Umbrella Academy fic: The Unsolved Equation (1/3)
Title: The Unsolved Equation
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: Set immediately post S1. I don’t think this will actually happen but resolving that cliffhanger sure does leave open a lot of possibilities. Fills my coma square for hc_bingo. No beta.
Summary: The team travels to the past and meets their father, who may just know the future better than any of them.
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
-o-
Number Five, part one: Number Five
“Hold on!” Five yelled. “This is going to get messy!”
Messy was hardly a technical term, nor was it particularly an apt description of anything that was going on at the moment. The world was literally ending. The moon was exploding and consuming the planet in fire and ash. They were well past messy by every indication out there.
Understatement, as it were, was not typically Five’s thing. If anything, he liked theatrics, albeit of a different nature than his siblings. Sure, he downplayed things that some people found incredulous, but it wasn’t Five’s fault if they didn’t understand the full scope of his ability and/or intellect. Sometimes that certainly did get him into trouble. His innate over-estimation of his own ability was a recurring problem in his life, and as he forced his way through time and space, he had to hope he wasn’t making the same mistake now.
If he was, there was some solace in knowing that the alternative to his failure was certain death and destruction for all of humanity; at this point, there was literally nothing left to lose and everything to gain. At the very least, failure would be a short-lived and fiery humiliation.
Besides, it wasn’t like he could stop it now as he threw the rest of his energy into solidifying the rift, widening it around himself and all of his siblings in equal turn. He could feel the power as it rippled through him, firing through the synapses of his mind with an intensity that was hard to fully grasp. He’d done this before of course but never this suddenly, never without a plan. He’d sketched out an equation for time travel when he got back to 2019 a week ago, calculating a few odd numbers as a possible last resort. He’d never gotten very far. He’d been busy, after all. And time travel had really lost its appeal, when you got right down to it.
That was a pity, then. The half-baked equation with missing variables would have made this easier. It might have made it safer -- for him, for his siblings, for the world. As it was, he was working on pure instinct, counting on his innate and reliable survival instincts to get him through to the end.
Not the end.
To the beginning.
Five was done with endings. Well and truly, 100 percent finished.
He closed his eyes, tightening his grip on his siblings hands. The power intensified and he gritted his teeth, feeling the pressure as it built up in his chest and head. It was uncontrollable now, blinding him to the present as he opened himself up to the entirety of time.
That was the crazy thing about time travel. The way it condensed all of existence into a finite point. To think about time as a line, where you could pick up pieces and move them around. Without the calculations, his efforts to pinpoint a time were haphazard at best, and he was overwhelmed by the vastness of it. Past, present, future. A split second, an infinity. People didn’t understand the concept of eternity, the scope of it. The way it consumed everything until it became nothing. Here, where every possible version of himself existed and untold possibilities for the future were tied up with every possible decision in the past.
It lost meaning here; he lost meaning.
Desperately, he struggled to seize back control. He had to take the mess and channel it. He had to create a conduit through the chaos, large enough to get himself and his siblings through unscathed. The effort was more than mental; he could feel it, exacting a perilous toll on his body. His breathing diminished and his pulse intensified, and he could feel his consciousness as it reached a burning apex. By now, his power was resonate, echoing in his skull. It was fire, burning with a white hot rage that made him scream.
It was too much. The world vanished behind them, but Five flailed as he tried to open a portal on the other end. He was slipping, though. His precarious control was faltering, and he could feel himself as he lost his grip, barely keeping his siblings with him as eternity loomed before him.
But failure? Now? After surviving an apocalypse? After turning himself into a killer? After betraying the most powerful organization the world will never know?
Five wouldn’t accept it; it couldn’t.
Instead, he focused inward. He closed himself to the possibilities and internalized his struggle instead. He found his strength where he always found it, at the moment when he thought there was nothing else he could possibly give. Dredging up those reserves, he ripped it out of himself, pouring it out until he anchored onto a point and held fast.
Time and space roared by him, but he ignored it. He was too old for this, too young.
Buckling down, he worked at the anchor until it ripped through the expanse. He felt the opening give way to him, and he needled it open, inch by inch while holding fast to his family all the while. He couldn’t let go; if he did, he would lose them. Here, in the expanse. Indiscriminately, throughout history. The effect was the same, and both options were unacceptable.
This wasn’t what he’d intended -- none of this -- but as long as they were safe, as long as they were together, as long as the moon was still moored in the sky, then Five could make it work.
Five would make it work.
He thought about his unfinished equation again, stashed in his pocket. It was still open ended, missing one critical variable. Normally, he would consider this a mistake, throwing himself into an answer, committing himself to it, without all parts of the equation.
Like the missing gaps would just fill themselves in by chance and pure luck.
It was a hell of a gamble, and Five had the increasingly pressing suspicion that it very well could kill him.
But then, there were worse things.
With a scream, deep and guttural as it echoed across the expanse, Five broke through the rest of the barrier, flaying time wide and yanking himself through, his siblings falling after him. With a rush, his power left him, and the sudden exhaustion made his head spin. For a moment, he thought he might recover, but he had barely been able to confirm that his siblings were still circled around him when the weakness spread. Head throbbing, heart pounding, Five’s knees buckled and he crashed to the floor.
As it rushed up to meet him, Five’s final thought was how very familiar it looked.
Number One: Luther
Luther, for all that his siblings thought otherwise, was actually quite good at change. He knew how to adapt. He created a new routine out of chaos. It wasn’t his inability to change that had kept him at home when the others had left. It had been his ability to change that had allowed him to endure the process. Even when he’d been transformed into something not quite human, even when his father had sent him to the moon, even when his father had died, even when it turned out the end of the world was coming -- Luther handled it.
Steady, calm and certain, using the same tools and tactics to cope in every situation. Luther could find normal in the abnormal. Sure, his skill was technically super strength, but he thought his managerial prowess wasn’t half bad either.
So when Five had suggested time travel, Luther had figured what the hell? The only change you couldn’t adapt to was death, and he wasn’t about to let his siblings die. The rush and whirlwind had been overwhelming, and Luther found his unsteady feet and surprisingly steady ground.
Blinking, he struggled to catch his breath. The shock was that there was no shock.
He was home.
Back at the mansion.
He exhaled, heavy and shocked.
How the hell was he home?
He was about to ask if everyone was okay, when he turned in time to see Five’s skinny knees crumpling beneath him. Luther had just enough foresight to catch him, balancing Vanya’s dead weight with on hand while he lowered Five’s small body alongside Vanya’s to the ground on top of him as he looked up at the others in shock.
“Did it not work?” he asked, looking down at Five’s slack face and back up at his siblings. They were all there -- Diego, Allison, Klaus (and Ben). They were together; they were home. The world wasn’t over. “Where are we?”
Allison is pale, color parched from her cheeks. Klaus laughs, short and wild, and Ben flickers in and out. Diego wets his lips. “Maybe the question isn’t where,” he says. “Maybe it’s when.”
Luther looked back down at Five -- back down at Vanya. A minute ago, they’d been standing at the end of the world. He blinked, looking back up. “The moon,” he said. “Is the moon still there?”
Allison was already having the same thought. She rushed to the front door, swinging it open to peer outside.
“It felt like time travel,” Klaus said, studying his arms as if they showed something. He glanced at Ben, as if for confirmation. “Just like before.”
Allison came back, nodding with wide eyes.
“So it’s not the apocalypse,” Luther muttered. He worked carefully to arrange both Five and Vanya on the ground. He checked Vanya’s pulse, just to be sure, then tried to straighten Five’s suit jacket. He hesitated, pulling a loose note that was sticking out of the top. He unfolded it, but the scrawled numbers meant nothing to him. Frowning, he shook his head. “So what is it?”
There was a short huff, a familiar and caustic air of indignation. “Time travel.”
Luther looked up, and he was the last one to see, but the first one to understand. Standing there, at the bottom of the stairs, was Reginald Hargreeves, their father, in the flesh. Luther struggled numbly to his feet. “What?”
Reginald gave Luther an appraising, but vaguely disappointed look. His nose wrinkled even further when he surveyed the others. “Time travel,” he said again.
Luther shook his head, utterly confused. He had to remind himself that his father was dead. He had to remember that he’d scattered the ashes in the courtyard. Which meant that if his father was standing here, then maybe it had worked. Maybe they had traveled through time.
But that didn’t explain why Reginald knew anything about it. “Why would you say that?”
Reginald narrowed his eyes, disapproval mounting. “Because I have six uninvited strangers standing in the foyer of my well protected home, utterly uninvited and clearly from a different era,” he said, staring down his nose, the trimmed mustache twitching. “Also, that paper in your hand?”
Luther looked at it again.
Reginald clucked his tongue. “It’s a half finished equation for time travel.”
Luther blinked, feeling like this revelation should explain some of what it meant, but the numbers and variables were still gibberish to him.
Swallowing hard, he reminded himself that there were, in fact, other concerns. He glanced back at his siblings, who had crowded together. Allison was on the floor between Five and Vanya, hovering protectively. Diego’s fingers were lingering by his knives while Klaus cowered in something akin to shock. Clearing his throat now, he looked back at his dad. “Well, yeah,” he confirmed. He was good in battle, but he wasn’t particularly skilled with deceptive strategies. “We ended up a little turned around, actually. When are we anyway?”
The uncertainty seemed to annoy Reginald. “1978. April. It’s been a long winter this year, but they say spring is right around the corner.” He smiled, wry and terse. “As if there were people who could tell you the future right where you stand.”
It wasn’t quite an accusation, but it definitely wasn’t a joke. Luther shifted uncomfortably in the foyer of the only home he’d ever known. Unless you counted the moon, and, for the record, Luther wasn’t counting the moon. Glancing back, he tipped his head, implicitly asking for his siblings’ input. This was a team effort, after all. He couldn’t strongarm them into compliance. Or, if he could, he didn’t want to.
Unfortunately, shellshocked and overwhelmed, his siblings weren’t much help. Diego shrugged, utterly indecisive. Allison shook her head, still blinking back tears. Klaus makes a pained face, half apology, half terror.
Reginald loudly cleared his own throat, and Luther turned himself back to attention. Old habits really did die hard.
He winced mentally at his word choice. Whatever the case was, he was still their Number One. They could hate it, they could pity him, but in the moment of crisis, they would still follow him. It was a responsibility he had never shirked.
Forcing the wince into a smile, he did his best to hold his father’s eye contact. Years before he was even born, his old man was still the same in all the ways that counted, both good and bad. The familiarity was both terrifying and reassuring. “I know you don’t know us, but I get the sense that you know what we’re doing is important,” he ventured, because Reginald Hargreeves was many things, starting with being a man of utmost purpose. Driven by that purpose to greatness.
To failure, too.
Luther pushed himself to continue. “So maybe you’d be willing to help us out,” he said, gesturing back at the poor showing his siblings were making. Two passed out on the ground, three cowered together, one flickering in and out.
Reginald arched his bushy brows. “With the equation?”
“Well, yes,” Luther said. “But with the others first.”
It was a polite request, but it was still forward. He knew his father liked things to the point, but he wasn’t prone to sentiment. Luther couldn’t recall a single time when his father had overtly shown compassion outside what he considered the realm of the Umbrella Academy. Even his choice to adopt seven children had never been purely philanthropic. He was not a man prone to fits of kindness, at least not when there wasn’t something in it for him.
Pursing his lips, the request seemed to annoy Reginald. He looked Luther over again, more disappointed than before. He sighed, shaking his head in what could only be described as resignation. “Very well,” he said. “Get your companions up. You can put them in one of the spare rooms and we’ll see what we can do.”
It was as much generosity as Luther could have hoped for, and it was only when he was scooping up Vanya again, watching Diego carefully heft up Five, that he realized he hadn’t expected it at all. Though, he’d expected none of this. The end of the world. Time travel. Now he was standing face to face with his past in an effort to save the future.
Still leading the way, Luther followed a step behind their father up the stairs. The wound in a familiar direction, but Luther still found himself shocked when his father opened the door to Luther’s bedroom. At Luther’s hesitation, Reginald turned back with a scowl. “Come along now, come along,” he said. “It’s not fancy but it is spacious and convenient. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
It was a surprise, but Luther wasn’t sure if it was pleasant or not. The room -- which Luther had stocked with records and space paraphernalia -- was sparse now. There were three beds lined up along one wall. Still, it would be wrong to suggest that it wasn’t decorated at all. There were a few paintings on the wall -- old ones, oil canvases, Russian -- and a few lamps on spartan end tables. There was a chair in one corner with books stacked on the floor nearby.
“I use it primarily as a reading room, but I suppose it would suffice for unexpected guests,” Reginald explained. He gestured to the beds, which were drawn up with plain brown quilts. “Please, put your friends here.”
Luther complied, Diego a step behind him. Vanya was on one bed closest to the window; Five was spread out on the one closest to the door. Allison sat heavily on the bed between them, the exhaustion plainly catching up with her as the barely sober Klaus hovered with weak knees nearby.
“Do you have a medic among you?” Reginald asked.
Luther blinked at him. “What?”
“A medic,” Reginald said gruffly. “Surely, if you are a trained group, you would have a medic. Whoever put a team together without a medic would be foolish.”
The obvious answer was locked away in the back of his throat. Instead, Luther breathed through the emotion. Grace hadn’t been made yet. He wasn’t even sure Pogo had been made yet. It was just Reginald, all alone in this massive, old mansion.
“No medic,” he said hoarsely. He gestured over his shoulder, as if that proved anything. “She, uh. Is back--”
He faltered, not sure how to finish.
“In the future? Or the past?” Reginald mused, a sense of curiosity sparking in his eyes. He drew a breath himself, and unbuttoned his sleeves, rolling them up. “No matter. I can probably handle it myself for now.”
Luther frowned. “You?”
Reginald shrugged. “If I wanted to leave you to die, I would have turned you out already,” he said. “If I’m invested, I will see it through to its conclusion.”
Luther could only stare at him, uncertain if he was understanding the situation correctly.
Moving to the beds, Reginald was in his element now. “I will need warm water, blankets,” he said. He nodded to Allison and Klaus. “You will find the blankets in the hall closet, and there is a bathroom down the hall. You should find a basin suitable to carry water under the sink.”
His siblings had all left to escape their father’s orders, but Allison and Klaus were quick to comply. They hurried down the hall without so much as a look back.
“You, go down to my study,” he advised Diego. “Do you think you can find the first aid kit?”
“You have a first aid kit?” Luther asked.
“Preparedness is a virtue,” Reginald said. He turned his hardened gaze back to Diego. “It’s on the wall, beside an ancient Roman vase.”
If Diego remembered breaking that same vase with a knife some 15 years in the future, he made no visible notice of it. Instead, Reginald’s Number Two regarded him coldly before numbly sliding past Luther on his way out the room.
When it was just the two of them, Reginald moved between the beds, checking over Vanya first. “She seems to be fine,” he said, checking over her vitals and lifting her eyelids. “Regular pulse and respiration. Has she sustained some shock?”
Luther hesitated. Certainly, finding out she’d been lied to her whole life and that she had wildly uncontrollable powers was one thing. The knowledge that she was responsible for the apocalypse, when Vanya was of sound mind and body, would be more than a shock. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “She’s kind of been through a lot. Emotionally.”
Reginald huffed with some disapproval before moving over to Five’s bed. He was surprisingly gentle with Five’s childlike form, checking him over with some sense of disconcertion. He checked Five’s eyelids, like Vanya’s, but then proceeded to rub roughly at his chest. When Five didn’t respond, Reginald looked back at Luther. “This child has sustained a head injury.”
“What?” Luther asked, stepping forward as if there was something to see.
Reginald folded Five’s arms neatly by his sides. “His deep state of unresponsiveness is indicative of head trauma,” he said, looking keenly at Luther. “Given his obvious age, this is of a particular concern. One might demand an explanation even.”
Luther’s face flushed red. He hadn’t thought how it might look. Five grownups dragging around an unconscious child. Five hadn’t expressed any specific concerns about his last minute time traveling rescue, but there also hadn’t been much time. He had said it might be messy.
Reginald shrugged, turning back to Five, sweeping a hand across his forehead. “It will be helpful to know the nature of the injury,” he said, matter of fact and calm. “It might help us in treating him more effectively.”
There was no caveat. There was no threat to call the legal authorities. There wasn’t even a demand for an explanation, which Reginald was certainly owed. “Honestly, I’m not sure,” Luther admitted. “He was the one doing the whole, you know, time travel thing.”
“Ah,” Reginald said, sitting back slightly. His expression was thoughtful. “Well that might help explain it, yes.”
His father seemed lost in the thought now, and Luther stepped forward cautiously. “Thank you,” he said. “For helping us. We’re strangers to you, showing up at your front door--”
“In my front door, thank you very much.”
“In your front door,” Luther corrected sheepishly. “And you’re being generous and magnanimous.”
And kind, he didn’t say. He was being kind and thoughtful and understanding. The father he knew, the hardliner that he’d grown up with, would have demanded answers. He wouldn’t have settled for assumptions. He wouldn’t have waited to learn what he wanted to know.
At least, that was how it’d seemed.
Unless there had been a reason. A reason for adopting them, a reason for training them. A reason for being so hard and ruthless. A reason for sending Luther, the loyal son, to the moon for four years of solitude and isolation.
The praise made Reginald scowl. “You’re being sentimental,” he said.
“Just expressing gratitude,” Luther quickly amended.
This time, Reginald scoffed. “Sentimental whinging is a poor way of going about it,” he said. “People waste time on talking, telling people how they feel. As if any declaration of love can compete with verifiable, measurable action.”
It really was his old man. Luther hadn’t doubted it, of course, but the emotion weight of it was hitting him all over again. This was the man he’d spent his whole life trying to please. The man he’d given up any hope of a future to serve. This was the man who he’d willingly gone to the moon in order to earn his approval. He’d never doubted him, never failed him, never once.
And here they were. Talking about love, about relationships.
Luther knew it didn’t begin to excuse the last 30 years of his life, but he couldn’t deny that it was a new way to look at things. Actions, not words. The big picture and not the details. All the times Reginald had never said I love you but Luther had known, even when the others couldn’t see it, that the man had cared.
The most gutting realization was that he’d been right about it.
In his own way, Reginald Hargreeves had loved his children because he’d done everything he could -- including killing himself -- to save them. It was messed up, and it was still probably quantifiable child abuse, but it was love in a language that only brittle old men could speak.
Reginald huffed again, sitting back with a sigh. “We’ll know more once we evaluate them further,” he explained. “The good news is that they don’t seem to be in any immediate physical danger, as best I can tell, so I think we are safe keeping them here if that’s your wish.”
His father looked at Luther for confirmation, but Luther was so dazed that it took him a minute to realize it. The aftermath of time travel was hard enough in terms of recovery. Coming face to face with his father had nearly done him in. The past was bringing him face to face with the present, however, and Luther stumbled over his words to finally form a reply. “Yes, of course,” he said, wetting his lips awkwardly. “If you’ll have us, I mean. We’ll stay. That’s good.”
The rush of words was awkward and uncoordinated, and Reginald frowned in skepticism. “You’re indecisive nature does you and your companions no favors,” he said. “Am I right in assuming you’re their leader?”
Luther blinked at him dumbly. “What?”
With a long suffering air, Reginald pursed his lips again. “Are you the leader here?” he repeated, and he gestured toward Luther. “You show all the signs of it, and they pay you the respect that the position warrants. But I don’t know why you are constantly seeking affirmation.”
Luther’s mouth dropped open, and he struggled to remember that the old man was due a reply. Five hadn’t talked about the ramifications of altering the past, but Luther’s gut told him to minimize an interference. It was safest to assume that Reginald couldn’t know their true identity or their true purpose. Which meant, unfortunately, Luther was going to have to put on an act.
He was always bad at this part, but there weren’t a lot of other options. He cleared his throat. “Well, I wouldn’t say there’s a hierarchy necessarily,” he said. “I, uh, like to think of it is more of a democratic effort.”
This time, his father’s huff was bemused indignation. “That is a highly inefficient means of operation. It’s no wonder that your missions has gone so badly, then.”
The mission, Luther remembered. His father had always been about the mission. He’d drilled it into Luther, his Number One, at such a young age. Stick to the mission; finish the mission.
Clumsily, Luther pulled Five’s equation out of his pocket. He held it up. “Well, you might be able to help us,” he said. “We only have one time traveler, and this is the only clue we have about how to get back home. You said you recognized it.”
Cautiously, Reginald took the paper. He studied it with an air of detached fascination. “I do,” he said. “Though I can’t claim to be an expert on time travel or anything like that. I can simply recognize the mechanics.”
Luther smiled carefully, feeling himself slide into a familiar pattern of deference. Diego had thought it was Luther’s submissive nature. Allison had worried he wasn’t standing up for himself. But that was too simplistic. Luther had loved his father, and the crushing reality that his old man might have not returned the feeling had nearly destroyed him.
He wasn’t a child anymore, so he could see the man his father was. He knew him for his faults, but here with Reginald, he could still see the man he’d loved wasn’t undeserving wholly of his loyalty. After all, how did a heartless bastard show you that he loved you?
Maybe you called him Number One. Maybe you saved his life by turning him into an ape. Maybe you sent him to the moon to keep him from killing himself on your behalf. Maybe you committed suicide so he would step up and save the world like you always knew he could.
It was possible, Luther had to believe, to love someone without justifying them, to forgive them without absolving them. It had to be possible to acknowledge all the bad things they’d done without abolishing all affection.
Love was funny like that. Love defied convention, it defied definition. Sometimes, it even defied words.
“Well,” Luther said with a light, self deprecating laugh. “That’s more than I’ve got. Can you tell me how to finish the equation? Give me something to work with to get us back home?”
There was no gain in it for Reginald. Even for the sake of intellectual curiosity, the favors Luther was asking would far exceed the cost. Not monetary, of course. Of time and attention. Possibly, of affection.
“I’m afraid not,” Reginald said, handing the paper back to Luther. “Without knowing the full scope of your...situation, my speculation could do more harm than good.”
Disappointed, Luther took it back. He looked it over a few times before putting it on the table between Five and Vanya.
“You’re sulking,” Reginald observed with some disdain.
“No,” Luther said. “I’m just -- it’s been kind of a long trip, you might say.”
“Never finish things you can’t start, I say,” Reginald said as the first of Luther’s siblings came back into the room, bearing supplies in hand. “Even when the end is much harder than you think.”
Reginald took up the supplies and pressed his lips together as he looked back at Luther.
“The things that matter in life are rarely without sacrifice, after all,” he said. “A real leader, one that cares for his men, is one who will do anything he can to guarantee their safety -- even if it means sacrificing his own.”
That sounded like an apt way to be a leader, true.
It also sounded suspiciously like a decent way to be a father.
Number Two: Diego
Well, wasn’t this just a kick in the head.
For all that Diego had been reluctant to save the world with his asshole siblings, he’d gone and made a go at it. They had failed -- spectacularly -- and now here he was, lost in the past with his own damn heartless bastard father. As if life wasn’t shitty enough right now.
That was the prevailing sensation that Diego was experiencing, but he was too tied up in this whole debacle to even know how to respond. Could he respond? Was he going to unravel the fabric of the universe if he dressed his old man down right here, right now for being the shittiest person alive? Would he erase his own future -- the future of this makeshift excuse of a family -- if he just did the world a favor and offed him.
The old man lived alone, no ties to anyone. Diego hadn’t even been born yet. He could put a knife in his skull, drop him in the basement and no one would know about it for years.
But Diego had always been more talk than action. That was a problem of his, his lack of execution. Instead of doing any of those things, he was sitting idly in Luther’s future bedroom, watching the old man tend to Five like some antiquated war medic.
To be fair, it had been a sort of long day. Time travel, as it turned out, really did suck pretty bad, and he had seen his sister blow up the moon, so emotionally speaking, he was a bit unstable at the moment. Sitting idle meant that he wasn’t losing his shit, and Diego had to take the victories where he could find them.
Hell, Diego was probably going to need to change his definition of victory after this whole mess. If they got back to the present and stopped the apocalypse, then maybe this would be worth it.
But that was one hell of a maybe at this point, and with Five still unconscious, Diego wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic. He fiddled with the equation at Five’s bedside, pretending to follow along the string of numbers and letters like he had some sense of what he was seeing and like they weren’t total gibberish to him. He wanted to help. Short of that, he wanted to look like he was helping.
Otherwise, the whole situation would be way to much.
Frustrated, Diego looked back at Five again, chewing the inside of his lip. They’d been here for hours now -- hours in the past, marooned with their father before he had the chance to adopt seven kids he had no right to -- and Five hadn’t as much as twitched. Vanya had started to come around, so much so that Luther, Allison and Klaus had moved her to another spare room. Sir Reginald, in what could only be described as a fit of unprecedented thoughtfulness, had agreed to watch over their youngest member.
It might have been a nice gesture, which was precisely why Diego didn’t trust it. He scowled at his father over the note. His father, unimpressed to his core, scowled back.
“If you’re worried about the boy, I think your fear is misplaced,” Reginald explained.
“He’s unconscious,” Diego snapped. “Not sure why that wouldn’t be something to worry about.”
“He’s not unconscious,” Reginald corrected him sternly. “The boy is in a coma.”
Diego snorted. “Oh, and that somehow makes it better?”
“His condition is stable,” Reginald said, with his frustrating air of utter superiority. This being despite the fact that Diego knew the bastard had no actual medical training. The old dude just read a lot. “Many people recover from this type of comatose state with no complications whatsoever.”
His father’s presence always pissed him off. His impulse was to act mature and show this asshole that he didn’t need to be patronized. Somehow, he always ended up sounding like a petulant toddler. “But we need him,” Diego said, fixing his eyes on Five’s lax features and letting his frustration with the situation bubble to the surface. “And soon, if we’re going to get out of here.”
“Isn’t that advantage of time travel?” Reginald asked, annoying keen. “Soon would be rather relative, so I’m not sure I understand your rush.”
“It’s none of your damn business is what it is,” Diego snapped. It was hard to remember the context here, that they were travelers who Reginald had taken in -- they weren’t children who had been raised wrong. Except both were true, and Diego couldn’t deny which one had a stronger pull over him. He slumped back in his chair, unapologetic.
Reginald, for his part, looked wholly unimpressed. Whether he was dealing with rude strangers or superpowered children, apparently his reaction was the same. “The restlessness of youth. Or perhaps it is merely a character flaw,” he said, offering judgment without somehow making it a personal invective. “Patience brings its own rewards. Time wasted is never the same as time spent.”
Diego made a face, casting a perturbed eye back at his father. That was the kind of shit the old man always said, trying to prove his points. All his reason, all his logic, all his knowledge -- it was bullshit. It was just one old man’s way of trying to control everything. Diego had hated it at 18, and he sure as hell didn’t love it now. Time apparently didn’t change nearly enough. “He’s in a coma,” he said, bobbing his head back toward Five’s limp form. “This isn’t a pot of water that you want to boil. He’s a person, and we’re all far from where we’re supposed to be. I feel like now is the time to be proactive.”
With a dismissive hand motion, Reginald reached into his pocket and removed his monocle. Diego couldn’t help it; he flinched. The small round glass that had so defined the pervasive, penetrating trauma of his youth. He’d thrown it in the river for a reason, his attempt at closure.
But here it was.
His father adjusted it over his eye with a gruff intake of air and picked up a book from one of the end tables. “If you want a more definitive diagnosis, by all means, take your young companion to a hospital,” he said. “You can try to explain to them who he is and what happened to him. I’m sure they will run a battery of expensive tests and conclude, just as I have, that he is in no pressing danger. He is merely unconscious. Then, I’m quite confident they will recommend that you be patient.”
Reginald opened his book and smirked at Diego.
“Quite like I have,” he concluded smugly.
Diego bristled, his fingers tightening into fists. He fought the urge to draw his knives. Not that he would actually kill his father, but knowing he had the option was some sort of comfort to him. “Still,” Diego said, voice taut as he watched his father’s eyes skim indifferently down the page. “You keep neglecting the part where he might not wake up.”
This time, Reginald didn’t even bother to look up from his book. “Possible, yes, but decidedly unlikely.”
At his father’s indifference, Diego shifted anxiously in his chair. With no other option, he looked back at Five, wishing his smaller and older brother would wake up to alleviate some of this. But Five was still out cold. Somehow, tucked into the bed like that, dark hair splayed over the pillow, he looked even younger than 13.
Diego sighed. He shook his head. “Shit.”
To that, Reginald had no meaningful reply. Instead, he snuffled, turning the page hastily as he started to read the next. The book was large and old, a dusty volume that had no doubt been read before. Diego wondered how many times he’d seen it in the library and ignored it because anything his father found interested, Diego had deemed completely irrelevant.
Chewing his lip, Diego played with his fingernail. He wanted to believe it was all irrelevant, that his father was no more important than the dusty books in his library. But even those books had purpose, they have usefulness -- if you knew how to read them, if you took the time to care.
That wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. He owed his old man nothing, and he wasn’t going to sit here and feel guilty for hating a man who hadn’t mistreated him yet. Hate, though, was a strong emotion. The strongest, just like love.
Tapping his leg, Diego shifted in his seat again. It scraped against the floor, and he darkened his brow as he studied his shoes. Everyone else was still wearing bowling shoes. He’d had the presence of mind to refuse back at the alley. That seemed like a lifetime ago. Funny, how in this timeline, it hadn’t even happened yet.
That was why they were here, weren’t they? To change the future. To stop the world from ending. To help Vanya adjust to her powers. If he believed that these things were possible -- if he actually bought into that shit -- then did he have to believe that other changes were possible? That there might be a world where Patch didn’t die? That there might be a future where his old man wasn’t an unremitting bastard?
He frowned, drumming his fingers on his leg as he looked impatiently at Five. That wasn’t why he was here; it wasn’t. And he needed to get out of here before he forgot why he came in the first place.
“You care about him,” the old man observed.
Looking over at him, Diego realized that Reginald was watching him. He flattened his lips and composed himself again. “What?”
Reginald inclined his head toward him. “I can see you, fidgeting about,” he said. “You care about this child more than you let on.”
There wasn’t a good reason to deny this -- Five was his brother, after all -- but he had no desire to admit anything about Reginald Hargreeves was right. He shrugged, stiff. “He’s our way home.”
This, it seemed, bemused his father. “Ah. You’re a utilitarian, then!”
Contrarily, Diego crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, it’s not like I don’t care at all,” he said. “I’m just saying.”
Arching an eyebrow, his father peered at him through the monocle, his gaze piercing. “So it comes back to patience again,” he said. He shrugged, going back to his book. “As I said, you are free to take him to the hospital. It is of no particular concern to me.”
For all that Diego didn’t want to show this asshole that he cared, he also didn’t want the asshole to think he didn’t. Diego had always struggled with paradoxical emotions where his family was concerned. It was part of the reason he hated them so damn much.
It was also part of the reason why he’d do anything for them.
After all, which sibling had bailed Klaus out of jail countless times? Which siblings had been Klaus ride from rehab?
Yeah, that wasn’t Allison, in LA, with her jetsetting lifestyle. It wasn’t Luther, following his dad’s orders to the moon.
And hell, who was the only siblings -- the only one -- actually doing the job? Putting his life on the line? Fighting bad guys? Helping people?
Diego, that was who. It was Diego who had come closer than anyone -- even closer than Luther -- to living out his father’s plans.
He’d always told Patch his family was complicated. What he’d really meant was that his feelings toward his complicated family were really damn complicated.
“But you said it already,” Diego countered. “The hospital probably can’t do shit for him.”
“Yes, it is unlikely,” the old man agreed, turning another page. “They would take up lots of your time, ask you lots of irrelevant questions and charge you a great deal of money, assuming social services doesn’t get involved.”
Diego gaped, still incredulous by this conversation. By this situation. They had traveled through time and here he was, face to face with his father years before he was even born. And he still hated the man just as much as he had the day the guy offed himself.
Shit, today was giving him a headache. “Then why the hell would I take him there?”
His father lifted one shoulder indifferently. “Well, I hear that some people find it comforting. Knowing they are doing everything to be done for their loved one.”
With a scoff, Diego rocked back on his chair, lifting the front legs off the ground. His father cast him a disparaging eye and Diego rocked back more. As a child, his dad would have reprimanded him. There was a certain pleasure in knowing how much it bothered the old man and how he wasn’t going to say anything to a relative stranger. “I just need a way home,” Diego explained. He let the chair fall back on the ground loudly. He nodded toward Five. “For all of us.”
Much to Diego’s frustration, his father seemed unrattled by his caustic back and forth. For all that Diego was trying to push his dad’s buttons, his father seemed to be taking the impersonal approach. Logically, that made sense. Diego was a stranger in this time period.
But damn it, it was so hard. The old dude and kicked it without ever making amends with Diego, and now Diego was beholden to his father’s generosity to get back home? How was this shit even fair?
“Then wait,” his father advised, still looking at his book. “Be patient.”
Patient. All the years Diego had been patient. He’d been obedient. He’d tried his best, he’d had. He hadn’t started out wanted to run away. He’d wanted to be the good son, to be as good as Dad’s precious Number One.
But he’d always been Number Two.
He’d always been not enough.
Screw time travel.
Screw saving the world.
Screw his old man and all his damn issues.
Screw it.
“Be patient?” Diego repeated, letting his incredulity come to the forefront now. Subtlety had never been Diego’s particular strong suit. “With this?”
He nodded toward Five, but he was talking about all of it. Every last bit of it. Complicated, annoying, frustrating and weird.
His father glanced up, but hardly seemed moved by the display of outright emotion. “I don’t really see what other option you have,” he said. “Some things are outside our control. You have to wait and simply accept that control is a fallacy built by your own sense of pride. Such a construct will only limit you in the end.”
The fact that the notion was rendered coldly and impersonally did not make it better.
In fact, it made it worse. Diego sat forward and stared at him. The man was practically from another planet; there was no way he could actually be human. “What the hell do you know about it anyway?”
It was the question of a defiant child. The kind of question that Reginald would have ignored in the past.
But, talking as two strangers in a strange time, Reginald made a small noise in the back of his throat. “Everything, of course,” he said. “You are probably just egotistical enough to believe otherwise, but pride is not a quality unique to you -- or unique to youth. The hardest task any of us face in the long years we have is surrendering our control. If we don’t concede that some things are simply beyond us, we will let the quest of the unattainable destroy us. We have to focus on what is within our sphere of control. Everything else is sentimental nonsense.”
Diego stared at him, not sure what to say. Not sure what to think.
That answer.
Well, it was an answer, wasn’t it?
As a father, Reginald had never been keen to talk about weakness. He hadn’t been keen to talk about himself at all. He’d kept himself impersonal to his children, a pure, authoritative figure. As a child, Diego had thought it was simply because Reginald Hargreeves was, at his core, just a terrible excuse for a human being.
But there was something more to it. Something more...well, complicated.
That really was the word for this family. Complicated.
The question was -- and this really was the heart of it -- was complicated always bad? It wasn’t always good, it wasn’t even mostly good -- Diego knew that -- but maybe that was the point of complicated. It never could be categorized one way or another. Sometimes, when you really were honest with yourself, you recognized that there was always more to the story, that heroes and villains were shitty constructs, and that people were just people.
Even when they were your asshole of a father.
He could sit here, and he could think about all the things his father should have done.
But his father, sitting with him, hadn’t done any of it.
There was a man who existed beyond the father that Diego hated. That man didn’t redeem the father, but it was worth something.
“So?” Diego asked, crossing his arms stiffly over his chest. “What then?”
His father stopped reading and looked at him, as if really trying to see him. “It depends what you choose,” he said. “If you hold too fast for too long, the things you are trying to save will slip right through your fingers. You scarcely will notice before it’s too late.”
The words were spoken with regret.
The regret of a father who had watched all his children walk out of the door, one by one.
Only that had happened yet.
Diego frowned. “You mean that?”
This time, his father almost dared to smile. “It is a hard habit to break, I believe,” he said, more gently than before. “I speak from experience for I have not mastered it yet, nor do I expect to for years to come if ever.” Then, he shrugged, nodding at Five. “But then, this isn’t my decision to make. This is not my problem to solve. I am merely a vehicle here to help you on your journey, tumultuous though it may seem.”
Well, shit. That was...almost human.
How unfair was it.
To find out your father was human. After he was dead and before you were even born.
Remember how complicated it was?
Finally, he sighed. He looked back at Five. “Well, I guess I can wait,” he said. “I mean, a little longer anyway.”
His father made no reply. Instead, he looked back down at his book and started reading again. Diego watched, eyes going between Five’s unconscious form and his father’s indifferent figure. He fiddled with the paper again, but the letters and numbers still didn’t mean anything to him. There was no reason to pretend, and Diego left the paper where it was, at Five’s bedside.
It was hard to say how much time passed, the three of them in that room, waiting patiently together.
What Diego did know, however, was that in 31 years, he had never once felt closer to the man who had been and who would be his father.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: Set immediately post S1. I don’t think this will actually happen but resolving that cliffhanger sure does leave open a lot of possibilities. Fills my coma square for hc_bingo. No beta.
Summary: The team travels to the past and meets their father, who may just know the future better than any of them.
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
-o-
Number Five, part one: Number Five
“Hold on!” Five yelled. “This is going to get messy!”
Messy was hardly a technical term, nor was it particularly an apt description of anything that was going on at the moment. The world was literally ending. The moon was exploding and consuming the planet in fire and ash. They were well past messy by every indication out there.
Understatement, as it were, was not typically Five’s thing. If anything, he liked theatrics, albeit of a different nature than his siblings. Sure, he downplayed things that some people found incredulous, but it wasn’t Five’s fault if they didn’t understand the full scope of his ability and/or intellect. Sometimes that certainly did get him into trouble. His innate over-estimation of his own ability was a recurring problem in his life, and as he forced his way through time and space, he had to hope he wasn’t making the same mistake now.
If he was, there was some solace in knowing that the alternative to his failure was certain death and destruction for all of humanity; at this point, there was literally nothing left to lose and everything to gain. At the very least, failure would be a short-lived and fiery humiliation.
Besides, it wasn’t like he could stop it now as he threw the rest of his energy into solidifying the rift, widening it around himself and all of his siblings in equal turn. He could feel the power as it rippled through him, firing through the synapses of his mind with an intensity that was hard to fully grasp. He’d done this before of course but never this suddenly, never without a plan. He’d sketched out an equation for time travel when he got back to 2019 a week ago, calculating a few odd numbers as a possible last resort. He’d never gotten very far. He’d been busy, after all. And time travel had really lost its appeal, when you got right down to it.
That was a pity, then. The half-baked equation with missing variables would have made this easier. It might have made it safer -- for him, for his siblings, for the world. As it was, he was working on pure instinct, counting on his innate and reliable survival instincts to get him through to the end.
Not the end.
To the beginning.
Five was done with endings. Well and truly, 100 percent finished.
He closed his eyes, tightening his grip on his siblings hands. The power intensified and he gritted his teeth, feeling the pressure as it built up in his chest and head. It was uncontrollable now, blinding him to the present as he opened himself up to the entirety of time.
That was the crazy thing about time travel. The way it condensed all of existence into a finite point. To think about time as a line, where you could pick up pieces and move them around. Without the calculations, his efforts to pinpoint a time were haphazard at best, and he was overwhelmed by the vastness of it. Past, present, future. A split second, an infinity. People didn’t understand the concept of eternity, the scope of it. The way it consumed everything until it became nothing. Here, where every possible version of himself existed and untold possibilities for the future were tied up with every possible decision in the past.
It lost meaning here; he lost meaning.
Desperately, he struggled to seize back control. He had to take the mess and channel it. He had to create a conduit through the chaos, large enough to get himself and his siblings through unscathed. The effort was more than mental; he could feel it, exacting a perilous toll on his body. His breathing diminished and his pulse intensified, and he could feel his consciousness as it reached a burning apex. By now, his power was resonate, echoing in his skull. It was fire, burning with a white hot rage that made him scream.
It was too much. The world vanished behind them, but Five flailed as he tried to open a portal on the other end. He was slipping, though. His precarious control was faltering, and he could feel himself as he lost his grip, barely keeping his siblings with him as eternity loomed before him.
But failure? Now? After surviving an apocalypse? After turning himself into a killer? After betraying the most powerful organization the world will never know?
Five wouldn’t accept it; it couldn’t.
Instead, he focused inward. He closed himself to the possibilities and internalized his struggle instead. He found his strength where he always found it, at the moment when he thought there was nothing else he could possibly give. Dredging up those reserves, he ripped it out of himself, pouring it out until he anchored onto a point and held fast.
Time and space roared by him, but he ignored it. He was too old for this, too young.
Buckling down, he worked at the anchor until it ripped through the expanse. He felt the opening give way to him, and he needled it open, inch by inch while holding fast to his family all the while. He couldn’t let go; if he did, he would lose them. Here, in the expanse. Indiscriminately, throughout history. The effect was the same, and both options were unacceptable.
This wasn’t what he’d intended -- none of this -- but as long as they were safe, as long as they were together, as long as the moon was still moored in the sky, then Five could make it work.
Five would make it work.
He thought about his unfinished equation again, stashed in his pocket. It was still open ended, missing one critical variable. Normally, he would consider this a mistake, throwing himself into an answer, committing himself to it, without all parts of the equation.
Like the missing gaps would just fill themselves in by chance and pure luck.
It was a hell of a gamble, and Five had the increasingly pressing suspicion that it very well could kill him.
But then, there were worse things.
With a scream, deep and guttural as it echoed across the expanse, Five broke through the rest of the barrier, flaying time wide and yanking himself through, his siblings falling after him. With a rush, his power left him, and the sudden exhaustion made his head spin. For a moment, he thought he might recover, but he had barely been able to confirm that his siblings were still circled around him when the weakness spread. Head throbbing, heart pounding, Five’s knees buckled and he crashed to the floor.
As it rushed up to meet him, Five’s final thought was how very familiar it looked.
Number One: Luther
Luther, for all that his siblings thought otherwise, was actually quite good at change. He knew how to adapt. He created a new routine out of chaos. It wasn’t his inability to change that had kept him at home when the others had left. It had been his ability to change that had allowed him to endure the process. Even when he’d been transformed into something not quite human, even when his father had sent him to the moon, even when his father had died, even when it turned out the end of the world was coming -- Luther handled it.
Steady, calm and certain, using the same tools and tactics to cope in every situation. Luther could find normal in the abnormal. Sure, his skill was technically super strength, but he thought his managerial prowess wasn’t half bad either.
So when Five had suggested time travel, Luther had figured what the hell? The only change you couldn’t adapt to was death, and he wasn’t about to let his siblings die. The rush and whirlwind had been overwhelming, and Luther found his unsteady feet and surprisingly steady ground.
Blinking, he struggled to catch his breath. The shock was that there was no shock.
He was home.
Back at the mansion.
He exhaled, heavy and shocked.
How the hell was he home?
He was about to ask if everyone was okay, when he turned in time to see Five’s skinny knees crumpling beneath him. Luther had just enough foresight to catch him, balancing Vanya’s dead weight with on hand while he lowered Five’s small body alongside Vanya’s to the ground on top of him as he looked up at the others in shock.
“Did it not work?” he asked, looking down at Five’s slack face and back up at his siblings. They were all there -- Diego, Allison, Klaus (and Ben). They were together; they were home. The world wasn’t over. “Where are we?”
Allison is pale, color parched from her cheeks. Klaus laughs, short and wild, and Ben flickers in and out. Diego wets his lips. “Maybe the question isn’t where,” he says. “Maybe it’s when.”
Luther looked back down at Five -- back down at Vanya. A minute ago, they’d been standing at the end of the world. He blinked, looking back up. “The moon,” he said. “Is the moon still there?”
Allison was already having the same thought. She rushed to the front door, swinging it open to peer outside.
“It felt like time travel,” Klaus said, studying his arms as if they showed something. He glanced at Ben, as if for confirmation. “Just like before.”
Allison came back, nodding with wide eyes.
“So it’s not the apocalypse,” Luther muttered. He worked carefully to arrange both Five and Vanya on the ground. He checked Vanya’s pulse, just to be sure, then tried to straighten Five’s suit jacket. He hesitated, pulling a loose note that was sticking out of the top. He unfolded it, but the scrawled numbers meant nothing to him. Frowning, he shook his head. “So what is it?”
There was a short huff, a familiar and caustic air of indignation. “Time travel.”
Luther looked up, and he was the last one to see, but the first one to understand. Standing there, at the bottom of the stairs, was Reginald Hargreeves, their father, in the flesh. Luther struggled numbly to his feet. “What?”
Reginald gave Luther an appraising, but vaguely disappointed look. His nose wrinkled even further when he surveyed the others. “Time travel,” he said again.
Luther shook his head, utterly confused. He had to remind himself that his father was dead. He had to remember that he’d scattered the ashes in the courtyard. Which meant that if his father was standing here, then maybe it had worked. Maybe they had traveled through time.
But that didn’t explain why Reginald knew anything about it. “Why would you say that?”
Reginald narrowed his eyes, disapproval mounting. “Because I have six uninvited strangers standing in the foyer of my well protected home, utterly uninvited and clearly from a different era,” he said, staring down his nose, the trimmed mustache twitching. “Also, that paper in your hand?”
Luther looked at it again.
Reginald clucked his tongue. “It’s a half finished equation for time travel.”
Luther blinked, feeling like this revelation should explain some of what it meant, but the numbers and variables were still gibberish to him.
Swallowing hard, he reminded himself that there were, in fact, other concerns. He glanced back at his siblings, who had crowded together. Allison was on the floor between Five and Vanya, hovering protectively. Diego’s fingers were lingering by his knives while Klaus cowered in something akin to shock. Clearing his throat now, he looked back at his dad. “Well, yeah,” he confirmed. He was good in battle, but he wasn’t particularly skilled with deceptive strategies. “We ended up a little turned around, actually. When are we anyway?”
The uncertainty seemed to annoy Reginald. “1978. April. It’s been a long winter this year, but they say spring is right around the corner.” He smiled, wry and terse. “As if there were people who could tell you the future right where you stand.”
It wasn’t quite an accusation, but it definitely wasn’t a joke. Luther shifted uncomfortably in the foyer of the only home he’d ever known. Unless you counted the moon, and, for the record, Luther wasn’t counting the moon. Glancing back, he tipped his head, implicitly asking for his siblings’ input. This was a team effort, after all. He couldn’t strongarm them into compliance. Or, if he could, he didn’t want to.
Unfortunately, shellshocked and overwhelmed, his siblings weren’t much help. Diego shrugged, utterly indecisive. Allison shook her head, still blinking back tears. Klaus makes a pained face, half apology, half terror.
Reginald loudly cleared his own throat, and Luther turned himself back to attention. Old habits really did die hard.
He winced mentally at his word choice. Whatever the case was, he was still their Number One. They could hate it, they could pity him, but in the moment of crisis, they would still follow him. It was a responsibility he had never shirked.
Forcing the wince into a smile, he did his best to hold his father’s eye contact. Years before he was even born, his old man was still the same in all the ways that counted, both good and bad. The familiarity was both terrifying and reassuring. “I know you don’t know us, but I get the sense that you know what we’re doing is important,” he ventured, because Reginald Hargreeves was many things, starting with being a man of utmost purpose. Driven by that purpose to greatness.
To failure, too.
Luther pushed himself to continue. “So maybe you’d be willing to help us out,” he said, gesturing back at the poor showing his siblings were making. Two passed out on the ground, three cowered together, one flickering in and out.
Reginald arched his bushy brows. “With the equation?”
“Well, yes,” Luther said. “But with the others first.”
It was a polite request, but it was still forward. He knew his father liked things to the point, but he wasn’t prone to sentiment. Luther couldn’t recall a single time when his father had overtly shown compassion outside what he considered the realm of the Umbrella Academy. Even his choice to adopt seven children had never been purely philanthropic. He was not a man prone to fits of kindness, at least not when there wasn’t something in it for him.
Pursing his lips, the request seemed to annoy Reginald. He looked Luther over again, more disappointed than before. He sighed, shaking his head in what could only be described as resignation. “Very well,” he said. “Get your companions up. You can put them in one of the spare rooms and we’ll see what we can do.”
It was as much generosity as Luther could have hoped for, and it was only when he was scooping up Vanya again, watching Diego carefully heft up Five, that he realized he hadn’t expected it at all. Though, he’d expected none of this. The end of the world. Time travel. Now he was standing face to face with his past in an effort to save the future.
Still leading the way, Luther followed a step behind their father up the stairs. The wound in a familiar direction, but Luther still found himself shocked when his father opened the door to Luther’s bedroom. At Luther’s hesitation, Reginald turned back with a scowl. “Come along now, come along,” he said. “It’s not fancy but it is spacious and convenient. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
It was a surprise, but Luther wasn’t sure if it was pleasant or not. The room -- which Luther had stocked with records and space paraphernalia -- was sparse now. There were three beds lined up along one wall. Still, it would be wrong to suggest that it wasn’t decorated at all. There were a few paintings on the wall -- old ones, oil canvases, Russian -- and a few lamps on spartan end tables. There was a chair in one corner with books stacked on the floor nearby.
“I use it primarily as a reading room, but I suppose it would suffice for unexpected guests,” Reginald explained. He gestured to the beds, which were drawn up with plain brown quilts. “Please, put your friends here.”
Luther complied, Diego a step behind him. Vanya was on one bed closest to the window; Five was spread out on the one closest to the door. Allison sat heavily on the bed between them, the exhaustion plainly catching up with her as the barely sober Klaus hovered with weak knees nearby.
“Do you have a medic among you?” Reginald asked.
Luther blinked at him. “What?”
“A medic,” Reginald said gruffly. “Surely, if you are a trained group, you would have a medic. Whoever put a team together without a medic would be foolish.”
The obvious answer was locked away in the back of his throat. Instead, Luther breathed through the emotion. Grace hadn’t been made yet. He wasn’t even sure Pogo had been made yet. It was just Reginald, all alone in this massive, old mansion.
“No medic,” he said hoarsely. He gestured over his shoulder, as if that proved anything. “She, uh. Is back--”
He faltered, not sure how to finish.
“In the future? Or the past?” Reginald mused, a sense of curiosity sparking in his eyes. He drew a breath himself, and unbuttoned his sleeves, rolling them up. “No matter. I can probably handle it myself for now.”
Luther frowned. “You?”
Reginald shrugged. “If I wanted to leave you to die, I would have turned you out already,” he said. “If I’m invested, I will see it through to its conclusion.”
Luther could only stare at him, uncertain if he was understanding the situation correctly.
Moving to the beds, Reginald was in his element now. “I will need warm water, blankets,” he said. He nodded to Allison and Klaus. “You will find the blankets in the hall closet, and there is a bathroom down the hall. You should find a basin suitable to carry water under the sink.”
His siblings had all left to escape their father’s orders, but Allison and Klaus were quick to comply. They hurried down the hall without so much as a look back.
“You, go down to my study,” he advised Diego. “Do you think you can find the first aid kit?”
“You have a first aid kit?” Luther asked.
“Preparedness is a virtue,” Reginald said. He turned his hardened gaze back to Diego. “It’s on the wall, beside an ancient Roman vase.”
If Diego remembered breaking that same vase with a knife some 15 years in the future, he made no visible notice of it. Instead, Reginald’s Number Two regarded him coldly before numbly sliding past Luther on his way out the room.
When it was just the two of them, Reginald moved between the beds, checking over Vanya first. “She seems to be fine,” he said, checking over her vitals and lifting her eyelids. “Regular pulse and respiration. Has she sustained some shock?”
Luther hesitated. Certainly, finding out she’d been lied to her whole life and that she had wildly uncontrollable powers was one thing. The knowledge that she was responsible for the apocalypse, when Vanya was of sound mind and body, would be more than a shock. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “She’s kind of been through a lot. Emotionally.”
Reginald huffed with some disapproval before moving over to Five’s bed. He was surprisingly gentle with Five’s childlike form, checking him over with some sense of disconcertion. He checked Five’s eyelids, like Vanya’s, but then proceeded to rub roughly at his chest. When Five didn’t respond, Reginald looked back at Luther. “This child has sustained a head injury.”
“What?” Luther asked, stepping forward as if there was something to see.
Reginald folded Five’s arms neatly by his sides. “His deep state of unresponsiveness is indicative of head trauma,” he said, looking keenly at Luther. “Given his obvious age, this is of a particular concern. One might demand an explanation even.”
Luther’s face flushed red. He hadn’t thought how it might look. Five grownups dragging around an unconscious child. Five hadn’t expressed any specific concerns about his last minute time traveling rescue, but there also hadn’t been much time. He had said it might be messy.
Reginald shrugged, turning back to Five, sweeping a hand across his forehead. “It will be helpful to know the nature of the injury,” he said, matter of fact and calm. “It might help us in treating him more effectively.”
There was no caveat. There was no threat to call the legal authorities. There wasn’t even a demand for an explanation, which Reginald was certainly owed. “Honestly, I’m not sure,” Luther admitted. “He was the one doing the whole, you know, time travel thing.”
“Ah,” Reginald said, sitting back slightly. His expression was thoughtful. “Well that might help explain it, yes.”
His father seemed lost in the thought now, and Luther stepped forward cautiously. “Thank you,” he said. “For helping us. We’re strangers to you, showing up at your front door--”
“In my front door, thank you very much.”
“In your front door,” Luther corrected sheepishly. “And you’re being generous and magnanimous.”
And kind, he didn’t say. He was being kind and thoughtful and understanding. The father he knew, the hardliner that he’d grown up with, would have demanded answers. He wouldn’t have settled for assumptions. He wouldn’t have waited to learn what he wanted to know.
At least, that was how it’d seemed.
Unless there had been a reason. A reason for adopting them, a reason for training them. A reason for being so hard and ruthless. A reason for sending Luther, the loyal son, to the moon for four years of solitude and isolation.
The praise made Reginald scowl. “You’re being sentimental,” he said.
“Just expressing gratitude,” Luther quickly amended.
This time, Reginald scoffed. “Sentimental whinging is a poor way of going about it,” he said. “People waste time on talking, telling people how they feel. As if any declaration of love can compete with verifiable, measurable action.”
It really was his old man. Luther hadn’t doubted it, of course, but the emotion weight of it was hitting him all over again. This was the man he’d spent his whole life trying to please. The man he’d given up any hope of a future to serve. This was the man who he’d willingly gone to the moon in order to earn his approval. He’d never doubted him, never failed him, never once.
And here they were. Talking about love, about relationships.
Luther knew it didn’t begin to excuse the last 30 years of his life, but he couldn’t deny that it was a new way to look at things. Actions, not words. The big picture and not the details. All the times Reginald had never said I love you but Luther had known, even when the others couldn’t see it, that the man had cared.
The most gutting realization was that he’d been right about it.
In his own way, Reginald Hargreeves had loved his children because he’d done everything he could -- including killing himself -- to save them. It was messed up, and it was still probably quantifiable child abuse, but it was love in a language that only brittle old men could speak.
Reginald huffed again, sitting back with a sigh. “We’ll know more once we evaluate them further,” he explained. “The good news is that they don’t seem to be in any immediate physical danger, as best I can tell, so I think we are safe keeping them here if that’s your wish.”
His father looked at Luther for confirmation, but Luther was so dazed that it took him a minute to realize it. The aftermath of time travel was hard enough in terms of recovery. Coming face to face with his father had nearly done him in. The past was bringing him face to face with the present, however, and Luther stumbled over his words to finally form a reply. “Yes, of course,” he said, wetting his lips awkwardly. “If you’ll have us, I mean. We’ll stay. That’s good.”
The rush of words was awkward and uncoordinated, and Reginald frowned in skepticism. “You’re indecisive nature does you and your companions no favors,” he said. “Am I right in assuming you’re their leader?”
Luther blinked at him dumbly. “What?”
With a long suffering air, Reginald pursed his lips again. “Are you the leader here?” he repeated, and he gestured toward Luther. “You show all the signs of it, and they pay you the respect that the position warrants. But I don’t know why you are constantly seeking affirmation.”
Luther’s mouth dropped open, and he struggled to remember that the old man was due a reply. Five hadn’t talked about the ramifications of altering the past, but Luther’s gut told him to minimize an interference. It was safest to assume that Reginald couldn’t know their true identity or their true purpose. Which meant, unfortunately, Luther was going to have to put on an act.
He was always bad at this part, but there weren’t a lot of other options. He cleared his throat. “Well, I wouldn’t say there’s a hierarchy necessarily,” he said. “I, uh, like to think of it is more of a democratic effort.”
This time, his father’s huff was bemused indignation. “That is a highly inefficient means of operation. It’s no wonder that your missions has gone so badly, then.”
The mission, Luther remembered. His father had always been about the mission. He’d drilled it into Luther, his Number One, at such a young age. Stick to the mission; finish the mission.
Clumsily, Luther pulled Five’s equation out of his pocket. He held it up. “Well, you might be able to help us,” he said. “We only have one time traveler, and this is the only clue we have about how to get back home. You said you recognized it.”
Cautiously, Reginald took the paper. He studied it with an air of detached fascination. “I do,” he said. “Though I can’t claim to be an expert on time travel or anything like that. I can simply recognize the mechanics.”
Luther smiled carefully, feeling himself slide into a familiar pattern of deference. Diego had thought it was Luther’s submissive nature. Allison had worried he wasn’t standing up for himself. But that was too simplistic. Luther had loved his father, and the crushing reality that his old man might have not returned the feeling had nearly destroyed him.
He wasn’t a child anymore, so he could see the man his father was. He knew him for his faults, but here with Reginald, he could still see the man he’d loved wasn’t undeserving wholly of his loyalty. After all, how did a heartless bastard show you that he loved you?
Maybe you called him Number One. Maybe you saved his life by turning him into an ape. Maybe you sent him to the moon to keep him from killing himself on your behalf. Maybe you committed suicide so he would step up and save the world like you always knew he could.
It was possible, Luther had to believe, to love someone without justifying them, to forgive them without absolving them. It had to be possible to acknowledge all the bad things they’d done without abolishing all affection.
Love was funny like that. Love defied convention, it defied definition. Sometimes, it even defied words.
“Well,” Luther said with a light, self deprecating laugh. “That’s more than I’ve got. Can you tell me how to finish the equation? Give me something to work with to get us back home?”
There was no gain in it for Reginald. Even for the sake of intellectual curiosity, the favors Luther was asking would far exceed the cost. Not monetary, of course. Of time and attention. Possibly, of affection.
“I’m afraid not,” Reginald said, handing the paper back to Luther. “Without knowing the full scope of your...situation, my speculation could do more harm than good.”
Disappointed, Luther took it back. He looked it over a few times before putting it on the table between Five and Vanya.
“You’re sulking,” Reginald observed with some disdain.
“No,” Luther said. “I’m just -- it’s been kind of a long trip, you might say.”
“Never finish things you can’t start, I say,” Reginald said as the first of Luther’s siblings came back into the room, bearing supplies in hand. “Even when the end is much harder than you think.”
Reginald took up the supplies and pressed his lips together as he looked back at Luther.
“The things that matter in life are rarely without sacrifice, after all,” he said. “A real leader, one that cares for his men, is one who will do anything he can to guarantee their safety -- even if it means sacrificing his own.”
That sounded like an apt way to be a leader, true.
It also sounded suspiciously like a decent way to be a father.
Number Two: Diego
Well, wasn’t this just a kick in the head.
For all that Diego had been reluctant to save the world with his asshole siblings, he’d gone and made a go at it. They had failed -- spectacularly -- and now here he was, lost in the past with his own damn heartless bastard father. As if life wasn’t shitty enough right now.
That was the prevailing sensation that Diego was experiencing, but he was too tied up in this whole debacle to even know how to respond. Could he respond? Was he going to unravel the fabric of the universe if he dressed his old man down right here, right now for being the shittiest person alive? Would he erase his own future -- the future of this makeshift excuse of a family -- if he just did the world a favor and offed him.
The old man lived alone, no ties to anyone. Diego hadn’t even been born yet. He could put a knife in his skull, drop him in the basement and no one would know about it for years.
But Diego had always been more talk than action. That was a problem of his, his lack of execution. Instead of doing any of those things, he was sitting idly in Luther’s future bedroom, watching the old man tend to Five like some antiquated war medic.
To be fair, it had been a sort of long day. Time travel, as it turned out, really did suck pretty bad, and he had seen his sister blow up the moon, so emotionally speaking, he was a bit unstable at the moment. Sitting idle meant that he wasn’t losing his shit, and Diego had to take the victories where he could find them.
Hell, Diego was probably going to need to change his definition of victory after this whole mess. If they got back to the present and stopped the apocalypse, then maybe this would be worth it.
But that was one hell of a maybe at this point, and with Five still unconscious, Diego wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic. He fiddled with the equation at Five’s bedside, pretending to follow along the string of numbers and letters like he had some sense of what he was seeing and like they weren’t total gibberish to him. He wanted to help. Short of that, he wanted to look like he was helping.
Otherwise, the whole situation would be way to much.
Frustrated, Diego looked back at Five again, chewing the inside of his lip. They’d been here for hours now -- hours in the past, marooned with their father before he had the chance to adopt seven kids he had no right to -- and Five hadn’t as much as twitched. Vanya had started to come around, so much so that Luther, Allison and Klaus had moved her to another spare room. Sir Reginald, in what could only be described as a fit of unprecedented thoughtfulness, had agreed to watch over their youngest member.
It might have been a nice gesture, which was precisely why Diego didn’t trust it. He scowled at his father over the note. His father, unimpressed to his core, scowled back.
“If you’re worried about the boy, I think your fear is misplaced,” Reginald explained.
“He’s unconscious,” Diego snapped. “Not sure why that wouldn’t be something to worry about.”
“He’s not unconscious,” Reginald corrected him sternly. “The boy is in a coma.”
Diego snorted. “Oh, and that somehow makes it better?”
“His condition is stable,” Reginald said, with his frustrating air of utter superiority. This being despite the fact that Diego knew the bastard had no actual medical training. The old dude just read a lot. “Many people recover from this type of comatose state with no complications whatsoever.”
His father’s presence always pissed him off. His impulse was to act mature and show this asshole that he didn’t need to be patronized. Somehow, he always ended up sounding like a petulant toddler. “But we need him,” Diego said, fixing his eyes on Five’s lax features and letting his frustration with the situation bubble to the surface. “And soon, if we’re going to get out of here.”
“Isn’t that advantage of time travel?” Reginald asked, annoying keen. “Soon would be rather relative, so I’m not sure I understand your rush.”
“It’s none of your damn business is what it is,” Diego snapped. It was hard to remember the context here, that they were travelers who Reginald had taken in -- they weren’t children who had been raised wrong. Except both were true, and Diego couldn’t deny which one had a stronger pull over him. He slumped back in his chair, unapologetic.
Reginald, for his part, looked wholly unimpressed. Whether he was dealing with rude strangers or superpowered children, apparently his reaction was the same. “The restlessness of youth. Or perhaps it is merely a character flaw,” he said, offering judgment without somehow making it a personal invective. “Patience brings its own rewards. Time wasted is never the same as time spent.”
Diego made a face, casting a perturbed eye back at his father. That was the kind of shit the old man always said, trying to prove his points. All his reason, all his logic, all his knowledge -- it was bullshit. It was just one old man’s way of trying to control everything. Diego had hated it at 18, and he sure as hell didn’t love it now. Time apparently didn’t change nearly enough. “He’s in a coma,” he said, bobbing his head back toward Five’s limp form. “This isn’t a pot of water that you want to boil. He’s a person, and we’re all far from where we’re supposed to be. I feel like now is the time to be proactive.”
With a dismissive hand motion, Reginald reached into his pocket and removed his monocle. Diego couldn’t help it; he flinched. The small round glass that had so defined the pervasive, penetrating trauma of his youth. He’d thrown it in the river for a reason, his attempt at closure.
But here it was.
His father adjusted it over his eye with a gruff intake of air and picked up a book from one of the end tables. “If you want a more definitive diagnosis, by all means, take your young companion to a hospital,” he said. “You can try to explain to them who he is and what happened to him. I’m sure they will run a battery of expensive tests and conclude, just as I have, that he is in no pressing danger. He is merely unconscious. Then, I’m quite confident they will recommend that you be patient.”
Reginald opened his book and smirked at Diego.
“Quite like I have,” he concluded smugly.
Diego bristled, his fingers tightening into fists. He fought the urge to draw his knives. Not that he would actually kill his father, but knowing he had the option was some sort of comfort to him. “Still,” Diego said, voice taut as he watched his father’s eyes skim indifferently down the page. “You keep neglecting the part where he might not wake up.”
This time, Reginald didn’t even bother to look up from his book. “Possible, yes, but decidedly unlikely.”
At his father’s indifference, Diego shifted anxiously in his chair. With no other option, he looked back at Five, wishing his smaller and older brother would wake up to alleviate some of this. But Five was still out cold. Somehow, tucked into the bed like that, dark hair splayed over the pillow, he looked even younger than 13.
Diego sighed. He shook his head. “Shit.”
To that, Reginald had no meaningful reply. Instead, he snuffled, turning the page hastily as he started to read the next. The book was large and old, a dusty volume that had no doubt been read before. Diego wondered how many times he’d seen it in the library and ignored it because anything his father found interested, Diego had deemed completely irrelevant.
Chewing his lip, Diego played with his fingernail. He wanted to believe it was all irrelevant, that his father was no more important than the dusty books in his library. But even those books had purpose, they have usefulness -- if you knew how to read them, if you took the time to care.
That wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. He owed his old man nothing, and he wasn’t going to sit here and feel guilty for hating a man who hadn’t mistreated him yet. Hate, though, was a strong emotion. The strongest, just like love.
Tapping his leg, Diego shifted in his seat again. It scraped against the floor, and he darkened his brow as he studied his shoes. Everyone else was still wearing bowling shoes. He’d had the presence of mind to refuse back at the alley. That seemed like a lifetime ago. Funny, how in this timeline, it hadn’t even happened yet.
That was why they were here, weren’t they? To change the future. To stop the world from ending. To help Vanya adjust to her powers. If he believed that these things were possible -- if he actually bought into that shit -- then did he have to believe that other changes were possible? That there might be a world where Patch didn’t die? That there might be a future where his old man wasn’t an unremitting bastard?
He frowned, drumming his fingers on his leg as he looked impatiently at Five. That wasn’t why he was here; it wasn’t. And he needed to get out of here before he forgot why he came in the first place.
“You care about him,” the old man observed.
Looking over at him, Diego realized that Reginald was watching him. He flattened his lips and composed himself again. “What?”
Reginald inclined his head toward him. “I can see you, fidgeting about,” he said. “You care about this child more than you let on.”
There wasn’t a good reason to deny this -- Five was his brother, after all -- but he had no desire to admit anything about Reginald Hargreeves was right. He shrugged, stiff. “He’s our way home.”
This, it seemed, bemused his father. “Ah. You’re a utilitarian, then!”
Contrarily, Diego crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, it’s not like I don’t care at all,” he said. “I’m just saying.”
Arching an eyebrow, his father peered at him through the monocle, his gaze piercing. “So it comes back to patience again,” he said. He shrugged, going back to his book. “As I said, you are free to take him to the hospital. It is of no particular concern to me.”
For all that Diego didn’t want to show this asshole that he cared, he also didn’t want the asshole to think he didn’t. Diego had always struggled with paradoxical emotions where his family was concerned. It was part of the reason he hated them so damn much.
It was also part of the reason why he’d do anything for them.
After all, which sibling had bailed Klaus out of jail countless times? Which siblings had been Klaus ride from rehab?
Yeah, that wasn’t Allison, in LA, with her jetsetting lifestyle. It wasn’t Luther, following his dad’s orders to the moon.
And hell, who was the only siblings -- the only one -- actually doing the job? Putting his life on the line? Fighting bad guys? Helping people?
Diego, that was who. It was Diego who had come closer than anyone -- even closer than Luther -- to living out his father’s plans.
He’d always told Patch his family was complicated. What he’d really meant was that his feelings toward his complicated family were really damn complicated.
“But you said it already,” Diego countered. “The hospital probably can’t do shit for him.”
“Yes, it is unlikely,” the old man agreed, turning another page. “They would take up lots of your time, ask you lots of irrelevant questions and charge you a great deal of money, assuming social services doesn’t get involved.”
Diego gaped, still incredulous by this conversation. By this situation. They had traveled through time and here he was, face to face with his father years before he was even born. And he still hated the man just as much as he had the day the guy offed himself.
Shit, today was giving him a headache. “Then why the hell would I take him there?”
His father lifted one shoulder indifferently. “Well, I hear that some people find it comforting. Knowing they are doing everything to be done for their loved one.”
With a scoff, Diego rocked back on his chair, lifting the front legs off the ground. His father cast him a disparaging eye and Diego rocked back more. As a child, his dad would have reprimanded him. There was a certain pleasure in knowing how much it bothered the old man and how he wasn’t going to say anything to a relative stranger. “I just need a way home,” Diego explained. He let the chair fall back on the ground loudly. He nodded toward Five. “For all of us.”
Much to Diego’s frustration, his father seemed unrattled by his caustic back and forth. For all that Diego was trying to push his dad’s buttons, his father seemed to be taking the impersonal approach. Logically, that made sense. Diego was a stranger in this time period.
But damn it, it was so hard. The old dude and kicked it without ever making amends with Diego, and now Diego was beholden to his father’s generosity to get back home? How was this shit even fair?
“Then wait,” his father advised, still looking at his book. “Be patient.”
Patient. All the years Diego had been patient. He’d been obedient. He’d tried his best, he’d had. He hadn’t started out wanted to run away. He’d wanted to be the good son, to be as good as Dad’s precious Number One.
But he’d always been Number Two.
He’d always been not enough.
Screw time travel.
Screw saving the world.
Screw his old man and all his damn issues.
Screw it.
“Be patient?” Diego repeated, letting his incredulity come to the forefront now. Subtlety had never been Diego’s particular strong suit. “With this?”
He nodded toward Five, but he was talking about all of it. Every last bit of it. Complicated, annoying, frustrating and weird.
His father glanced up, but hardly seemed moved by the display of outright emotion. “I don’t really see what other option you have,” he said. “Some things are outside our control. You have to wait and simply accept that control is a fallacy built by your own sense of pride. Such a construct will only limit you in the end.”
The fact that the notion was rendered coldly and impersonally did not make it better.
In fact, it made it worse. Diego sat forward and stared at him. The man was practically from another planet; there was no way he could actually be human. “What the hell do you know about it anyway?”
It was the question of a defiant child. The kind of question that Reginald would have ignored in the past.
But, talking as two strangers in a strange time, Reginald made a small noise in the back of his throat. “Everything, of course,” he said. “You are probably just egotistical enough to believe otherwise, but pride is not a quality unique to you -- or unique to youth. The hardest task any of us face in the long years we have is surrendering our control. If we don’t concede that some things are simply beyond us, we will let the quest of the unattainable destroy us. We have to focus on what is within our sphere of control. Everything else is sentimental nonsense.”
Diego stared at him, not sure what to say. Not sure what to think.
That answer.
Well, it was an answer, wasn’t it?
As a father, Reginald had never been keen to talk about weakness. He hadn’t been keen to talk about himself at all. He’d kept himself impersonal to his children, a pure, authoritative figure. As a child, Diego had thought it was simply because Reginald Hargreeves was, at his core, just a terrible excuse for a human being.
But there was something more to it. Something more...well, complicated.
That really was the word for this family. Complicated.
The question was -- and this really was the heart of it -- was complicated always bad? It wasn’t always good, it wasn’t even mostly good -- Diego knew that -- but maybe that was the point of complicated. It never could be categorized one way or another. Sometimes, when you really were honest with yourself, you recognized that there was always more to the story, that heroes and villains were shitty constructs, and that people were just people.
Even when they were your asshole of a father.
He could sit here, and he could think about all the things his father should have done.
But his father, sitting with him, hadn’t done any of it.
There was a man who existed beyond the father that Diego hated. That man didn’t redeem the father, but it was worth something.
“So?” Diego asked, crossing his arms stiffly over his chest. “What then?”
His father stopped reading and looked at him, as if really trying to see him. “It depends what you choose,” he said. “If you hold too fast for too long, the things you are trying to save will slip right through your fingers. You scarcely will notice before it’s too late.”
The words were spoken with regret.
The regret of a father who had watched all his children walk out of the door, one by one.
Only that had happened yet.
Diego frowned. “You mean that?”
This time, his father almost dared to smile. “It is a hard habit to break, I believe,” he said, more gently than before. “I speak from experience for I have not mastered it yet, nor do I expect to for years to come if ever.” Then, he shrugged, nodding at Five. “But then, this isn’t my decision to make. This is not my problem to solve. I am merely a vehicle here to help you on your journey, tumultuous though it may seem.”
Well, shit. That was...almost human.
How unfair was it.
To find out your father was human. After he was dead and before you were even born.
Remember how complicated it was?
Finally, he sighed. He looked back at Five. “Well, I guess I can wait,” he said. “I mean, a little longer anyway.”
His father made no reply. Instead, he looked back down at his book and started reading again. Diego watched, eyes going between Five’s unconscious form and his father’s indifferent figure. He fiddled with the paper again, but the letters and numbers still didn’t mean anything to him. There was no reason to pretend, and Diego left the paper where it was, at Five’s bedside.
It was hard to say how much time passed, the three of them in that room, waiting patiently together.
What Diego did know, however, was that in 31 years, he had never once felt closer to the man who had been and who would be his father.