Umbrella Academy fic: Five Times Five Didn’t Tell Vanya His Feelings
Title: Five Times Five Didn’t Tell Vanya His Feelings (And One Time She Figured Them Out Anyway)
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Pairing: Five/Vanya -- but very one-sided and very awkward due to the natural problems with time travel. It’s a largely unrequited investment
A/N: As the pairing suggest, this is a fill for unrequited pining in hc_bingo. Unbeta’ed.
Warning: I guess for adopted siblings having a thing for each other?
Summary: It’s not a love fulfilled, when you get right down to it. But the thing is, it’s not a love unrequited, either.
-o-
One.
At thirteen, Five knows what puberty is. It has been explained to them in lessons, delineated in a sterile, undramatic sort of way. And Five is not some kind of idiot. He reads between the lines well enough, and when he has more questions, he sneaks books out of the library to flesh out his understanding of such foreign concepts.
As best he can figure, Allison hit puberty first, as it is common for females to go through the transition first. Klaus begins to increase his subterfuge, and rebellion is a sign of a growing demand for independence, which is perfectly in line with textbook definitions. Diego displays emotional outbursts with newfound frequency and questionable merit. Ben seems relatively even keeled. It’s Ben, after all, but he’s the first one to get acne.
Luther is harder to figure out. Despite his growth spurts and fuzzy facial scrub, he tends to act as much like a trained puppy as ever. However, when he develops an obvious sexual crush on Allison, Five must concede that he is also in the throes of puberty. Therefore, it seems, Five is coming in late to this party.
Five, inherently, hates being left behind, but it’s hard to resent something he only grasps on an intellectual level. As far as he can tell, puberty has limited utility. In other words, he’s losing at a race he doesn’t much care to win.
Vanya is the exception, of course. Vanya has always been the exception. Vanya shows no signs of maturity. Her body is the same; her composure and demeanor are unchanged. Vanya is the reassuring constant in a world of increasing change.
Vanya, he realizes.
Vanya is the best of them in many ways. For all that she is not special, she is kind. She tries hard, and she listens. She is not trying to compete; she is merely trying to exist. It is remarkable in its simplicity, and there is a reason Five craves her company above all others.
So what if she’s not as focused as Luther. Does it matter if she is not as decisive as Diego? Allison’s beauty is rote, and Klaus has a more carefree spirit. Vanya is not as smart as Ben, but she doesn’t have to be. Because she’s Vanya.
The conclusion is logical but he feels a flush on his cheeks. His heart races like he has run a mile without any actual exertion. Vanya preoccupies his thoughts. The flutter in his stomach is a momentary euphoria. It is an inspired lapse, a willing suspension of sanity. It is Five, feeling as strong as Luther, as independent as Diego, as confident as Allison, as giddy as Klaus, as certain as Ben.
It’s Five, thinking about Vanya.
Dreaming about her.
Yearning for her.
That much is a bit of a revelation, and though he finds the physical manifestation to be not what he expects from his reading, he can’t say that is going out of his way to avoid it. Not when Vanya is on his mind, anyway.
Five decides, therefore, that if this is what puberty is, then it may not be so bad.
He should tell her, probably. That would be the mature thing to do.
However, that is the ironic thing about puberty. You want to feel mature, but you don’t actually want to be mature.
Needless to say, Five keeps his feelings to himself.
He’ll tell her when puberty is over.
When they’re both reasonable, rational adults of age.
He’ll tell her then.
He’s quite confident about that.
Two.
Five doesn’t get the chance to tell Vanya, naturally.
It is impossible to complete this task, no matter how earnest he has been, because he has stranded himself in the apocalypse. Therefore, Five comes of age in a world of desolation. His mood swings are witnessed by no one except cockroaches. And his physical transformation is the only sign of life in an already dead world.
Over the years, his yearning for Vanya doesn’t diminish necessarily, but the physical manifestations are muted. This is part of maturity, he decides. It is also the natural consequence of being utterly preoccupied with his own desperate bid for survival. You might say that the apocalypse is a bit of a buzzkill.
A lot of a buzzkill.
Still, he does long for her. He finds himself thinking about her, what she would be doing if she were here. He thinks about where she was when the world ended. He hopes she didn’t see it coming. He hopes it didn’t hurt.
Then, one day, the longing is fulfilled.
No, that’s not quite it.
There’s only one way to fulfill the longing, and Delores is good for many things, but she’s not good for that.
No, Five’s longing is accentuated. Validated.
See, while drudging through a section of the library he has not explored, he comes across a book. Not just any book. A book by Vanya Hargreeves.
He thinks he’s imagining it at first. He thinks he’s projecting his desires onto inanimate objects again, as he is wont to do from time to time. He thinks it’s a coincidence. A strange and unlikely coincidence.
But, then he picks up the book.
And there she is.
Vanya Hargreeves.
Her face not quite smiling on the cover, looking up at him.
Extra-Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven.
Needless to say, he read the book, cover to cover, in one night. He skips dinner, doesn’t seek shelter and doesn’t even go home to Delores. He takes monumental risks, leaving himself vulnerable and exposed, but he doesn’t care. Not when he’s reading Vanya’s words.
The next day, he reads it again. He stops after that to eat something and go back to Delores, who asks him where he’s been.
“None of your business,” he replies, and then tucks himself away where Delores can’t see him to read the book again.
Within a week, he has read it ten times.
Within a month, he has it memorized.
Within a year, he has found fifteen copies of the book by scouring every library and book stores and private collection within his walking radius. He keeps the copies safe, along with his food and medicine. Several copies are kept pristine. Others are used for notetaking purposes. When he goes to sleep each night, he dreams of her words. When he wakes up, her words greet him.
He knows it’s not like she’s here.
No one is here with him at the end of the world.
But it’s like she’s here.
The book is so utterly, perfectly Vanya.
And the book itself is the story of the life he forfeited. It’s the future he gave up. It’s the history he never lived. She’s painfully detailed sometimes, delineating details that make him ache. Other times, she’s woefully sparse, glossing over the details he really wants to know. That said, she’s unspeakably fair in her writing. When she writes about him, her assessments are accurate but couched in an understated kindness.
That’s not to say it’s easy. It still hurts to read sometimes. He grimaces when she describes his outbursts, but she’s undyingly sympathetic in her retelling. It’s no matter, anyway. There’s no room for pride when you’re the last person on the planet.
In truth, when he’s being honest -- and there’s no one left to deceive -- she’s probably too kind. She’s too generous in her descriptions. It is a human tendency to rewrite a favorable history for those who have gone before, and Vanya is too prone to believing in the good of people anyway. Sure, she captures his overconfidence and restlessness, but she doesn’t treat his disappearance as an act of hubris. She treats it as nothing short of a tragedy. She assigns him no blame. To her, in this rendition, it is almost an unavoidable reality, a cruel twist of fate. She doesn’t once talk about the fact that Five made the biggest mistake of his life, a mistake he will pay for with solitude, hunger and wanting for the rest of his lonely, miserable existence.
If anything, that only makes it worse. Her kindness only accentuates just how much he threw away. On purpose. Utterly willfully. For all the wrong reasons. He threw away a family; he threw away a purpose. He threw away safety, stability, a purpose. He threw away her.
He reads Vanya’s account of the years he missed, the ones he blinked by. He reads about all the sandwiches she made him, all the lights she left burning into a night he skipped. Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder, and this devotion -- this love, this attention, this commitment -- is what he’d craved from her all along.
Funny enough, he’s left her unrequited for a decade.
For that sin, he’ll remain unrequited for the rest of his life.
He runs his fingers along the page, as if he can feel her hand writing them. Those years, he thinks as he aches, those precious years. He skipped those years like they were nothing. He squandered her love, and now she’s gone.
She’s gone, just like everyone, everything else.
In the apocalypse, he does not find her body along the others. The book is the only trace of her, the only sign that she survived the childhood Five abandoned. He wonders about that sometimes, why she wasn’t with the others. In reality, it’s probably not so surprising. Vanya was never part of the team; she wouldn’t have been there at the end. No, Vanya would have been on her own. She’d never fit in with the others. She probably never saw it coming.
Although he’s long since buried the others, he feels compelled to give Vanya a eulogy too. He takes one of the copies of the book -- the first one, the one worn through and dog eared -- and he takes it to his makeshift cemetery. He buries it alongside his siblings corpses and marks the spot with a cross. He etches her name into the wood and sticks it in the ground and tries to cry.
The tears don’t come.
He doesn’t know how to feel them.
It’s so silly now, to dwell on regret. It’s so utterly pointless to mourn one death in the light of millions. And yet, here he is.
Here.
When he should have been there.
Her words still run in his head, and they are a part of him like she’s always been. He knows he should have spent more time listening to her, and he knows he will spend the rest of his life making up for that mistake.
That night, he returns back home and looks at the stack of Vanya’s manuscript. He says goodnight to Delores, steals a pristine copy of the stack and settles into a cozy alcove that has a view of the sky. He stares up for awhile, looking at the spot where the moon is supposed to be, and he thinks about the things he should have told her.
He thinks he could say it now. He thinks he could form the words.
She’s not here, though. No one’s here.
And if he says them -- if he says those three words -- then they’re real. Then the desire is real. The yearning is validated.
And Five doesn’t know if he can stomach that disappointment and expect to survive.
He doesn’t.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he opens the book, creasing the cover to the first page. Then, he starts to read again.
The emotion goes unrequited.
But the intellect will be satisfied.
Three.
Five knows he really has a lot of other things to deal with right now. After years of planning, he’s finally made the jump to 2019 with relative success. Sure, he’s accidentally transformed himself into a 13 year old, but he’s here. There’s one week until the apocalypse, and he’s got a lot of shit to figure out in one week’s time.
Therefore, he needs to get down to business. He needs to start tracking down leads, building his probability maps. He needs to pinpoint the cause and come up with a foolproof plan to circumvent the disaster before it claims the lives of everything on the planet.
Yet, somehow, the first place he ends up, after eating a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, is Vanya’s place.
That means instead of researching the apocalypse, he takes the time to look up Vanya’s address. Instead of tracking down the owner of the eye, he’s trolling the streets after dark to break into her apartment and scour it from top to bottom just to make sure she’s okay.
And he waits there, sitting alone in the dark. He waits for Vanya instead of using his time -- his precious, hard earned time -- to prevent the oncoming disaster that has been so formative in his existence. For a man who clings to logic and pragmatism, this is decidedly neither. He can offer plenty of counterarguments, and he has a lot of reasons to leave.
But there’s one reason to stay.
And honestly, that’s the only reason he needs.
As he sits there, he thinks maybe he could tell her. He thinks maybe he could make up for all the years of loneliness, all the years of pining. Maybe he could tell her how he feels, and maybe he could glean some value from the callused beating of his heart.
In her apartment, it’s tempting. Her place is so essentially Vanya, and he’s had zero forethought about this situation, and yet it’s everything he expects it to be. In so many ways, going through her things, running his fingers along her bookshelf feels more real than standing face to face with her. Relationally, this is all he knows. It’s been decades since he’s spent time with his siblings. He knows them -- he cares for them -- only in the most profound absences. He relates to them in the artifacts, the pieces they’ve left behind.
And Vanya.
He’d never found her body in the apocalypse, and the book had been crafted with care. It had always been ironic to him, how she had exposed so much about the others and kept so much about herself under wraps. But here she is, now. Laid bare in the books stacked on her bedside table. There’s a rickety shelf with DVDs and knicknacks. The shelf itself is old, probably salvaged. She likely bought it at a sale. Some kind of yard sale, estate sale. Not a flea market, he decides. She wouldn’t like flea markets. Too many people in too small a space. Too much noise.
It’s clear that the quilt on the bed is vintage, and Five can see why she selected it. It’s a well made quilt, and the colors are faded but strong. It’s rustic; it’s beautiful, in its way. It’s a kind of beauty it takes work to see. More work still to appreciate. It’s the kind of beauty Vanya would see.
In the living room, her violin is out. It’s the same one she’d had as a child. It’s old, but still impeccably cared for. It’s not hard to see it’s the most expensive item she owns; her prized possession. That’s a bit ironic, when he thinks about it. For her to cling to a gift her father had been so reluctant to give. He considers, briefly, if her choice had been entirely pragmatic. A good instrument would cost money; it’s clear Vanya has no cash to spare.
But that’s not it. The violin is not just impeccably maintained, it’s loved. Five can feel that when he runs his fingers along the strings, the oiled surface of the wood. Vanya still craves her father’s acceptance, even after all this time.
It’s her last vestige. Everything else about this apartment, small and old, would repel their father. He wouldn’t understand the touches of culture. He would only see the drabby exterior and think it not good enough. He’s not a man who understands nuance. He’s a man of ends and means, and Five worries sometimes that he is truly his father’s son.
Yet, Five does see it. He understands it. He understands her.
This is her apartment. These are her things. She had nothing and she made a home.
The ache is palpable as he realizes it. This lonely, solitary existence. In a city full of people, a family full of survivors, and she’s by herself here. The thought of it is like a gnawing pain, deep in the bit of his stomach. His fingers itch, and he tightens them in a futile attempt to alleviate the tension he cannot quite rationalize. He thinks he should leave -- it is the more sensible thing to do -- but Five is not always sensible.
At least, Five’s not always sensible about the right things.
He’s come too far. He’s waited too long. Because he came to save the world from an impending apocalypse, but he also came for her. Years of pining, and he’s right here, sitting on her couch. She is out there, somewhere in this world, and she’s still breathing. Her has seven days until the end of the world.
That doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but Five’s had decades to sort out his priorities.
That’s really probably why he’s here, sitting in Vanya’s apartment.
Because Five didn’t just use his head to get here.
When she comes back, though, he feels himself waver. In his schemes, there is little room for doubt. He’s risked too much, sacrificed more than he can afford. He’s spread himself thin, laid it all on the line.
But that’s the power she holds over him.
His resolve all but crumbles.
He’s come to tell her one truth.
But as she sits across from him, as she sits there, a thing realized, he loses his nerve. Instead of confessing the unrequited feelings that have driven him crazy for decades, he tells her about the apocalypse. He asks for a drink and lets her stitch up the cut on his arm. He tells her everything about the apocalypse, about how he got there, about how terrible it was. He tells her everything except the one thing he came here to say.
That’s when he knows it’ll never work. It’ll never make sense. Earnest as she can, Vanya listens. She stitches up his arm carefully, and asks serious questions. But she doesn’t understand. When she looks at Five, she sees the person she lost so many years ago.
The problem, most fundamentally that he is, sitting in her apartment, the person she has yet to find. He knows her inside and out; she hardly recognizes him at all.
In short, they are incompatible. The moment has passed; they are out of synch. Five feels that disappointment bitterly, and watches her closed door long after she goes to bed. He thinks he could stay, he could be here in the morning, and maybe it’d be better. Maybe he could find the words then.
It’s pointless, however. Five gets up and sneaks to the door and opens it. He slips out without leaving a note, disappearing into the dark, Vanya safe and sound.
Five only has time for one unrealized dream this week, and it’s pretty clear to him that it can’t be her.
Four.
And then, here he is.
At the end of the world.
The thing he’s come to prevent, and he’s been a part of the cause. He should have guessed; he should have seen it. It’s like all the pieces are coming together, and he’s seeing the puzzle for the first time. Suspended in midair, small and writhing, face to face with his failure, it seems to make all the sense in the world.
Vanya causes the apocalypse.
Of course Vanya causes the apocalypse.
Five’s known his whole life that the world hinges on Vanya, and here he is. The world, teetering on its last, because of her.
She is in complete control, as she’s always been. She’s just finally realized it for herself; she’s come into her own. For her, this is entirely new. For Five, this seems like the natural order of things. Vanya, after all, has always had complete control over him. He’s always been small and helpless against her.
In some ways, it’s nice to see that she can realize that in herself for once.
Of course, it’d be nice if she didn’t have to kill them to make it happen, but beggars can’t be choosers. Especially not now.
The thing is, even as he’s plotted to kill her, he’s not sad she’s bested them. He can’t be. You see, Five’s never loved Vanya because she was ordinary. That’s what you might think, but that’s not it. He’s always loved her because she was special in a way none of them were. Vanya had never needed powers.
And yet, they suit her.
She’s brilliant.
Talents and beautiful and dazzling. Her movements are strong and confident; her music is flawless and spectacular.
He can’t help but think how things could have been different if they’d known all along. He can’t stop himself from wondering about all the battles they could have won if they hadn’t wasted all those years.
Those could have beens, would have beens, should have beens. They define Five’s life, and as she holds him fast now, they threaten to consume him even more than her powers ever could. His is a life of regret. Regret for not listening. Regret for not waiting. Regret for not learning.
He should have told her when he was 13.
The first time around.
The second time around.
For a moment, a long, suspended moment, Five thinks the future can’t be changed. He thinks all these things have been set in stone and that he’s been toiling against inevitability his whole life. It’s almost comforting, when you get down to the end of things. To be a victim. To have it outside of your control. The mistakes are irrelevant; acceptance is the only thing left.
But then, the power evaporates as a gunshot rips through the theater. He crashes to the ground, hitting hard. His vision blacks out for a moment, and he gasps. Craning his neck, he looks up, fearing the worst.
Vanya is on the stage, cradled in Allison’s lap. She’s still donning white; she’s breathing.
Scrambling to his feet, he mounts the stage and dares himself to believe it’s worked.
Maybe he has saved the world.
Maybe he’s saved Vanya.
Maybe there’s still time.
But then he looks up at the sky, where the moon is burning red, and Five feels the familiar sting of failure in his gut. The others prepare for a goodbye.
The funny thing is that Five’s never said goodbye. He’s never had to.
He looks back at Vanya and thinks.
No, he doesn’t think.
He feels.
That’s the beauty of time travel.
The beauty of time travel.
He seizes upon the idea, only half realized in his mind. The calculations are a muddled mess, and he’s got as much of a chance of succeeding as he does of abject failure.
Stepping back, he gathers his siblings around him. He looks at Vanya’s pale, limp body and puts his doubts away. He puts his fears aside. The moon is raining down through the atmosphere now, and the world is burning, and Five gives up on his calculations. He can’t solve this problem with math or control or logic.
Five will only solve this problem with pure emotion.
Pure Vanya.
Sure, it’d probably have been easier to sit her down and tell her the truth, but Five’s always been better with actions. He won’t tell her how he feels, but he will rip apart the fabric of time and space to save her, to save them all.
Five.
Five is successful.
The reality is that it’s such a novelty that Five scarcely knows how to understand it. In fact, even months after bringing them all back to a fully restored and apocalypse-free 2019, he finds himself restless and on edge. He still wakes to nightmares, and he catches himself making probability maps for disasters that are no longer going to happen. You could say that he’s having a little bit of trouble coping.
He is, however, the only one.
Everyone else is thriving.
Blossoming.
They’re coming alive like they’ve been waiting all their lives for this.
It’s something to behold, really, and Five has no regrets. In fact, it’s a validation of all his loss and failure and work. To know that he’s finally done it. He’s saved the world. He’s saved them.
His debt, after all these years, is ultimately repaid.
Luther develops his own confidence, and he becomes his own man. He is the leader his father always intended, but he’s the one his family needs. Diego, by contrast, is no longer striving. He is satisfied planning missions and making a measurable difference in the world on his own terms. Allison regains joint custody of her daughter, and they make a room for Claire at the mansion. Her voice slowly returns, but every word she speaks and measured and controlled and honest. Klaus stays sober, and his powers grow exponentially. The idea that he can be a viable member of the Umbrella Academy is basically a given. More impressive, however, is his decision to start dating again. Ben benefits greatly from Klaus’ newfound stability, though not his colorful love life. With Klaus’ amplified powers, Ben can manifest at will most of the time. He’s still dead, but he’s present, and the notion that people can see him seems to be a perpetually relief to him.
Of all these happy endings, Vanya’s is the happiest at all.
Five goes out of his way to ensure that much.
He doesn’t get tired of it, that’s for sure. For as much as he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing with his life, he loves watching her live hers.
She’s active, she’s powerful, she’s special.
Mostly, though, she’s happy.
She’s fulfilled, complete, confident.
She is transcendent. She is a fixed point that exists beyond all time and space. She is Vanya.
Logically, Five tells himself that this is enough. Vanya is happy; his family is complete. The team is reunited, and the world is safe. Five has succeeded on every count.
Except one.
You see, in all these months, Five still hasn’t told her. He hasn’t mustered up the courage; he hasn’t calculated the right time. He’s not come up with a way, in all his brilliance, of telling her what he’s known since he was 13 the first time.
He should tell her. It’s only sensible. All his years of pining, he should be a man, tell her the truth.
But she’s so happy.
She’s so complete.
If he tells her, it’ll be a burden she doesn’t need. A weight she doesn’t deserve. These feelings -- these silly, encompassing, irrelevant, persistent feelings -- can’t be requited. It’s impossible. Telling her is not just unnecessary. It’s mean; it’s cruel.
Five loves her too much--
Five loves her--
Five stops because the logic circles him back, and he can’t sleep and he can’t finish an equation and everyone else is building a new life and Five isn’t sure what the hell he’s doing or if he’s even got any life left to live. In fact, logic dictates that he’s fulfilled his purpose, thus making him entirely superfluous.
In other words, he’s expendable.
Five’s the expendable one. Too old, too young, too everything.
When someone has to take a bullet, he thinks it shouldn’t be Luther, who is leading them so well, and it should be Diego, who is so steady, and it shouldn’t be Allison, who keeps them all honest, and it shouldn’t be Klaus, who is too reliable, and it should be Ben, who is already dead and it sure as hell shouldn’t be Vanya, who is too powerful.
Too perfect.
By logical deduction, therefore, it has to be him.
That’s how he ends up here, standing between everything he cares about and the barrel of a gun. He thinks he might have enough time to jump, if he wants to. But if he jumps, if he moves, then there’s no telling where the bullet will end up. Besides, Five has spent his whole life running.
Maybe it’s time to end it by standing still.
He plants his feet, he squares his shoulders. He doesn’t look away.
When the bullet pierces his chest, the words die in his throat as his heart stutters in his chest.
It doesn’t hurt as much as he expects.
Five reckons he’s been dying from a broken heart all along.
And One Time She Figured Them Out Anyway.
Five should know that one instance of success does not begin to erase a lifetime of mistakes. Five has a proven propensity toward failure, and the odds suggest that he’s likely to be prone to mistakes for the rest of his life.
In other words, if Five jumped in front of a bullet to die, then he did a pretty piss poor job. It’s with some embarrassment that he wakes up, hooked up to IVs and monitors, stripped naked under a blanket in the mansion’s infirmary.
Mom is tending him busily, and his chest hurts like a son of a bitch, and his entire body feels drained. Keeping his eyes open seems like a chore, and when he draws a breath, it feels like he’s set himself on fire. Panic rises in his throat, and he struggles to exhale. Mom puts a hand on his head and smiles. “Just rest, dear. Rest now.”
Five is not inclined to obliged, but he’s really got no choice. When he wakes again, an indeterminate time later, Allison and Luther are holding hands at his bedside. He falls asleep when they notice him, and the next time he opens his eyes, Diego is sharpening a knife. Five stays awake long enough for Diego to sit up and smile, but he’s out again before his brother can ask the obvious question.
An obvious question with no obvious answer. Five sleep restlessly, the pain ebbing and flowing as his body struggles against its injury. When he wakes up again, Klaus is there, Ben perched by his side, and they seem to be engaged in a long winded debate about the relative importance of having lungs when Five closes his eyes and sleeps some more.
He’s more than ready to keep sleeping forever, but the next time he opens his eyes, it’s Vanya.
His breath catches. The pain ratchets up. His chest swells, and he hears the heart monitor spike. Vanya has been watching him all this time, and she doesn’t flinch. Instead, she leans forward and it’s only then that he realizes she’s holding his hand.
For a moment, they sit there like that, as close as they’ve ever been. Five wonders, briefly, if he’s already died. He wonders, against his better judgment, if this is some version of the afterlife.
She sits forward and she hesitates before pressing a kiss, warm and tentative, against his cheek. He turns into her and almost melts.
Then, Vanya finds the strength Five has never had. She sits back and she clutches his hand tighter. She smiles. “Five, I love you.”
It’s a rush of euphoria so strong that it almost reduces him to tears. Simultaneously, it’s the most disappointing, heart wrenching thing he’s ever heard. It’s the promise of everything and nothing all at the same time. Infinite possibility and limited capacity. That which he craves, requited in all the wrong ways.
Five swallows with difficulty and blinks his burning eyes. “I know,” is all he can manage to say, the only words he can dredge up.
Her fingers lace between his and she presses his hand against her chest. “Do you?” she asks, emphatically now, purposefully. “Do you really?”
He’s half choking now, but he manages to nod his head. “Of course,” he croaks. “I’ve always known.”
“Then why?” she asks, and it’s her voice that’s raw now, sharper than one of Diego’s immaculately kept knives. Her eyes glint. “Then why would you do this?”
Five exhales, slow and ragged. He looks around, and knows regret not for the first time. His eyes lock back on her. “I don’t know,” he says. “Because I know that you love me. But not in the way that I love you.”
She’s not surprised. “I know,” she says. “I’ve always known, probably. I just -- I didn’t want to admit it.”
“Understandable--”
“No, Five,” she says. “I didn’t want to admit it because it’s not fair to either of us. Because in another life, another existence, it might have worked. But you’re older than me and younger than me, and I don’t know how to make that work, Five. I don’t know how to make any of that work.”
“You don’t have to explain,” he says, blinking away the tears as best he can. “I mean, I get it.”
She leans closer to him again. “But I love you,” she says. She implores. “I love you so much.”
The more she says it, the more it hurts.
“But is it enough?” she continues, her own tears starting to fall now. “Is the love I can offer you going to be enough?”
It’s a pointed question, one that cuts deep. He can’t hide behind the apocalypse. He can’t hide behind his years with the Commission. He can’t hide behind his childhood foibles, his dogged pursuits, any of it. He’s always been flush with excuses, but time is finite. It’s not that Five’s made a choice to stand still. No, the truth is far less heroic. Five’s ran out of places to run.
And he’s got a healing bullet wound to the chest to prove it.
He swallows again, shaky, tentative and resolute. “I’ve made do with less,” he admits.
Her brow darkens and she shakes her head, vehement. “No, you can’t say that,” she says. “See, this doesn’t work. What you did here, it doesn’t work.”
She’s so adamant that Five is taken aback. “I didn’t do anything.”
She lets go of his hand entirely this time, her mouth dropping open as she scoffs. “Five, you jumped in front of a bullet,” she says. “That’s not something. That’s everything. Everything wrong. I can’t live like that. I can’t live with you like that, running around like you’ve got nothing to lose.”
That’s genuine concern, he knows. He recognizes it in a fascinating sort of way. For years, it’d been just him and Delores. The idea of someone out there to care about him had been a fantasy. Of all the things he’s had trouble adjusting to, this is probably the one that eludes him the most.
Not just living with other people.
Living for them.
And accepting that they live for him in return.
Mutuality is a gift in society, one so easily taken for granted, one that still feels irreparably foreign to him.
And yet, her accusation is not quite well placed. He cocks his head, struggling weakly to catch his breath. “Vanya, that’s not it at all,” he says, ignoring as his chest aches. “You’re here. You’re here, so I have everything to lose.”
She’s all but shaking now. The tears are still falling. “And that’s why you did it? You did it for me?”
“You and them,” Five says. “But you’re my best friend, Vanya. My best friend.”
He hesitates.
He hesitates.
The moment builds. 45 years in the making. All the times he hasn’t said it, and this is the one time she already knows. Maybe that’s why he can say it now. Maybe that’s why it has to.
He shrugs, helpless as ever, and it has nothing to do with blood loss and prolonged unconsciousness. “I love you, Vanya,” he confesses. “I completely love you.”
There it is.
There it is.
It’s so simple when he says it, so straightforward, so obvious, so natural, that he wonders why he hasn’t said it before.
Her eyes fill with tears, however. “Five, I love you, too,” she says. “You know that. I love you, Five.”
It twists hard in his gut.
That’s why he hasn’t said it.
Because she’s saying the same words back but they have a wholly different meaning.
Sighing, he limpidly smiles. “I’m sorry.”
Hastily, she wipes at her eyes. “What? Why are you apologizing? You’re the one who nearly died.”
“A fact you already have berated me for,” Five reminds her. “Besides, what I’m telling you now, what I’m confessing to you, it’s not fair. You don’t deserve to have emotions foisted upon you that you can’t possibly return.”
“But I told you--”
“That you love me,” Five concludes for her. “But you and I both know the difference. Vanya, I’m sorry.”
Her face flushes red, and she rakes her fingers across her eyes again. “No, stop,” she says. “You’ve been out of it for days. You don’t get to be worried about me. I get to be worried about you right now.”
Five lifts a shoulder, impassive. “But I’m fine--”
She breathes a curse and shakes her head. “No, Five, no,” she says. “That’s not -- no. I mean. I get to be sorry. I get to be worried. Because I can’t give you what you want, and I hate that. I hate the thought of hurting you any more than I know you’ve been hurt already.”
On the bed, he’s still weak and winded, but he wrinkles his nose. “But it’s not your fault,” he says. “And besides, you are the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Vanya’s complexion is mottled by the tears now, but she arches her eyebrows skeptically. “Do we need to review how there was a bullet extracted from your chest recently?”
Five concedes the point with a helpless gesture. “But that was me,” he argues. “My inability to cope.”
“No, that was us,” she returns, surprisingly steadfast.
He exhales tiredly. “Vanya--”
She sits forward once more, adamant as ever. “What can I do? What can I do to help?”
Watching her, her commitment, her determination -- it’s as beautiful as he’s ever seen her. Her hair is a mess and in need of washing; her face is stained with tears. Her clothing is rumpled and mismatched, and she’s clearly gone days without sleep. And still, she’s gorgeous. She’s perfect. She’s Vanya.
The one he’s pined for, and here she is.
The thing about it is this: the future is shit. The past is, too.
Right now isn’t what he thought he wanted, but it’s better than anything and everything he’s ever had.
“Just stay,” he says finally, the words feeling long and tired as they rise up his throat. “Just stay. People think that romance is everything -- the pinnacle, if you will -- but they’re wrong. There are other kinds of love, stronger and more transcendent. Love that can keep you alive when the world is dying. Love that can give you the courage to defy the odds. Love that can save the world.”
“Five--”
He shakes his head, and he can’t let her finish. The emotions are solidifying now; he’s growing stronger. The admission has mattered, more than he could have anticipated. “I love you,” he says again, this time without hesitation. “I’ve been trying to say it for 45 years, and I’m saying it now, and I’ll say it again. I love you.”
The words, like the emotion that underwrites them, is important. It’s transformative. It changes everything.
And nothing.
For this love, this deep, undying love -- it’s not a love fulfilled, when you get right down to it. All that’s happened, it never can be, and Five’s too smart not to see that.
But the thing is, it’s not a love unrequited, either.
He’s not sure where that leaves him.
He is sure, however, that he’s willing to build a life in the struggle to find out.
She reaches forward, encasing his hand in both of hers this time. “Five, I’m sorry--”
“Well, don’t be,” he says, and he’s smiling for real now, his eyes locked on hers. “Because I’m certainly not.”
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Pairing: Five/Vanya -- but very one-sided and very awkward due to the natural problems with time travel. It’s a largely unrequited investment
A/N: As the pairing suggest, this is a fill for unrequited pining in hc_bingo. Unbeta’ed.
Warning: I guess for adopted siblings having a thing for each other?
Summary: It’s not a love fulfilled, when you get right down to it. But the thing is, it’s not a love unrequited, either.
-o-
One.
At thirteen, Five knows what puberty is. It has been explained to them in lessons, delineated in a sterile, undramatic sort of way. And Five is not some kind of idiot. He reads between the lines well enough, and when he has more questions, he sneaks books out of the library to flesh out his understanding of such foreign concepts.
As best he can figure, Allison hit puberty first, as it is common for females to go through the transition first. Klaus begins to increase his subterfuge, and rebellion is a sign of a growing demand for independence, which is perfectly in line with textbook definitions. Diego displays emotional outbursts with newfound frequency and questionable merit. Ben seems relatively even keeled. It’s Ben, after all, but he’s the first one to get acne.
Luther is harder to figure out. Despite his growth spurts and fuzzy facial scrub, he tends to act as much like a trained puppy as ever. However, when he develops an obvious sexual crush on Allison, Five must concede that he is also in the throes of puberty. Therefore, it seems, Five is coming in late to this party.
Five, inherently, hates being left behind, but it’s hard to resent something he only grasps on an intellectual level. As far as he can tell, puberty has limited utility. In other words, he’s losing at a race he doesn’t much care to win.
Vanya is the exception, of course. Vanya has always been the exception. Vanya shows no signs of maturity. Her body is the same; her composure and demeanor are unchanged. Vanya is the reassuring constant in a world of increasing change.
Vanya, he realizes.
Vanya is the best of them in many ways. For all that she is not special, she is kind. She tries hard, and she listens. She is not trying to compete; she is merely trying to exist. It is remarkable in its simplicity, and there is a reason Five craves her company above all others.
So what if she’s not as focused as Luther. Does it matter if she is not as decisive as Diego? Allison’s beauty is rote, and Klaus has a more carefree spirit. Vanya is not as smart as Ben, but she doesn’t have to be. Because she’s Vanya.
The conclusion is logical but he feels a flush on his cheeks. His heart races like he has run a mile without any actual exertion. Vanya preoccupies his thoughts. The flutter in his stomach is a momentary euphoria. It is an inspired lapse, a willing suspension of sanity. It is Five, feeling as strong as Luther, as independent as Diego, as confident as Allison, as giddy as Klaus, as certain as Ben.
It’s Five, thinking about Vanya.
Dreaming about her.
Yearning for her.
That much is a bit of a revelation, and though he finds the physical manifestation to be not what he expects from his reading, he can’t say that is going out of his way to avoid it. Not when Vanya is on his mind, anyway.
Five decides, therefore, that if this is what puberty is, then it may not be so bad.
He should tell her, probably. That would be the mature thing to do.
However, that is the ironic thing about puberty. You want to feel mature, but you don’t actually want to be mature.
Needless to say, Five keeps his feelings to himself.
He’ll tell her when puberty is over.
When they’re both reasonable, rational adults of age.
He’ll tell her then.
He’s quite confident about that.
Two.
Five doesn’t get the chance to tell Vanya, naturally.
It is impossible to complete this task, no matter how earnest he has been, because he has stranded himself in the apocalypse. Therefore, Five comes of age in a world of desolation. His mood swings are witnessed by no one except cockroaches. And his physical transformation is the only sign of life in an already dead world.
Over the years, his yearning for Vanya doesn’t diminish necessarily, but the physical manifestations are muted. This is part of maturity, he decides. It is also the natural consequence of being utterly preoccupied with his own desperate bid for survival. You might say that the apocalypse is a bit of a buzzkill.
A lot of a buzzkill.
Still, he does long for her. He finds himself thinking about her, what she would be doing if she were here. He thinks about where she was when the world ended. He hopes she didn’t see it coming. He hopes it didn’t hurt.
Then, one day, the longing is fulfilled.
No, that’s not quite it.
There’s only one way to fulfill the longing, and Delores is good for many things, but she’s not good for that.
No, Five’s longing is accentuated. Validated.
See, while drudging through a section of the library he has not explored, he comes across a book. Not just any book. A book by Vanya Hargreeves.
He thinks he’s imagining it at first. He thinks he’s projecting his desires onto inanimate objects again, as he is wont to do from time to time. He thinks it’s a coincidence. A strange and unlikely coincidence.
But, then he picks up the book.
And there she is.
Vanya Hargreeves.
Her face not quite smiling on the cover, looking up at him.
Extra-Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven.
Needless to say, he read the book, cover to cover, in one night. He skips dinner, doesn’t seek shelter and doesn’t even go home to Delores. He takes monumental risks, leaving himself vulnerable and exposed, but he doesn’t care. Not when he’s reading Vanya’s words.
The next day, he reads it again. He stops after that to eat something and go back to Delores, who asks him where he’s been.
“None of your business,” he replies, and then tucks himself away where Delores can’t see him to read the book again.
Within a week, he has read it ten times.
Within a month, he has it memorized.
Within a year, he has found fifteen copies of the book by scouring every library and book stores and private collection within his walking radius. He keeps the copies safe, along with his food and medicine. Several copies are kept pristine. Others are used for notetaking purposes. When he goes to sleep each night, he dreams of her words. When he wakes up, her words greet him.
He knows it’s not like she’s here.
No one is here with him at the end of the world.
But it’s like she’s here.
The book is so utterly, perfectly Vanya.
And the book itself is the story of the life he forfeited. It’s the future he gave up. It’s the history he never lived. She’s painfully detailed sometimes, delineating details that make him ache. Other times, she’s woefully sparse, glossing over the details he really wants to know. That said, she’s unspeakably fair in her writing. When she writes about him, her assessments are accurate but couched in an understated kindness.
That’s not to say it’s easy. It still hurts to read sometimes. He grimaces when she describes his outbursts, but she’s undyingly sympathetic in her retelling. It’s no matter, anyway. There’s no room for pride when you’re the last person on the planet.
In truth, when he’s being honest -- and there’s no one left to deceive -- she’s probably too kind. She’s too generous in her descriptions. It is a human tendency to rewrite a favorable history for those who have gone before, and Vanya is too prone to believing in the good of people anyway. Sure, she captures his overconfidence and restlessness, but she doesn’t treat his disappearance as an act of hubris. She treats it as nothing short of a tragedy. She assigns him no blame. To her, in this rendition, it is almost an unavoidable reality, a cruel twist of fate. She doesn’t once talk about the fact that Five made the biggest mistake of his life, a mistake he will pay for with solitude, hunger and wanting for the rest of his lonely, miserable existence.
If anything, that only makes it worse. Her kindness only accentuates just how much he threw away. On purpose. Utterly willfully. For all the wrong reasons. He threw away a family; he threw away a purpose. He threw away safety, stability, a purpose. He threw away her.
He reads Vanya’s account of the years he missed, the ones he blinked by. He reads about all the sandwiches she made him, all the lights she left burning into a night he skipped. Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder, and this devotion -- this love, this attention, this commitment -- is what he’d craved from her all along.
Funny enough, he’s left her unrequited for a decade.
For that sin, he’ll remain unrequited for the rest of his life.
He runs his fingers along the page, as if he can feel her hand writing them. Those years, he thinks as he aches, those precious years. He skipped those years like they were nothing. He squandered her love, and now she’s gone.
She’s gone, just like everyone, everything else.
In the apocalypse, he does not find her body along the others. The book is the only trace of her, the only sign that she survived the childhood Five abandoned. He wonders about that sometimes, why she wasn’t with the others. In reality, it’s probably not so surprising. Vanya was never part of the team; she wouldn’t have been there at the end. No, Vanya would have been on her own. She’d never fit in with the others. She probably never saw it coming.
Although he’s long since buried the others, he feels compelled to give Vanya a eulogy too. He takes one of the copies of the book -- the first one, the one worn through and dog eared -- and he takes it to his makeshift cemetery. He buries it alongside his siblings corpses and marks the spot with a cross. He etches her name into the wood and sticks it in the ground and tries to cry.
The tears don’t come.
He doesn’t know how to feel them.
It’s so silly now, to dwell on regret. It’s so utterly pointless to mourn one death in the light of millions. And yet, here he is.
Here.
When he should have been there.
Her words still run in his head, and they are a part of him like she’s always been. He knows he should have spent more time listening to her, and he knows he will spend the rest of his life making up for that mistake.
That night, he returns back home and looks at the stack of Vanya’s manuscript. He says goodnight to Delores, steals a pristine copy of the stack and settles into a cozy alcove that has a view of the sky. He stares up for awhile, looking at the spot where the moon is supposed to be, and he thinks about the things he should have told her.
He thinks he could say it now. He thinks he could form the words.
She’s not here, though. No one’s here.
And if he says them -- if he says those three words -- then they’re real. Then the desire is real. The yearning is validated.
And Five doesn’t know if he can stomach that disappointment and expect to survive.
He doesn’t.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he opens the book, creasing the cover to the first page. Then, he starts to read again.
The emotion goes unrequited.
But the intellect will be satisfied.
Three.
Five knows he really has a lot of other things to deal with right now. After years of planning, he’s finally made the jump to 2019 with relative success. Sure, he’s accidentally transformed himself into a 13 year old, but he’s here. There’s one week until the apocalypse, and he’s got a lot of shit to figure out in one week’s time.
Therefore, he needs to get down to business. He needs to start tracking down leads, building his probability maps. He needs to pinpoint the cause and come up with a foolproof plan to circumvent the disaster before it claims the lives of everything on the planet.
Yet, somehow, the first place he ends up, after eating a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, is Vanya’s place.
That means instead of researching the apocalypse, he takes the time to look up Vanya’s address. Instead of tracking down the owner of the eye, he’s trolling the streets after dark to break into her apartment and scour it from top to bottom just to make sure she’s okay.
And he waits there, sitting alone in the dark. He waits for Vanya instead of using his time -- his precious, hard earned time -- to prevent the oncoming disaster that has been so formative in his existence. For a man who clings to logic and pragmatism, this is decidedly neither. He can offer plenty of counterarguments, and he has a lot of reasons to leave.
But there’s one reason to stay.
And honestly, that’s the only reason he needs.
As he sits there, he thinks maybe he could tell her. He thinks maybe he could make up for all the years of loneliness, all the years of pining. Maybe he could tell her how he feels, and maybe he could glean some value from the callused beating of his heart.
In her apartment, it’s tempting. Her place is so essentially Vanya, and he’s had zero forethought about this situation, and yet it’s everything he expects it to be. In so many ways, going through her things, running his fingers along her bookshelf feels more real than standing face to face with her. Relationally, this is all he knows. It’s been decades since he’s spent time with his siblings. He knows them -- he cares for them -- only in the most profound absences. He relates to them in the artifacts, the pieces they’ve left behind.
And Vanya.
He’d never found her body in the apocalypse, and the book had been crafted with care. It had always been ironic to him, how she had exposed so much about the others and kept so much about herself under wraps. But here she is, now. Laid bare in the books stacked on her bedside table. There’s a rickety shelf with DVDs and knicknacks. The shelf itself is old, probably salvaged. She likely bought it at a sale. Some kind of yard sale, estate sale. Not a flea market, he decides. She wouldn’t like flea markets. Too many people in too small a space. Too much noise.
It’s clear that the quilt on the bed is vintage, and Five can see why she selected it. It’s a well made quilt, and the colors are faded but strong. It’s rustic; it’s beautiful, in its way. It’s a kind of beauty it takes work to see. More work still to appreciate. It’s the kind of beauty Vanya would see.
In the living room, her violin is out. It’s the same one she’d had as a child. It’s old, but still impeccably cared for. It’s not hard to see it’s the most expensive item she owns; her prized possession. That’s a bit ironic, when he thinks about it. For her to cling to a gift her father had been so reluctant to give. He considers, briefly, if her choice had been entirely pragmatic. A good instrument would cost money; it’s clear Vanya has no cash to spare.
But that’s not it. The violin is not just impeccably maintained, it’s loved. Five can feel that when he runs his fingers along the strings, the oiled surface of the wood. Vanya still craves her father’s acceptance, even after all this time.
It’s her last vestige. Everything else about this apartment, small and old, would repel their father. He wouldn’t understand the touches of culture. He would only see the drabby exterior and think it not good enough. He’s not a man who understands nuance. He’s a man of ends and means, and Five worries sometimes that he is truly his father’s son.
Yet, Five does see it. He understands it. He understands her.
This is her apartment. These are her things. She had nothing and she made a home.
The ache is palpable as he realizes it. This lonely, solitary existence. In a city full of people, a family full of survivors, and she’s by herself here. The thought of it is like a gnawing pain, deep in the bit of his stomach. His fingers itch, and he tightens them in a futile attempt to alleviate the tension he cannot quite rationalize. He thinks he should leave -- it is the more sensible thing to do -- but Five is not always sensible.
At least, Five’s not always sensible about the right things.
He’s come too far. He’s waited too long. Because he came to save the world from an impending apocalypse, but he also came for her. Years of pining, and he’s right here, sitting on her couch. She is out there, somewhere in this world, and she’s still breathing. Her has seven days until the end of the world.
That doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but Five’s had decades to sort out his priorities.
That’s really probably why he’s here, sitting in Vanya’s apartment.
Because Five didn’t just use his head to get here.
When she comes back, though, he feels himself waver. In his schemes, there is little room for doubt. He’s risked too much, sacrificed more than he can afford. He’s spread himself thin, laid it all on the line.
But that’s the power she holds over him.
His resolve all but crumbles.
He’s come to tell her one truth.
But as she sits across from him, as she sits there, a thing realized, he loses his nerve. Instead of confessing the unrequited feelings that have driven him crazy for decades, he tells her about the apocalypse. He asks for a drink and lets her stitch up the cut on his arm. He tells her everything about the apocalypse, about how he got there, about how terrible it was. He tells her everything except the one thing he came here to say.
That’s when he knows it’ll never work. It’ll never make sense. Earnest as she can, Vanya listens. She stitches up his arm carefully, and asks serious questions. But she doesn’t understand. When she looks at Five, she sees the person she lost so many years ago.
The problem, most fundamentally that he is, sitting in her apartment, the person she has yet to find. He knows her inside and out; she hardly recognizes him at all.
In short, they are incompatible. The moment has passed; they are out of synch. Five feels that disappointment bitterly, and watches her closed door long after she goes to bed. He thinks he could stay, he could be here in the morning, and maybe it’d be better. Maybe he could find the words then.
It’s pointless, however. Five gets up and sneaks to the door and opens it. He slips out without leaving a note, disappearing into the dark, Vanya safe and sound.
Five only has time for one unrealized dream this week, and it’s pretty clear to him that it can’t be her.
Four.
And then, here he is.
At the end of the world.
The thing he’s come to prevent, and he’s been a part of the cause. He should have guessed; he should have seen it. It’s like all the pieces are coming together, and he’s seeing the puzzle for the first time. Suspended in midair, small and writhing, face to face with his failure, it seems to make all the sense in the world.
Vanya causes the apocalypse.
Of course Vanya causes the apocalypse.
Five’s known his whole life that the world hinges on Vanya, and here he is. The world, teetering on its last, because of her.
She is in complete control, as she’s always been. She’s just finally realized it for herself; she’s come into her own. For her, this is entirely new. For Five, this seems like the natural order of things. Vanya, after all, has always had complete control over him. He’s always been small and helpless against her.
In some ways, it’s nice to see that she can realize that in herself for once.
Of course, it’d be nice if she didn’t have to kill them to make it happen, but beggars can’t be choosers. Especially not now.
The thing is, even as he’s plotted to kill her, he’s not sad she’s bested them. He can’t be. You see, Five’s never loved Vanya because she was ordinary. That’s what you might think, but that’s not it. He’s always loved her because she was special in a way none of them were. Vanya had never needed powers.
And yet, they suit her.
She’s brilliant.
Talents and beautiful and dazzling. Her movements are strong and confident; her music is flawless and spectacular.
He can’t help but think how things could have been different if they’d known all along. He can’t stop himself from wondering about all the battles they could have won if they hadn’t wasted all those years.
Those could have beens, would have beens, should have beens. They define Five’s life, and as she holds him fast now, they threaten to consume him even more than her powers ever could. His is a life of regret. Regret for not listening. Regret for not waiting. Regret for not learning.
He should have told her when he was 13.
The first time around.
The second time around.
For a moment, a long, suspended moment, Five thinks the future can’t be changed. He thinks all these things have been set in stone and that he’s been toiling against inevitability his whole life. It’s almost comforting, when you get down to the end of things. To be a victim. To have it outside of your control. The mistakes are irrelevant; acceptance is the only thing left.
But then, the power evaporates as a gunshot rips through the theater. He crashes to the ground, hitting hard. His vision blacks out for a moment, and he gasps. Craning his neck, he looks up, fearing the worst.
Vanya is on the stage, cradled in Allison’s lap. She’s still donning white; she’s breathing.
Scrambling to his feet, he mounts the stage and dares himself to believe it’s worked.
Maybe he has saved the world.
Maybe he’s saved Vanya.
Maybe there’s still time.
But then he looks up at the sky, where the moon is burning red, and Five feels the familiar sting of failure in his gut. The others prepare for a goodbye.
The funny thing is that Five’s never said goodbye. He’s never had to.
He looks back at Vanya and thinks.
No, he doesn’t think.
He feels.
That’s the beauty of time travel.
The beauty of time travel.
He seizes upon the idea, only half realized in his mind. The calculations are a muddled mess, and he’s got as much of a chance of succeeding as he does of abject failure.
Stepping back, he gathers his siblings around him. He looks at Vanya’s pale, limp body and puts his doubts away. He puts his fears aside. The moon is raining down through the atmosphere now, and the world is burning, and Five gives up on his calculations. He can’t solve this problem with math or control or logic.
Five will only solve this problem with pure emotion.
Pure Vanya.
Sure, it’d probably have been easier to sit her down and tell her the truth, but Five’s always been better with actions. He won’t tell her how he feels, but he will rip apart the fabric of time and space to save her, to save them all.
Five.
Five is successful.
The reality is that it’s such a novelty that Five scarcely knows how to understand it. In fact, even months after bringing them all back to a fully restored and apocalypse-free 2019, he finds himself restless and on edge. He still wakes to nightmares, and he catches himself making probability maps for disasters that are no longer going to happen. You could say that he’s having a little bit of trouble coping.
He is, however, the only one.
Everyone else is thriving.
Blossoming.
They’re coming alive like they’ve been waiting all their lives for this.
It’s something to behold, really, and Five has no regrets. In fact, it’s a validation of all his loss and failure and work. To know that he’s finally done it. He’s saved the world. He’s saved them.
His debt, after all these years, is ultimately repaid.
Luther develops his own confidence, and he becomes his own man. He is the leader his father always intended, but he’s the one his family needs. Diego, by contrast, is no longer striving. He is satisfied planning missions and making a measurable difference in the world on his own terms. Allison regains joint custody of her daughter, and they make a room for Claire at the mansion. Her voice slowly returns, but every word she speaks and measured and controlled and honest. Klaus stays sober, and his powers grow exponentially. The idea that he can be a viable member of the Umbrella Academy is basically a given. More impressive, however, is his decision to start dating again. Ben benefits greatly from Klaus’ newfound stability, though not his colorful love life. With Klaus’ amplified powers, Ben can manifest at will most of the time. He’s still dead, but he’s present, and the notion that people can see him seems to be a perpetually relief to him.
Of all these happy endings, Vanya’s is the happiest at all.
Five goes out of his way to ensure that much.
He doesn’t get tired of it, that’s for sure. For as much as he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing with his life, he loves watching her live hers.
She’s active, she’s powerful, she’s special.
Mostly, though, she’s happy.
She’s fulfilled, complete, confident.
She is transcendent. She is a fixed point that exists beyond all time and space. She is Vanya.
Logically, Five tells himself that this is enough. Vanya is happy; his family is complete. The team is reunited, and the world is safe. Five has succeeded on every count.
Except one.
You see, in all these months, Five still hasn’t told her. He hasn’t mustered up the courage; he hasn’t calculated the right time. He’s not come up with a way, in all his brilliance, of telling her what he’s known since he was 13 the first time.
He should tell her. It’s only sensible. All his years of pining, he should be a man, tell her the truth.
But she’s so happy.
She’s so complete.
If he tells her, it’ll be a burden she doesn’t need. A weight she doesn’t deserve. These feelings -- these silly, encompassing, irrelevant, persistent feelings -- can’t be requited. It’s impossible. Telling her is not just unnecessary. It’s mean; it’s cruel.
Five loves her too much--
Five loves her--
Five stops because the logic circles him back, and he can’t sleep and he can’t finish an equation and everyone else is building a new life and Five isn’t sure what the hell he’s doing or if he’s even got any life left to live. In fact, logic dictates that he’s fulfilled his purpose, thus making him entirely superfluous.
In other words, he’s expendable.
Five’s the expendable one. Too old, too young, too everything.
When someone has to take a bullet, he thinks it shouldn’t be Luther, who is leading them so well, and it should be Diego, who is so steady, and it shouldn’t be Allison, who keeps them all honest, and it shouldn’t be Klaus, who is too reliable, and it should be Ben, who is already dead and it sure as hell shouldn’t be Vanya, who is too powerful.
Too perfect.
By logical deduction, therefore, it has to be him.
That’s how he ends up here, standing between everything he cares about and the barrel of a gun. He thinks he might have enough time to jump, if he wants to. But if he jumps, if he moves, then there’s no telling where the bullet will end up. Besides, Five has spent his whole life running.
Maybe it’s time to end it by standing still.
He plants his feet, he squares his shoulders. He doesn’t look away.
When the bullet pierces his chest, the words die in his throat as his heart stutters in his chest.
It doesn’t hurt as much as he expects.
Five reckons he’s been dying from a broken heart all along.
And One Time She Figured Them Out Anyway.
Five should know that one instance of success does not begin to erase a lifetime of mistakes. Five has a proven propensity toward failure, and the odds suggest that he’s likely to be prone to mistakes for the rest of his life.
In other words, if Five jumped in front of a bullet to die, then he did a pretty piss poor job. It’s with some embarrassment that he wakes up, hooked up to IVs and monitors, stripped naked under a blanket in the mansion’s infirmary.
Mom is tending him busily, and his chest hurts like a son of a bitch, and his entire body feels drained. Keeping his eyes open seems like a chore, and when he draws a breath, it feels like he’s set himself on fire. Panic rises in his throat, and he struggles to exhale. Mom puts a hand on his head and smiles. “Just rest, dear. Rest now.”
Five is not inclined to obliged, but he’s really got no choice. When he wakes again, an indeterminate time later, Allison and Luther are holding hands at his bedside. He falls asleep when they notice him, and the next time he opens his eyes, Diego is sharpening a knife. Five stays awake long enough for Diego to sit up and smile, but he’s out again before his brother can ask the obvious question.
An obvious question with no obvious answer. Five sleep restlessly, the pain ebbing and flowing as his body struggles against its injury. When he wakes up again, Klaus is there, Ben perched by his side, and they seem to be engaged in a long winded debate about the relative importance of having lungs when Five closes his eyes and sleeps some more.
He’s more than ready to keep sleeping forever, but the next time he opens his eyes, it’s Vanya.
His breath catches. The pain ratchets up. His chest swells, and he hears the heart monitor spike. Vanya has been watching him all this time, and she doesn’t flinch. Instead, she leans forward and it’s only then that he realizes she’s holding his hand.
For a moment, they sit there like that, as close as they’ve ever been. Five wonders, briefly, if he’s already died. He wonders, against his better judgment, if this is some version of the afterlife.
She sits forward and she hesitates before pressing a kiss, warm and tentative, against his cheek. He turns into her and almost melts.
Then, Vanya finds the strength Five has never had. She sits back and she clutches his hand tighter. She smiles. “Five, I love you.”
It’s a rush of euphoria so strong that it almost reduces him to tears. Simultaneously, it’s the most disappointing, heart wrenching thing he’s ever heard. It’s the promise of everything and nothing all at the same time. Infinite possibility and limited capacity. That which he craves, requited in all the wrong ways.
Five swallows with difficulty and blinks his burning eyes. “I know,” is all he can manage to say, the only words he can dredge up.
Her fingers lace between his and she presses his hand against her chest. “Do you?” she asks, emphatically now, purposefully. “Do you really?”
He’s half choking now, but he manages to nod his head. “Of course,” he croaks. “I’ve always known.”
“Then why?” she asks, and it’s her voice that’s raw now, sharper than one of Diego’s immaculately kept knives. Her eyes glint. “Then why would you do this?”
Five exhales, slow and ragged. He looks around, and knows regret not for the first time. His eyes lock back on her. “I don’t know,” he says. “Because I know that you love me. But not in the way that I love you.”
She’s not surprised. “I know,” she says. “I’ve always known, probably. I just -- I didn’t want to admit it.”
“Understandable--”
“No, Five,” she says. “I didn’t want to admit it because it’s not fair to either of us. Because in another life, another existence, it might have worked. But you’re older than me and younger than me, and I don’t know how to make that work, Five. I don’t know how to make any of that work.”
“You don’t have to explain,” he says, blinking away the tears as best he can. “I mean, I get it.”
She leans closer to him again. “But I love you,” she says. She implores. “I love you so much.”
The more she says it, the more it hurts.
“But is it enough?” she continues, her own tears starting to fall now. “Is the love I can offer you going to be enough?”
It’s a pointed question, one that cuts deep. He can’t hide behind the apocalypse. He can’t hide behind his years with the Commission. He can’t hide behind his childhood foibles, his dogged pursuits, any of it. He’s always been flush with excuses, but time is finite. It’s not that Five’s made a choice to stand still. No, the truth is far less heroic. Five’s ran out of places to run.
And he’s got a healing bullet wound to the chest to prove it.
He swallows again, shaky, tentative and resolute. “I’ve made do with less,” he admits.
Her brow darkens and she shakes her head, vehement. “No, you can’t say that,” she says. “See, this doesn’t work. What you did here, it doesn’t work.”
She’s so adamant that Five is taken aback. “I didn’t do anything.”
She lets go of his hand entirely this time, her mouth dropping open as she scoffs. “Five, you jumped in front of a bullet,” she says. “That’s not something. That’s everything. Everything wrong. I can’t live like that. I can’t live with you like that, running around like you’ve got nothing to lose.”
That’s genuine concern, he knows. He recognizes it in a fascinating sort of way. For years, it’d been just him and Delores. The idea of someone out there to care about him had been a fantasy. Of all the things he’s had trouble adjusting to, this is probably the one that eludes him the most.
Not just living with other people.
Living for them.
And accepting that they live for him in return.
Mutuality is a gift in society, one so easily taken for granted, one that still feels irreparably foreign to him.
And yet, her accusation is not quite well placed. He cocks his head, struggling weakly to catch his breath. “Vanya, that’s not it at all,” he says, ignoring as his chest aches. “You’re here. You’re here, so I have everything to lose.”
She’s all but shaking now. The tears are still falling. “And that’s why you did it? You did it for me?”
“You and them,” Five says. “But you’re my best friend, Vanya. My best friend.”
He hesitates.
He hesitates.
The moment builds. 45 years in the making. All the times he hasn’t said it, and this is the one time she already knows. Maybe that’s why he can say it now. Maybe that’s why it has to.
He shrugs, helpless as ever, and it has nothing to do with blood loss and prolonged unconsciousness. “I love you, Vanya,” he confesses. “I completely love you.”
There it is.
There it is.
It’s so simple when he says it, so straightforward, so obvious, so natural, that he wonders why he hasn’t said it before.
Her eyes fill with tears, however. “Five, I love you, too,” she says. “You know that. I love you, Five.”
It twists hard in his gut.
That’s why he hasn’t said it.
Because she’s saying the same words back but they have a wholly different meaning.
Sighing, he limpidly smiles. “I’m sorry.”
Hastily, she wipes at her eyes. “What? Why are you apologizing? You’re the one who nearly died.”
“A fact you already have berated me for,” Five reminds her. “Besides, what I’m telling you now, what I’m confessing to you, it’s not fair. You don’t deserve to have emotions foisted upon you that you can’t possibly return.”
“But I told you--”
“That you love me,” Five concludes for her. “But you and I both know the difference. Vanya, I’m sorry.”
Her face flushes red, and she rakes her fingers across her eyes again. “No, stop,” she says. “You’ve been out of it for days. You don’t get to be worried about me. I get to be worried about you right now.”
Five lifts a shoulder, impassive. “But I’m fine--”
She breathes a curse and shakes her head. “No, Five, no,” she says. “That’s not -- no. I mean. I get to be sorry. I get to be worried. Because I can’t give you what you want, and I hate that. I hate the thought of hurting you any more than I know you’ve been hurt already.”
On the bed, he’s still weak and winded, but he wrinkles his nose. “But it’s not your fault,” he says. “And besides, you are the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Vanya’s complexion is mottled by the tears now, but she arches her eyebrows skeptically. “Do we need to review how there was a bullet extracted from your chest recently?”
Five concedes the point with a helpless gesture. “But that was me,” he argues. “My inability to cope.”
“No, that was us,” she returns, surprisingly steadfast.
He exhales tiredly. “Vanya--”
She sits forward once more, adamant as ever. “What can I do? What can I do to help?”
Watching her, her commitment, her determination -- it’s as beautiful as he’s ever seen her. Her hair is a mess and in need of washing; her face is stained with tears. Her clothing is rumpled and mismatched, and she’s clearly gone days without sleep. And still, she’s gorgeous. She’s perfect. She’s Vanya.
The one he’s pined for, and here she is.
The thing about it is this: the future is shit. The past is, too.
Right now isn’t what he thought he wanted, but it’s better than anything and everything he’s ever had.
“Just stay,” he says finally, the words feeling long and tired as they rise up his throat. “Just stay. People think that romance is everything -- the pinnacle, if you will -- but they’re wrong. There are other kinds of love, stronger and more transcendent. Love that can keep you alive when the world is dying. Love that can give you the courage to defy the odds. Love that can save the world.”
“Five--”
He shakes his head, and he can’t let her finish. The emotions are solidifying now; he’s growing stronger. The admission has mattered, more than he could have anticipated. “I love you,” he says again, this time without hesitation. “I’ve been trying to say it for 45 years, and I’m saying it now, and I’ll say it again. I love you.”
The words, like the emotion that underwrites them, is important. It’s transformative. It changes everything.
And nothing.
For this love, this deep, undying love -- it’s not a love fulfilled, when you get right down to it. All that’s happened, it never can be, and Five’s too smart not to see that.
But the thing is, it’s not a love unrequited, either.
He’s not sure where that leaves him.
He is sure, however, that he’s willing to build a life in the struggle to find out.
She reaches forward, encasing his hand in both of hers this time. “Five, I’m sorry--”
“Well, don’t be,” he says, and he’s smiling for real now, his eyes locked on hers. “Because I’m certainly not.”