Umbrella Academy fic: Childish Things (3/3)
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
-o-
Five awareness returned with a screeching halt. A steady hand reached out, holding him down so he didn’t fall out of his seat. Even so, the pressure on the blade in his stomach grew in intensity, and Five groaned, wanting to pass out again.
Suddenly, the door was being opened, and Five blinked as he was hoisted up and out into the morning sunlight. It was a frantic, pressing movement forward before he was deposited on the ground. There was a pounding, and by the time Five looked up, he finally recognized where he was.
He was home, as it turned out.
Five had finally come home.
-o-
After that, things happened rather quickly. His siblings were at the door within minutes, just slow enough to miss the van as it sped away but just quick enough to catch Five before he passed out for good.
Luther carried him up, Diego running ahead to get Mom. Allison held open the doors while Klaus told Five he was going to be okay, Ben totally agreed, Five was going to be okay. Vanya walked next to them, crying as she held his hand.
He was still awake when they got to the medical room, and he was still awake when Mom frowned down at him, her medical programming kicking into full gear. She ordered Klaus to gather a few supplies, and asked Diego if he was ready to donate blood. Allison helped cut away Five’s clothes while Luther stepped back so his large frame wouldn’t be in the way. Vanya was still crying, taking up his hand in hers until Mom shooed them all out, no nonsense in her voice.
“If I’m going to save your brother I need to work,” she told them firmly. “Pogo, please get the blood. Allison, if you would like to assist--”
There was shuffling, complaining, and Five drifted precariously away. Mom was above him again, but her expression was softer this time.
“You are a silly boy,” she said gently. “All these years, and you’re still making messes.”
Five was too weak to reply, his voice parched.
“There now,” she said, hanging the IV bag that Five couldn’t remember being attached to his arm. “Everything’s okay now.”
Five had every reason to doubt her.
Still, as he closed his eyes, he didn’t.
He really, really didn’t.
-o-
After that, things were dark.
Like, really dark.
This could only be attributed to the drugs, of which he knew Mom had pumped him full of plenty. He had snippets of awareness, where someone changed his IV bag or checked his bandages. Sometimes, he was aware of a presence. Mom as her skirts swished efficiently by his bedside. Luther as he sat in a chair two sizes too small. Diego as he paced, unable to do anything with his hands since leaving his knives outside. Allison sitting calmly by his bedside, checking her phone for texts. Klaus rambling at long lengths, stories about people he didn’t remember meeting at places he didn’t remember going. Vanya, too. Vanya, mostly. She was the one who held his hand, the one who didn’t tell him he’s going to be okay but asked him.
“Please, Five. You can’t leave me again. You won’t leave me again, will you? Will you?”
Five, slipping back into oblivion, hoped he could oblige her this time.
-o-
When you got right down to it, okay was an anticlimactic resolution to some of life’s most tumultuous events. Too often, the solutions to complex problems were often far less interesting than the problems themselves. For all that Five had been through, his recovery was a slow and quiet affair.
Five spent a great deal of time unconscious, naturally, but he came back to awareness by degrees. His siblings spent less and less time fretting as Five spent more and more time with his eyes open. Soon, he was able to talk again. He was waiting for them to ask the question about what had happened. When enough time had gone by, Five asked it for them.
“What the hell happened anyway?”
They’re all gathered, as they were wont to do these days. Mom tried to keep them in shifts, but she was only moderately successful. Somehow, during dinner, all of Five’s siblings showed up and crammed into the medical room without any intention of leaving.
Klaus looked horrified at the question, and Vanya had the distinct look like she might cry again. Diego looked awkwardly at his hands while Allison winced, her eyes turned to Luther while Ben hovered sympathetically in the background.
Luther, being Number One, cleared his throat. “Well, Five,” he said, stopping uncertainly. He started again, less certain than before. “You were kidnapped.”
Five would have sighed if it didn’t hurt so much. His midsection was still tender with the red row of stitches across his stomach. “Right. I know that. But what happened?”
“Dude, this can wait,” Diego interjected, shaking his head. “You need to get stronger.”
“No,” Five said. “I mean, I’m lying here in this bed. You all hover around me all day. And you’re really going to tell me that you don’t want to talk about it?”
It was more blunt that they were prepared for. For all that their father had trained them to be superheroes, they were cowards in their own rights. Allison finally cleared her throat. “We know they nabbed you off the street. We were tracking your location when they dropped you off.”
That was a nice way of putting it, conveniently leaving out the part where Five had been left bleeding out on their doorstep.
“But a lot of it, man, we don’t know,” Klaus hedged. “I mean, they stabbed you and then dropped you off. That seems weird, right?” He looked at the others for confirmation. “That seems weird?”
Five sighed with a small harrumph. He was a proud man, but he wasn’t overly vain. He was pragmatic enough to own up to his mistakes. “The stabbing was an accident. Happened when I tried to escape. In fact, most of this was my fault. I never should have let it get this far.”
“Five, it’s not your fault--” Vanya said.
“I have the power to jump through space,” Five reminded them. “And I let two amateurs get one up on me.”
“Five, it’s not that simple--”
“Of course it is,” Five said, feeling a bit annoyed now. At himself for letting this happen. At them for not acknowledging it. “I mean, I got taken off the street. I didn’t even suspect them.”
“And why would you?” Allison asked. She wrinkled her nose. “Five, you can’t expect disaster around every turn. That’s not how you live a life.”
“But it’s how you survive,” Five said, and he could feel the emotion rising with a blush in his cheeks. “I was sloppy. Even if you could write off the initial abduction, my performance while in their custody was atrocious.”
“Dude,” Diego said. “You had a massive concussion.”
“That’s no excuse--”
“Uh, yeah,” Klaus said. “I think it might be.”
It was Five’s turn to screw up his nose. “What do you mean?”
Vanya smiled, approaching him gently. “Mom said it looked like you’d been hit several times in the head, but that first hit -- the one that probably got you off the street -- was really bad. You probably never fully recovered that whole day. You’re still not recovered from it now.”
Five gaped at her, not sure he understood what she was saying.
“It’s true,” Luther said softly. “It wasn’t blood loss and infection that kept you out for a week. Mom sedated you, worried about the swelling in your brain.”
“But I--” Five started, not sure what he wanted to say. But he was losing his touch? He thought he was too weak? He thought he was going soft? Or maybe just that he didn’t understand weakness or what to do with it or how to accept it at all? “I screwed up.”
He finished the words through a tight throat, and he blinked harshly, refusing to acknowledge anything resembling tears in his eyes.
“Yeah, well,” Luther said, smiling stupid. “It’s not the first time.”
Diego snorted. “Probably won’t be the last time either.”
“Welcome to the club,” Allison added gently.
He stared at them with something like wonder. “So you think it’s just okay?”
“I think okay is the only thing it can be,” Klaus answered. “I mean, come on. What else can it be?”
It could be lots of things, but Five was at a loss for all of them. It might be the drugs; hell, it might be the concussion, apparently.
Vanya expression was warm as she closed the last of the distance, her hand on top of his. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away. “You’re here, back with us, we’re together,” she said. “What could possibly be more okay than that?”
-o-
It was nice; it really was. His siblings were kind and supportive. They didn’t accuse him of weakness or badger him with tips for what he should do better next time. After spending years as a victim of his own self flagellation, the concept of unconditional absolution was new to him and not entirely unwelcome.
Except it wasn’t unconditional.
Not quite.
His siblings weren’t trying to extort him or anything like that. They weren’t trying to use emotional manipulation to get something out of him. But that didn’t mean there weren’t strings attached.
The strings were just what he’d feared.
After his rescue, his siblings were happy to act like he’d done nothing wrong.
Because after his rescue, his siblings now apparently looked at him like he was 13 again.
And fine, technically he was 13 again, but they were conveniently forgetting the part where he was far more dangerous than all of them put together. They were forgetting about the countless people he’d murdered with his own hands, and he wasn’t proud of that but he had credentials, damn it. Credential that made it important -- no, that made it necessary -- for him to be treated like an actual adult.
Instead of treating him with that kind of respect, they treated him with kid gloves. Luther had the audacity to actually fluff his pillow, and when Five tried to throttle him for it, his much larger brother gently detangled Five’s fingers from around his throat and said, “Come on, none of that now. If you’re not careful, you’ll pull your stitches.”
He might as well have patted him on the head like he was being a naughty puppy biting a slipper.
One might expect Diego to be better. Diego was all business and to the point. He didn’t seem like the type to get sentimental, which was probably why he was incredibly sentimental. Every time Five tried to get up, he looked like he was about to have a panic attack before rushing over to do whatever task Five needed for him. “Just let me do it for awhile, okay?” he said. “I’d rather be put out than worry about you some more. Do you know how much you scared us?”
Five could imagine, though he doubted it justified coddling to this degree. When Allison tried to help him to the bathroom two weeks after his incident, he really felt like things were getting out of hand. “We all need a little help sometimes,” she said, smiling in a very motherly, very annoying way. “It’s no big deal.”
That was easy for her to say. No one was offering to pull down her pants while she took a shit and being right there to help him wipe his ass when he was done.
Klaus, who he had hoped would be better, was just as bad. Klaus had always had a tenuous grip on reality.
Until it came to this, apparently.
Five nearly dying had sobered him more than an AA meeting every could.
As much as he appreciated his brother’s ability not to get high, Five was not particularly fond of being an object lesson. As if his mistakes could be substantiated with some misplaced notion of the greater good. That was the same kind of thinking that said how lucky he was for getting stuck in the apocalypse because it gave him a chance to save the world. Right, like fate was trying to be kind by marooning him in the least hospitable environment at a young age so he could save humanity.
Five didn’t believe in luck or chance or karma or anything. Sometimes bad shit happened. That was it, the end. There was no moral, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to waste time pretending like there was.
“Like, honestly, I think I feel really good about this,” Klaus explained one afternoon.
Five, though rested and fed, was still exhausted by this comment. “You feel good about me being abducted and nearly bleeding to death?”
“Well, not when you put it like that, but--”
“There’s not really another way to put it--”
“I just mean there’s good to come from this, right?” Klaus asked. “It’s a reminder that we’re all human, all of us, even you.”
It was obvious that Klaus was well intentioned, but that only made it worse. Five glowered at him. “I’m quite glad that my humiliation can help you out.”
“It’s not -- I didn’t -- there’s no humiliation,” Klaus said. He scoffed a light laugh. “I mean, come on, Five. I know you were this trained assassin and you survived the apocalypse, but now you’re my kid brother. I think I like that, having a kid brother.”
Unimpressed, Five sighed. “I’m 58, Klaus.”
Klaus smiled, reaching out and tweaking Five’s cheek. “And you don’t look a day over 12!”
Murdering Klaus would be preferable but rather a lot of work, and honestly, telling his siblings would be exhausting, so Five had no choice but to let it slide.
He had no choice about a lot of things these days. Of all the things he’d lost in this incident, he missed his autonomy the most. His privacy, however, was right up there.
He discovered, rather belatedly, that his siblings didn’t even trust him to sleep alone. Yep, they actually didn’t trust him to be unconscious without their nonstop supervision. Five learned this the hard way when he woke up in a cold sweat one night, a scream lodged in his chest as he panted for clarity. Blinking in the darkness, he was surprised to see Ben leaning close to the bed.
Surprised was the nice way of putting it.
“Are you okay?” Ben asked, wide eyed and translucent. “Do you need me to get the others?”
Five, who had had a nightmare, the ones that he was prone to having about death and devastation and your usual dalliances, took a shuddering breath and gritted his teeth with a snarl. “No,” he said. “But you can feel free to leave.”
Ben leaned back a bit, but he didn’t give any ground. “I’m here if you need me, Five.”
“And if I need you to leave?” Five muttered, turning over to go back to sleep.
Ben didn’t answer; Ben didn’t leave.
Five, by consequence, didn’t go back to sleep.
As if that wasn’t enough, there was still the issue of Vanya. Vanya had always been his favorite sibling, and he really had no qualms saying it like that. She’d always been the one to listen to him without judgement, to accept him for who he was. Things had felt a little different since he’d been back.
Now, after his kidnapping and near death experience, they were more than different. They were markedly worse.
She lingered, uncertain of herself but clearly too scared to leave most of the time. There was an unsettling sense of obligation, like she had made years of peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches, so she was sure as hell going to hold a bedside vigil.
And that was what it was. It was a vigil. She wasn’t there merely to keep him company. She was there to watch him -- and watch him, she did. She monitored everything he did and said. In some ways, for as much as Vanya had issues with their old man, she acted just like him, leaving nothing to chance. She structured his day so he would have exercise and food in equal intervals, retrieving supplies for him to read for a set amount of time and alloting a set period for mathematics.
In some ways, he thought she probably intended this as a kindness.
In all other ways, however, it felt like he was being cloistered. Closeted. Sequestered.
It chafed at him, the same way his father’s control had chafed at him the first time he was 13. He could remember now, the rage he felt, the frustration that had led him to leave the house and jump his way into a future he could get away from.
It wasn’t a mistake he intended to make again.
But this was a lifestyle, favorite sibling or not, he did not think he could actually abide.
“Five, it’s time to get up.”
“Five, have you done your math yet?”
“Five, we have about 30 minutes for music.”
“Five, you have to practice your skills, get your strength up.”
“Five, you know what it takes to be in the field.”
“Five, you’re not ready yet.”
And on and on and on.
To think, these were the siblings he’d come back to save.
Now, if he wasn’t careful, he might end up murdering them himself.
-o-
Ultimately, three weeks passed.
Mom said she was quite pleased with his progress. She said that he showed no signs of infection and that there was no apparent complication. She approved increasing amounts of activity and seemed content with his performance all around.
Ironically, the mother figure with programmed protective instincts was the most lenient of them all.
The others stridently objected on every front.
Three weeks into his convalescence, and it was still a convalescence to them. Their coddling, and their babying and their incessant worrying when it was increasingly apparent that Five was fine.
Five tried to endure this. He really did try. After all, they probably had a valid point. Five had nearly gotten himself killed. He had let himself be kidnapped by amateurs, and he had to live with those consequences. Maybe he needed to be treated like a child. He couldn’t deny that there was a logic to it, a logic that his siblings would probably be swayed by.
There was a problem with that, however. A very fundamental problem.
To the point: Five didn’t want to be treated like a child.
Not just that. This wasn’t a mere matter of preference. This wasn’t him throwing a temper tantrum like some toddler who didn’t know better.
No, Five didn’t just dislike being treated like a child.
He hated it. He actively hated it and loathed it.
In fact, when you got right down to it, Five couldn’t take it.
He had endured a lot throughout this ordeal. He had accepted Mom’s restrictions, and he’d let his siblings take over a great deal of his medical care. There was no reason to fight on those fronts; he knew he needed steady care in order for recovery to be possible. But that didn’t mean he was a child. Accepting authorized medical care did not strip him of his maturity. It didn’t make him a child.
It couldn’t.
A child was helpless and dependent. A child had no volition, no control. Children were devoid of intention and they had no capacity to enact actual change. Children were pathetic, weak and practically unnecessary apart from the need to continue the human race.
That didn’t mean that Five didn’t like children. It really didn’t. He had some interest in them, and he found some of them to be palatable. He liked talking to Allison about Claire, and he had meant what he said: he wanted to get to know her.
But children had a time and place, and Five didn’t fit in either.
No, Five had buried the child he was in the apocalypse along with the rest of his family. As far as he was concerned, his 13 year old self was still there, killed by his own hubris.
That was the problem, then. His siblings were looking at him and seeing a person who didn’t exist, who hadn’t existed in more than 40 years. They looked at him and missed the point entirely. They didn’t see him. They didn’t know him.
So who was he now?
Who was this person he had become?
Where was the old man who had survived the end of the world? Where was the hardened assassin who had beaten the Commission at its own game? Where was Five, the man he had become, in the body of a broken child?
Didn’t they understand? Why couldn’t they see?
For as much as their old man had impaired their childhoods, they had still had the chance to mature. They’d still had room to make their mistakes and recover. They had still had a choice with the people they’d become. The right choice, the wrong choice, choice. Something his siblings would never value enough.
Because what choice had Five had? When the consequences had been so dire, so immediate and so unforgiving?
Being a child was a luxury, after all. An absolute luxury. A luxury Five had never had. Or maybe just one he had forfeited when he was 13 the first time around.
It was a luxury he didn’t want now, not if he was still going to be a valuable part of this family.
Why didn’t they see that? Why couldn’t they understand? Why couldn’t they see who he was? How could they look at him and still see an innocent child? Didn’t they remember who he was? Couldn’t they remember what he’d done?
It was intolerable, that was what it was. Five had endured as best he could all these days, but he was at his breaking point. He could feel it, crawling beneath his skin. A restlessness he couldn’t contain. An anger and frustration he could no longer abide.
Five had grown up years before any of them.
And it was about time they realized that.
-o-
Separately, his siblings were difficult to handle. Put together, and Five wasn’t on enough pain medications to deal with them.
At all.
It came to a head at dinner.
Dinner was, by far, Five’s least favorite meal of the day. Now, more than ever.
Allison had made a pasta dish (Five rarely craved carbs), but Luther worried that the meat would be too much for Five’s recovering digestive system (it wasn’t). Diego thought they needed to include more protein (he had no idea) and that they should grind up double the meat into the sauce. Klaus, for some reason, was worried that Five would spill on himself and kept trying to tuck a napkin under his chin (as if that mattered). When Vanya tried to actually cut his his pasta for him (because of course Five was an invalid now), Five didn’t give a shit how many stitches he had. He was done.
“No -- just -- stop,” he said, pushing Vanya’s hands away. “Stop.”
It was his voice more than his touch that made her recoil, his expression cutting like the blade of a knife through the banter that always accompanied this painful family event. The others stopped too, looking between him and Vanya uncertainly.
The assholes couldn’t even bring themselves to be decisive when it mattered. Five pressed his lips together, knowing there was no way to hold this back now. “You can all stop,” he said, working hard to keep his voice steady, barely controlling the rage that threatened to overtake him.
“You’re still weak, Five,” Vanya implored. She gestured toward the plate of food on his lap since he still wasn’t allowed to leave this damn room for any extended period of time. “We’re trying to help you.”
“No, you’re trying to keep me weak,” Five said. He scoffed. “I know you’ve all talked to Mom. She says I’m fine.”
“She says your wounds are healing,” Allison said. “There’s a difference.”
“How?” Five asked. “Will my wounds not heal if I cut my own food?”
He shot a glance back at Vanya, undaunted now, even when hurt flickered in her eyes.
“Will my wounds not heal if I get out of this bed and sleep in my own room? If I do my exercises without your supervision? Will my wounds not heal if I sleep on my own? For the love of -- will my wounds not heal without your continued monitoring? Is that what you all think?”
His heart was pounding now, and he could feel the pressure in his skull mount. His head wound had cleared weeks ago with no lingering effect, but he could feel it now. Threatening to blur the edges of his vision with the exertion.
“We all need a little help sometimes, that’s all,” Klaus ventured.
“This isn’t help!” Five said, voice starting to rise now. He pointed at them again, nodding at his food. “This is smothering!”
“You need to take it easy,” Luther coached him quietly.
“Why?” Five asked. “How am I ever going to get better, get back in the field, if I take it easy?”
His siblings exchanged sudden, awkward, silent glances, and Five’s mouth fell open.
“Wait,” he said. “You don’t think I should be back in the field, do you?”
“Well, not right now,” Diego said. “I mean, you’re a mess.”
“We’re all a mess,” Ben corrected for him. “Still learning to control our powers.”
Indignant now, Five shook his head. “I’m not learning. I’m 58. My powers are perfectly honed.”
“But that was when you were 58, Five,” Vanya said. She looked sorry -- so very sorry -- and it felt like a knife twisting in his gut all over again. “It’s got to be hard now that you’re 13 again. Relearning to use your powers in this body. I mean, we get it--”
Five blinked, still shocked by the insinuation. “Because I’m 13,” he repeated, a little awestruck to hear it said so plainly. “Because I’m a child.”
Vanya closed her mouth. The others looked noticeably away.
Five laughed, sharp and bitter. Nausea swelled in his gut. “Because you think I’m a child.”
No one denied it. He had to give the bastards credit for that. They weren’t backing down. At least they stood by their beliefs.
Even if those beliefs were dead wrong. “I’m not a child,” he said, voice quiet at first. When it didn’t garner a response, he picked up the plate and threw it at the wall. It shattered violently, and Five’s voice pitched to a yell now. “I’m not a child!”
The fact that he was throwing a temper tantrum was not withstanding. He had grounds for this. He had justification. This was weeks in the making. Months, probably. It was a conversation he’d needed to have since the moment he came back to their present, since the moment he ripped himself apart and hastily put himself back together for them.
Breathing heavily, he shook his head, more adamant than before. “This has to stop. All of it. Right now.”
“Stop what exactly?” Allison asked, eyebrows up.
“The babying,” Five said. “The coddling.”
“The what?” Diego asked, nose wrinkled.
“You’re treating me like a child, like a baby,” Five said. “Bringing me meals and watching me sleep. It has to stop. Now.”
Luther stepped in, as if to inject a voice of reason. “Five, you were seriously injured--”
Five laughed, feeling vaguely hysterical his anger was pulsing so intensely. “Right, and so that must mean I’m helpless.”
“We didn’t say that,” Luther said.
“You didn’t have to!” Five shot back, undeterred now. “I mean, come on. You think I don’t know it? You think I can’t see it? You see me differently now. Your opinion of me has changed. You think that, what, I make one mistake and now I can’t take care of myself? I let my guard down for one minute -- one tiny minute -- and now I’m useless. Is that it? I’m a useless child?”
Klaus looked particularly distressed. “Five, come on--”
“I mean, that must be it,” Five said, ignoring the pinch of pain in his side where his vigor was pulling at the stitches. “That’s why you tell me what I need to do, when I need to do it, how much to eat.”
“Five--” Ben started.
But Five was past listening. He was done. “I made a mistake, okay?” he asked, punctuating the sentiment with his finger. “I made one damn mistake. I know I let two morons get the drop on me, but I don’t make the same mistake twice. I learn, and I get better. How do you think I managed to survive an apocalypse where you all died? How do you think I ripped apart time and space to get back here in the first place?”
“Five, please,” Vanya tried to interject.
But not even Vanya could stop him now. He was spewing with rage now; it tingled through him, lifting the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck. “No, no please,” he snarled back, more vitriolic than ever. “You need to understand, all of you. I’m the one who came back here to save you. You’re the children here, you. Without me, you would be dead, every last one of you, dead as doornails and you wouldn’t have even seen it coming.”
Allison held up her hands, placating. “Five, you need to relax--”
Relaxing wasn’t going to help. If anything, relaxing would make it worse. It would prove to them that he was weak, he was vulnerable, and Five couldn’t. He wouldn’t. “No, you know what? Maybe I don’t learn from my mistakes. Maybe I should have let you die along with the rest of humanity. Being back here, seeing you, seeing the world, seeing humanity, I’m not sure why I thought it was all such a big deal to let it burn.”
Vanya swallowed. Hard. Her eyes were wet again. “You don’t mean that.”
Sneering at her, he pounced and pounced hard. “Maybe I do,” he said, eyes glinting like steel now. “Maybe I mean all of it. Maybe I really am the bastard I told you I was. Maybe you should just leave me be because I can take care of myself. I always have.”
Luther, big and strong as he was, looked stricken. “Five--”
“Go,” he ordered coldly. “All of you. Go.”
“Five, come on,” Diego said, softly cajoling.
“I mean it,” Five told him flatly, told all of them. “Get the hell out.”
They hesitated, looking from one to another uncertainly.
“Now!” Five yelled with finality, the sound of his own voice echoing off the walls. “Or I swear, I will rip this IV out and leaves this house tonight and never come back.”
The threat was not idle, and his siblings knew it. Five stared them all down, one at a time, until they had no doubt. Luther was the first to leave, his large frame shuffling out the door with his head down. Diego followed behind him, glancing back for one mournful moment. Allison held out longer, regarding Five with consideration before she left. Klaus and Ben left together, both looking equally pained. Vanya was the last to leave, lingering in that way of her. But as she hesitated to speak, he stared her down unrelentingly.
It was hard, sure, but she had to grow up.
They all had to grow up.
Just like he had.
Blinking back her tears, Vanya ducked her head and hurried out after the others, leaving Five alone.
Five sat there, still breathing heavily. His heart was still pounding; his head still ringing. The adrenaline was still coursing, but there was no foe to fight. He blinked numbly, looking at his siblings’ plates, full of uneaten food, strewn about the room. His own plate was a mess of broken glass and pasta, shattered on the floor amongst them.
He let out a breath, and felt the flush of emotions. Trembling for a moment, he tried to concentrate on his breathing, using mental acuity to stave off what would either be a panic attempt or a mental breakdown.
They had left, at least.
They had left, just like he’d asked.
They’d left.
Five had demanded their respect, and they had given it to him. Five was alone now, by his own insistence, willpower and design.
They had left.
He exhaled again, shakier than before. His stomach was emptier than he remembered; his body more tired. But he was alone. They had left. Just like he’d asked.
He slumped back, closing his eyes as he tried to rest. Because that was the thing about Five. Sometimes, you see, in a world full of bad things, sometimes he actually got what he wanted.
If only it didn’t always turn out to be the worst thing instead.
-o-
The thing was, and this was a thing, his family left.
But they didn’t exactly leave.
Sure, they gave him more space. They were quieter and more respectful of his space and his needs, but they were still there. They didn’t ditch him like you might expect.
No, they didn’t ditch him like Five expected.
The next morning, Allison brought breakfast. After eating, Diego got him up for some exercise. Luther came with lunch, and Klaus was subdued but present when he and Ben came by for a mid-afternoon visit. Vanya came by herself for dinner, leaving him a bag of unopened taken for him to take or leave as he wanted.
For a little bit, he sat sullenly, watching her eat in uneasy, contemptuous silence.
Finally, though, when she showed no signs of reproach, he reached for the takeout and opened it up.
They ate like that, in silence that wasn’t quite amiable, but was no longer tense.
Sure, Five thought it might be condenscending. It was possible that this was more reason for him to be pissed off because they were ignoring him. It might be evidence that they still thought of him like a child, that his temper tantrum before was just that -- a willful fit of immaturity spurred on by surging adolescent hormones.
Or, Five reflected as he watched Vanya eat, maybe that was just what family did.
No, what good people did.
What people, plain and simple, did.
You screwed up, you lashed out, you moved on and you grew up.
Maybe his family wasn’t treating him like a kid.
Maybe they were just treating them like their brother.
A person they cared about.
He’d never stopped to ask himself if humanity deserved to be saved.
As it turned out, humanity didn’t ask if he needed to be saved either.
As it turned out, his family got it after all.
Five, he was willing to grudgingly admit, was still in the process of figuring it out.
-o-
One month in, and Five was medically cleared. The IV was gone, his stitches were removed. His diet was unrestricted, and he was free to do what he wanted. His siblings watched anxiously as he walked himself out of the medical wing, but no one tried to stop him as he marched his way up to his bedroom unassisted.
No one followed him either.
Getting back to his room, closing the door, it was a relief.
But sitting there, in his closed bedroom, it felt strangely lonely, too.
Five wasn’t prone to sentiment, but he wasn’t wholly immuned to it, either.
He sighed.
Closed his eyes.
“Shit,” he said.
And he knew what he had to do.
-o-
Five wasn’t much into grand gestures. He and Delores had fought about this often, since she thought his response to things like anniversaries and birthdays was unnecessarily understated. Five just didn’t get the point in expending time and resources when simple sentiment could be expressed in simple words.
Still, talking to a mannequin was apparently easier than talking to actual real people.
Therefore, Five made dinner.
Now, Five didn’t make dinner as much as he did order it, but still. Five and dinner weren’t compatible things, and when he rallied them all to the dining room they all looked appropriately confused and concerned. He waited for them to sit down before he sighed.
“Look,” he said. “I know I screwed up.”
“Five, if this is about the men on the street--” Luther started.
Five shook his head. “I screwed up there, too, but that’s different,” he said. “I screwed up with the way I talked to you. I was rude and ungrateful, and I’m sorry. I should not have lost my temper with any of you. None of you did anything to me. My anger is directed at myself and my own weakness, and I took it out on you instead. That was immature and inappropriate, and I hope you can forgive me.”
He said it clearly and without much fuss. It was the reason he’d called them here, and he wanted to bring this matter to a sufficient close.
His siblings, though they looked like functional adults, were anything but. None of them knew how to talk about things like feelings. They weren’t good without guilt. Or basically anything. As they all became suddenly very interested in the Chinese spread Five had ordered, Allison managed to clear her throat. “It was a hard time for all of us,” she said. “We understand.”
Simple absolution. Five could live with it. He nodded. “Good,” he said. “I can’t promise you I won’t lose my temper again, but I will always attempt to own up to my mistakes.”
“Well, just for the record, you didn’t make a mistake,” Klaus said. He shrugged, a little uncomfortable. “I mean, having emotions isn’t a mistake.”
“Yeah, and, I mean, getting nicked off the street -- that’s not your fault, either, man,” Diego said.
Ben nodded along earnestly. “If anyone should be apologizing, it should be us,” he said. “You’re our brother, and we weren’t there for you. You nearly died.”
Five made a small flitting motion with his hand. “It’s unrealistic to assume we can prevent everything,” he said. “There are too many uncontrolled variables.”
“But it’s our job to look out for each other,” Vanya said. Her voice was strong, but Five could hear it wobble. “That’s why we were coddling. Not because we think you’re a kid or anything. Because we were angry at ourselves, too. Angry that we couldn’t stop this. That we didn’t.”
“But it was outside your control,” Five said. “You can’t possibly expect to control everything?”
Allison raised her eyebrows. “You do, don’t you?”
Five tipped his head. “Touche.”
“Look, there’s something else we need to talk to you about,” Diego said, venturing the conversation forward with an uncertain lilt.
The others looked duly nervous. Five simply cocked his head again.
“It’s about the guys who did this to you,” Diego said, and he cut himself off, face reddening.
Luther drew a breath and picked it up for him. “We tracked a few leads to find them.”
Five blinked. In all of this -- and there had been a lot -- he hadn’t even thought about that. As determined as he was, Five wasn’t one bent on revenge. He didn’t feel the need to get even. He didn’t have some desire to level a cosmic score. Vengeance was another luxury he’d let go of in the apocalypse. That had been a world with no one to blame but himself.
Klaus was the one who had the guts to keep talking. “I mean, they kidnapped you, nearly killed you. We fight crime, so yeah, we need to fight this crime. This very personal crime.”
Five frowned, not sure of an appropriate response. “Okay.”
“We think we found one of them pretty easy,” Luther said. “Some local low life ended up in the hospital same day you showed up back home. He showed signs of a fight but he wouldn’t cop to anything. Concussion, broken bones -- that kind of thing.”
Five remembered pushing that particular moron down the stairs. He shrugged. “Seems plausible.”
“He’s still in the hospital -- bad head wound,” Allison said. “They’re not sure he’ll be quite the same again.”
Five still didn’t believe in karma or fate, but it could be a bitch.
“But we found the other guy, too,” Ben said.
“That was harder,” Diego added. “We had to track down associates, do some digging. But we think we confirmed it.”
Five made a face. “But how?”
“Handwriting samples, mostly,” Klaus said. “We were able to get a match.”
Five scoffed. “A match to what?”
“This,” Vanya said, and she pulled something from her pocket. She held out a folded piece of paper to Five, and he noted that it had been thoroughly creased, like she’d been carrying it around, opening it up often.
He took it, glancing at his sister before cautiously unfolding the note. Inside, there was a short mission, scrawled in blocky letters that Five had no reason to recognize. Still, as he read the words, he knew who it was from.
Sorry about your kid. I never should have taken him, and I never meant for him to get hurt like his. I hope he’s okay.
Five read it again, and again, until he couldn’t see anything at all. His mind went blank; his ears started ringing. He could still see the apartment, feel the tight ropes around his chest and his healing wrists. The drawl in his voice, the way he smiled.
“We’ll find him, Five,” Luther vowed. “We will.”
Five blinked, bringing him back to his senses. He refolded the paper and put it down on the table. “He saved my life.”
He wasn’t sure if he was saying it as his own form of absolution. It was, however, a fact.
“Yeah, after he nearly killed you,” Klaus said with an emphatic scoff. “I mean, he’s not one of the good guys.”
Five shrugged. “Attempted murder, in the grander scheme of things, is not nearly as vile as you all think it is.”
“Five,” Ben said. “Klaus is right. This is a bad guy.”
“Yeah, well,” Five said with a sigh. “I guess he can join the club.”
There was a collective murmur, but Five ignored it. Allison opened her mouth to protest. “Five, you’re not--”
“A bad guy?” he asked. “I am, trust me. I probably would have let me die, in all honesty. He made the choice to save my life at the risk of his own freedom. He had nothing to gain from letting me go and everything to lose. Let him be.”
They were gaping at him now, none more so than Diego. “But he’s a criminal!”
“Look,” Five said. “In his history, does he have any other examples of violent crime?”
They looked at him blankly, clearly telling him no.
“No offenses against children?” Five pushed. “Murder?”
There was still no response.
Five shrugged. “So he made a mistake this time. I didn’t help matters, and he learned his lesson. It’s time to let him be.”
Luther swallowed, looking concerned. “Are you sure?”
“No, but no one can be,” Five said plainly.
“But then why?” Klaus asked. “I mean, why?”
Five sighed, looking at his siblings gathered around the dinner table. Here they were together, after all these years. As grown up and immature as ever. “Because you have to believe in humanity every now and then.”
Vanya’s expression was quiet, and her voice strained. “And if it goes wrong?”
“Then, I don’t know,” Five said, reaching for the box of fried rice. “Then at least you knew you believed in something for the right reasons no matter how it turned out.”
No one asked if that was enough as they all started to fill their plates.
As they ate their dinner, it turned out, they really didn’t have to.
Some things, in the end, really were self evident.
-o-
After that dinner, Five was admittedly tired. He felt sore and cranky, and honestly, the thought of climbing up the stairs to go to bed was more than he wanted to take on. Looking miserable, he was trying to figure out if he had enough strength to make a jump. He was still contemplating that when Vanya nudged him.
“Hey, you need a hand?” she asked.
He looked at her.
She smiled.
“I should clean up a bit first,” he said.
“I got that,” Allison said from the dining room.
“We got that,” Luther amended, his arms full of dirty dishes.
Five watched, a little dumbfounded, as they worked together to make short work of the mess.
“And hey, breakfast is on me tomorrow,” Diego said.
“Oh, and me!” Klaus said.
“You can cook?” Diego asked.
“I can stand there while you cook and offer really good suggestions,” Klaus said.
“I was thinking carry out again,” Diego admitted.
Klaus clapped. “Waffles!”
Ben rolled his eyes.
Vanya nudged him again. “See?” she said. “They’ve got this.”
“I can climb the stairs, Vanya,” he said tiredly.
“We know that,” she said. “But sometimes, I don’t know. Why do it alone if you don’t have to?”
That was the question, then. The real thing he needed to learn in order to grow up once and for all. He let out his breath and smiled back.
“Okay, then,” he said, accepting her hand. “I could use a hand.”
-o-
For the next few weeks, Five was still recovering, getting back to full strength and mobility. His siblings, despite themselves, still babied him from time to time.
He stopped fighting them on it and let them.
After all, it was a sign of their humanity.
Maybe, just maybe, it was also a sign of his.
PART TWO
PART THREE
-o-
Five awareness returned with a screeching halt. A steady hand reached out, holding him down so he didn’t fall out of his seat. Even so, the pressure on the blade in his stomach grew in intensity, and Five groaned, wanting to pass out again.
Suddenly, the door was being opened, and Five blinked as he was hoisted up and out into the morning sunlight. It was a frantic, pressing movement forward before he was deposited on the ground. There was a pounding, and by the time Five looked up, he finally recognized where he was.
He was home, as it turned out.
Five had finally come home.
-o-
After that, things happened rather quickly. His siblings were at the door within minutes, just slow enough to miss the van as it sped away but just quick enough to catch Five before he passed out for good.
Luther carried him up, Diego running ahead to get Mom. Allison held open the doors while Klaus told Five he was going to be okay, Ben totally agreed, Five was going to be okay. Vanya walked next to them, crying as she held his hand.
He was still awake when they got to the medical room, and he was still awake when Mom frowned down at him, her medical programming kicking into full gear. She ordered Klaus to gather a few supplies, and asked Diego if he was ready to donate blood. Allison helped cut away Five’s clothes while Luther stepped back so his large frame wouldn’t be in the way. Vanya was still crying, taking up his hand in hers until Mom shooed them all out, no nonsense in her voice.
“If I’m going to save your brother I need to work,” she told them firmly. “Pogo, please get the blood. Allison, if you would like to assist--”
There was shuffling, complaining, and Five drifted precariously away. Mom was above him again, but her expression was softer this time.
“You are a silly boy,” she said gently. “All these years, and you’re still making messes.”
Five was too weak to reply, his voice parched.
“There now,” she said, hanging the IV bag that Five couldn’t remember being attached to his arm. “Everything’s okay now.”
Five had every reason to doubt her.
Still, as he closed his eyes, he didn’t.
He really, really didn’t.
-o-
After that, things were dark.
Like, really dark.
This could only be attributed to the drugs, of which he knew Mom had pumped him full of plenty. He had snippets of awareness, where someone changed his IV bag or checked his bandages. Sometimes, he was aware of a presence. Mom as her skirts swished efficiently by his bedside. Luther as he sat in a chair two sizes too small. Diego as he paced, unable to do anything with his hands since leaving his knives outside. Allison sitting calmly by his bedside, checking her phone for texts. Klaus rambling at long lengths, stories about people he didn’t remember meeting at places he didn’t remember going. Vanya, too. Vanya, mostly. She was the one who held his hand, the one who didn’t tell him he’s going to be okay but asked him.
“Please, Five. You can’t leave me again. You won’t leave me again, will you? Will you?”
Five, slipping back into oblivion, hoped he could oblige her this time.
-o-
When you got right down to it, okay was an anticlimactic resolution to some of life’s most tumultuous events. Too often, the solutions to complex problems were often far less interesting than the problems themselves. For all that Five had been through, his recovery was a slow and quiet affair.
Five spent a great deal of time unconscious, naturally, but he came back to awareness by degrees. His siblings spent less and less time fretting as Five spent more and more time with his eyes open. Soon, he was able to talk again. He was waiting for them to ask the question about what had happened. When enough time had gone by, Five asked it for them.
“What the hell happened anyway?”
They’re all gathered, as they were wont to do these days. Mom tried to keep them in shifts, but she was only moderately successful. Somehow, during dinner, all of Five’s siblings showed up and crammed into the medical room without any intention of leaving.
Klaus looked horrified at the question, and Vanya had the distinct look like she might cry again. Diego looked awkwardly at his hands while Allison winced, her eyes turned to Luther while Ben hovered sympathetically in the background.
Luther, being Number One, cleared his throat. “Well, Five,” he said, stopping uncertainly. He started again, less certain than before. “You were kidnapped.”
Five would have sighed if it didn’t hurt so much. His midsection was still tender with the red row of stitches across his stomach. “Right. I know that. But what happened?”
“Dude, this can wait,” Diego interjected, shaking his head. “You need to get stronger.”
“No,” Five said. “I mean, I’m lying here in this bed. You all hover around me all day. And you’re really going to tell me that you don’t want to talk about it?”
It was more blunt that they were prepared for. For all that their father had trained them to be superheroes, they were cowards in their own rights. Allison finally cleared her throat. “We know they nabbed you off the street. We were tracking your location when they dropped you off.”
That was a nice way of putting it, conveniently leaving out the part where Five had been left bleeding out on their doorstep.
“But a lot of it, man, we don’t know,” Klaus hedged. “I mean, they stabbed you and then dropped you off. That seems weird, right?” He looked at the others for confirmation. “That seems weird?”
Five sighed with a small harrumph. He was a proud man, but he wasn’t overly vain. He was pragmatic enough to own up to his mistakes. “The stabbing was an accident. Happened when I tried to escape. In fact, most of this was my fault. I never should have let it get this far.”
“Five, it’s not your fault--” Vanya said.
“I have the power to jump through space,” Five reminded them. “And I let two amateurs get one up on me.”
“Five, it’s not that simple--”
“Of course it is,” Five said, feeling a bit annoyed now. At himself for letting this happen. At them for not acknowledging it. “I mean, I got taken off the street. I didn’t even suspect them.”
“And why would you?” Allison asked. She wrinkled her nose. “Five, you can’t expect disaster around every turn. That’s not how you live a life.”
“But it’s how you survive,” Five said, and he could feel the emotion rising with a blush in his cheeks. “I was sloppy. Even if you could write off the initial abduction, my performance while in their custody was atrocious.”
“Dude,” Diego said. “You had a massive concussion.”
“That’s no excuse--”
“Uh, yeah,” Klaus said. “I think it might be.”
It was Five’s turn to screw up his nose. “What do you mean?”
Vanya smiled, approaching him gently. “Mom said it looked like you’d been hit several times in the head, but that first hit -- the one that probably got you off the street -- was really bad. You probably never fully recovered that whole day. You’re still not recovered from it now.”
Five gaped at her, not sure he understood what she was saying.
“It’s true,” Luther said softly. “It wasn’t blood loss and infection that kept you out for a week. Mom sedated you, worried about the swelling in your brain.”
“But I--” Five started, not sure what he wanted to say. But he was losing his touch? He thought he was too weak? He thought he was going soft? Or maybe just that he didn’t understand weakness or what to do with it or how to accept it at all? “I screwed up.”
He finished the words through a tight throat, and he blinked harshly, refusing to acknowledge anything resembling tears in his eyes.
“Yeah, well,” Luther said, smiling stupid. “It’s not the first time.”
Diego snorted. “Probably won’t be the last time either.”
“Welcome to the club,” Allison added gently.
He stared at them with something like wonder. “So you think it’s just okay?”
“I think okay is the only thing it can be,” Klaus answered. “I mean, come on. What else can it be?”
It could be lots of things, but Five was at a loss for all of them. It might be the drugs; hell, it might be the concussion, apparently.
Vanya expression was warm as she closed the last of the distance, her hand on top of his. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away. “You’re here, back with us, we’re together,” she said. “What could possibly be more okay than that?”
-o-
It was nice; it really was. His siblings were kind and supportive. They didn’t accuse him of weakness or badger him with tips for what he should do better next time. After spending years as a victim of his own self flagellation, the concept of unconditional absolution was new to him and not entirely unwelcome.
Except it wasn’t unconditional.
Not quite.
His siblings weren’t trying to extort him or anything like that. They weren’t trying to use emotional manipulation to get something out of him. But that didn’t mean there weren’t strings attached.
The strings were just what he’d feared.
After his rescue, his siblings were happy to act like he’d done nothing wrong.
Because after his rescue, his siblings now apparently looked at him like he was 13 again.
And fine, technically he was 13 again, but they were conveniently forgetting the part where he was far more dangerous than all of them put together. They were forgetting about the countless people he’d murdered with his own hands, and he wasn’t proud of that but he had credentials, damn it. Credential that made it important -- no, that made it necessary -- for him to be treated like an actual adult.
Instead of treating him with that kind of respect, they treated him with kid gloves. Luther had the audacity to actually fluff his pillow, and when Five tried to throttle him for it, his much larger brother gently detangled Five’s fingers from around his throat and said, “Come on, none of that now. If you’re not careful, you’ll pull your stitches.”
He might as well have patted him on the head like he was being a naughty puppy biting a slipper.
One might expect Diego to be better. Diego was all business and to the point. He didn’t seem like the type to get sentimental, which was probably why he was incredibly sentimental. Every time Five tried to get up, he looked like he was about to have a panic attack before rushing over to do whatever task Five needed for him. “Just let me do it for awhile, okay?” he said. “I’d rather be put out than worry about you some more. Do you know how much you scared us?”
Five could imagine, though he doubted it justified coddling to this degree. When Allison tried to help him to the bathroom two weeks after his incident, he really felt like things were getting out of hand. “We all need a little help sometimes,” she said, smiling in a very motherly, very annoying way. “It’s no big deal.”
That was easy for her to say. No one was offering to pull down her pants while she took a shit and being right there to help him wipe his ass when he was done.
Klaus, who he had hoped would be better, was just as bad. Klaus had always had a tenuous grip on reality.
Until it came to this, apparently.
Five nearly dying had sobered him more than an AA meeting every could.
As much as he appreciated his brother’s ability not to get high, Five was not particularly fond of being an object lesson. As if his mistakes could be substantiated with some misplaced notion of the greater good. That was the same kind of thinking that said how lucky he was for getting stuck in the apocalypse because it gave him a chance to save the world. Right, like fate was trying to be kind by marooning him in the least hospitable environment at a young age so he could save humanity.
Five didn’t believe in luck or chance or karma or anything. Sometimes bad shit happened. That was it, the end. There was no moral, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to waste time pretending like there was.
“Like, honestly, I think I feel really good about this,” Klaus explained one afternoon.
Five, though rested and fed, was still exhausted by this comment. “You feel good about me being abducted and nearly bleeding to death?”
“Well, not when you put it like that, but--”
“There’s not really another way to put it--”
“I just mean there’s good to come from this, right?” Klaus asked. “It’s a reminder that we’re all human, all of us, even you.”
It was obvious that Klaus was well intentioned, but that only made it worse. Five glowered at him. “I’m quite glad that my humiliation can help you out.”
“It’s not -- I didn’t -- there’s no humiliation,” Klaus said. He scoffed a light laugh. “I mean, come on, Five. I know you were this trained assassin and you survived the apocalypse, but now you’re my kid brother. I think I like that, having a kid brother.”
Unimpressed, Five sighed. “I’m 58, Klaus.”
Klaus smiled, reaching out and tweaking Five’s cheek. “And you don’t look a day over 12!”
Murdering Klaus would be preferable but rather a lot of work, and honestly, telling his siblings would be exhausting, so Five had no choice but to let it slide.
He had no choice about a lot of things these days. Of all the things he’d lost in this incident, he missed his autonomy the most. His privacy, however, was right up there.
He discovered, rather belatedly, that his siblings didn’t even trust him to sleep alone. Yep, they actually didn’t trust him to be unconscious without their nonstop supervision. Five learned this the hard way when he woke up in a cold sweat one night, a scream lodged in his chest as he panted for clarity. Blinking in the darkness, he was surprised to see Ben leaning close to the bed.
Surprised was the nice way of putting it.
“Are you okay?” Ben asked, wide eyed and translucent. “Do you need me to get the others?”
Five, who had had a nightmare, the ones that he was prone to having about death and devastation and your usual dalliances, took a shuddering breath and gritted his teeth with a snarl. “No,” he said. “But you can feel free to leave.”
Ben leaned back a bit, but he didn’t give any ground. “I’m here if you need me, Five.”
“And if I need you to leave?” Five muttered, turning over to go back to sleep.
Ben didn’t answer; Ben didn’t leave.
Five, by consequence, didn’t go back to sleep.
As if that wasn’t enough, there was still the issue of Vanya. Vanya had always been his favorite sibling, and he really had no qualms saying it like that. She’d always been the one to listen to him without judgement, to accept him for who he was. Things had felt a little different since he’d been back.
Now, after his kidnapping and near death experience, they were more than different. They were markedly worse.
She lingered, uncertain of herself but clearly too scared to leave most of the time. There was an unsettling sense of obligation, like she had made years of peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches, so she was sure as hell going to hold a bedside vigil.
And that was what it was. It was a vigil. She wasn’t there merely to keep him company. She was there to watch him -- and watch him, she did. She monitored everything he did and said. In some ways, for as much as Vanya had issues with their old man, she acted just like him, leaving nothing to chance. She structured his day so he would have exercise and food in equal intervals, retrieving supplies for him to read for a set amount of time and alloting a set period for mathematics.
In some ways, he thought she probably intended this as a kindness.
In all other ways, however, it felt like he was being cloistered. Closeted. Sequestered.
It chafed at him, the same way his father’s control had chafed at him the first time he was 13. He could remember now, the rage he felt, the frustration that had led him to leave the house and jump his way into a future he could get away from.
It wasn’t a mistake he intended to make again.
But this was a lifestyle, favorite sibling or not, he did not think he could actually abide.
“Five, it’s time to get up.”
“Five, have you done your math yet?”
“Five, we have about 30 minutes for music.”
“Five, you have to practice your skills, get your strength up.”
“Five, you know what it takes to be in the field.”
“Five, you’re not ready yet.”
And on and on and on.
To think, these were the siblings he’d come back to save.
Now, if he wasn’t careful, he might end up murdering them himself.
-o-
Ultimately, three weeks passed.
Mom said she was quite pleased with his progress. She said that he showed no signs of infection and that there was no apparent complication. She approved increasing amounts of activity and seemed content with his performance all around.
Ironically, the mother figure with programmed protective instincts was the most lenient of them all.
The others stridently objected on every front.
Three weeks into his convalescence, and it was still a convalescence to them. Their coddling, and their babying and their incessant worrying when it was increasingly apparent that Five was fine.
Five tried to endure this. He really did try. After all, they probably had a valid point. Five had nearly gotten himself killed. He had let himself be kidnapped by amateurs, and he had to live with those consequences. Maybe he needed to be treated like a child. He couldn’t deny that there was a logic to it, a logic that his siblings would probably be swayed by.
There was a problem with that, however. A very fundamental problem.
To the point: Five didn’t want to be treated like a child.
Not just that. This wasn’t a mere matter of preference. This wasn’t him throwing a temper tantrum like some toddler who didn’t know better.
No, Five didn’t just dislike being treated like a child.
He hated it. He actively hated it and loathed it.
In fact, when you got right down to it, Five couldn’t take it.
He had endured a lot throughout this ordeal. He had accepted Mom’s restrictions, and he’d let his siblings take over a great deal of his medical care. There was no reason to fight on those fronts; he knew he needed steady care in order for recovery to be possible. But that didn’t mean he was a child. Accepting authorized medical care did not strip him of his maturity. It didn’t make him a child.
It couldn’t.
A child was helpless and dependent. A child had no volition, no control. Children were devoid of intention and they had no capacity to enact actual change. Children were pathetic, weak and practically unnecessary apart from the need to continue the human race.
That didn’t mean that Five didn’t like children. It really didn’t. He had some interest in them, and he found some of them to be palatable. He liked talking to Allison about Claire, and he had meant what he said: he wanted to get to know her.
But children had a time and place, and Five didn’t fit in either.
No, Five had buried the child he was in the apocalypse along with the rest of his family. As far as he was concerned, his 13 year old self was still there, killed by his own hubris.
That was the problem, then. His siblings were looking at him and seeing a person who didn’t exist, who hadn’t existed in more than 40 years. They looked at him and missed the point entirely. They didn’t see him. They didn’t know him.
So who was he now?
Who was this person he had become?
Where was the old man who had survived the end of the world? Where was the hardened assassin who had beaten the Commission at its own game? Where was Five, the man he had become, in the body of a broken child?
Didn’t they understand? Why couldn’t they see?
For as much as their old man had impaired their childhoods, they had still had the chance to mature. They’d still had room to make their mistakes and recover. They had still had a choice with the people they’d become. The right choice, the wrong choice, choice. Something his siblings would never value enough.
Because what choice had Five had? When the consequences had been so dire, so immediate and so unforgiving?
Being a child was a luxury, after all. An absolute luxury. A luxury Five had never had. Or maybe just one he had forfeited when he was 13 the first time around.
It was a luxury he didn’t want now, not if he was still going to be a valuable part of this family.
Why didn’t they see that? Why couldn’t they understand? Why couldn’t they see who he was? How could they look at him and still see an innocent child? Didn’t they remember who he was? Couldn’t they remember what he’d done?
It was intolerable, that was what it was. Five had endured as best he could all these days, but he was at his breaking point. He could feel it, crawling beneath his skin. A restlessness he couldn’t contain. An anger and frustration he could no longer abide.
Five had grown up years before any of them.
And it was about time they realized that.
-o-
Separately, his siblings were difficult to handle. Put together, and Five wasn’t on enough pain medications to deal with them.
At all.
It came to a head at dinner.
Dinner was, by far, Five’s least favorite meal of the day. Now, more than ever.
Allison had made a pasta dish (Five rarely craved carbs), but Luther worried that the meat would be too much for Five’s recovering digestive system (it wasn’t). Diego thought they needed to include more protein (he had no idea) and that they should grind up double the meat into the sauce. Klaus, for some reason, was worried that Five would spill on himself and kept trying to tuck a napkin under his chin (as if that mattered). When Vanya tried to actually cut his his pasta for him (because of course Five was an invalid now), Five didn’t give a shit how many stitches he had. He was done.
“No -- just -- stop,” he said, pushing Vanya’s hands away. “Stop.”
It was his voice more than his touch that made her recoil, his expression cutting like the blade of a knife through the banter that always accompanied this painful family event. The others stopped too, looking between him and Vanya uncertainly.
The assholes couldn’t even bring themselves to be decisive when it mattered. Five pressed his lips together, knowing there was no way to hold this back now. “You can all stop,” he said, working hard to keep his voice steady, barely controlling the rage that threatened to overtake him.
“You’re still weak, Five,” Vanya implored. She gestured toward the plate of food on his lap since he still wasn’t allowed to leave this damn room for any extended period of time. “We’re trying to help you.”
“No, you’re trying to keep me weak,” Five said. He scoffed. “I know you’ve all talked to Mom. She says I’m fine.”
“She says your wounds are healing,” Allison said. “There’s a difference.”
“How?” Five asked. “Will my wounds not heal if I cut my own food?”
He shot a glance back at Vanya, undaunted now, even when hurt flickered in her eyes.
“Will my wounds not heal if I get out of this bed and sleep in my own room? If I do my exercises without your supervision? Will my wounds not heal if I sleep on my own? For the love of -- will my wounds not heal without your continued monitoring? Is that what you all think?”
His heart was pounding now, and he could feel the pressure in his skull mount. His head wound had cleared weeks ago with no lingering effect, but he could feel it now. Threatening to blur the edges of his vision with the exertion.
“We all need a little help sometimes, that’s all,” Klaus ventured.
“This isn’t help!” Five said, voice starting to rise now. He pointed at them again, nodding at his food. “This is smothering!”
“You need to take it easy,” Luther coached him quietly.
“Why?” Five asked. “How am I ever going to get better, get back in the field, if I take it easy?”
His siblings exchanged sudden, awkward, silent glances, and Five’s mouth fell open.
“Wait,” he said. “You don’t think I should be back in the field, do you?”
“Well, not right now,” Diego said. “I mean, you’re a mess.”
“We’re all a mess,” Ben corrected for him. “Still learning to control our powers.”
Indignant now, Five shook his head. “I’m not learning. I’m 58. My powers are perfectly honed.”
“But that was when you were 58, Five,” Vanya said. She looked sorry -- so very sorry -- and it felt like a knife twisting in his gut all over again. “It’s got to be hard now that you’re 13 again. Relearning to use your powers in this body. I mean, we get it--”
Five blinked, still shocked by the insinuation. “Because I’m 13,” he repeated, a little awestruck to hear it said so plainly. “Because I’m a child.”
Vanya closed her mouth. The others looked noticeably away.
Five laughed, sharp and bitter. Nausea swelled in his gut. “Because you think I’m a child.”
No one denied it. He had to give the bastards credit for that. They weren’t backing down. At least they stood by their beliefs.
Even if those beliefs were dead wrong. “I’m not a child,” he said, voice quiet at first. When it didn’t garner a response, he picked up the plate and threw it at the wall. It shattered violently, and Five’s voice pitched to a yell now. “I’m not a child!”
The fact that he was throwing a temper tantrum was not withstanding. He had grounds for this. He had justification. This was weeks in the making. Months, probably. It was a conversation he’d needed to have since the moment he came back to their present, since the moment he ripped himself apart and hastily put himself back together for them.
Breathing heavily, he shook his head, more adamant than before. “This has to stop. All of it. Right now.”
“Stop what exactly?” Allison asked, eyebrows up.
“The babying,” Five said. “The coddling.”
“The what?” Diego asked, nose wrinkled.
“You’re treating me like a child, like a baby,” Five said. “Bringing me meals and watching me sleep. It has to stop. Now.”
Luther stepped in, as if to inject a voice of reason. “Five, you were seriously injured--”
Five laughed, feeling vaguely hysterical his anger was pulsing so intensely. “Right, and so that must mean I’m helpless.”
“We didn’t say that,” Luther said.
“You didn’t have to!” Five shot back, undeterred now. “I mean, come on. You think I don’t know it? You think I can’t see it? You see me differently now. Your opinion of me has changed. You think that, what, I make one mistake and now I can’t take care of myself? I let my guard down for one minute -- one tiny minute -- and now I’m useless. Is that it? I’m a useless child?”
Klaus looked particularly distressed. “Five, come on--”
“I mean, that must be it,” Five said, ignoring the pinch of pain in his side where his vigor was pulling at the stitches. “That’s why you tell me what I need to do, when I need to do it, how much to eat.”
“Five--” Ben started.
But Five was past listening. He was done. “I made a mistake, okay?” he asked, punctuating the sentiment with his finger. “I made one damn mistake. I know I let two morons get the drop on me, but I don’t make the same mistake twice. I learn, and I get better. How do you think I managed to survive an apocalypse where you all died? How do you think I ripped apart time and space to get back here in the first place?”
“Five, please,” Vanya tried to interject.
But not even Vanya could stop him now. He was spewing with rage now; it tingled through him, lifting the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck. “No, no please,” he snarled back, more vitriolic than ever. “You need to understand, all of you. I’m the one who came back here to save you. You’re the children here, you. Without me, you would be dead, every last one of you, dead as doornails and you wouldn’t have even seen it coming.”
Allison held up her hands, placating. “Five, you need to relax--”
Relaxing wasn’t going to help. If anything, relaxing would make it worse. It would prove to them that he was weak, he was vulnerable, and Five couldn’t. He wouldn’t. “No, you know what? Maybe I don’t learn from my mistakes. Maybe I should have let you die along with the rest of humanity. Being back here, seeing you, seeing the world, seeing humanity, I’m not sure why I thought it was all such a big deal to let it burn.”
Vanya swallowed. Hard. Her eyes were wet again. “You don’t mean that.”
Sneering at her, he pounced and pounced hard. “Maybe I do,” he said, eyes glinting like steel now. “Maybe I mean all of it. Maybe I really am the bastard I told you I was. Maybe you should just leave me be because I can take care of myself. I always have.”
Luther, big and strong as he was, looked stricken. “Five--”
“Go,” he ordered coldly. “All of you. Go.”
“Five, come on,” Diego said, softly cajoling.
“I mean it,” Five told him flatly, told all of them. “Get the hell out.”
They hesitated, looking from one to another uncertainly.
“Now!” Five yelled with finality, the sound of his own voice echoing off the walls. “Or I swear, I will rip this IV out and leaves this house tonight and never come back.”
The threat was not idle, and his siblings knew it. Five stared them all down, one at a time, until they had no doubt. Luther was the first to leave, his large frame shuffling out the door with his head down. Diego followed behind him, glancing back for one mournful moment. Allison held out longer, regarding Five with consideration before she left. Klaus and Ben left together, both looking equally pained. Vanya was the last to leave, lingering in that way of her. But as she hesitated to speak, he stared her down unrelentingly.
It was hard, sure, but she had to grow up.
They all had to grow up.
Just like he had.
Blinking back her tears, Vanya ducked her head and hurried out after the others, leaving Five alone.
Five sat there, still breathing heavily. His heart was still pounding; his head still ringing. The adrenaline was still coursing, but there was no foe to fight. He blinked numbly, looking at his siblings’ plates, full of uneaten food, strewn about the room. His own plate was a mess of broken glass and pasta, shattered on the floor amongst them.
He let out a breath, and felt the flush of emotions. Trembling for a moment, he tried to concentrate on his breathing, using mental acuity to stave off what would either be a panic attempt or a mental breakdown.
They had left, at least.
They had left, just like he’d asked.
They’d left.
Five had demanded their respect, and they had given it to him. Five was alone now, by his own insistence, willpower and design.
They had left.
He exhaled again, shakier than before. His stomach was emptier than he remembered; his body more tired. But he was alone. They had left. Just like he’d asked.
He slumped back, closing his eyes as he tried to rest. Because that was the thing about Five. Sometimes, you see, in a world full of bad things, sometimes he actually got what he wanted.
If only it didn’t always turn out to be the worst thing instead.
-o-
The thing was, and this was a thing, his family left.
But they didn’t exactly leave.
Sure, they gave him more space. They were quieter and more respectful of his space and his needs, but they were still there. They didn’t ditch him like you might expect.
No, they didn’t ditch him like Five expected.
The next morning, Allison brought breakfast. After eating, Diego got him up for some exercise. Luther came with lunch, and Klaus was subdued but present when he and Ben came by for a mid-afternoon visit. Vanya came by herself for dinner, leaving him a bag of unopened taken for him to take or leave as he wanted.
For a little bit, he sat sullenly, watching her eat in uneasy, contemptuous silence.
Finally, though, when she showed no signs of reproach, he reached for the takeout and opened it up.
They ate like that, in silence that wasn’t quite amiable, but was no longer tense.
Sure, Five thought it might be condenscending. It was possible that this was more reason for him to be pissed off because they were ignoring him. It might be evidence that they still thought of him like a child, that his temper tantrum before was just that -- a willful fit of immaturity spurred on by surging adolescent hormones.
Or, Five reflected as he watched Vanya eat, maybe that was just what family did.
No, what good people did.
What people, plain and simple, did.
You screwed up, you lashed out, you moved on and you grew up.
Maybe his family wasn’t treating him like a kid.
Maybe they were just treating them like their brother.
A person they cared about.
He’d never stopped to ask himself if humanity deserved to be saved.
As it turned out, humanity didn’t ask if he needed to be saved either.
As it turned out, his family got it after all.
Five, he was willing to grudgingly admit, was still in the process of figuring it out.
-o-
One month in, and Five was medically cleared. The IV was gone, his stitches were removed. His diet was unrestricted, and he was free to do what he wanted. His siblings watched anxiously as he walked himself out of the medical wing, but no one tried to stop him as he marched his way up to his bedroom unassisted.
No one followed him either.
Getting back to his room, closing the door, it was a relief.
But sitting there, in his closed bedroom, it felt strangely lonely, too.
Five wasn’t prone to sentiment, but he wasn’t wholly immuned to it, either.
He sighed.
Closed his eyes.
“Shit,” he said.
And he knew what he had to do.
-o-
Five wasn’t much into grand gestures. He and Delores had fought about this often, since she thought his response to things like anniversaries and birthdays was unnecessarily understated. Five just didn’t get the point in expending time and resources when simple sentiment could be expressed in simple words.
Still, talking to a mannequin was apparently easier than talking to actual real people.
Therefore, Five made dinner.
Now, Five didn’t make dinner as much as he did order it, but still. Five and dinner weren’t compatible things, and when he rallied them all to the dining room they all looked appropriately confused and concerned. He waited for them to sit down before he sighed.
“Look,” he said. “I know I screwed up.”
“Five, if this is about the men on the street--” Luther started.
Five shook his head. “I screwed up there, too, but that’s different,” he said. “I screwed up with the way I talked to you. I was rude and ungrateful, and I’m sorry. I should not have lost my temper with any of you. None of you did anything to me. My anger is directed at myself and my own weakness, and I took it out on you instead. That was immature and inappropriate, and I hope you can forgive me.”
He said it clearly and without much fuss. It was the reason he’d called them here, and he wanted to bring this matter to a sufficient close.
His siblings, though they looked like functional adults, were anything but. None of them knew how to talk about things like feelings. They weren’t good without guilt. Or basically anything. As they all became suddenly very interested in the Chinese spread Five had ordered, Allison managed to clear her throat. “It was a hard time for all of us,” she said. “We understand.”
Simple absolution. Five could live with it. He nodded. “Good,” he said. “I can’t promise you I won’t lose my temper again, but I will always attempt to own up to my mistakes.”
“Well, just for the record, you didn’t make a mistake,” Klaus said. He shrugged, a little uncomfortable. “I mean, having emotions isn’t a mistake.”
“Yeah, and, I mean, getting nicked off the street -- that’s not your fault, either, man,” Diego said.
Ben nodded along earnestly. “If anyone should be apologizing, it should be us,” he said. “You’re our brother, and we weren’t there for you. You nearly died.”
Five made a small flitting motion with his hand. “It’s unrealistic to assume we can prevent everything,” he said. “There are too many uncontrolled variables.”
“But it’s our job to look out for each other,” Vanya said. Her voice was strong, but Five could hear it wobble. “That’s why we were coddling. Not because we think you’re a kid or anything. Because we were angry at ourselves, too. Angry that we couldn’t stop this. That we didn’t.”
“But it was outside your control,” Five said. “You can’t possibly expect to control everything?”
Allison raised her eyebrows. “You do, don’t you?”
Five tipped his head. “Touche.”
“Look, there’s something else we need to talk to you about,” Diego said, venturing the conversation forward with an uncertain lilt.
The others looked duly nervous. Five simply cocked his head again.
“It’s about the guys who did this to you,” Diego said, and he cut himself off, face reddening.
Luther drew a breath and picked it up for him. “We tracked a few leads to find them.”
Five blinked. In all of this -- and there had been a lot -- he hadn’t even thought about that. As determined as he was, Five wasn’t one bent on revenge. He didn’t feel the need to get even. He didn’t have some desire to level a cosmic score. Vengeance was another luxury he’d let go of in the apocalypse. That had been a world with no one to blame but himself.
Klaus was the one who had the guts to keep talking. “I mean, they kidnapped you, nearly killed you. We fight crime, so yeah, we need to fight this crime. This very personal crime.”
Five frowned, not sure of an appropriate response. “Okay.”
“We think we found one of them pretty easy,” Luther said. “Some local low life ended up in the hospital same day you showed up back home. He showed signs of a fight but he wouldn’t cop to anything. Concussion, broken bones -- that kind of thing.”
Five remembered pushing that particular moron down the stairs. He shrugged. “Seems plausible.”
“He’s still in the hospital -- bad head wound,” Allison said. “They’re not sure he’ll be quite the same again.”
Five still didn’t believe in karma or fate, but it could be a bitch.
“But we found the other guy, too,” Ben said.
“That was harder,” Diego added. “We had to track down associates, do some digging. But we think we confirmed it.”
Five made a face. “But how?”
“Handwriting samples, mostly,” Klaus said. “We were able to get a match.”
Five scoffed. “A match to what?”
“This,” Vanya said, and she pulled something from her pocket. She held out a folded piece of paper to Five, and he noted that it had been thoroughly creased, like she’d been carrying it around, opening it up often.
He took it, glancing at his sister before cautiously unfolding the note. Inside, there was a short mission, scrawled in blocky letters that Five had no reason to recognize. Still, as he read the words, he knew who it was from.
Sorry about your kid. I never should have taken him, and I never meant for him to get hurt like his. I hope he’s okay.
Five read it again, and again, until he couldn’t see anything at all. His mind went blank; his ears started ringing. He could still see the apartment, feel the tight ropes around his chest and his healing wrists. The drawl in his voice, the way he smiled.
“We’ll find him, Five,” Luther vowed. “We will.”
Five blinked, bringing him back to his senses. He refolded the paper and put it down on the table. “He saved my life.”
He wasn’t sure if he was saying it as his own form of absolution. It was, however, a fact.
“Yeah, after he nearly killed you,” Klaus said with an emphatic scoff. “I mean, he’s not one of the good guys.”
Five shrugged. “Attempted murder, in the grander scheme of things, is not nearly as vile as you all think it is.”
“Five,” Ben said. “Klaus is right. This is a bad guy.”
“Yeah, well,” Five said with a sigh. “I guess he can join the club.”
There was a collective murmur, but Five ignored it. Allison opened her mouth to protest. “Five, you’re not--”
“A bad guy?” he asked. “I am, trust me. I probably would have let me die, in all honesty. He made the choice to save my life at the risk of his own freedom. He had nothing to gain from letting me go and everything to lose. Let him be.”
They were gaping at him now, none more so than Diego. “But he’s a criminal!”
“Look,” Five said. “In his history, does he have any other examples of violent crime?”
They looked at him blankly, clearly telling him no.
“No offenses against children?” Five pushed. “Murder?”
There was still no response.
Five shrugged. “So he made a mistake this time. I didn’t help matters, and he learned his lesson. It’s time to let him be.”
Luther swallowed, looking concerned. “Are you sure?”
“No, but no one can be,” Five said plainly.
“But then why?” Klaus asked. “I mean, why?”
Five sighed, looking at his siblings gathered around the dinner table. Here they were together, after all these years. As grown up and immature as ever. “Because you have to believe in humanity every now and then.”
Vanya’s expression was quiet, and her voice strained. “And if it goes wrong?”
“Then, I don’t know,” Five said, reaching for the box of fried rice. “Then at least you knew you believed in something for the right reasons no matter how it turned out.”
No one asked if that was enough as they all started to fill their plates.
As they ate their dinner, it turned out, they really didn’t have to.
Some things, in the end, really were self evident.
-o-
After that dinner, Five was admittedly tired. He felt sore and cranky, and honestly, the thought of climbing up the stairs to go to bed was more than he wanted to take on. Looking miserable, he was trying to figure out if he had enough strength to make a jump. He was still contemplating that when Vanya nudged him.
“Hey, you need a hand?” she asked.
He looked at her.
She smiled.
“I should clean up a bit first,” he said.
“I got that,” Allison said from the dining room.
“We got that,” Luther amended, his arms full of dirty dishes.
Five watched, a little dumbfounded, as they worked together to make short work of the mess.
“And hey, breakfast is on me tomorrow,” Diego said.
“Oh, and me!” Klaus said.
“You can cook?” Diego asked.
“I can stand there while you cook and offer really good suggestions,” Klaus said.
“I was thinking carry out again,” Diego admitted.
Klaus clapped. “Waffles!”
Ben rolled his eyes.
Vanya nudged him again. “See?” she said. “They’ve got this.”
“I can climb the stairs, Vanya,” he said tiredly.
“We know that,” she said. “But sometimes, I don’t know. Why do it alone if you don’t have to?”
That was the question, then. The real thing he needed to learn in order to grow up once and for all. He let out his breath and smiled back.
“Okay, then,” he said, accepting her hand. “I could use a hand.”
-o-
For the next few weeks, Five was still recovering, getting back to full strength and mobility. His siblings, despite themselves, still babied him from time to time.
He stopped fighting them on it and let them.
After all, it was a sign of their humanity.
Maybe, just maybe, it was also a sign of his.