Umbrella Academy fic: The Start of the Story (1/16)
Title: The Start of the Story
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: No beta. This fic got very much out of control. Fills my dehumanization square for hc_bingo.
Summary: Two weeks. That’s how long it takes the Commission to find him. That’s how long it takes before the timeline is in jeopardy again. That’s how long it takes for Five to realize the Umbrella Academy needs a new plan.
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
PART THIRTEEN
PART FOURTEEN
PART FIFTEEN
PART SIXTEEN
-o-
Saving the world, when they’re finally working together, turns out to be relatively easy. They travel through time, they do things right, they take care of Vanya and keep track of each other. By the time Five gets them back to the present (or, their present, at any rate, who the hell even knows anymore), everyone is (mostly) happy and (more or less) whole and the world isn’t ending (presumably).
That’s simplifying it a bit -- or, you know, a lot -- but Five’s actually okay with that. In most instances, he doesn’t like to dumb stuff down, and he tends to be frustrated when other people make light of truly important things.
But life has been unduly complicated for the past five decades.
Like, really complicated.
Time travel and continuum corrections and saving his family. Destruction and nearly starving to death and isolation and, well, murder.
He’ll take easy this time.
Hell, he’s earned it.
Right?
-o-
That assumption is not Five’s first mistake by a long shot.
Only time will tell if it’s his last.
And time?
Well, time is a son of a bitch.
Shit.
-o-
As it turns out, easy lasts for all of two weeks.
Really, it figures. Five should have expected. Maybe Five did expect it. Who is he kidding? Of course he expected it.
Two weeks.
That’s how long it takes the Commission to find him.
That’s how long it takes before the timeline is in jeopardy again.
That’s how long it takes for Five to realize the Umbrella Academy needs a new plan.
-o-
Five’s getting ahead of himself. That’s not where the story starts.
This is not entirely Five’s fault. When you travel through time, chronology is not your strong suit. Sure, Five can sit down and make a timeline when he needs to, but he doesn’t think in a linear fashion anymore. He’s more likely to pull out the most relevant facts and assemble them together in a coherent narrative. That narrative rarely follows a simple trajectory from point A to point B and really, Five doesn’t know why other people have such a hard time with that.
But anyway, scratch that bit. If Five is going to make sense of this story for other people (lesser people) to understand, he needs to start earlier.
In that context, the story actually starts a week after they get back to the present. This is exactly two days before the once-apocalypse started the first (and presumably second) time around. You may think that the story should start the moment they got back, but you’d be wrong. That first week is a lost week to Five -- he spends most of it in different stages of unconsciousness. Time travel, after all, is straight up exhausting, and when you drag six other people along with you, it saps you of everything. For that first week back, he’s barely cognizant.
Therefore, that week is too inconsequential to ground the story. The action starts, as previously stated, a week after their arrival and two days before the end of the world.
At this point, Five is finally awake more than he’s asleep, which is good. His siblings seem to be getting things in order around the house, and Five finds that he has no pressing concerns to deal with. When he’s finally up and about, he starts reading through Dad’s library -- the books he never let Five touch -- and then he makes a trip to the grocery store because his siblings, for all that they’ve done to settle in, still haven’t bought a damn coffee pot.
Five’s plan to rectify it is simple but important. He purchases a simple pot with no frills and invests in strong beans. As a note of decadence, he invests in a bean grinder, too. It’s unnecessary and probably overly cumbersome, but Five has few indulgences in life and it’s not like he has other plans for his time right now.
That’s what’s weird about this starting point. That’s what makes it memorable. Because it’s the first and only time in Five’s life that he didn’t have any actual plans. Sure, plans to read a book and buy coffee are technically plans, but only just. They are short term plans based solely on his own comfort. They have no greater meaning, no actual significance.
Five tells himself this is okay. It’s expected. Five has expended more energy than his 13 year old body has to give, so he’s entitled a slow start for once. He’s still so tired that he honestly hasn’t considered the possibility that he needs a better plan.
At least, that’s what he thinks until he hears the plans the others have.
-o-
See, the Umbrella Academy is composed of seven super powered individuals. Ostensibly, they are the most powerful people on the planet. They were raised to save the world, and then they did. They’re the best chance this world has at surviving. Between the seven of them, they can stop any disaster, stop any deviant, promote any cause.
And not one of them has a plan.
It’s been a week since they got back, and the apocalypse they prevented is not supposed to happen in two days. And not one of his siblings has thought to do anything significant at all.
They don’t even have the inkling of a plan.
That’s not entirely fair. They do have plans. It’s just that they’re terrible, terrible plans.
Naive, short-sighted, reductive, juvenile.
Plans that make Five’s preoccupation with coffee look brilliant.
In short, terrible.
So terrible that Five decides they don’t actually count as plans at all.
For example:
“I thought we’d put the Academy back together,” Luther suggests brightly over dinner. They eat dinner together now, at least once a week, according to Luther’s proclamation. This seems a bit overly zealous as they’ve only been back a week, but Five’s willing to let that slide. Luther isn’t making dinner obligatory like it was when they were kids, so Five can tolerate it. They also don’t expect Grace to cook and Pogo to serve. In fact, they give those two the night off, and let it be a sibling time. That seems like a thoughtful touch, if Five’s perfectly honest.
Still, it’s a little weird, Five has to admit. He finds himself on edge at the table. It’s impossible not to remember the last family dinner he was at, when he basically told his dad to stick it and walked out in a melodramatic huff before proving to everyone that their father was right about him all along.
That’s not the point, though. Five needs to keep his focus in the here and now for once. The point is they’re together and that’s good and that Luther has a plan.
Despite his best efforts to sound spontaneous, Luther has clearly been harboring this notion ever since they got back -- possibly before, possibly since they all moved out and he spent four years on the stupid moon -- but he says it like he’s trying to suggest it’s some kind of inspiration and not the inevitable outcome of their shared experiences.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Allison is the first to agree. “I think that’s a good idea,” she says. “I was thinking I needed to take a step back from my career for awhile. Focus on myself. That’s the best way for me to, you know, fix things with Claire.”
She also says this like it’s an inspiration. Five suspects she and Luther have talked this over extensively, however. She’s not quite as good of an actress as she thinks she is or Luther is just really hard to play off of.
Diego, being his typical obtuse self, looks thoughtful. “I’ve been doing this job solo all these years,” he says. “The Academy together? Working as a team? Without Dad? Would be much more effective at saving people.”
Diego doesn’t talk about how he lives in a boiler room and makes minimum wage by working as a janitor by day. He doesn’t talk about how his (not) girlfriend is dead, which makes going back to the police harder than he cares to admit.
Everyone seems perfectly content to let that slide.
Klaus shrugs indifferently even though he cares immensely. “I had no foreseeable future goals, so, you know, I’m in,” he says. He makes a vague gesture with his hand. “I could also, you know, use some accountability.”
What Klaus means to say is that he doesn’t have anywhere to live and that his only hobbies for the last ten years have involved drugs and alcohol. For Klaus, the Academy is probably his best hope of staying sober. The fact that Klaus wants that is, perhaps, the only inspiration of the night.
Ben is seated next to Klaus. They’ve set a place for him, which seems silly since Ben can’t eat, but Five spent three decades propping up a mannequin with a drink in her hand, so it’s fine. “We just found each other,” Ben says, and he seems to enjoy the fact that the others can see him and talk to him now that Klaus has his abilities under control. “It’d be a shame to let that go now.”
It’s sentimental, but Ben’s the only one who can pull it off. And not just because he’s dead. But because he’s Ben and that’s what Ben does. Five suspects that’s why he was Number Six when clearly he could kill any of them on a whim.
Vanya grins. She still sits at the end of the table, opposite the empty chair where their father used to sit. They used to forget about her there, turned toward their father all the time. It’s not that way anymore. They’re turned toward her now, the utter novelty of it all. “I’m in, of course,” she enthuses. She’s happier now, so much happier than before. Complete in a way that Five can’t quite explain but knows implicitly. “I mean, this is all I’ve wanted for, like, ever.”
That’s that, then.
They’re all beaming, proud and content of this series of predictable sentiment, when they finally look to Five.
He looks back.
Because that’s what he does.
That’s all he can do.
Five has spent most of his life looking back.
His family is ready to look forward.
This is reflective of their life situations, of course. He can’t blame them for it. But he also can’t blindly follow them. “We just have to be careful, you know,” he ventures cautiously, because he’s not some damn 13 year old insisting that he knows better. Well, technically he is, but it’s different this time. Five hopes it’s different. “We can’t say for sure that all we’ve changed won’t have unexpected consequences.”
He’s being reasonable and rational and, honestly, just plain smart, but they all groan. Klaus actually rolls his eyes.
“You got to lighten up,” Diego tells him. “It’s over.”
“Diego’s right,” Luther says. “It’s done.”
“We won,” Allison tells him, more gently than the others. “You need to accept that.”
Vanya reaches out to him, because she’s still closest to him at the table. Her hand on his arm is warm. “It’s okay to be careful,” she assures him. “But we’ve got to move forward, Five. We’ve got to.”
He sighs. He looks at Vanya. He looks at Ben, who nods his agreement. He looks at the others.
“Fine,” he says with another sigh, this one even more exasperated than the last. He isn’t sure if this counts as surrender or acceptance. He’s not sure which option he finds more distasteful. Maybe the Handler is right about some things: que sera, sera. He shakes his head. “I’m in.”
At least this way, he rationalizes over the rest of the meal, he can keep them close. While they make their plans for cute family bonding, he’ll make his plans to save them from likely impending doom.
Whatever that may be.
-o-
That’s how the story starts.
With a plan.
His family clearly needs help with planning.
Five, on the other hand, is an old pro.
-o-
First things first, the apocalypse.
As far as plans go, this one seems obvious. After all, it’s the apocalypse. It means everyone dies and the world goes up and flames and there’s nothing -- absolutely nothing -- left. That’s not good. That’s very, very bad, and Five has the PTSD symptoms to prove it.
He’s not sure why the others aren’t more concerned about this. Even though he’s told them that things are probably fine, based on his math and logic, it’s still the apocalypse. It’s not the kind of thing you just take someone’s word for, not even when that someone is a time traveling assassin.
Now, it’s true, Five’s calculations suggest that they have prevented it by helping Vanya accept her powers, but that’s the thing about calculations. Sometimes you get them wrong. In the Commission, you have the chance to go back and fix things again (and again and again, sometimes), but Five’s own resources are finite. He’s got no one to cross check his work, and if he gets this wrong, then they all go boom and this time there’s no second chance.
In all of this, Five has downplayed the possibility of a secondary consequence. After all, the original logic still stood. Saving Vanya and bringing her into the family as an equal would dispel the risk. If Vanya was in control of her powers, then there was no risk. There would be no apocalypse.
It’s just, this puts them in a whole new territory. Honestly, Five has no idea what the implications are for the timeline because of this, and all the knowledge he brought into this before is pretty much useless. They’ve changed massive things -- and they’ve changed small things. And history, if his previous attempts to stop the world are any indication, has a tendency to repeat itself. The Handler’s motto is even more impossible to ignore now: what will be, will be.
Five’s worked so hard to disprove that but he’s not sure how to let it go. Bringing them back to the future -- he could have skipped all of this entirely. He could have plunked them down a few days after the would-be apocalypse just to make sure. He told the others that the calculations were too hypothetical and that there was too high of a risk by traveling through such unknown variables, but that’s not entirely true.
The truth is, at the core of it, that Five needs to be here. He’s been obsessed with this day; this day defines him more than any other. To skip it would mean sacrificing the closure he so clearly needs. If he’s ever going to put this behind him, after all these years, then he can’t skimp. He needs to be here when it happens -- or when it doesn’t. Mostly, this is a day he needs to live, no matter what.
That’s his resolve.
It’s also mentally tearing him apart.
Shit, he’s an emotional wreck.
All those years in the apocalypse, all those years as a trained killer, and he’s never been as on edge as he is right now.
He tells the others not to worry, that things will be fine, but it’s all total bullshit. His siblings were about to live out the day they died, and Five’s not sure if this is the day his life ended or began. All he knows is that the next 24 hours are going to be hell.
“Well, we could go out,” Diego says. “You know. Get your mind off things.”
Five does not want to go out.
“Family night then,” Luther suggests. “Games and music.”
That sounds like torture. He can’t imagine playing Monopoly with his siblings now. He doesn’t want to buy Park Place; he just wants to stop it from burning.
“I’d say we could go party or something, but I’m not sober enough for that,” Klaus says with an apologetic wince. “Also, you’d get arrested for being underage, and that would ruin your record. At your age? Tragic.”
Getting drunk actually sounds pretty decent, but Klaus’ logic has some validity.
“Nothing wrong with taking it easy,” Ben consoles him. “Even for you.”
That’s the problem, though. Five is trying to take it easy, but he’s not sure what taking it easy on the day the world ended twice but hopefully not a third time looks like.
“You didn’t work this hard to worry so much,” Allison tells him. “We don’t like seeing you do this to yourself.”
There’s no doubt that she means it. There’s also no doubt that it’s irrelevant.
“Oh, that’s tonight?” Vanya says, like she’s forgotten. That’s who well they’ve fixed things; Vanya hardly remembers the fact that she’s the end of days. “I totally forgot!”
Five’s on his own then.
Somehow, he’s not surprised.
-o-
Ultimately, Five decides to treat it like a normal day. He’ll be vigilant and prepared but he won’t go over the top. He’ll get up, have some coffee, eat some breakfast, read some books, complain about his siblings and that’ll be that.
It’s not his best plan, but it’s conservative with plenty of room for improvisation. He thinks it’ll do.
To that end, Five keeps his bedtime. In fact, he goes to bed extra early just to prove to himself that he’s got this entirely under control. He’ll go to sleep, wake up, no problem.
No problem at all.
-o-
There are a few problems.
Namely, Five can’t sleep.
At all.
He tosses and turns for a few hours, and just when he thinks he’s drifting off, he opens his eyes with a sudden jolt. Compulsively, he looks over at the clock. But he already knows it’s midnight.
The once-last day of the world has started.
Swearing, Five gets out of bed.
So much for sleep.
He goes to the wardrobe to pull out a fresh pair of clothes.
So much for sleep.
-o-
Resigned, he decides not to pretend. It’s beneath him, really, and he’s not going to act like a damn child even if he looks like one. The best way to approach this, he decides, is to get dressed and face the day. This may seem like overkill, Five concedes that much, but it’s not all ego. It’s practicality, too. If he’s going to face down the end of the world, he doesn’t want to be in his pajamas. It’s debatable if schoolboy shorts are any better, but Five doesn’t have the energy to concern himself with his limited wardrobe selection.
No, he needs to worry about the apocalypse that happened once and may not happen again.
He walks through the house for awhile, taking it all in. It’s still a little surreal to him, being back. And if this is the end of the world, he wants to remember why it matters. He wants to remember the shitty childhood he walked out on. He wants to remember the family he sacrificed everything to come back to. He wants to remember that he’s alive, he’s here, he’s now.
When he ends up in the kitchen, he makes a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich and puts on a pot of coffee. With nothing else to do, he settles down to wait.
People expect drama when you get to these kind of moments, and there’s a time and place for it. But Five lived for decades in the apocalypse. Sometimes the darkest moment are the quietest ones, the simplest ones. Sometimes it’s not the fight that kills you.
Sometimes it’s the wait.
If the Handler had come for him ten years earlier, he might not have taken her deal quite so quickly. She knew what she was doing, though. She knew that the solitude would break him and she could pick up the pieces to do as she pleased. She wasn’t stupid, the Handler.
Five just hopes like hell he was smarter.
He looks at the clocks. It’s an hour into the once-last day on Earth.
Five rubs a weary hand over his face.
He’s going to need a lot more coffee.
-o-
He’s on the third pot of coffee when Klaus comes out. It’s a little past three, and Klaus is wearing a dressing robe and not much else. He groans, slumping into a chair across from Five. “I can’t sleep,” he moans.
Five gives him a quizzical look. “You look like you have been sleeping.”
Ben has followed Klaus into the kitchen. He doesn’t look tired or rumpled. That’s one of the benefits of being dead, probably. “He has been,” he informs Five with a sigh. He sits down next to Klaus. “But there were dreams.”
“Dreams?” Klaus asks. “Try nightmares!”
Ben is not amused. “I don’t think they were nightmares.”
“Uh, yeah they were,” Klaus says. “I see dead people, remember?”
“But I heard you talking in your sleep,” Ben reasons. “You were complaining that the grocery store was out of your shampoo.”
Klaus mouth drops open. “I still can’t believe you listen to me while I sleep. Isn’t that, like, an invasion of privacy?”
“You really need baby shampoo?” Ben asks.
“I have sensitive eyes!” Klaus says. “And I like baby soft hair, okay? Is that so bad?”
Five watches this exchange without a single bit of commentary. Klaus sighs dramatically, and seems to finally be awake enough to pay attention to Five’s actual presence.
“Why are you dressed?” Klaus asks with a frown.
“Because I’m not asleep,” Five tells him.
“It’s, like, 3 AM,” Klaus says, squinting at a clock.
“Yep,” Five says.
Klaus still doesn’t get it, but Ben leans closer to him. “3 AM,” he repeats. “On the dawn of the apocalypse.”
Klaus’ eyes go wide. “Oh, right,” he says, and he looks at Five again. He tips his head to the side. “I thought we stopped that?”
“I think we stopped it,” Five clarifies. “No way to actually be sure.”
“Except to live it,” Ben supplies.
“Oh,” Klaus says, and he goes very quiet. “Well, in that case, maybe you better share the coffee. Unless you think it counts as a drug? Do you think? Is coffee a drug?”
Five doesn’t care. He pours a cup for himself, one for Ben and one for Klaus. Ben doesn’t drink his. Klaus, for his rambling, doesn’t drink his either.
Five drinks enough for all of them combined.
-o-
It’s only an hour later when there are footsteps on the stairs. Klaus looks up, interested, but Five is fixated on the coffee pot. It’s filling again. This is the fourth time.
Vanya yawns in the doorway, and she looks vexed. “I thought I heard something,” she says.
“You hear everything,” Five reminds her, tapping his feet impatiently while it fills. “That’s part of your powers.”
“I know,” Vanya says, shuffling over to a spare chair. “But I could hear you guys talking.”
“And you wanted to join us?” Klaus asks. “Because we’re just so much fun.”
Vanya allows herself a smile. “We have to be there for each other,” she says. Her smile widens reassuringly as she looks at Five. “Especially today.”
“You don’t need to worry about today,” Five tells her. “Whatever happens, none of it will be your fault.”
Her chuckle is mirthless. “I know my powers caused the last apocalypse.”
“And possibly the only one,” Klaus clarifies. “Are we forgetting about the part where we fixed things?”
Five ignores him, eyes on Vanya instead. “We all played a role in it,” he says. “More than we like to talk about.”
“We still made it work, didn’t we?” Vanya asks him. “Are you really that worried?”
“About you? No,” Five says. But he shakes his head. “Time’s hard to grasp, though. The more you know about it, the more you realize you have to learn. I mean, I feel good about what we did, and my calculations work out, but…”
He can’t finish the thought. He’s not sure what he wants to say.
Vanya gathers a breath and lets it out. She goes over to the coffee pot and pours a fresh cup for herself and one for Five. “Then we wait it out,” she says. “We see what happens.”
Klaus claps his hands together. “Yay!” he says. “Family!”
Five takes the cup of coffee and drinks it while it’s hot and bitter on his tongue.
Yay, he thinks to himself. Family
-o-
Diego is the next one down when it’s almost dawn. He is dressed to go running, and he seems surprised to see them there. “Whoa,” he says. “Did I miss a memo? Are we having a family meeting?”
The joke goes over like a lead balloon.
Klaus forces a smile. “Impromptu, of course,” he says.
Diego still doesn’t get it. He looks at his watch. “It’s, like, five AM.”
“On the day of the last apocalypse,” Ben informs him.
Diego blinks, still blank and confused. “The one we stopped?”
“The one we hoped we stopped,” Vanya corrects him gently.
He makes a face but pours himself a coffee and sits down. “Well, you’re not feeling maniacal or anything, are you, Vanya?”
“No, not in the least,” Vanya says.
Diego takes a few sips, nodding his head. “So we’re just going to sit here and wait it out? Just in case?”
“Pretty much,” Klaus says.
“Well,” Diego says, kicking back and putting his feet up on the table. “Sounds awesome, then.”
-o-
At six AM, Allison and Luther come down together, making them a complete set. They are clearly embarrassed being seen together, but Diego and Klaus spare any commentary. Five has lost track of how much coffee he’s drunk, and it’s impossible to tell if he’s thrumming from the caffeine or the adrenaline.
Both is the likely answer, and Five is moderately grateful for the distraction when Luther asks, “Why didn’t you guys tell me we were waiting it out? I would have come down sooner.”
“It wasn’t planned,” Diego tells him.
“Like, at all,” Klaus says. “I was going to get a facial today. That sounds nice, right? A facial?”
Allison sits down gingerly, looking at them each. Her eyes linger on Five in concern. “Have you slept at all?”
“Irrelevant,” Five says. “I’ll sleep tonight when the world is safe. If it’s not…”
He doesn’t finish the thought.
Vanya sits up straighter and does it for him. “If it’s not, then we want to be together,” she says. “Like we should be.”
Luther sits down as well, his large presence filling the room. “If we’re together, then the world can’t end,” he says with a confidence that he has no actual knowledge to substantiate. “Today’s just another day.”
Five sighs. He wants to tell them they’re right. He wants the platitudes to work.
But he shakes his head. “No one else has to stay,” he says. “I’ll admit that my fears are probably completely unfounded. I’ve just spent so many years, trying to stop this day from happening. I’m not sure I was ever emotionally prepared to live it out.”
Allison smiles. “There’s a first for everything.”
“And a second, apparently,” Klaus says.
“Maybe a third,” Ben adds.
“Do we have any coffee?” Luther asks, getting up and wandering over to the pot. “Because I think we’re going to need a lot of coffee.”
-o-
They do need a lot of coffee.
Five had invested heavily in coffee beans upon their return, but it’s all gone by the end of the day. In the past, Five would have spent the day plotting and calculating, but he can’t make his brain work anymore. He sits there and listens to his family. He listens while they tell stories and make jokes. He listens while they talk about the past four years and what they hope to do tomorrow.
If this is the end of the world, Five decides, then there are worse ways to go.
-o-
When midnight approaches, the conversation tapers off. When it’s 11:59, no one moves. No one even breathes.
At midnight, no one speaks.
It’s 12:02 when Diego finally breaks the silence.
“So that’s it,” Diego says, and he nods like he’s impressed.
“No apocalypse,” Allison agrees, and she takes Luther’s hand with a squeeze.
“Of course not,” Luther says. “We saved the world, right?”
“It’s a little less exciting than I’d hoped,” Klaus admits. “But I am tired. I could go for something to take the edge off.”
Ben slaps him.
Klaus howls. “I could, but I won’t,” he says. “Sheesh.”
Vanya is the last one out, and she puts a hand on Five’s shoulder. “See? It all worked out,” she tells him. “Now you can finally get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” Five says, feeling numb somehow. “Right.”
He sits there as his family files out, one by one, back to bed.
He sits there and watches as the clock continues to tick. 12:05, 12:09, 12:35.
Time keeps going; time doesn’t stop.
Five’s not sure what the hell to do with that.
-o-
In any case, Five stays in the kitchen until morning.
Partially because he’s so jacked up on coffee that he’s not going to sleep for a week.
And also because the apocalypse didn’t happen yesterday.
But Five has no idea what to expect today.
-o-
He approaches the new day with as much optimism as he can muster up. It’s a good thing when the world doesn’t end. And now that today is a reality, he can form a new plan, a better plan. Impending doom is still a distinct possibility, and just because the apocalypse wasn’t yesterday doesn’t mean that it’s not going to happen next week or next month or whenever. Five still needs a plan.
They all need a plan.
-o-
The others come up with another, not so brilliant plan.
Two days after the world doesn’t end, they decide to update their rooms.
Seriously. That’s their only plan for the day. Home decor.
Five can’t completely say they’re crazy -- he did decorate his place during the apocalypse with whatever found treasures he could come up with -- but it feels so ridiculously petty that Five can’t even. He had resorted to home decor out of extreme loneliness and prolonged isolation.
This?
Five doesn’t even know what to make of this.
There are some positives, of course. This means that they’re all agreed, they are going to stay. It also means that they’re ready to take control of the old man’s estate. He left everything to the kids, split equally seven ways. They had always known that their father was loaded, but their sum had been a shock, even to them.
There’s debate over investments and financial portfolios. Luther gets sentimental about it, and Diego feels a bit scorned for some reason. Ultimately, Five’s a pragmatist. They need money; Dad had money. Let that be what it is.
So, in that sense, a little home renovation is probably a good sign for family unity, and it’s also probably a good investment. But it’s not actually a plan with any resonance. It feels like wasting time, if Five is being candid.
He is, unfortunately, the only one who feels that way.
After years under their father’s authoritarian rule, they seem to be embracing a democratic approach now. Five’s disdain for pointless activities is overwhelmingly ignored.
Luther embraces the task with gusto, and whenever someone tries to throw something away, he objects. When they insist, he takes it for himself. “We have to keep the family memories alive!”
Diego is much more perfunctory in his update. He’s putting plenty of stuff out in the hallway that he no longer wants. This is not a matter of actual need, but when he notices that Luther is trying to salvage everything, he seems to think it is his duty to get rid of everything. Five isn’t sure either of them are making any significant progress, but pointing this out to them would take too much effort.
Allison actually appears to take the tasks seriously, and she actually goes out and buys useful things like bookshelves and lamps and photo frames. By the end of the day, she’s taken down most of the pictures of herself and replaced them with ones of Claire. Five lingers in her room the longest. He tells her it’s because the others have too much drama, and he hopes she doesn’t notice that he spends most of the time looking at those pictures in wonder.
When he leaves Allison’s room, he tries to pass by Klaus’ but that’s a futile effort. Klaus is throwing things around, and Five is hit with several pairs of pants that are clearly too hideous for any human being ever. It’s not clear to Five if Klaus is making any actual progress, but he seems to be having a thoroughly good time, so there is that.
Ben, conveniently, has the room right next to Klaus. Thanks to Klaus’ sobriety, Ben can interact with his things now. He’s the only one who seems to be playing with his childhood mementos in genuine fondness. It’s not so much the things, Five is pretty sure, but the simple fact that he can. Five understands that impulse. For as much as he hates people, decades of solitude have made him appreciate companionship in a way he probably never would have before. Still, when Ben starts jumping on his bed, Five moves on.
Vanya is moving rooms, actually. She’s taking one closer to the others. She has some boxes that she’s had sent over from her old apartment, and she’s unpacking the items like she’s never seen them before. She’s prone to slipping out, though. Standing in the hallway, as if in awe that she’s finally got a place here. It’s a few decades overdue, of course, but Vanya seems to be past her anger. You destroy the world a few times over, and it probably doesn’t seem as appealing anymore.
Five doesn’t pay much heed to Pogo or Grace, though they both seem to be watching keenly. Grace helps out with the unpacking where needed, showing Diego how to fold a shirt and making sure that Vanya has everything she needs. Pogo smiles as he watches, like this is the happiest he’s been in years.
Funny enough, none of them miss Dad.
None of them think of Dad at all.
All the things they’ve fixed, and there’s no fixing that.
-o-
Five doesn’t mean to, but the whole thing ends up being a distraction. It’s true, he has no interest in doing anything to his own room, but the others keep wanting help. They want advice. And Five’s there, so that seems like as good of reason as any to lend a hand.
Besides, without the apocalypse, what else has he got to do?
Maybe normal is utterly vapid and stupid.
And maybe Five finally has time for vapid and stupid.
He’s a 58 year old time traveling assassin living with his superhero siblings while going through puberty for a second time.
Stranger things have happened in his life, needless to say.
-o-
Besides, it starts small. Luther is hanging a picture -- a family portrait, one from Dad’s bedroom -- and he can’t tell if it’s crooked or not. Five watches him, bemused as Luther tips it one way and then the other, before Luther finally looks back at him.
“Well, don’t just stand there and smirk,” Luther chides.
That seems like an odd invective. Five is quite good at standing here and smirking.
Luther gestures to the picture. “Help me out!”
It’s a plaintive demand but it reads like a request. For all that Luther is huge and can snap Five in half with one hand, he’s also oddly paternal. It had come across annoying as children, and the goody two-shoes act still isn’t something Five loves, but he sees that there’s heart to it now. Luther is just about blindly following orders. Essentially, he wants to make people happy. Now that their father is out of the picture, his devotion to his siblings has taken center stage, and that, more than anything, is why he’ll always be their Number One.
These are sudden conclusions for Five. They’re also entirely irrelevant.
Luther is still staring at him, one hand pointed at the wall.
Five looks at the wall.
He looks at the crooked picture.
Then, finally, he looks at Luther.
Chewing his lips, he steps into the room. Crossing the floor, he lifts his hand and tips the picture. He tips it back the other way, making a few small adjustments. It needs a gentle touch, and Five feels the wire slipping over the nail Luther anchored into the wall. Just a nudge more.
“There,” he says, stepping back to admire his work. He gives the picture a once over and nods his approval at the properly balanced picture. “What do you think?”
Luther looks at the picture. Then, he looks at the picture. None of them are smiling in it, but it’s the last one with the six of them. “I wish Vanya were in it,” he says finally.
Five steps back until he’s side by side with his brother. He frowns. “We can commission another,” he says.
Luther brightens at the idea. “You think so?”
Five realizes belatedly that now that he’s made the suggestion, he has to endure the process. Part of him wants to backtrack, to tell Luther to snap a photograph instead.
But the six stoic faces and the six masks stare back at him. His own face looks smug. Inexplicably, Five feels his stomach turn. He’s still a smug bastard, this much is true. But after all these years, he thinks he’s earned it. Back then? Shit, he was an idiot back then.
He looks back at Luther, almost mustering up something that resembles a smile. “Yeah,” he says, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “I think so.”
-o-
Five can’t imagine what life would really be like without Ben, and there’s a part of him -- a small part, granted -- that is glad he missed Ben’s death while trying to survive apocalypse. Still, walking by Ben’s room and seeing him there is nice.
Five’s lived a long time without nice. So he knows to appreciate it.
Ben knows to appreciate it, too. He’s spent the last however many years with only Klaus to talk to, so it’s a toss up to say which one of them has had it worse. All of which is to say Ben is very glad that Klaus is very sober.
That’s not to say it’s perfect.
Apparently, going shopping while noncorporeal is a little difficult.
It’s funny that Five is the only one who has noticed how left out he feels with this fit of redecorating.
“We could go out, buy you some stuff,” Five offers. “I mean, I’d have to do the shopping, but you know. You get to pick it out. I don’t care.”
“You don’t have any money either,” Ben points out. He’s pouting a little. “And you’re 13.”
No matter the fact that it’s true -- Five is still frustratingly young -- he still resents it every time someone tells him that. He takes it as a personal insult for some reason. For all reasons. “13, not dead,” he reasons, a little coolly. But this is Ben, and he likes Ben. He softens with a shrug. “I could go ask Luther. He’s a soft touch about this shit.”
Ben shrugs back, slumping a little on his bed. “I don’t know.”
Five sighs. He hates unnecessary conversation that become emotionally invested. Delores was always so good about that, not pushing too hard. She knew when to call him on his shit but she also knew when to let him be.
But Ben’s a ghost, not a mannequin, so Five has to adjust. He’s a bastard and he knows it, but he does love his family.
“Well, then, look around the house,” Five says. “There’s a lot of stuff around that no one’s using.”
Ben make a face. “I don’t want Dad’s stuff.”
“Okay, then, how about mine?” Five offers with a shrug.
He says it like it’s no big deal because it doesn’t seem like a big deal to him.
The look on Ben’s face, however, suggests that Five has wildly misjudged what it means to Ben. “Really?”
Five blinks, a little caught off guard. Part of him wants to retract the offer because this whole thing is uncomfortable, but Ben looks so damn hopeful that he can’t. “Sure,” Five says. “I mean, I don’t care about most of it. There’d be a few books I want to keep, maybe a memento or two, but it’s just stuff. I’ve lived long enough without it, and I can’t say that any of that is what I missed.”
During the apocalypse, he thought often of his family. He thought of Luther and Diego and Allison and Klaus and Ben and Vanya.
He hadn’t given a second thought to the shitty knicknacks he’d left behind.
Ben is looking increasingly awestruck by the moment. “Even your dart board?”
Five scoffs at the idea. “Even the dart board.”
Ben sits back, shaking his head. “No way.”
“Yes way,” Five says. “I’ll go get it right now, if you want. Help you hang it.”
Ben is just short of gaping now. It makes him look young.
Frustratingly, he still looks older than Five.
“Are you sure?” Ben asks, as if to check one more time.
Five rolls his eyes this time. “Yes, I’m sure.”
Because if you can’t give your dead brother the dart board you haven’t played with in 40 years, then what the hell is the point?
-o-
After all that, Five’s had his fill of personal interaction and he’s ready to go back to his room, close his door and not be around people for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, on his way back to his room, Allison waves at him to come in.
“Five! Good!” she calls out, like she’s actually glad to see him.
He can think of no reason why she’d be glad to see him. He’s not actually all that likeable. He’s about to keep walking, but she steps toward the door and beckons him again.
“I need a second opinion,” she says, and she’s smiling. A real smile, not something fake or provocative. He wonders about Allison sometimes, about how you manage sincerity when your power is falsehood. It’s not that he doubts her or her intentions, but he knows better than the rest of them that a superpower comes with a flipside. Call it a super-weakness if you will, but it’s why a time traveler got stuck in the future. Irony is a cosmic joke on them all.
She still smiling and Five remembers to almost smile back. “Well, I can go get Luther for you--”
She rolls her eyes and tugs him inside the room. “No, you,” she says, in a light and sing-songy kind of way. He suspects this is what she sounds like with Claire. Five wants to be indignant about that, but he finds that he can’t muster up the conviction for it.
“Okay, okay,” he relents. When he’s inside the room, she lets him go, and he sighs. “What, then?”
He wonders if she’s going to ask about his calculations for time travel. He thinks it’s possible that she has questions about how her body was restore during time travel. It’s even possible that she wants to know if he’s going to help out with chores around the house because with all seven of them living there, things are getting messy really fast.
To his surprise, she holds up two colored squares. Five studies them, trying to discern if they have any special powers or a secret message or--
“Which one do you like better?” she asks.
Five looks at the two squares. They’re both shades of blue, and Five can see no discernible evidence that they’re significant at all. He frowns. “What are they?”
She has the audacity to look like he’s the crazy one. “They’re paint swatches,” she says.
When Five clearly doesn’t know what she’s talking about, she makes a noise of disbelief and gestures to the room.
“For the walls,” she says. “I was going to repaint, but I can’t decide which color I like better.”
Five can only stare at her for a moment, wondering if this is somehow a joke.
It’s not a joke.
He frowns, looking at the paint swatches again. He shakes his head. “They’re both blue.”
“Yeah, but one is sky blue,” she says, waving a brighter one at him. “And this one is periwinkle, so there are more purple undertones.”
She says that like it matters. Five shakes his head again. “So? They’re still both blue.”
“But the nuance matters,” she says.
Five can only scoff because that’s the only appropriate response. “Does it?”
She doesn’t look offended, even though Five is clearly mocking her and belittling her point of view. Instead, she just looks distressed, as if Five’s inability to appreciate one shade of blue from another is some kind of actual tragedy. “Of course it does,” she says. “I mean, you, more than any of us, understands that the smallest choices we make matter. That nuance can be the difference between a second chance and the end of the world.”
For a moment, Five has no response. Her explanation is surprisingly adept; it sounds like something Dad would say.
It strikes him, then, that Allison’s power to bend reality isn’t based on lies. It’s not even based on three little words. It only works when she believes it first.
And maybe she doesn’t even need to start a rumor to make other people believe.
“I guess so,” he concedes with epic understatement. “But these are literally two shades of blue. I know I talk about the Butterfly Effect, but not even I am convinced that your paint swatches will make any difference in the cosmic balance of things.”
Instead of saying she’s right, he’ll find a way to talk around her point. Because that’s what Five does instead of admitting that he’s wrong.
She looks a little bemused, as if he’s said something ridiculous. “Vanya caused the apocalypse, right? And how did we save her?”
“We went back in time, taught her to use her powers and accepted her as an equal into the Academy,” Five says.
“No, we went back in time and loved her, Five. That’s what we did.”
He laughs as he shakes his head dismissively. “That’s basically the same thing.”
“Right,” she says, waving the paint swatches again. “Two shades of blue. But the difference matters.”
That’s annoyingly receptive. Delores would like Allison, he thinks. She’d like her a lot.
He wishes they’d spent more time together, Allison and Delores.
Five still wishes a lot things
He gathers a breath and purses his lips. He has no desire to debate this with Allison. He wants to go to his room and close his door.
Or, you know, mostly close it. He’d probably leave it open a crack.
He brushes the thought aside. “Fine,” he says. “Then go with the sky blue.”
Allison is clearly shocked. She stares at him for a moment, as if this is the first time he’s ever played along with one of her silly requests. The fact that it very well could be is notwithstanding. “You think I should use sky blue?” she asks.
With a decisive nod, Five says, “Yes.”
“Why?” Allison asks.
“Because,” Five says. “Some days are gray. A lot of days are gray. And none of us can control the weather, so we’re just stuck with that. But if you choose this one--” He flicks his finger at the brighter blue. “--then at least you’ll always have blue skies when you come home. Besides, I think Claire will like it better. Kids like bright colors.”
Now she is genuinely shocked. It’s her turn to be speechless. “That’s...thoughtful,” she finally says like she can’t quite believe i herself.
Five puts his hands in his pockets with a chortle. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I know I’m full of surprises sometimes.”
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: No beta. This fic got very much out of control. Fills my dehumanization square for hc_bingo.
Summary: Two weeks. That’s how long it takes the Commission to find him. That’s how long it takes before the timeline is in jeopardy again. That’s how long it takes for Five to realize the Umbrella Academy needs a new plan.
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
PART THIRTEEN
PART FOURTEEN
PART FIFTEEN
PART SIXTEEN
-o-
Saving the world, when they’re finally working together, turns out to be relatively easy. They travel through time, they do things right, they take care of Vanya and keep track of each other. By the time Five gets them back to the present (or, their present, at any rate, who the hell even knows anymore), everyone is (mostly) happy and (more or less) whole and the world isn’t ending (presumably).
That’s simplifying it a bit -- or, you know, a lot -- but Five’s actually okay with that. In most instances, he doesn’t like to dumb stuff down, and he tends to be frustrated when other people make light of truly important things.
But life has been unduly complicated for the past five decades.
Like, really complicated.
Time travel and continuum corrections and saving his family. Destruction and nearly starving to death and isolation and, well, murder.
He’ll take easy this time.
Hell, he’s earned it.
Right?
-o-
That assumption is not Five’s first mistake by a long shot.
Only time will tell if it’s his last.
And time?
Well, time is a son of a bitch.
Shit.
-o-
As it turns out, easy lasts for all of two weeks.
Really, it figures. Five should have expected. Maybe Five did expect it. Who is he kidding? Of course he expected it.
Two weeks.
That’s how long it takes the Commission to find him.
That’s how long it takes before the timeline is in jeopardy again.
That’s how long it takes for Five to realize the Umbrella Academy needs a new plan.
-o-
Five’s getting ahead of himself. That’s not where the story starts.
This is not entirely Five’s fault. When you travel through time, chronology is not your strong suit. Sure, Five can sit down and make a timeline when he needs to, but he doesn’t think in a linear fashion anymore. He’s more likely to pull out the most relevant facts and assemble them together in a coherent narrative. That narrative rarely follows a simple trajectory from point A to point B and really, Five doesn’t know why other people have such a hard time with that.
But anyway, scratch that bit. If Five is going to make sense of this story for other people (lesser people) to understand, he needs to start earlier.
In that context, the story actually starts a week after they get back to the present. This is exactly two days before the once-apocalypse started the first (and presumably second) time around. You may think that the story should start the moment they got back, but you’d be wrong. That first week is a lost week to Five -- he spends most of it in different stages of unconsciousness. Time travel, after all, is straight up exhausting, and when you drag six other people along with you, it saps you of everything. For that first week back, he’s barely cognizant.
Therefore, that week is too inconsequential to ground the story. The action starts, as previously stated, a week after their arrival and two days before the end of the world.
At this point, Five is finally awake more than he’s asleep, which is good. His siblings seem to be getting things in order around the house, and Five finds that he has no pressing concerns to deal with. When he’s finally up and about, he starts reading through Dad’s library -- the books he never let Five touch -- and then he makes a trip to the grocery store because his siblings, for all that they’ve done to settle in, still haven’t bought a damn coffee pot.
Five’s plan to rectify it is simple but important. He purchases a simple pot with no frills and invests in strong beans. As a note of decadence, he invests in a bean grinder, too. It’s unnecessary and probably overly cumbersome, but Five has few indulgences in life and it’s not like he has other plans for his time right now.
That’s what’s weird about this starting point. That’s what makes it memorable. Because it’s the first and only time in Five’s life that he didn’t have any actual plans. Sure, plans to read a book and buy coffee are technically plans, but only just. They are short term plans based solely on his own comfort. They have no greater meaning, no actual significance.
Five tells himself this is okay. It’s expected. Five has expended more energy than his 13 year old body has to give, so he’s entitled a slow start for once. He’s still so tired that he honestly hasn’t considered the possibility that he needs a better plan.
At least, that’s what he thinks until he hears the plans the others have.
-o-
See, the Umbrella Academy is composed of seven super powered individuals. Ostensibly, they are the most powerful people on the planet. They were raised to save the world, and then they did. They’re the best chance this world has at surviving. Between the seven of them, they can stop any disaster, stop any deviant, promote any cause.
And not one of them has a plan.
It’s been a week since they got back, and the apocalypse they prevented is not supposed to happen in two days. And not one of his siblings has thought to do anything significant at all.
They don’t even have the inkling of a plan.
That’s not entirely fair. They do have plans. It’s just that they’re terrible, terrible plans.
Naive, short-sighted, reductive, juvenile.
Plans that make Five’s preoccupation with coffee look brilliant.
In short, terrible.
So terrible that Five decides they don’t actually count as plans at all.
For example:
“I thought we’d put the Academy back together,” Luther suggests brightly over dinner. They eat dinner together now, at least once a week, according to Luther’s proclamation. This seems a bit overly zealous as they’ve only been back a week, but Five’s willing to let that slide. Luther isn’t making dinner obligatory like it was when they were kids, so Five can tolerate it. They also don’t expect Grace to cook and Pogo to serve. In fact, they give those two the night off, and let it be a sibling time. That seems like a thoughtful touch, if Five’s perfectly honest.
Still, it’s a little weird, Five has to admit. He finds himself on edge at the table. It’s impossible not to remember the last family dinner he was at, when he basically told his dad to stick it and walked out in a melodramatic huff before proving to everyone that their father was right about him all along.
That’s not the point, though. Five needs to keep his focus in the here and now for once. The point is they’re together and that’s good and that Luther has a plan.
Despite his best efforts to sound spontaneous, Luther has clearly been harboring this notion ever since they got back -- possibly before, possibly since they all moved out and he spent four years on the stupid moon -- but he says it like he’s trying to suggest it’s some kind of inspiration and not the inevitable outcome of their shared experiences.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Allison is the first to agree. “I think that’s a good idea,” she says. “I was thinking I needed to take a step back from my career for awhile. Focus on myself. That’s the best way for me to, you know, fix things with Claire.”
She also says this like it’s an inspiration. Five suspects she and Luther have talked this over extensively, however. She’s not quite as good of an actress as she thinks she is or Luther is just really hard to play off of.
Diego, being his typical obtuse self, looks thoughtful. “I’ve been doing this job solo all these years,” he says. “The Academy together? Working as a team? Without Dad? Would be much more effective at saving people.”
Diego doesn’t talk about how he lives in a boiler room and makes minimum wage by working as a janitor by day. He doesn’t talk about how his (not) girlfriend is dead, which makes going back to the police harder than he cares to admit.
Everyone seems perfectly content to let that slide.
Klaus shrugs indifferently even though he cares immensely. “I had no foreseeable future goals, so, you know, I’m in,” he says. He makes a vague gesture with his hand. “I could also, you know, use some accountability.”
What Klaus means to say is that he doesn’t have anywhere to live and that his only hobbies for the last ten years have involved drugs and alcohol. For Klaus, the Academy is probably his best hope of staying sober. The fact that Klaus wants that is, perhaps, the only inspiration of the night.
Ben is seated next to Klaus. They’ve set a place for him, which seems silly since Ben can’t eat, but Five spent three decades propping up a mannequin with a drink in her hand, so it’s fine. “We just found each other,” Ben says, and he seems to enjoy the fact that the others can see him and talk to him now that Klaus has his abilities under control. “It’d be a shame to let that go now.”
It’s sentimental, but Ben’s the only one who can pull it off. And not just because he’s dead. But because he’s Ben and that’s what Ben does. Five suspects that’s why he was Number Six when clearly he could kill any of them on a whim.
Vanya grins. She still sits at the end of the table, opposite the empty chair where their father used to sit. They used to forget about her there, turned toward their father all the time. It’s not that way anymore. They’re turned toward her now, the utter novelty of it all. “I’m in, of course,” she enthuses. She’s happier now, so much happier than before. Complete in a way that Five can’t quite explain but knows implicitly. “I mean, this is all I’ve wanted for, like, ever.”
That’s that, then.
They’re all beaming, proud and content of this series of predictable sentiment, when they finally look to Five.
He looks back.
Because that’s what he does.
That’s all he can do.
Five has spent most of his life looking back.
His family is ready to look forward.
This is reflective of their life situations, of course. He can’t blame them for it. But he also can’t blindly follow them. “We just have to be careful, you know,” he ventures cautiously, because he’s not some damn 13 year old insisting that he knows better. Well, technically he is, but it’s different this time. Five hopes it’s different. “We can’t say for sure that all we’ve changed won’t have unexpected consequences.”
He’s being reasonable and rational and, honestly, just plain smart, but they all groan. Klaus actually rolls his eyes.
“You got to lighten up,” Diego tells him. “It’s over.”
“Diego’s right,” Luther says. “It’s done.”
“We won,” Allison tells him, more gently than the others. “You need to accept that.”
Vanya reaches out to him, because she’s still closest to him at the table. Her hand on his arm is warm. “It’s okay to be careful,” she assures him. “But we’ve got to move forward, Five. We’ve got to.”
He sighs. He looks at Vanya. He looks at Ben, who nods his agreement. He looks at the others.
“Fine,” he says with another sigh, this one even more exasperated than the last. He isn’t sure if this counts as surrender or acceptance. He’s not sure which option he finds more distasteful. Maybe the Handler is right about some things: que sera, sera. He shakes his head. “I’m in.”
At least this way, he rationalizes over the rest of the meal, he can keep them close. While they make their plans for cute family bonding, he’ll make his plans to save them from likely impending doom.
Whatever that may be.
-o-
That’s how the story starts.
With a plan.
His family clearly needs help with planning.
Five, on the other hand, is an old pro.
-o-
First things first, the apocalypse.
As far as plans go, this one seems obvious. After all, it’s the apocalypse. It means everyone dies and the world goes up and flames and there’s nothing -- absolutely nothing -- left. That’s not good. That’s very, very bad, and Five has the PTSD symptoms to prove it.
He’s not sure why the others aren’t more concerned about this. Even though he’s told them that things are probably fine, based on his math and logic, it’s still the apocalypse. It’s not the kind of thing you just take someone’s word for, not even when that someone is a time traveling assassin.
Now, it’s true, Five’s calculations suggest that they have prevented it by helping Vanya accept her powers, but that’s the thing about calculations. Sometimes you get them wrong. In the Commission, you have the chance to go back and fix things again (and again and again, sometimes), but Five’s own resources are finite. He’s got no one to cross check his work, and if he gets this wrong, then they all go boom and this time there’s no second chance.
In all of this, Five has downplayed the possibility of a secondary consequence. After all, the original logic still stood. Saving Vanya and bringing her into the family as an equal would dispel the risk. If Vanya was in control of her powers, then there was no risk. There would be no apocalypse.
It’s just, this puts them in a whole new territory. Honestly, Five has no idea what the implications are for the timeline because of this, and all the knowledge he brought into this before is pretty much useless. They’ve changed massive things -- and they’ve changed small things. And history, if his previous attempts to stop the world are any indication, has a tendency to repeat itself. The Handler’s motto is even more impossible to ignore now: what will be, will be.
Five’s worked so hard to disprove that but he’s not sure how to let it go. Bringing them back to the future -- he could have skipped all of this entirely. He could have plunked them down a few days after the would-be apocalypse just to make sure. He told the others that the calculations were too hypothetical and that there was too high of a risk by traveling through such unknown variables, but that’s not entirely true.
The truth is, at the core of it, that Five needs to be here. He’s been obsessed with this day; this day defines him more than any other. To skip it would mean sacrificing the closure he so clearly needs. If he’s ever going to put this behind him, after all these years, then he can’t skimp. He needs to be here when it happens -- or when it doesn’t. Mostly, this is a day he needs to live, no matter what.
That’s his resolve.
It’s also mentally tearing him apart.
Shit, he’s an emotional wreck.
All those years in the apocalypse, all those years as a trained killer, and he’s never been as on edge as he is right now.
He tells the others not to worry, that things will be fine, but it’s all total bullshit. His siblings were about to live out the day they died, and Five’s not sure if this is the day his life ended or began. All he knows is that the next 24 hours are going to be hell.
“Well, we could go out,” Diego says. “You know. Get your mind off things.”
Five does not want to go out.
“Family night then,” Luther suggests. “Games and music.”
That sounds like torture. He can’t imagine playing Monopoly with his siblings now. He doesn’t want to buy Park Place; he just wants to stop it from burning.
“I’d say we could go party or something, but I’m not sober enough for that,” Klaus says with an apologetic wince. “Also, you’d get arrested for being underage, and that would ruin your record. At your age? Tragic.”
Getting drunk actually sounds pretty decent, but Klaus’ logic has some validity.
“Nothing wrong with taking it easy,” Ben consoles him. “Even for you.”
That’s the problem, though. Five is trying to take it easy, but he’s not sure what taking it easy on the day the world ended twice but hopefully not a third time looks like.
“You didn’t work this hard to worry so much,” Allison tells him. “We don’t like seeing you do this to yourself.”
There’s no doubt that she means it. There’s also no doubt that it’s irrelevant.
“Oh, that’s tonight?” Vanya says, like she’s forgotten. That’s who well they’ve fixed things; Vanya hardly remembers the fact that she’s the end of days. “I totally forgot!”
Five’s on his own then.
Somehow, he’s not surprised.
-o-
Ultimately, Five decides to treat it like a normal day. He’ll be vigilant and prepared but he won’t go over the top. He’ll get up, have some coffee, eat some breakfast, read some books, complain about his siblings and that’ll be that.
It’s not his best plan, but it’s conservative with plenty of room for improvisation. He thinks it’ll do.
To that end, Five keeps his bedtime. In fact, he goes to bed extra early just to prove to himself that he’s got this entirely under control. He’ll go to sleep, wake up, no problem.
No problem at all.
-o-
There are a few problems.
Namely, Five can’t sleep.
At all.
He tosses and turns for a few hours, and just when he thinks he’s drifting off, he opens his eyes with a sudden jolt. Compulsively, he looks over at the clock. But he already knows it’s midnight.
The once-last day of the world has started.
Swearing, Five gets out of bed.
So much for sleep.
He goes to the wardrobe to pull out a fresh pair of clothes.
So much for sleep.
-o-
Resigned, he decides not to pretend. It’s beneath him, really, and he’s not going to act like a damn child even if he looks like one. The best way to approach this, he decides, is to get dressed and face the day. This may seem like overkill, Five concedes that much, but it’s not all ego. It’s practicality, too. If he’s going to face down the end of the world, he doesn’t want to be in his pajamas. It’s debatable if schoolboy shorts are any better, but Five doesn’t have the energy to concern himself with his limited wardrobe selection.
No, he needs to worry about the apocalypse that happened once and may not happen again.
He walks through the house for awhile, taking it all in. It’s still a little surreal to him, being back. And if this is the end of the world, he wants to remember why it matters. He wants to remember the shitty childhood he walked out on. He wants to remember the family he sacrificed everything to come back to. He wants to remember that he’s alive, he’s here, he’s now.
When he ends up in the kitchen, he makes a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich and puts on a pot of coffee. With nothing else to do, he settles down to wait.
People expect drama when you get to these kind of moments, and there’s a time and place for it. But Five lived for decades in the apocalypse. Sometimes the darkest moment are the quietest ones, the simplest ones. Sometimes it’s not the fight that kills you.
Sometimes it’s the wait.
If the Handler had come for him ten years earlier, he might not have taken her deal quite so quickly. She knew what she was doing, though. She knew that the solitude would break him and she could pick up the pieces to do as she pleased. She wasn’t stupid, the Handler.
Five just hopes like hell he was smarter.
He looks at the clocks. It’s an hour into the once-last day on Earth.
Five rubs a weary hand over his face.
He’s going to need a lot more coffee.
-o-
He’s on the third pot of coffee when Klaus comes out. It’s a little past three, and Klaus is wearing a dressing robe and not much else. He groans, slumping into a chair across from Five. “I can’t sleep,” he moans.
Five gives him a quizzical look. “You look like you have been sleeping.”
Ben has followed Klaus into the kitchen. He doesn’t look tired or rumpled. That’s one of the benefits of being dead, probably. “He has been,” he informs Five with a sigh. He sits down next to Klaus. “But there were dreams.”
“Dreams?” Klaus asks. “Try nightmares!”
Ben is not amused. “I don’t think they were nightmares.”
“Uh, yeah they were,” Klaus says. “I see dead people, remember?”
“But I heard you talking in your sleep,” Ben reasons. “You were complaining that the grocery store was out of your shampoo.”
Klaus mouth drops open. “I still can’t believe you listen to me while I sleep. Isn’t that, like, an invasion of privacy?”
“You really need baby shampoo?” Ben asks.
“I have sensitive eyes!” Klaus says. “And I like baby soft hair, okay? Is that so bad?”
Five watches this exchange without a single bit of commentary. Klaus sighs dramatically, and seems to finally be awake enough to pay attention to Five’s actual presence.
“Why are you dressed?” Klaus asks with a frown.
“Because I’m not asleep,” Five tells him.
“It’s, like, 3 AM,” Klaus says, squinting at a clock.
“Yep,” Five says.
Klaus still doesn’t get it, but Ben leans closer to him. “3 AM,” he repeats. “On the dawn of the apocalypse.”
Klaus’ eyes go wide. “Oh, right,” he says, and he looks at Five again. He tips his head to the side. “I thought we stopped that?”
“I think we stopped it,” Five clarifies. “No way to actually be sure.”
“Except to live it,” Ben supplies.
“Oh,” Klaus says, and he goes very quiet. “Well, in that case, maybe you better share the coffee. Unless you think it counts as a drug? Do you think? Is coffee a drug?”
Five doesn’t care. He pours a cup for himself, one for Ben and one for Klaus. Ben doesn’t drink his. Klaus, for his rambling, doesn’t drink his either.
Five drinks enough for all of them combined.
-o-
It’s only an hour later when there are footsteps on the stairs. Klaus looks up, interested, but Five is fixated on the coffee pot. It’s filling again. This is the fourth time.
Vanya yawns in the doorway, and she looks vexed. “I thought I heard something,” she says.
“You hear everything,” Five reminds her, tapping his feet impatiently while it fills. “That’s part of your powers.”
“I know,” Vanya says, shuffling over to a spare chair. “But I could hear you guys talking.”
“And you wanted to join us?” Klaus asks. “Because we’re just so much fun.”
Vanya allows herself a smile. “We have to be there for each other,” she says. Her smile widens reassuringly as she looks at Five. “Especially today.”
“You don’t need to worry about today,” Five tells her. “Whatever happens, none of it will be your fault.”
Her chuckle is mirthless. “I know my powers caused the last apocalypse.”
“And possibly the only one,” Klaus clarifies. “Are we forgetting about the part where we fixed things?”
Five ignores him, eyes on Vanya instead. “We all played a role in it,” he says. “More than we like to talk about.”
“We still made it work, didn’t we?” Vanya asks him. “Are you really that worried?”
“About you? No,” Five says. But he shakes his head. “Time’s hard to grasp, though. The more you know about it, the more you realize you have to learn. I mean, I feel good about what we did, and my calculations work out, but…”
He can’t finish the thought. He’s not sure what he wants to say.
Vanya gathers a breath and lets it out. She goes over to the coffee pot and pours a fresh cup for herself and one for Five. “Then we wait it out,” she says. “We see what happens.”
Klaus claps his hands together. “Yay!” he says. “Family!”
Five takes the cup of coffee and drinks it while it’s hot and bitter on his tongue.
Yay, he thinks to himself. Family
-o-
Diego is the next one down when it’s almost dawn. He is dressed to go running, and he seems surprised to see them there. “Whoa,” he says. “Did I miss a memo? Are we having a family meeting?”
The joke goes over like a lead balloon.
Klaus forces a smile. “Impromptu, of course,” he says.
Diego still doesn’t get it. He looks at his watch. “It’s, like, five AM.”
“On the day of the last apocalypse,” Ben informs him.
Diego blinks, still blank and confused. “The one we stopped?”
“The one we hoped we stopped,” Vanya corrects him gently.
He makes a face but pours himself a coffee and sits down. “Well, you’re not feeling maniacal or anything, are you, Vanya?”
“No, not in the least,” Vanya says.
Diego takes a few sips, nodding his head. “So we’re just going to sit here and wait it out? Just in case?”
“Pretty much,” Klaus says.
“Well,” Diego says, kicking back and putting his feet up on the table. “Sounds awesome, then.”
-o-
At six AM, Allison and Luther come down together, making them a complete set. They are clearly embarrassed being seen together, but Diego and Klaus spare any commentary. Five has lost track of how much coffee he’s drunk, and it’s impossible to tell if he’s thrumming from the caffeine or the adrenaline.
Both is the likely answer, and Five is moderately grateful for the distraction when Luther asks, “Why didn’t you guys tell me we were waiting it out? I would have come down sooner.”
“It wasn’t planned,” Diego tells him.
“Like, at all,” Klaus says. “I was going to get a facial today. That sounds nice, right? A facial?”
Allison sits down gingerly, looking at them each. Her eyes linger on Five in concern. “Have you slept at all?”
“Irrelevant,” Five says. “I’ll sleep tonight when the world is safe. If it’s not…”
He doesn’t finish the thought.
Vanya sits up straighter and does it for him. “If it’s not, then we want to be together,” she says. “Like we should be.”
Luther sits down as well, his large presence filling the room. “If we’re together, then the world can’t end,” he says with a confidence that he has no actual knowledge to substantiate. “Today’s just another day.”
Five sighs. He wants to tell them they’re right. He wants the platitudes to work.
But he shakes his head. “No one else has to stay,” he says. “I’ll admit that my fears are probably completely unfounded. I’ve just spent so many years, trying to stop this day from happening. I’m not sure I was ever emotionally prepared to live it out.”
Allison smiles. “There’s a first for everything.”
“And a second, apparently,” Klaus says.
“Maybe a third,” Ben adds.
“Do we have any coffee?” Luther asks, getting up and wandering over to the pot. “Because I think we’re going to need a lot of coffee.”
-o-
They do need a lot of coffee.
Five had invested heavily in coffee beans upon their return, but it’s all gone by the end of the day. In the past, Five would have spent the day plotting and calculating, but he can’t make his brain work anymore. He sits there and listens to his family. He listens while they tell stories and make jokes. He listens while they talk about the past four years and what they hope to do tomorrow.
If this is the end of the world, Five decides, then there are worse ways to go.
-o-
When midnight approaches, the conversation tapers off. When it’s 11:59, no one moves. No one even breathes.
At midnight, no one speaks.
It’s 12:02 when Diego finally breaks the silence.
“So that’s it,” Diego says, and he nods like he’s impressed.
“No apocalypse,” Allison agrees, and she takes Luther’s hand with a squeeze.
“Of course not,” Luther says. “We saved the world, right?”
“It’s a little less exciting than I’d hoped,” Klaus admits. “But I am tired. I could go for something to take the edge off.”
Ben slaps him.
Klaus howls. “I could, but I won’t,” he says. “Sheesh.”
Vanya is the last one out, and she puts a hand on Five’s shoulder. “See? It all worked out,” she tells him. “Now you can finally get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” Five says, feeling numb somehow. “Right.”
He sits there as his family files out, one by one, back to bed.
He sits there and watches as the clock continues to tick. 12:05, 12:09, 12:35.
Time keeps going; time doesn’t stop.
Five’s not sure what the hell to do with that.
-o-
In any case, Five stays in the kitchen until morning.
Partially because he’s so jacked up on coffee that he’s not going to sleep for a week.
And also because the apocalypse didn’t happen yesterday.
But Five has no idea what to expect today.
-o-
He approaches the new day with as much optimism as he can muster up. It’s a good thing when the world doesn’t end. And now that today is a reality, he can form a new plan, a better plan. Impending doom is still a distinct possibility, and just because the apocalypse wasn’t yesterday doesn’t mean that it’s not going to happen next week or next month or whenever. Five still needs a plan.
They all need a plan.
-o-
The others come up with another, not so brilliant plan.
Two days after the world doesn’t end, they decide to update their rooms.
Seriously. That’s their only plan for the day. Home decor.
Five can’t completely say they’re crazy -- he did decorate his place during the apocalypse with whatever found treasures he could come up with -- but it feels so ridiculously petty that Five can’t even. He had resorted to home decor out of extreme loneliness and prolonged isolation.
This?
Five doesn’t even know what to make of this.
There are some positives, of course. This means that they’re all agreed, they are going to stay. It also means that they’re ready to take control of the old man’s estate. He left everything to the kids, split equally seven ways. They had always known that their father was loaded, but their sum had been a shock, even to them.
There’s debate over investments and financial portfolios. Luther gets sentimental about it, and Diego feels a bit scorned for some reason. Ultimately, Five’s a pragmatist. They need money; Dad had money. Let that be what it is.
So, in that sense, a little home renovation is probably a good sign for family unity, and it’s also probably a good investment. But it’s not actually a plan with any resonance. It feels like wasting time, if Five is being candid.
He is, unfortunately, the only one who feels that way.
After years under their father’s authoritarian rule, they seem to be embracing a democratic approach now. Five’s disdain for pointless activities is overwhelmingly ignored.
Luther embraces the task with gusto, and whenever someone tries to throw something away, he objects. When they insist, he takes it for himself. “We have to keep the family memories alive!”
Diego is much more perfunctory in his update. He’s putting plenty of stuff out in the hallway that he no longer wants. This is not a matter of actual need, but when he notices that Luther is trying to salvage everything, he seems to think it is his duty to get rid of everything. Five isn’t sure either of them are making any significant progress, but pointing this out to them would take too much effort.
Allison actually appears to take the tasks seriously, and she actually goes out and buys useful things like bookshelves and lamps and photo frames. By the end of the day, she’s taken down most of the pictures of herself and replaced them with ones of Claire. Five lingers in her room the longest. He tells her it’s because the others have too much drama, and he hopes she doesn’t notice that he spends most of the time looking at those pictures in wonder.
When he leaves Allison’s room, he tries to pass by Klaus’ but that’s a futile effort. Klaus is throwing things around, and Five is hit with several pairs of pants that are clearly too hideous for any human being ever. It’s not clear to Five if Klaus is making any actual progress, but he seems to be having a thoroughly good time, so there is that.
Ben, conveniently, has the room right next to Klaus. Thanks to Klaus’ sobriety, Ben can interact with his things now. He’s the only one who seems to be playing with his childhood mementos in genuine fondness. It’s not so much the things, Five is pretty sure, but the simple fact that he can. Five understands that impulse. For as much as he hates people, decades of solitude have made him appreciate companionship in a way he probably never would have before. Still, when Ben starts jumping on his bed, Five moves on.
Vanya is moving rooms, actually. She’s taking one closer to the others. She has some boxes that she’s had sent over from her old apartment, and she’s unpacking the items like she’s never seen them before. She’s prone to slipping out, though. Standing in the hallway, as if in awe that she’s finally got a place here. It’s a few decades overdue, of course, but Vanya seems to be past her anger. You destroy the world a few times over, and it probably doesn’t seem as appealing anymore.
Five doesn’t pay much heed to Pogo or Grace, though they both seem to be watching keenly. Grace helps out with the unpacking where needed, showing Diego how to fold a shirt and making sure that Vanya has everything she needs. Pogo smiles as he watches, like this is the happiest he’s been in years.
Funny enough, none of them miss Dad.
None of them think of Dad at all.
All the things they’ve fixed, and there’s no fixing that.
-o-
Five doesn’t mean to, but the whole thing ends up being a distraction. It’s true, he has no interest in doing anything to his own room, but the others keep wanting help. They want advice. And Five’s there, so that seems like as good of reason as any to lend a hand.
Besides, without the apocalypse, what else has he got to do?
Maybe normal is utterly vapid and stupid.
And maybe Five finally has time for vapid and stupid.
He’s a 58 year old time traveling assassin living with his superhero siblings while going through puberty for a second time.
Stranger things have happened in his life, needless to say.
-o-
Besides, it starts small. Luther is hanging a picture -- a family portrait, one from Dad’s bedroom -- and he can’t tell if it’s crooked or not. Five watches him, bemused as Luther tips it one way and then the other, before Luther finally looks back at him.
“Well, don’t just stand there and smirk,” Luther chides.
That seems like an odd invective. Five is quite good at standing here and smirking.
Luther gestures to the picture. “Help me out!”
It’s a plaintive demand but it reads like a request. For all that Luther is huge and can snap Five in half with one hand, he’s also oddly paternal. It had come across annoying as children, and the goody two-shoes act still isn’t something Five loves, but he sees that there’s heart to it now. Luther is just about blindly following orders. Essentially, he wants to make people happy. Now that their father is out of the picture, his devotion to his siblings has taken center stage, and that, more than anything, is why he’ll always be their Number One.
These are sudden conclusions for Five. They’re also entirely irrelevant.
Luther is still staring at him, one hand pointed at the wall.
Five looks at the wall.
He looks at the crooked picture.
Then, finally, he looks at Luther.
Chewing his lips, he steps into the room. Crossing the floor, he lifts his hand and tips the picture. He tips it back the other way, making a few small adjustments. It needs a gentle touch, and Five feels the wire slipping over the nail Luther anchored into the wall. Just a nudge more.
“There,” he says, stepping back to admire his work. He gives the picture a once over and nods his approval at the properly balanced picture. “What do you think?”
Luther looks at the picture. Then, he looks at the picture. None of them are smiling in it, but it’s the last one with the six of them. “I wish Vanya were in it,” he says finally.
Five steps back until he’s side by side with his brother. He frowns. “We can commission another,” he says.
Luther brightens at the idea. “You think so?”
Five realizes belatedly that now that he’s made the suggestion, he has to endure the process. Part of him wants to backtrack, to tell Luther to snap a photograph instead.
But the six stoic faces and the six masks stare back at him. His own face looks smug. Inexplicably, Five feels his stomach turn. He’s still a smug bastard, this much is true. But after all these years, he thinks he’s earned it. Back then? Shit, he was an idiot back then.
He looks back at Luther, almost mustering up something that resembles a smile. “Yeah,” he says, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “I think so.”
-o-
Five can’t imagine what life would really be like without Ben, and there’s a part of him -- a small part, granted -- that is glad he missed Ben’s death while trying to survive apocalypse. Still, walking by Ben’s room and seeing him there is nice.
Five’s lived a long time without nice. So he knows to appreciate it.
Ben knows to appreciate it, too. He’s spent the last however many years with only Klaus to talk to, so it’s a toss up to say which one of them has had it worse. All of which is to say Ben is very glad that Klaus is very sober.
That’s not to say it’s perfect.
Apparently, going shopping while noncorporeal is a little difficult.
It’s funny that Five is the only one who has noticed how left out he feels with this fit of redecorating.
“We could go out, buy you some stuff,” Five offers. “I mean, I’d have to do the shopping, but you know. You get to pick it out. I don’t care.”
“You don’t have any money either,” Ben points out. He’s pouting a little. “And you’re 13.”
No matter the fact that it’s true -- Five is still frustratingly young -- he still resents it every time someone tells him that. He takes it as a personal insult for some reason. For all reasons. “13, not dead,” he reasons, a little coolly. But this is Ben, and he likes Ben. He softens with a shrug. “I could go ask Luther. He’s a soft touch about this shit.”
Ben shrugs back, slumping a little on his bed. “I don’t know.”
Five sighs. He hates unnecessary conversation that become emotionally invested. Delores was always so good about that, not pushing too hard. She knew when to call him on his shit but she also knew when to let him be.
But Ben’s a ghost, not a mannequin, so Five has to adjust. He’s a bastard and he knows it, but he does love his family.
“Well, then, look around the house,” Five says. “There’s a lot of stuff around that no one’s using.”
Ben make a face. “I don’t want Dad’s stuff.”
“Okay, then, how about mine?” Five offers with a shrug.
He says it like it’s no big deal because it doesn’t seem like a big deal to him.
The look on Ben’s face, however, suggests that Five has wildly misjudged what it means to Ben. “Really?”
Five blinks, a little caught off guard. Part of him wants to retract the offer because this whole thing is uncomfortable, but Ben looks so damn hopeful that he can’t. “Sure,” Five says. “I mean, I don’t care about most of it. There’d be a few books I want to keep, maybe a memento or two, but it’s just stuff. I’ve lived long enough without it, and I can’t say that any of that is what I missed.”
During the apocalypse, he thought often of his family. He thought of Luther and Diego and Allison and Klaus and Ben and Vanya.
He hadn’t given a second thought to the shitty knicknacks he’d left behind.
Ben is looking increasingly awestruck by the moment. “Even your dart board?”
Five scoffs at the idea. “Even the dart board.”
Ben sits back, shaking his head. “No way.”
“Yes way,” Five says. “I’ll go get it right now, if you want. Help you hang it.”
Ben is just short of gaping now. It makes him look young.
Frustratingly, he still looks older than Five.
“Are you sure?” Ben asks, as if to check one more time.
Five rolls his eyes this time. “Yes, I’m sure.”
Because if you can’t give your dead brother the dart board you haven’t played with in 40 years, then what the hell is the point?
-o-
After all that, Five’s had his fill of personal interaction and he’s ready to go back to his room, close his door and not be around people for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, on his way back to his room, Allison waves at him to come in.
“Five! Good!” she calls out, like she’s actually glad to see him.
He can think of no reason why she’d be glad to see him. He’s not actually all that likeable. He’s about to keep walking, but she steps toward the door and beckons him again.
“I need a second opinion,” she says, and she’s smiling. A real smile, not something fake or provocative. He wonders about Allison sometimes, about how you manage sincerity when your power is falsehood. It’s not that he doubts her or her intentions, but he knows better than the rest of them that a superpower comes with a flipside. Call it a super-weakness if you will, but it’s why a time traveler got stuck in the future. Irony is a cosmic joke on them all.
She still smiling and Five remembers to almost smile back. “Well, I can go get Luther for you--”
She rolls her eyes and tugs him inside the room. “No, you,” she says, in a light and sing-songy kind of way. He suspects this is what she sounds like with Claire. Five wants to be indignant about that, but he finds that he can’t muster up the conviction for it.
“Okay, okay,” he relents. When he’s inside the room, she lets him go, and he sighs. “What, then?”
He wonders if she’s going to ask about his calculations for time travel. He thinks it’s possible that she has questions about how her body was restore during time travel. It’s even possible that she wants to know if he’s going to help out with chores around the house because with all seven of them living there, things are getting messy really fast.
To his surprise, she holds up two colored squares. Five studies them, trying to discern if they have any special powers or a secret message or--
“Which one do you like better?” she asks.
Five looks at the two squares. They’re both shades of blue, and Five can see no discernible evidence that they’re significant at all. He frowns. “What are they?”
She has the audacity to look like he’s the crazy one. “They’re paint swatches,” she says.
When Five clearly doesn’t know what she’s talking about, she makes a noise of disbelief and gestures to the room.
“For the walls,” she says. “I was going to repaint, but I can’t decide which color I like better.”
Five can only stare at her for a moment, wondering if this is somehow a joke.
It’s not a joke.
He frowns, looking at the paint swatches again. He shakes his head. “They’re both blue.”
“Yeah, but one is sky blue,” she says, waving a brighter one at him. “And this one is periwinkle, so there are more purple undertones.”
She says that like it matters. Five shakes his head again. “So? They’re still both blue.”
“But the nuance matters,” she says.
Five can only scoff because that’s the only appropriate response. “Does it?”
She doesn’t look offended, even though Five is clearly mocking her and belittling her point of view. Instead, she just looks distressed, as if Five’s inability to appreciate one shade of blue from another is some kind of actual tragedy. “Of course it does,” she says. “I mean, you, more than any of us, understands that the smallest choices we make matter. That nuance can be the difference between a second chance and the end of the world.”
For a moment, Five has no response. Her explanation is surprisingly adept; it sounds like something Dad would say.
It strikes him, then, that Allison’s power to bend reality isn’t based on lies. It’s not even based on three little words. It only works when she believes it first.
And maybe she doesn’t even need to start a rumor to make other people believe.
“I guess so,” he concedes with epic understatement. “But these are literally two shades of blue. I know I talk about the Butterfly Effect, but not even I am convinced that your paint swatches will make any difference in the cosmic balance of things.”
Instead of saying she’s right, he’ll find a way to talk around her point. Because that’s what Five does instead of admitting that he’s wrong.
She looks a little bemused, as if he’s said something ridiculous. “Vanya caused the apocalypse, right? And how did we save her?”
“We went back in time, taught her to use her powers and accepted her as an equal into the Academy,” Five says.
“No, we went back in time and loved her, Five. That’s what we did.”
He laughs as he shakes his head dismissively. “That’s basically the same thing.”
“Right,” she says, waving the paint swatches again. “Two shades of blue. But the difference matters.”
That’s annoyingly receptive. Delores would like Allison, he thinks. She’d like her a lot.
He wishes they’d spent more time together, Allison and Delores.
Five still wishes a lot things
He gathers a breath and purses his lips. He has no desire to debate this with Allison. He wants to go to his room and close his door.
Or, you know, mostly close it. He’d probably leave it open a crack.
He brushes the thought aside. “Fine,” he says. “Then go with the sky blue.”
Allison is clearly shocked. She stares at him for a moment, as if this is the first time he’s ever played along with one of her silly requests. The fact that it very well could be is notwithstanding. “You think I should use sky blue?” she asks.
With a decisive nod, Five says, “Yes.”
“Why?” Allison asks.
“Because,” Five says. “Some days are gray. A lot of days are gray. And none of us can control the weather, so we’re just stuck with that. But if you choose this one--” He flicks his finger at the brighter blue. “--then at least you’ll always have blue skies when you come home. Besides, I think Claire will like it better. Kids like bright colors.”
Now she is genuinely shocked. It’s her turn to be speechless. “That’s...thoughtful,” she finally says like she can’t quite believe i herself.
Five puts his hands in his pockets with a chortle. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I know I’m full of surprises sometimes.”