strength and focus by degrees. He practices so the others don’t see him; they wouldn’t understand and he imagines it would be disconcerting for them to see him struggling with spatial jumps when he’s supposed to whisk them all back to the future in a few days time.
He’s set the deadline, you see.
Two weeks.
Pogo confirms that’s when the old man and their former selves are due back, so Five figures that’s a good time for them not to be here. It’ll be a seamless, easy transition for everyone.
Everyone, that is, except him.
Doing the jumps, he tries to remember how focused he was. He’d been motivated by pride back then, a pressing, insatiable need to blow past his expectations and achieve his full potential. In his naivete, he’d been unstoppable.
13 again, he’s been dispossessed of his naivete. He understands his limitations, and he knows that everything stops sooner or later.
He jumps through a few walls. He jumps through the back door and back in again. He jumps into the kitchen and then up and up and up. He feels his head spin as he draws on his strength and jumps again.
The only person he has to prove anything to is himself. He has to believe he can do this, that he can get them back safely. He has to believe in this or… what?
What does failure look like?
A misguided past?
An uncertain future?
He hasn’t told them that.
He hasn’t told them that the side effects of time travel are unpredictable.
He hasn’t told them that he’s run the numbers, that there’s a good chance that his own foray into time travel is what caused so much of the problem. He hasn’t told them that he thinks all of this is his fault, that these are the actions he set in motion when he was 13 the first time, that he’s the one who doomed the world and he’s been living 13 on repeat ever since.
That’s why he has to get them back.
He has to free them from the loop.
He has to free them from his choices.
That’s why he’s 13 again.
Because this is his second chance to get it right.
With a rush of power, he materializes. He’s surprised to find that he’s not in his bedroom as intended. He’s missed by a few floors, and he’s in the medical wing.
His mother is standing there.
“Hello, Five,” she says with a smile.
“Mom?” he asks, confused. His equilibrium is faltering. His head rocks, and his stomach turns. The throbbing in his head is reaching unacceptable levels. “What are you doing here?”
“Your father’s orders,” she says. “He told me to be here, this particular time, this particular day.”
Five wrinkles his nose, but he can’t form the question. He can’t make his voice work as something coppery hits his top lip. He wonders how his old man saw this coming and he didn’t.
Without further motion, Five drops, crumbling to the ground.
In truth, it feels like he’s been falling all along.
-o-
Somewhere, in time and space, Five is still 13.
He’s trained hard all day, harder than ever before. Exhausted, worn out and angry, he stomps into his father’s office and demands the chance to prove himself.
“I know I can do it,” Five says. “I know I can travel through time.”
“You do, hm?” his father says, barely looking up from his work. “And do you think maybe there are a few things I know that you don’t, Number Five?”
Five makes a face, not sure why that matters. “Well, then tell me. What am I missing?”
Still writing away, his father sighs. “Why do you assume that you have to know?”
Five scoffs. “Because how can you make a good choice without all the information?”
His father looks up at him, quizzical. “And how can you make a good choice with all the information?”
Five scowls, shaking his head. “Just tell me!”
His father sighs, going back to his writing. “You’re going to have to trust me.”
“But why?” Five demands.
With a shake of his head, his father sounds disappointed. “You always do have to learn things the hard way, don’t you?”
“I can handle it, I know I can,” Five says, bolstering himself up. “Just tell me.”
His father, however, flits his hand through the air. “Carry on, Number Five,” he says, the conversation clearly closed. “I don’t imagine that anything I say or do will stop you anyway.”
-o-
Five wakes up with a start. He’s lying on his back on the examination table. Mom is poised above him, holding an IV.
“I already told you that your body cannot handle this strain,” she says.
Groggily, Five sits up. He grapples with the IV line but can’t quite coordinate his fingers enough to pull it out. “I have to be ready to leave.”
“If you want to leave, then keep the IV in,” Mom recommends. “You’ll never have the energy for a jump of the magnitude you’re thinking about without some help.”
Five stills, and looks up at her. “You know, don’t you?”
“You asked me if you could perform another jump,” she replies.
But Five shakes his head. “No, you know,” he says. “You knew all of this. You knew we’d show up, and you knew I’d pass out today. Just like you know that I’m making the jump back to my siblings’ present tomorrow.”
She doesn’t try to deny it. Passively, she stares at him.
“But how?” Five asks. “I mean, Dad--”
He stops short, and blinks a few times.
“Dad’s always known,” he says. “He’s known since I was 13 the first time. He probably knew from the day we were born -- before that.”
He pauses, as the full weight of that sinks in. “This is still part of his plan, isn’t it?”
Mom smooths her skirt. “Your father has lots of plans, dear. I only do as I’m told.’
Five looks at her anew, fresh understanding coloring his perspective. “Right,” he says. “So if you knew that so many years in the future, on an exact day, at an exact time, that we’d be coming back, you could, in theory, be ready?”
“My memory circuits are infallible with regular maintenance,” she says.
He lies back, slowly working his way through this revelation. “Good,” he says. “Because there’s a date I want you to remember.”
“Okay,” Mom says.
“And I want you to be ready, just like you were ready now,” he says.
She looks just slightly disconcerted. “Medical alert?”
“Of the most extreme kind,” he says. “Life and death.”
“Oh dear,” she says, fluffing his pillow before sitting down primly next to him. “Then you better tell me everything, darling. I want us both to be ready.”
-o-
He rests for the remainder of the afternoon, letting the IV do its work. When Mom clears him to move again, he thanks her and heads out. Checking the time, he realizes it’s dinner time.
Of course it is.
Well, he decides, making his way to the kitchen, tomorrow’s the big day.
But he probably has time for one more family meal.
-o-
It’s not hard to get them together. That’s what they are now, after all. They’re together.
It’s hard to believe that this isn’t how it’s always been, that they’ve each chosen to leave in their own way, in their own time, just to be here together again. He wonders if their 13 year old selves realize this. Wherever they are, they couldn’t possibly know. That’s what you do when you’re 13: you take it all for granted.
Five preps and serves the dinner himself. When the others try to talk about what’s coming tomorrow, he makes every attempt to deflect them.
“But it’s a big deal, tomorrow,” Luther says. “I want to make sure it’s all in order.”
“No kidding,” Diego says. “If we screw this shit up--”
“We’ve worked so hard,” Allison says, her voice stronger than it was two weeks ago.
“I haven’t been sober this long in, like years,” Klaus adds. “If I can do that, then I think we might actually pull this off.”
“We better pull it off,” Ben says.
Vanya smiles. She’s changed the most of all of them. Yet, somehow, she’s still exactly the same. “If Five says we’re ready, then we’re ready,” she says. “That’s all there is to it.”
Five swallows a mouth full of food and doesn’t think about his nagging headache. He doesn’t think about how tired he is or the fact that he’s nervous. He doesn’t think how this could be the last time he gets to do this, to sit here with them, to be him
When he was 13 the first time, he assumed tomorrow would always be there.
He makes no such assumptions now.
Instead, he takes this moment for what it is.
For what it will always be.
“That’s tomorrow,” he says, eschewing the talk of work and planning and saving the world. “But for now, who wants dessert?”
There’s a rumble of talking and laughter, and they debate the virtues of ice cream compared to fresh baked pie before someone finally finds the donuts that Mom has inexplicably bought. They talk about the years they’ve spent together, the ones they’ve spent apart. They talk about the years they hope to build in the future they hope to save.
It’s sentimental, sure. A ridiculous and wasteful display with no inherent practical value and immense personal pleasure. Five’s never been one to indulge like this, not under normal conditions anyway. But Five can’t quite control it, just like he can’t control the headaches and the nosebleeds.
Another side effect of time travel, it seems.
At least, that’s what Five tells himself.
-o-
The evening is the best Five’s ever had, if he’s being completely honest.
The next morning, he feels his absolute worst.
He’d sent them all to bed early, reminding them how eventful the day would be. He’d retired to his own room to review his notes and get to sleep, but the equations had kept eluded him and he hadn’t managed to sleep. When he finally did pass out, it was slumped over his desk, and he wakes up with a crick in his neck and a gnawing headache that makes his vision funny.
His dry mouth refuses to be satiated, and nothing can help. Food tastes bad, and he decides that his stomach feels so weak that it’s best to forgo eating altogether. He’s never vomited during his jumps before, but he imagines it might be an unpleasant -- or catastrophic -- experience.
The others, at least, look must more prepared. In fact, they seem downright excited. They’re up as early as he is, munching anxiously on breakfast while they chitchat about what they think the future will be. They have plans, you see. They have lots of plans, and Five listens to them like one might listen to a fortune teller talking about things that sound beautiful but you can’t imagine coming to pass.
It’s real for them, though.
For them, it’s all real.
That’s why Five pushes away from the table and gets shakily to his feet. He breathes in deep, and seeks to steady himself. “Okay,” he says, feeling his resolve like a bowling ball in the very pit of his stomach. “It’s time to do this.”
-o-
It’s time.
Five gathers them in the foyer, stands them in a circle. They’re anxious, but they’re ready. He feels weak, a little woozy at the knees, but there’s no choice but to stand strong among them.
“This will work,” he tells them. “I know it will work.”
They look at him, and they don’t see his throbbing headache. They don’t see his blurred vision or his chalky complexion. They don’t even see the 13 year that never grew up.
They just see him and the promise he offers.
He smiles, reaching down deep, one last time.
“You will be fine,” he assures them. “Each and every one of you will be just fine.”
It’s not a lie, at least.
That’s his last consolation as he rallies himself, brings the power brimming and burning to the surface. He runs through the numbers, but this time it’s not speculation. This time it’s the real thing. He calculates the force; he equates the pressure. By the time the air around him starts to bend, he can feel it, pulsing in his head. He smells blood when he forces it to rip apart, and by the time he makes the tear big enough for all of them, the pressure is bursting through him, threatening to tear him apart at the seams.
It requires the total accumulation of his 58 years, all of his energy, all of his knowledge, all of his willpower and tenacity. It necessitates, beyond everything else, all of his hope and affection for these people, these people who matter to him more than anything else.
These people who he’ll rip the universe apart to save.
These people who he’ll rip himself apart to redeem.
It’s time to go home.
Five uses the last of his focus and concentration to fling them forward.
It’s time.
-o-
Somewhere, in time and space, Five is still 13.
Harrumphing, his father gets out of the chair. “I’m raising heroes, not martyrs,” he says with disapproval. “I never expected you would be the one confused on that point.”
He rips his way into a future he can’t imagine and is terrified. Somewhere, he’s still that 13 year old boy, turning on his heel, running for home, calling for his father.
He yells until his voice is raw.
His father, however, flits his hand through the air. “Carry on, Number Five,” he says, the conversation clearly closed. “I don’t imagine that anything I say or do will stop you anyway.”
This time, someone answers.
-o-
They come back hard -- harder than Five has planned and anticipated. He hits the ground with numb legs, and it’s only by some kind of miracle that he doesn’t collapse immediately. As it is, he’s not sure he’s quite conscious, and his vision is tunneling dangerous as the rip around him closes itself back up with a zap.
Belatedly, he remembers to breathe, but it doesn’t do much. The oxygen only amplifies the suddenness of his disorientation, and he experiences a burst of vertigo that keeps him frozen in his spot. His head is on fire now; it’s the worst headache he’s ever experienced. It seems like his brain is literally trying to melt out of his ears.
That’s not hyperbole.
If anything, Five would liken it to understatement.
But as he stands there, he’s dimly aware that he’s home. He’s back in the mansion, standing in the foyer. He can see the tile beneath his feet, stretching across the expanse. It’s bigger than he remembers. The tile; the foyer. Everything’s bigger.
Alternatively, he’s smaller.
As he contemplates that dumbly, he lifts his eyes. In a distorted view, he can see his siblings. They’re still in a circle around him. Five has to count them one by one to be sure.
Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Ben and Vanya.
Luther moves first, scooping Allison up in a hug while she chokes on a cry. Diego whoops, walking over to give Klaus a punch to the shoulder. Klaus does a jig, something impromptu and silly, and he knocks hips with Ben, who laughs loud enough that it rattles Five’s chest. Vanya is staring at her hands, like she can’t believe she’s here.
Five wants to tell her to believe it; it’s real.
His mouth isn’t working, though.
In fact, nothing is working.
His consciousness is fracturing, and he has no means left to stop it. His energy reserves have gone dry; his motivation is seeping out of him because there’s nothing left to work for, nothing left to try. He’s done it. He’s done what he set out to do. He’s saved the world. He’s saved his family.
All the rest.
Well, those are just the side effects.
His hearing is gone now, and his vision has gone to gray. He sees Luther and Diego hug while Allison scoops Vanya up and Klaus jumps on top to join the embrace. Ben beams, flashing the thumbs up sign.
Five smiles.
It’s his last act, he decides.
A show of affection, of contentment.
The pain envelopes him, and his consciousness flees. He doesn’t even feel himself falling.
This is what it’s like, then.
This is what it’s like to finally get things right.
It feels like Five’s waited a lifetime.
Funny, though, Five’s still 13.
-o-
Somewhere, in time and space, Five is 13. He walks out of the house and doesn’t come back for a couple of decades. When he comes back, he’s still 13.
All the years he’s learned, all the years he’s worked. He’s grown, he’s hurt, he’s killed. He’s become someone he hates, and he’s sacrificed more things than he thought possible. He’s endured tragedy and loss, and he’s been formed by a world far harsher than his father’s cold parenting. The future is shit; the past is, too. All that matters is this moment. This singular moment.
Time is static and dynamic all at once. It’s evolving and ever present. It will remain constant and always change. Time is a joke, for the record. It’s a fallacy. A year, a day, a month, a lifetime. It doesn’t mean anything without context.
People are context.
People are meaning.
That’s what transcends the ages. That’s what transcends everything.
You see, in time and space, Five will always be 13.
-o-
After everything, Five is duly surprised when he wakes up. True, he’s spent most of his life approaching disaster with relatively indifference, but going into dangerous situation with nothing to lose is not the same thing as going into one with everything to lose. In all of Five’s long life, he knows what he’s putting on the line.
When he wakes up, he’s sore, he’s weak, he’s disoriented, he’s 13.
He’s also, most importantly, not alone.
Of the myriad of things he’s experienced lately, somehow, that strikes him as the most relevant.
Or, maybe his age is showing now. Maybe it’s just the most comforting.
In his defense, he is long for comfort. He’s spent years licking his own wounds, and these wounds are more serious than any he’s had before. He can’t know this objectively, but it’s still a truth he holds inside himself, a small revelation that appears to him as self evident.
It’s more than the headache, which is severe, to say the least. His senses are equally deadened and heightened. He feels like the entirely of his body has been swathed in cotton, and though he experiences things acutely, it’s distant. He’s distant. Hearing, sight, smell, touch -- him. His awareness has been disconnected somehow, and though there’s clearly been some effort to put him back together, it’s not entirely clear if it’s worked just yet.
That is the part that is truly disconcerting. It’s a pervasive sort of weakness, wherein he’s not sure he’s capable of sitting up or standing, much less kill someone as necessary. It’s a weakness that goes beyond the physical, one that permeates the mind. Though his thoughts trip over each other wildly, they are uncontrolled. His thought processes are truncated, and it’s like looking pieces of a puzzle and knowing exactly the picture they are supposed to make but he can’t put the pieces together to save his life.
That analogy is either very poor or very apt. He knows, in the apocalypse, with the Commission, whatever has happened to him would leave him for dead.
He’s not in the apocalypse, though.
He’s not with the Commission.
And he’s not alone.
Five is lying in the bed, but around him, his siblings are situated. They’re seated, perched anxiously on the edges of their chairs. Five can’t know for sure -- he’s been out of it too long -- but he gets the distinct impression they’ve been waiting like this for awhile.
This isn’t knowledge or observation. This is more than instinct, even. This is just the kind of thing you know. The kind of thing -- the very special kind of thing -- that transcends time and space. Some things in this universe, you see, just are.
Maybe you have to be at your weakest to see it. Maybe you have to surrender your control to know you’ve never had it all along. Maybe you have to concede to the darkness before you realize that there’s always been light if you know where to look.
All of time and space, Five is 13, and he knows that this is where he’s simply supposed to be.
Swallowing back, he tries to muster some moisture in his throat. He licks his dry lips and tries to clear the haze from his vision. Neither is quite successful, but he still forces himself to speak.
“Hey,” he says, the word barely audible and jumbled. “You’re here.”
“The bigger surprise is that you’re here,” Luther quips lightly, and his smile does little to bely the worry he’s clearly experiencing.
“Not for a lack of trying,” Diego adds, and he says it like a joke but Five knows he’s not kidding at all.
Allison is the one who manages to smile in a way that looks real. She reaches over, her hand on the edge of his bed. “How do you feel?”
The question redirects Five’s attention back to his physical state. Which is, still, horrible. He breathes through the pain as best he could and does not attempt to hide the pain. “Like shit,” he says.
Klaus snorts, both incredulous and amused. “I should think so, little man,” he says. “You tried to turn your brain to mush and you didn’t even bother to get high doing it, which to me, really defeats the purpose.”
Ben rolls his eyes, and interjects softly over Klaus’ answer. “You had a hemorrhage in your brain,” he says. “A pretty big one. You’re lucky Mom was here so fast.”
Five contemplates the full scope of what they’re saying. He thinks about what he’s ready in the medical journals, about how quickly a brain bleed can kill. He thinks about the percentages, the long term survival rates, the need for fast treatment or else the risk of death or permanent impairment skyrockets. This is the kind of injury people die from, the kind they don’t recover from.
But it’s not lucky, he remembers dimly. He remembers the instructions he’d given Mom, about this time, this date, this injury. Clearly, despite tampering and degradation, she hadn’t forgotten.
His siblings mistake his silence as confusion. Vanya sits forward, her expression shaky. “You’ve been in a coma for a week,” she explains gently, as if this is a revelation that she is worried might upset Five. “Mom put you in one to give you time to heal.”
“After the surgery, anyway,” Luther says. He shrugs, like he’s apologizing. “For what it’s worth, she says it went really well.”
Surgery had been a given, though Five had not truly considered it for what it would be. Tentatively, he reaches a hand up to his head. He realizes now that the feeling of being wrapped is not all psychosomatic. There is a large batch of gauze wrapped and pressed tightly. Only now can Five feel the line of stitches hot and itchy along the skull beneath it.
“Dude, leave it alone,” Diego advises, making a face. “I mean, it’s not pretty and it’s still healing.”
Five puts his hand back down, too tired to attempt moving it farther anyway.
Allison sighs a bit. “I know you like knowing the full story, so you might as well know it now,” she says. “It was a craniotomy, but the swelling’s down and there’s a metal plate in place. It’ll take some time for your hair to grow back, but Mom really outdid herself. I mean, I had no idea she was trained for brain surgery.”
Five can’t say for sure she was, initially. With all these years to plan, he knows she would make sure of it by now. This takes too much effort to think about, much less explain, so he doesn’t bother.
“Besides, you’re on strict bedrest for awhile now -- a long while,” Klaus says. “I’m sure by the time you’re back up on your feet, your hair will have grown back and you can go back to murdering people in style.”
Ben rolls his eyes. “The important thing is that you’re okay. You’re still you.”
“You scared us, Five,” Vanya says. “You really scared us.”
Five’s not even sure what that means. He stares at her, looks at each of them, and says, “Huh.”
They look back at him, the colored drained from their anxious faces. Finally, Allison brings her brows together. “Huh?” she repeats. “That’s all you can say?”
Five does his best to muster up a shrug. He’s not sure if it works or not, but it’s no matter. “What do you want me to say?”
Klaus laughs, short and brittle. “What do you think we want you to say? I mean, you are the family genius, I thought.”
Five’s head hurts too much for this. Klaus is hard enough to understand when Five’s not recovering from brain surgery.
“Try an apology,” Diego says, cutting to the point. “That would work.”
“An apology?” Five asks. He draws his brows together but it hurts like hell, pulling against the stitches and intensifying his headache for a moment. “What for?”
“For scaring us, for one thing,” Luther says. “I mean, we got back, just like we planned, and the next thing we know, you were passed out on the floor, bleeding out your nose and ears. We thought you were dead.”
Five imagines it was terrifying, though he can’t remember why he didn’t think of that except only that it was inconsequential. A side effect. “A necessary risk,” he muses softly.
“You shouldn’t have taken that risk, Five,” Ben says. “Not if you knew it was that bad.”
“But it worked, didn’t it?” Five asks, no guises involved. “Luther said it himself, it went entirely as planned.”
“Almost working? Five, you nearly died,” Allison says. “That’s not almost working. That’s abject failure.”
His ability to understand irrational emotion has never been particularly keen. It’s even harder right now, with his senses as mixed up as they are. “But you got back. The world didn’t end,” Five explains. “That was the goal. Everyone lives.”
“Everyone except you,” Vanya says, and she sounds a little hurt by this. “Five, everyone includes you.”
This is a fact he’s not sure what to do with, honestly. It’s not a context which he’s worried about. He’s always existed outside of time and space; the idea that he is a static player in a given moment defies his understanding of his own purpose.
It’s a sense of perspective he had stripped away from him when he was 13 years old.
Funny enough, he’s still 13.
“And don’t think we don’t know you set this shit up,” Diego says, and he sounds annoyed a little. He mostly sounds hurt. “We know you had Mom on standby. You told her to be ready for this in the past.”
It had seemed inconsequential at the time that they might find out. It’s not that he thinks his siblings are complete idiots -- though, in some ways, they well and truly are. It’s just Five’s learned to prioritize in his life. He’s learned that the ends will justify the means. His attention can be ruthless, cutting out all the things that don’t matter to truly focus on the things they are necessary.
Saving his family, saving the world: the only priorities.
Everything else: background noise.
He is too tired for denial. He’s too weak for equivocation. “I thought it would at least give me a chance of surviving this,” he says plaintively. “A hail mary, if you will.”
Luther looks downright appalled. “So you did know the risk, the full extent,” he says, like he’s been trying to talk himself into another explanation. “You knew it would probably kill you to bring us back.”
Five lifts one shoulder meekly. “Side effects.”
“Five,” Allison says, nearly aghast. “Side effects is a headache and a bloody nose. You nearly died. What on earth were you thinking?”
He looks at her, a little befuddled. “I was thinking about saving our family and making sure the world didn’t explode in the process,” he says. “As long as those two criteria were met, everything else was within acceptable measures.”
Klaus laughs, and he sounds a little irrational. “Saving the family? Minus one, I guess,” he says, and then he tips his head toward Ben conspiratorially. “And he’s supposed to be the one who’s good at math.”
His headache being what it is, Five has no energy to put together a pithy reply. “The math was good. Six for one.”
“I don’t think you know just how close you came,” Ben ventures, somewhat more diplomatically than his siblings. “You had a massive bleed in your brain. You’re lucky that you’re alive, that you’re you.”
“But that’s why I told Mom,” he says. “I didn’t leave it to luck.”
“That’s bullshit,” Vanya says, and the wounded look on her face is the first and only reason Five’s had pause about this so far.
“But the side effects were worth it,” he insists.
“Still bullshit,” Vanya says, and her voice threatens to crack as she blinks back tears. “You should have told us. Why didn’t you tell us?
His mouth opens but the words don’t quite come out. He looks from Vanya to the others, taking in the earnestness of their stares. He’s hurt them, he realizes more acutely now. He’s saved them but he’s hurt them. In some way, some impossible way, he’s betrayed them on the most basic level. Quietly now, he admits what they already know. “I knew you’d stop me.”
“Damn straight we would,” Diego grunts.
“We do things together, Five,” Luther says.
Allison nods. “No one is expendable.”
“I just can’t imagine that you actually thought you’d get away with it,” Klaus says. “How did you think you’d get away with this?”
“Well, to be honest, I thought I’d be dead and thus it’d be a moot point,” he says. Then, starting to feel sheepish, he swallows hard against the pain that lingers in his skull. “And I couldn’t live with the idea of you not living. I had to do whatever it took.”
This much they understand.
Because they feel the exact same way.
It’s a somewhat surreal realization. It’s not logic. It’s not rational. It’s something more fundamental, something Five can’t quite explain.
“Well,” Ben says, his voice a little hoarse. “We know the feeling. That’s how family is, after all.”
Vanya’s eyes are all but shining now. “We can’t all be laying our lives down for one another. We can’t live like that. This family, we do it together. We live, we die. Together. No more secrets.”
The truth is something he can’t deny her, he can’t deny them.
He blinks his own eyes, surprised to find them wet. “I’m sorry,” he says when there’s nothing else for him to say. “I never wanted to hurt you, but I have to tell you the truth. If I had to do it again, I’d make the same choice.”
It’s not defiance. It’s not superiority.
It’s love, pure and simple.
Five realizes it only a second after they do.
Time travel is a powerful ability, after all.
Family, though, is more powerful still.
Luther sighs, a little put out. “Fine,” he says. “But maybe we can limit the time travel for the time being?”
“Or indefinitely,” Diego says. “I still feel weird and it’s been a week.”
“Also Five’s brain probably won’t survive another round,” Allison points out.
“You’re all amateurs,” Klaus says with a dreamy wave of his hand. “Though I suspect the briefcase version is a little safer.”
Ben raises his eyebrows. “Debatable.”
Vanya inhales and rallies them together. “We’re here, we’re back, we’re together,” she says, finally lifting the edges of her mouth into a smile. “What more could we possibly want anyway?”
Five, tired, weary and hurting, can only agree.
-o-
There are many side effects to time travel, as it turns out. Brain bleeds, possibly age regression, alternate timelines, and so on.
It just so happens that realizing your family cares about you (as much as you care about them) is just another one of them.