Umbrella Academy fic: Teenagers (1/2)
Title: Teenagers
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: Fills my lost childhood square on hc_bingo. Set after S1 in the assumption that they rectify the timeline in some fashion. No beta.
Summary: The family decides, for practical reasons, that Five needs to relive his lost childhood. Five decides, for sentimental reasons, that reliving his lost childhood is a vehicle to let the others relive theirs instead.
PART ONE
PART TWO
-o-
It started quite simply, really. Five’s recovery of his lost childhood, that was. It started with a simple request for coffee. A request that was ubiquitously denied, prompting Five to take things into his own hands. If he could travel through time to save his family and save the world, then he sure as hell could get himself some coffee. He still thought it was absolutely ridiculous that they hadn’t invested in a coffeemaker yet, but Luther went on and on about how busy they were now that they were back in the present and how they had other priorities and family and blah, blah, blah.
How did anyone expect him to perform at other less important tasks when he wasn’t even properly caffeinated? Clearly, his siblings’ lack of experience was showing. Five, being the more mature and responsible sort, simply handled it on his own. He took the car keys and slipped out to get coffee all by his lonesome.
This was going fine, for the record, and he got a really nice cup of coffee for his troubles, but apparently someone got spooked at seeing a 13 year old kid behind the wheel. The next thing Five knew, he was in a high speed chase across several city blocks before he finally lost his tail. Back at home, he was nursing the last bit of coffee in his travel mug and changing out the license plates just in case when Luther found him.
“Um,” Luther said. He stopped, looked around and appeared vexed. “Anything you want to tell me?”
“What?” Five said, throwing the old plates in the heap due for the incinerator. Of course their old man had an incinerator. Just like he naturally had spare plates around. “Just some minor repair work.”
“Yeah,” Luther said, pressing his lips together. He hesitated. “Diego was listening to the police scanner--”
“Which is a bad habit,” Five told him, dusted off his hands as he got to his feet. The new plates looked impeccable, if he did say so himself.
“Well, sure,” Luther said. “But so is driving without a license.”
Five stared at him.
Luther shrugged, adding with a wince. “While underage.”
Five glared now. “I’m older than you by decades.”
“And yet,” Luther said. He gestured at Five. “It’s a problem.”
“I lost the cop,” Five said, getting perturbed now. “And I changed the plates. No problems at all.”
“This time, maybe,” Luther said. “But you can’t keep going around like this. You’re going to get caught.”
“So?” Five said. He threw his empty cup into the incinerator pile as well with a bit of a flourish. “I’m not scared of the cops.”
“What? Because you’ll kill them?” Luther asked, clearly skeptical. “That’s not how this works, Five. I mean, maybe you did what you had to do with the Commission, but here -- we’re the good guys, Five.”
Five shook his head. “I have already told you that your definition of good and evil is reductive--”
“And your grasp on reality isn’t quite solid,” Luther shot back. He straightened a little, pulling himself up to his impressive height. To others, he probably would have been formidable, but Five was more impressed that he was standing his ground here. “You, more than anyone else, wants to get the Umbrella Academy back off the ground. But to do that -- to really start functioning that way -- we have to play within the rules. We can’t go around breaking laws trivially. If you want to drive, you need to get a license.”
Five scoffed, amused at the indication. “How does a 58 year old man in the body of a 13 year old go about getting a license?” he asked wryly. “Hell, no one would even believe the record of my birth at this point. I don’t have an identity here.”
Luther seemed to listen to this quite seriously. For a moment, Five thought maybe his brother understood. He nodded, ever resolute. “So we make you one.”
Five raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“We make you one,” Luther said, his confidence gaining. “We make you a new identity.”
Five’s mouth fell open, and he found himself at a loss for words for his incredulity. “And how do you expect to do that?”
Luther was grinning now. “By reclaiming your lost childhood,” he said, annoyingly pleased with himself. “How else?”
-o-
The others thought this was a spectacular idea.
It was, in some regards.
It was spectacularly awful.
When he told them this, they sought about trying to convince him otherwise.
“Look,” Allison said. “This is a practical way to go about things.”
“How is it practical to waste time and effort pretending like some incompetent teenager?” Five growled. The others were seated across the living room, but Five was pacing back and forth like a caged lion.
“Because,” Allison said. “I know family court. They don’t mess around. If they catch wind that we have a kid without documents living in the mansion, they will intervene.”
Allison’s experience with family court was hard to argue with, but Five was feeling rather petulant.
No, not petulant. He wasn’t a child, damn it.
He was feeling duly offended. He shook his head. “We’d never get caught.”
Diego laughed at that. “So what? We make a habit of running from the cops?”
Five shrugged, making an indifferent gesture. In the apocalypse, there had been no law. As an assassin, he’d existed outside the law. He was not limited by societal conventions the same way his siblings were. “Why not?”
“Well, we want the cops on our side, for one thing,” Diego said. He was fiddling with a knife, but it was a small at least. It still looked unnecessarily sharp. “We are supposed to be the good guys right now.”
Five stopped his pacing to glare at him. “Right,” he said. “We’ll make friends with the cops through our efforts at forgery and probably some form of identity theft. The making of a really good partnership.”
Diego was vaguely perturbed now. “Look, I have connections and Allison has rumors,” he argued pointlessly. “We’ll make it work.”
Five rolled his eyes and started pacing again. “You’re still missing the point,” he said. “Both options are equally illegal, so your insistence on documenting my life as a teenager is both fallacious and ridiculous.”
“It’s safer,” Luther insisted.
“I’d feel a lot better with the paperwork,” Allison agreed.
“Oh, well, if you’d feel better--” Five muttered.
Vanya was seated on one of the chairs, her arms drawn together. She was still quiet, as it was her nature; she was still reserved. But she was more confident now, assured of her place. When she spoke, the others listened.
When she spoke, Five stopped.
“We would, though, Five,” she said, echoing Luther’s sentiment but her appeal was much more fundamental. She always had had that power over Five. “We want you with us, and we want to be a family. No hiding. No running. Just a real family.”
The sentiment was just as overdone as all the rest, but Five felt his insides churn. His logic fought against it, but he wasn’t going to win that battle. Not with Vanya. He couldn’t argue with her.
Still stewing in his inevitable acceptance of everything he wanted to reject, Klaus got up and slung an arm around his shoulder. “Besides,” he crooned. “You being a teenager again? This will be so much fun!”
Five scowled, shoving his hands in his pockets. He huffed as he looked darkly and Klaus and the rest of his pathetic siblings. “I can’t possibly imagine how.”
“Well, start with driving a car,” Luther offered, as though trying to be genuinely helpful. “If we get you an identity -- some paperwork or whatever -- you could get your driver’s permit in a few months. And then, after that, your own license. You’d still have to follow the rules of the road, but--”
Five shook of Klaus and started pacing again. “I’m still not seeing how this whole breaking laws to follow the law thing works.”
“It’s not perfect, we know that,” Ben said, standing behind the couch near the others.
“Uh, yeah,” Five said, turning on his heel and going back the other way. “It’s inane.”
“I don’t like breaking laws either, okay?” Allison said. “But it’s a necessary exception for you.”
“And I really do think you’re overthinking this, bro,” Klaus said. “I mean, think about it! A teenager! You! Teenagers get to have all the fun. Being a kid is the best.”
Five frowned. “I don’t want to be a kid.”
“Why not?” Ben asked. “What would be so bad about it?”
Ben was always the calm and reasonable sort, and that had always been something Five had liked about him.
Except when he didn’t like it.
At all.
Like right now when Five was feeling anything but calm and reasonable. “Because, it’s pointless,” he said. “I’m a trained fighter, an assassin. You put me in the system as some 13 year old and what? Now I’m supposed to go to school?”
He’d said it facetiously, and he felt immediately irritated that no one seemed to think that was a stupid, feigned suggestion.
“Well?” Ben asked. “Do you want to?”
The insinuation was now making him slightly murderous. This was not an exaggeration, but Ben was already dead, so that worked in his favor. With some effort, he managed to curb the emotion long enough to grit out his obvious answer. “No.”
Although their insinuation had been abhorrently naive, his siblings are not complete morons. Just partial ones. Sensing Five’s disposition, they retreated from that point quickly enough.
“Well, there are plenty of ways around that,” Allison assured him. “Homeschooling.”
“And I’m sure you can pass all the tests,” Vanya said quickly. “Get your GED. You have options, Five. Lots of options.”
He growled. “Sure, and one of them is to keep driving and not get caught.”
“Five, please,” Vanya implored him.
Which wasn’t fair.
None of this was fair.
All he’d ever done was try to save them. He’d risked everything, he’d sacrificed his sanity -- and for what? For one missed calculation to condemn him to this? This kind of humiliation?
He was 58 years old. He was nearly twice their ages. It was bad enough to be stuck in this body, but to have them act like this was who he was?
He shook his head, his stomach all but turning. “No,” he said. “I can’t do this.”
Luther drew himself up, coming to his full height. It would have been impressive were Five not so very confident that he could still kill his brother if he wanted.
For the record, right now he did kind of want to.
But he was an adult. He had restraint.
Teenagers didn’t have restraint.
“Five, this isn’t a debate,” he said. “We’re going to get the paperwork, and we’re going to make an effort.”
Lip curling into a sneer, Five asked, “Why?”
“Because if you don’t, you put the whole academy at risk,” he said. “If you choose not to be a legal teenager, then you can’t be part of what we do. You can’t go on missions. You’d be here, at home, all the time with Mom and Pogo.”
Well, damn it.
Pragmatism, of all things.
Five pressed his lips together thinly and exhaled. He was pissed as hell, but he couldn’t deny the point.
“Fine,” he said, turning to stalk toward his room. “But I hate you all.”
“Aw, look,” Klaus said. “He’s sounding more like a teenager already!”
Five flipped him off as he stormed up the stairs.
-o-
Five consented, but he certainly wasn’t going to help them with it. He was going about his business, living his life as he wanted, when they presented him with the paperwork a few weeks later. It was official in all the ways that mattered, and the name read Five Hargreeves on the inevitably forged birth certificate. His date of birth had been changed, and the social security number was false, but Five didn’t actually care about that as much as he had suggested he did.
He sighed, looking it over.
“No one thought it was weird?” he said. “Given that there is still a real missing Five Hargreeves out there?”
“If it makes you feel better, we tried to restore your old identity,” Diego said. He shrugged. “My cop friends told me that’d be a mess though.”
“You’d be lost in the system for years,” Allison agreed.
“We had to make a few connections,” Luther said.
“We? I had the connections,” Klaus said. “I’ve always been good with fake IDs. Really good.”
“These are the best you can get,” Ben assured him. “We did it right.”
They did it right by doing it all wrong, but Five couldn’t deny that their intentions were good.
That was the thing, wasn’t it?
Their intentions really were good. They wanted him to be one of them; they wanted the academy to be legitimate. They wanted him to have a chance at a normal life, to grow up.
Funny, it seemed like they were the ones who wanted to grow up.
So here he was, doing it for all of them.
So here they were, doing it together.
He sighed again.
“Surely the press will pick up on it, though?” Five asked, looking up at them. “I mean, pretending like I was born 13 years ago and that I’m not the long lost Hargreeves brother--”
“The public will believe what they want to believe,” Vanya said, smiling at him now. “And Dad was always secretive about stuff. I mean, we’re coming back with a Number Eight now. Do you really think it’ll seem so strange?”
Five looked at the paperwork again.
It was all in order.
He looked up at his siblings.
It was all very much in order.
“Fine,” he said. “But this is just paperwork, okay? Formalities. I am not a child, and I will not tolerate being treated as one.”
The statement was clear and definitive and impossible to argue.
Five took comfort in that.
-o-
Comfort, as it turned out, was a fantasy.
Clear and definitive statements were irrelevant.
Nothing was impossible to argue.
That was how Five ended up at the department store with Allison. She had badgered him relentlessly about updating his wardrobe for nearly two weeks before he had agreed, but when they got there, she had the audacity to steer him toward the boys department.
“You know,” she said. “So you can look like--”
He made a face, incredulous. “Like what? Kids my age?”
“So you can fit in,” she said easily, frustratingly unruffled. “The schoolboy shorts weren’t even in style when you were actually a kid. Surely you want something a little less…”
Five rolled his eyes. “Antiquated?”
“I was going to say ridiculous,” she said.
His cheeks reddened inexplicably and he stuff his hands in his pockets. He didn’t like the uniform, that was true, but he didn’t want to be lectured on it by some Hollywood starlet. “I don’t mind new clothes,” he said. “But the boys section? Really?”
Allison shrugged, gesturing at the racks of clothes and the small mannequins wearing stupid looking outfits and impractical sunglasses. “Why not?” she said. “I mean, if we go to the men’s section, nothing is going to fit you anyway.”
That wasn’t exactly what Five wanted to hear, but continuing this line of defense was going to get him nowhere fast. “Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll start here.”
She looked encouraged.
Then, she looked a little confused.
Five shrugged at her. “What?”
“Well,” she said. She hesitated. “You have to start looking.”
Five looked out at the racks again and realized the implications. “Oh,” he said. “Right.”
He swallowed, suddenly anxious. There were a lot of racks here. There was a lot of clothes.
He bit his lip. “What am I looking for anyway?”
Allison, for all her composure, was a little taken aback by his question. “Well, anything,” she said. “What do you like?”
That question was odd to him, really. In the apocalypse, he’d scrounged for anything that fit him. Personal taste had been mostly an afterthought as he looked for things that fit well, wore well and so on. With the Commission, he’d been brought into a professional dress code that suited him well enough though he had no real opinion on.
In short, he didn’t know what he liked.
At all.
It took Allison about three seconds to realize this. “You’ve never been clothes shopping before,” she said.
He shrugged, hoping to look nonchalant. “It’s never come up.”
“So you don’t know what you like,” she continued on the line of thought.
He was getting perturbed now. Not embarrassed; perturbed. “It’s superfluous.”
“Okay,” Allison said, clearly choosing not to engage this line of thought. She set out for the first rack and pulled out a shirt. “Well, let’s just start with first impressions. Instincts. Do you like this?”
She was holding up a shirt.
There was colorful cartoon superheroes on it.
Five turned his gaze to Allison. “Are you serious?” he asked. “I look 13, not seven.”
Hastily, she seemed aware of her mistake. She put the shirt back on the rack and shuffled through several more garments before pulling another shirt. “Okay, okay,” she said. “This. How about this?”
This one was at least presumably age appropriate for a 13 year old. It was clearly an athletic cut with a large logo that Five presumed to be trendy. He imagined real teenagers wore that kind of thing to school; maybe a few of them even wore such clothing to actual sporting events. Five had never been to an actual sporting event -- or a school for that matter -- so he wasn’t sure he had any context to judge.
Nor did he have any context for his own use. “It’s not exactly professional.”
Allison gave him a look in return. “Well, yeah,” she said. She nodded at it, giving the hanger a small shake. “Teenagers aren’t professionals, though.”
There were so many things wrong with that sentence that he didn’t have the energy to contradict her properly. This was likely to be a long day, if Allison had anything to say about it, and if he was going to play along with this stupid and elaborate charade his siblings had concocted, he was going to have to make some margin of peace with at least elements of his unfortunate present situation.
He reached out, jabbing at the garment. “But it’s not even practical,” he said. “Look at the cut. It’s clearly loose, hanging away from the body. That sort of style is a hazard in combat.”
Allison wrinkled her nose. “So then don’t wear it during combat.”
Five wrinkled his nose back. “Then where should I wear it?”
Allison’s eyebrows went up. “Anywhere,” she said. “You know. For fun. When we’re not on the job.”
She was saying that like it was obvious, but Five had no idea what she was talking about. He shook his head, at a loss. “I don’t even know what you mean by that.”
“You’re not always on the job, Five,” she said. She tilted her head. “You do know that, right?”
For some reason, it was like she had physically struck him. “But I’m a professional!”
“Wearing schoolboy shorts,” Allison pointed out. She put the shirt back on the rack. “You know, maybe we shouldn’t bother. Just stick with the uniform.”
She had successfully turned that point around, and Five growled in acceptance. “I don’t know what to do,” he hissed.
She pointed at the store again, making a wide, sweeping gesture. “Just browse. Try something on,” she said. “Make an effort.”
Make an effort was an understatement. Their shopping trip took three hours from start to finish, and by try something on, Allison had clearly meant try everything on. Five was so sick of clothing by the end that he was ready to dismember the mannequins, but with Allison’s pervasive sense of control and calm, he managed to purchase a pair of jeans, a pair of khakis, neutral black tennis shoes and several nondescript striped polo shirts. With his nerves frayed and worn, he even agreed to white athletic socks and a zip-up hoodie.
Five felt like shit when it was over, but Allison looked pretty pleased with herself. Growing up couldn’t happen fast enough.
Still, the next day, when he went to get dressed, he didn’t pull out a freshly pressed uniform. Instead, he put on his khakis and a polo shirt. Not because he liked them, for the record.
But because he liked the other option less.
-o-
Five went several weeks agreeably wearing clothing that made him fit in. He still preferred his training garb, but he had no actual objections to more comfortable clothes. Pragmatically speaking, dressing in schoolboy shorts was rather a hard sell. If they were going with this ridiculous notion that Five was a teenager, then wearing this style of clothing was an acceptable consequence he was willing to endure.
As far as he was concerned, that was that.
Unfortunately, Five was not the only one concerned.
It was likely that he should have expected further meddling -- these were his siblings, after all. Idiots, the whole lot of them -- but he’d been willfully naive when you got right down to it. He’d wanted to think that life could go on as it was, no problems whatsoever.
Then, one morning, Diego sat down next to him at breakfast. “Hey,” he said, folding a whole piece of toast in his mouth and chewing obnoxiously. He swallows with obvious effort while Five took a sip of his coffee. “You and me. We’re hanging out today.”
Five regarded him skeptically. There were still crumbs on his poorly kept facial hair. “Why?”
Diego shrugged. “It’s what brothers do, right?”
Five saw no point in arguing that. “Okay,” he said. “Extra training?”
“No, man, no,” Diego said, reaching for another piece of bread. “Like let’s hang out. Have fun.”
Five regarded him with even more skepticism as he ate the second piece of toast in two bites, washing it down with a noisy swig of orange juice. “Fun?”
“Hobbies, right?” Diego said. “You got to have a hobby or something?”
“I tend to do equations or read,” Five said.
Diego rolled his eyes. “Fun shit, man,” he said. “Come on. Something fun.”
Five’s eyes narrowed. “Is this another ploy to make me be a teenager?”
Diego held up his hands. “Not my idea, for the record,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s as bad as you do.”
Five glowered. “You’re treating me like a child. I don’t need you to tell me what hobbies to enjoy. I don’t even know what teenagers do.”
“They play sports--”
“I train--”
“They skateboard--”
“Pointlessly dangerous--”
“Fine,” Diego said. “Video games. They play video games.”
Five made a face, as if that was the most ridiculous thing he’d heard yet. And he’d heard a lot of ridiculous things from his family recently. “That’s an utter waste of time.”
“But they’re pretty fun,” Diego said. Then he stopped. “But you wouldn’t know that. You’ve never played a video game, have you?”
Five scowled despite himself. “Dad never let us,” he said. “And there was no electricity in the apocalypse.”
Diego grabbed one last piece of toast. “That’s it, then,” he said. “We’ll hang out and play video games today.”
“Do I have a choice in the matter?”
Diego grinned. “Nope,” he said, shoving the last piece of toast in his mouth. “Meet me in my room in a few!”
Five shook his head and took another sip of his coffee.
What the hell, he thought.
What. The. Hell.
-o-
Five had no actual reason to comply, but then, what else was he going to do today. Eliciting conflict with his siblings was exhausting and counterproductive. They had managed to emotionally compromise him, and now their personal leverage over him was at risk of becoming a liability, but still.
Five showed up at Diego’s room in exactly ten minutes, more or less as requested. There was a certain inevitability about it all, and Five was all about fighting the battles that mattered. In the grander scheme of things, resisting his brother’s attempts to teach him video games might seem valid in principle, but it would be exhausting in execution. The last thing he needed was another family meeting about his need to embrace this second go at the teenage years.
These were the sorts of probabilities he’d never thought to calculated all those long years in the apocalypse. Sometimes, he wished he had. Not that it would have actually changed anything, but still.
Five stood, bristled and at attention in the doorway of Diego’s room. He pursed his lips expectantly, watching while his brother hastily unfurled an array of cords and disentangled a few controllers. He watched unobtrusively for several long moments, noting how Diego fiddled with the cables between one HDMI jack and the next before rocking back on his heels and snorted.
Diego snorted back. “Just give me a sec,” he muttered, pressing the remote for a different input. The screen shifted to black.
Five raised his eyebrows. “This seems unnecessarily difficult,” he said. “I thought the point was to have fun not learn about wiring.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Diego said. “I’m just trying to get the Switch hooked up. I’ve been using the PS4 more lately.”
“Okay,” Five said. “And we’re not playing that because?”
“Because,” Diego said, finally getting a picture on the screen, showing the Switch’s apparent startup page. “We’re playing Mario Kart.”
Diego was now busily checking the charges on the controllers. “Mario Kart?” Five asked.
“Sure,” Diego said. He glanced back, opting for a plug in controller instead when the charge was clearly dead. “You’ve heard of it, right?”
Five had spent his life a damn wasteland where humanity was dead. Then, he’d spent his time jumping through history killing people. It wasn’t just that he hadn’t had time for video games, he had literally had no access to the technology. Pop culture was hardly relevant to him, seeing as it was dead for most of his life and he’d spent so much time popping in and out of culture that he couldn’t tie himself to anything concrete.
Nonetheless, he scoffed. “Yes, I’ve heard of Mario Kart, smart ass.”
Diego grinned, finally handing him a remote as the Switch reached its home screen. “Good,” he said. “So I don’t have to explain to you the point.”
Five gave Diego a wary look, but joined him on the bed facing the TV. “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “I find the whole process rather pointless.”
Diego hurriedly moved the extra cords out of the way. “But you get the gist of the game,” he said, clicking on the icon for Mario Kart. “Like, racing?”
Five made a face as the game started up. “Yeah, I got that,” he said. “What I don’t get, however, is why we’re playing a game that is clearly marketed to children.”
This time, Diego returned his look, as if noting that Five looked like one of said children. Wisely, he did not comment on that. Instead, he shrugged. “This is one of Nintendo’s iconic titles. Everyone loves Mario Kart.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Five quipped, watching as Diego picked a race circuit colored with red mushrooms and mooing cows.
“Well, okay, fine,” Diego said, clicking through a few more screens without taking time to really look at them. “But most of my other shit is all rated M.”
Five shrugged. “So?”
“So,” Diego said. He nodded at Five. “You don’t qualify.”
Five stared at him, unamused.
“I’m serious, dude,” Diego said. “You’re legally 13.”
“And I’m a trained assassin,” Five returned. “Any violence or language I may encounter in this context would be laughable to the things I’ve experienced in real life.”
Diego reached over and pressed a button to make Five join the game. “All the more reason for you to start breaking the habit.”
Five watched, still wholly unimpressed, as he was able to scroll through a host of silly, cartoon characters and accompanying vehicles that look increasingly ridiculous one after the next. Not a one of them actually looked like a capable racing vehicle, and not a single character was appropriately geared for a race. “We really can play the other games,” he said. “I wouldn’t tell anyone, if that makes you feel better.”
Diego’s face reddened, and he shook his head. “No, man. Just no,” he said. He looked at Five. “Look, I want to do this thing right, okay? If we’re playing by the rules now, then we’re playing by the rules. I just want to show you that it doesn’t all have to be bad, okay? We can still do the job; we can still have fun.”
Five was not remotely convinced on any of those points, but he wasn’t a robot. He wasn’t devoid of emotion and he wasn’t heartless. In short, he was not immune to the inherent plea in his brother’s words.
As much as his siblings wanted to make this whole process about Five, he knew better. This was a process for all of them, and as much as they wanted to help him, Five needed to help them just as much.
“Fine,” Five conceded, finally selecting one stupid looking character and a woefully pathetic looking car with a flippant shrug. “How hard can it be anyway?”
That question was supposed to be rhetorical.
And, in many ways, it was.
Just not in the way Five had expected.
You see, video games?
Could be hard.
Really, damn hard.
Even the ones marketed to children.
Five had ample experience with everything in real life, but he found the virtual application wanting. The controls were not true to life; the in-game reactions did not mimic real situations. Five’s acuity was lost in translation, and the computer programmed elements were designed to be intentionally disruptive at the most annoying possible times.
In short, Five was bad at video games.
Like, really bad.
So bad that after coming in 10th again after nearly 30 minutes of lackluster performance, Five had had enough. Angry at his cartoon characters hanging head and disappointed slump, Five threw his controller at the screen in a fit of rage.
His aim in the game was terrible, but in real life, he was spot on.
It cracked the screen nearly in half.
Diego jumped to his feet in utter dismay. “Dude! What the hell!”
Five, still fuming, crossed his arms over his chest. “This game is insufficient!”
Diego did not appear to think that was a valid answer. He gaped, gesturing to the broken television in apparent horror. “So you broke my TV?”
Five rolled his eyes. “It’s just a TV,” he said. “And not even a very good one. I’ll buy you another.”
This did not have the desired effect of satisfying Diego. If anything, it almost made his brother more apoplectic. “But you’re not supposed to break the TV!”
Five jabbed his finger at the TV. “Well, the game was asking for it,” he said. “The logistics aren’t realistic, and the command controls are sluggish. It doesn’t work like a real car on a real course.”
“Because it’s a game!” Diego said, almost roaring at him. He stopped himself, shook his head and gave a short laugh of indignation. “Like, that’s the point. It’s not supposed to be real!”
“But the whole thing is counterintuitive,” Five argued. He shrugged, feeling helpless now. “I mean, the whole concept of hoarding skills and tricks? And bananas? On a race course? What kind of traction do these tires have anyway?”
Diego took a long, measured breath. “Again, Five,” he said, slowly and decisively. “It’s just a game.”
“Sure, but what’s the point?” he said. “Even for a recreational pastime, it has to has some redeeming qualities.”
“Well, sure, it’s fun,” Diego said. He pointed at the screen, incredulous. “It’s supposed to be fun!”
“Then it failed on that front, too,” Five said, matter of fact and wholly unapologetic. “It wasn’t fun at all.”
Diego put his own remote down and rubbed his forehead. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m beginning to see that.”
At this point, Five was beginning to feel slightly -- ever so slightly -- guilty.
He had just broken Diego’s TV.
Sighing, he shook his head at his own sentimentality. “Maybe we’ll have to try a different game this time.”
Diego looked up at him.
Five shrugged, not quite sheepish. “On my TV.”
Diego seemed to be struggling for self control, but if Five could grow up, then so could Diego. “Fine,” he said, pointing a finger harshly at Five. “But if I break your TV--”
“I know, I know,” Five conceded as Diego reached for his collection of games. “I have it coming.”
-o-
The next game they tried was a first person shooter game, but Diego said that since it didn’t involve killing human targets it would be acceptable. A lot of teenagers play Halo, apparently.
Five was better at this game in substantial ways. Over the next few weeks, in fact, Five was able to hold his own. It was what you would call a compromise.
Diego allowed Five to play a video game more of his skill level and interest.
And Five stopped throwing controllers at television sets.
A win-win all around.
-o-
Five accepted his new wardrobe. He didn’t mind playing video games with Diego. These were small, acceptable changes to his life, and Five considered himself content.
He had never been looking for happy.
In truth, he doubted he knew what happy even looked like. He wouldn’t be likely to recognize it if it hit him in the face.
But this was good. This was acceptable. This left him without want.
As far as Five was concerned, therefore, that really should have been that.
His siblings, as always, had very different ideas.
-o-
“Okay, look,” Klaus said, sitting down on Five’s bed utterly invited. Five was at the wall, erasing the remnants of his last equation so he could get started on his next. He had invested a lot of money in chalk, you see. “Here’s the thing.”
Five didn’t look up. He saw no need to encourage whatever Klaus was about to say.
“We need to do something,” Klaus said.
It sounded rather dramatic, so Five spared his brother a look. Klaus was quite serious. “Do something about what?”
“About you!” Klaus said, flopping back on the bed and sprawling himself wide. “And your untempered youth!”
Five sighed and went back to his erasing. Clearly, this was only Klaus’ kind of dramatic, which was to say it was not dramatic at all to Five. “My youth is quite tempered, thank you.”
Klaus sat up again. “Exactly my point! It’s tempered when it’s supposed to be untempered!”
Tiredly, Five maneuvered a chair to stand on, reaching for a higher layer of chalk. He was pleased that at least he’d hit his growth spurt early so he was skinny at 13 but not short. “Klaus, do you have a point to any of this?”
“Of course I do!” Klaus said, for some reason sounding offended. “We’re all supposed to be doing our part.”
Five wrinkled his nose, scrubbing off a particularly complex part of the equation with some fondness. “Our part in what?”
“In raising you right!” Klaus rejoined.
Five looked back at him, both horrified and amused. “I agreed to legally be a child,” he said. “Not actually live like one.”
Klaus shook his head. “You went clothes shopping with Allison.”
“A practical gesture--”
“You play video games with Diego.”
That one was harder to deny. “It’s not a child’s video game.”
“That’s even worse!” Klaus said, sounding unreasonably distressed now. “You’re using up all your teenage rebellion on video games! With Diego!”
Klaus flopped back again, wailing with what sounded uncomfortably like real tears.
Five sighed again. This whole thing was wearisome, but it was best not to let it continue. He got off the chair and made his way to the bed. “Okay, fine,” he said, willing himself to play this game -- for Klaus’ peace of mind and his own. “What sort of untempered thing would you like to do together?”
Klaus sat up, looking considerably brighter. “Really?”
“Well, within reason,” Five said.
Klaus barely seemed to hear him. “I had been thinking of a few ideas, you know.”
Five found that to be disconcerting, but no response from him was required at the moment. Besides, he was a little worried that further engagement would only encourage Klaus more than absolutely necessary to fulfill the bonds of familial obligation.
“Like, so, I thought about a lot of stuff, but I started with sneaking out,” Klaus explained, rambling and unnecessarily long winded. He was looking at the ceiling thoughtfully, as if this was a serious consideration for him. “Because those are my best memories, sneaking out, subterfuge, the whole nine yards. But, you know, Dad’s dead and so it just doesn’t have the same weight anymore, does it? It just wouldn’t be as much fun because there’d be literally no one trying to stop us.”
There was actual some semblance of logic there, but Five would not acknowledge it. Klaus wasn’t particularly ready to listen anyway.
“And so I kept thinking and I thought of other stuff, you know, petty crimes, a step up from jaywalking and loitering,” Klaus continued, fingers flitting through the air as his voice meandered on. “And I thought about shoplifting, which was one of my first crimes, and is always very, very fun. And exciting. It’s exciting, and I thought, you like excitement. You seem like you could be an adrenaline junkie.”
He lifted his head to look at Five, as if positing some kind of question.
He didn’t wait for Five to answer it, however. “And I’m good at shoplifting,” Klaus said. “Like really good at it.”
Five made a face. This time, he couldn’t quite hold his tongue. “If you count getting caught as good.”
“Caught but not arrested,” Klaus said. He held up a finger and nodded sagely. “That takes real talent.”
“You were simply too annoying to incarcerate,” Five reasoned.
Klaus flitted his hand through the air. “You know, it’s not important,” he said. “That wasn’t my best attempt, but I decided against it. I mean, shoplifting is a rush, right? But I think we have to keep things legal, strictly speaking. The last thing we need is you in juvie. For you. And for juvie.”
Five found this notion to be unsettling on a number of levels. Rather than explore these levels, he figured getting out of this conversation was probably the best option. There was no way out but through, so Five pragmatically kept Klaus to task. “So what did you have in mind?”
Klaus was overly encouraged. “Right, so, I thought, you know, what little things do teenagers do? What are your classic acts of rebellion?” he said. “And you know, I thought about vandalism--”
“I thought we were talking legal--”
“And then I was thinking, you know, alcohol. Binge drinking. That’s a thing, right?” Klaus said.
“Still not legal,” Five reminded him. “And I already drink.”
Klaus held up a finger haltingly. “Not anymore, though.”
“Because you guys are all assholes,” Five agreed.
“Well, yeah,” Klaus said. He pointed at Five. “You are a kid.”
Five was getting perturbed again, and his temper was going to get the better of him. “And I thought you were here to push me into untempered territory.”
“Yes, yes, but, you know, not vices you already indulge more than you should,” Klaus said. “Which led me to think, you know, what’s quintessential to teenage rebellion? Drugs!”
Five fully gave up on any hope of returning to his eraser work. The thought of math was long gone. This conversation with Klaus had killed more brain cells than he cared to spare.
Klaus leaned forward, as if they were conspiring together. “In my experience at 13, drugs are great. I mean, they’re great at any age, but they’re really good at 13,” he said, starting to get distracted. Somehow, he pulled himself back to whatever point he was trying to make. “But yeah, that’s still illegal. And you on drugs is probably not something I need to see, and I think the others would string me up if I tried it.”
This was now getting exhaustingly tedious. “So what then? What’s your master plan?”
Klaus smiled, brighter than ever. “We keep it legal,” he said. “Legally addictive substances that do unnecessary harm to your body but feel oh-so-good.”
Klaus said it like it was something obvious, but Five made a face. Maybe those lost brain cells were starting to affect him negatively. “What are you talking about?”
“Food, Five,” Klaus said readily. “Sugar. Old. Salt. Chemical additives. High fructose corn syrup. Food dyes. The stuff that will block your arteries, give you cancer and bloat your gut -- none of which you have to worry about at all because look at you! You’re 13!”
That was unexpected. For some reason, Five felt let down. It wasn’t like he’d had high expectations or something, but Klaus had a unique talent for making you feel worse without even trying sometimes. “I don’t like that kind of food,” he said, still cringing a little at the thought of that damn apocalypse Twinkie. He’d been sick for a week; it’d almost killed him. And yes, Five did hold a grudge when it mattered.
“But you haven’t tried it,” Klaus implored him.
“I have,” Five said.
“No, you don’t get to bring up apocalypse Twinkie because that doesn’t count,” Klaus said, almost warning Five now. “Eating a Twinkie that went bad while scavenging at the end of the world is not the same thing as exploring the wonders of your teenage tastebuds. You have to eat it the right way.”
Five scoffed. “What’s the right way?”
“Uh, not scavenging for things that are past expiration date, for one thing,” Klaus said. Then, he smiled brighter, practically glowing now. “And also, the right way, my dear Five, is with me.”
Well, shit, Five thought. That was about the worst and best possible answer he’d heard in awhile.
-o-
Klaus was surprisingly organized about it all. He was downright systematic, taking Five religiously to a fast food joint once a week. They went out for dessert twice a week, and on the other days, Klaus insisted that they hit up the local convenience store to buy whatever shitty food looked appealing that day.
Five decided to approach it as a challenge. If he saw food as an enemy he had to conquer or a plight he had to face, then he could look at the menu and order the crappiest looking thing there. He could pick up some prepackaged garbage and actually think it was worth getting, He could chug milkshakes, sodas and even the occasional energy drink.
And it wasn’t all without some success. Five discovered that chicken nuggets were pretty good while fried fish gave him the runs. He found a liking for peanut butter cups and Fun Dip, but he thought that Snickers was highly overrated. He preferred a classic vanilla shake over anything else, but yes, hard serve ice cream was far superior to soft serve. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t eat a Blizzard if you gave him one, thank you very much.
After several weeks, Five has found a few additions he will consider making to his diet full time. For fun.
Things were going well until Klaus tried to get him to eat a Twinkie, and the ensuing debate turned into a physical altercation that left Klaus to declare that Five no longer needed his instruction on teenage eating habits.
That suited both of them just fine.
-o-
Then, it was Vanya’s turn.
By this point, Five was well aware that this was a thing, that this would continue to be a thing, and that he ought to start expecting it in order to manage it with minimal stress and fuss. Therefore, he knew he’d received would-be interventions from Allison, Diego and Klaus. Given the lack of order, it was hard to say who would be next, but he was pleasantly surprised when it was Vanya.
She, of course, approached the situation in typical Vanya fashion. She was excessively polite, soft spoken and apologetic. She was also quite to the point. These were some of the reasons why he had always liked Vanya best. Vanya knew how to say something without obfuscating it and without being annoying.
To make her point, she brought it up while they were eating lunch one day.
“So do you have plans this afternoon?” she asked.
“I was hoping for some extra training time,” Five said, pausing to take a large and satisfying bite of his banana. “Either that, or I might tweak a few equations.”
Vanya nodded. Her sandwich was basically gone, and she was fiddling with a few carrot sticks on her plate. “So, no real plans,” she said. “I mean, it’s just fun stuff.”
It was a testament to how well Vanya knew and respected him that she could call training and math fun without any hint of irony at all.
He really did love Vanya best.
“Pretty much, yeah,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He popped the rest of the banana in his mouth. “How about you?”
“Well, nothing, really,” she said. “So, you know. I was thinking we could spend some time together.”
This suggestion in and of itself wasn’t so unusual. Now that they were back and the world wasn’t ending, he and Vanya spent a decent amount of time together. They often ate meals together, and they enjoyed various cultural attractions in each other’s company. Vanya had an affinity for museums, and since all museums had been blown up during Five’s actual teenage years, he was more than keen to see things put together in person.
“Sure,” he said readily. “What did you have in mind?”
Somehow, he hadn’t thought about how enjoying culture was the antithesis of a lost childhood.
Vanya, however, did.
“It’s going to sound silly, but I was thinking we could listen to music,” she said.
He cocked his head. “Like, your violin?”
She laughed in self deprecation. “No, no, not like that,” she said. “Like, music. Other people’s. Dad’s always had records and there’s still a whole collection down in the study, but there’s other stuff, too. Other things other than records.”
“Yes, I know what music is,” Five said, though that still didn’t explain the intent behind her suggestion.
“Oh, I know, I know,” she said quickly, a note of apology evident in her voice as she chuckled at herself. “But you know, you don’t probably even know what you like in terms of music. So, I thought maybe we’d try to find out.”
This suggestion was both natural and curious. He looked contemplative. “I never got into it as a kid,” he said. “Dad’s stuff was boring. Luther’s stuff too loud.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s what’s cool about music. Everyone has their own tastes, unique to them. And you--”
She gestured at him with a smile.
“--you went away before you ever had the chance,” she said. “I mean, all those years in the apocalypse? Nothing but the sound of your own voice. I don’t know how you did it. I know I neer would have made it for the silence alone.”
He had acclimated some to bringing the apocalypse up in casual speech, but sometimes it still made him frown. He didn’t much like thinking about it, though when he was able to think back without teetering on the edge of a panic attack, it did seem like progress.
Vanya made it easier, at least.
He smiled back at her. “Well, you of all people understand isolation.”
If Five was still prone to the occasional flashback, Vanya’s collectedness was nothing short of a miracle. For all that she’d endured in her life, she was coping remarkably well. She was still inextricably Vanya, but she had adapted to the revelations about her true nature better than you might have expected.
Five wasn’t surprised, though. He’d always seen Vanya’s inner strength. It was just nice to see her embracing it for herself finally.
“I do, you’re right,” she said. “Which is why I keep coming back to music for our teenage thing together. Music was so important to me as a teenager. It gave me a purpose, an identity.”
He sighed a little. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said. “I know the others put you up to it, this whole lost childhood project they have going.”
“Hey,” she said, a little offended. “This isn’t me following orders and this certainly isn’t me giving you some kind of pity party. Music is very important to me, and I want to share it with you.”
He drew his lips closed, and wisely didn’t disagree.
Her expression softened again. “Besides, I didn’t get to know you as a teenager,” she said. “I mean, yes, you lost your childhood, but I lost out on it, too. We lost so much time together. So, I don’t know. This is my chance to show you who I was. We can reclaim a little of that time we lost the first time around.”
That answer would have been utterly annoying coming from anyone else. But Vanya -- and only Vanya -- could pull it off. He drew a long breath and nodded. “Okay,” he agreed. “You and I have a date with music this afternoon.”
Vanya looked positively chuffed. “Awesome,” she said. “I can’t wait to start.”
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: Fills my lost childhood square on hc_bingo. Set after S1 in the assumption that they rectify the timeline in some fashion. No beta.
Summary: The family decides, for practical reasons, that Five needs to relive his lost childhood. Five decides, for sentimental reasons, that reliving his lost childhood is a vehicle to let the others relive theirs instead.
PART ONE
PART TWO
-o-
It started quite simply, really. Five’s recovery of his lost childhood, that was. It started with a simple request for coffee. A request that was ubiquitously denied, prompting Five to take things into his own hands. If he could travel through time to save his family and save the world, then he sure as hell could get himself some coffee. He still thought it was absolutely ridiculous that they hadn’t invested in a coffeemaker yet, but Luther went on and on about how busy they were now that they were back in the present and how they had other priorities and family and blah, blah, blah.
How did anyone expect him to perform at other less important tasks when he wasn’t even properly caffeinated? Clearly, his siblings’ lack of experience was showing. Five, being the more mature and responsible sort, simply handled it on his own. He took the car keys and slipped out to get coffee all by his lonesome.
This was going fine, for the record, and he got a really nice cup of coffee for his troubles, but apparently someone got spooked at seeing a 13 year old kid behind the wheel. The next thing Five knew, he was in a high speed chase across several city blocks before he finally lost his tail. Back at home, he was nursing the last bit of coffee in his travel mug and changing out the license plates just in case when Luther found him.
“Um,” Luther said. He stopped, looked around and appeared vexed. “Anything you want to tell me?”
“What?” Five said, throwing the old plates in the heap due for the incinerator. Of course their old man had an incinerator. Just like he naturally had spare plates around. “Just some minor repair work.”
“Yeah,” Luther said, pressing his lips together. He hesitated. “Diego was listening to the police scanner--”
“Which is a bad habit,” Five told him, dusted off his hands as he got to his feet. The new plates looked impeccable, if he did say so himself.
“Well, sure,” Luther said. “But so is driving without a license.”
Five stared at him.
Luther shrugged, adding with a wince. “While underage.”
Five glared now. “I’m older than you by decades.”
“And yet,” Luther said. He gestured at Five. “It’s a problem.”
“I lost the cop,” Five said, getting perturbed now. “And I changed the plates. No problems at all.”
“This time, maybe,” Luther said. “But you can’t keep going around like this. You’re going to get caught.”
“So?” Five said. He threw his empty cup into the incinerator pile as well with a bit of a flourish. “I’m not scared of the cops.”
“What? Because you’ll kill them?” Luther asked, clearly skeptical. “That’s not how this works, Five. I mean, maybe you did what you had to do with the Commission, but here -- we’re the good guys, Five.”
Five shook his head. “I have already told you that your definition of good and evil is reductive--”
“And your grasp on reality isn’t quite solid,” Luther shot back. He straightened a little, pulling himself up to his impressive height. To others, he probably would have been formidable, but Five was more impressed that he was standing his ground here. “You, more than anyone else, wants to get the Umbrella Academy back off the ground. But to do that -- to really start functioning that way -- we have to play within the rules. We can’t go around breaking laws trivially. If you want to drive, you need to get a license.”
Five scoffed, amused at the indication. “How does a 58 year old man in the body of a 13 year old go about getting a license?” he asked wryly. “Hell, no one would even believe the record of my birth at this point. I don’t have an identity here.”
Luther seemed to listen to this quite seriously. For a moment, Five thought maybe his brother understood. He nodded, ever resolute. “So we make you one.”
Five raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“We make you one,” Luther said, his confidence gaining. “We make you a new identity.”
Five’s mouth fell open, and he found himself at a loss for words for his incredulity. “And how do you expect to do that?”
Luther was grinning now. “By reclaiming your lost childhood,” he said, annoyingly pleased with himself. “How else?”
-o-
The others thought this was a spectacular idea.
It was, in some regards.
It was spectacularly awful.
When he told them this, they sought about trying to convince him otherwise.
“Look,” Allison said. “This is a practical way to go about things.”
“How is it practical to waste time and effort pretending like some incompetent teenager?” Five growled. The others were seated across the living room, but Five was pacing back and forth like a caged lion.
“Because,” Allison said. “I know family court. They don’t mess around. If they catch wind that we have a kid without documents living in the mansion, they will intervene.”
Allison’s experience with family court was hard to argue with, but Five was feeling rather petulant.
No, not petulant. He wasn’t a child, damn it.
He was feeling duly offended. He shook his head. “We’d never get caught.”
Diego laughed at that. “So what? We make a habit of running from the cops?”
Five shrugged, making an indifferent gesture. In the apocalypse, there had been no law. As an assassin, he’d existed outside the law. He was not limited by societal conventions the same way his siblings were. “Why not?”
“Well, we want the cops on our side, for one thing,” Diego said. He was fiddling with a knife, but it was a small at least. It still looked unnecessarily sharp. “We are supposed to be the good guys right now.”
Five stopped his pacing to glare at him. “Right,” he said. “We’ll make friends with the cops through our efforts at forgery and probably some form of identity theft. The making of a really good partnership.”
Diego was vaguely perturbed now. “Look, I have connections and Allison has rumors,” he argued pointlessly. “We’ll make it work.”
Five rolled his eyes and started pacing again. “You’re still missing the point,” he said. “Both options are equally illegal, so your insistence on documenting my life as a teenager is both fallacious and ridiculous.”
“It’s safer,” Luther insisted.
“I’d feel a lot better with the paperwork,” Allison agreed.
“Oh, well, if you’d feel better--” Five muttered.
Vanya was seated on one of the chairs, her arms drawn together. She was still quiet, as it was her nature; she was still reserved. But she was more confident now, assured of her place. When she spoke, the others listened.
When she spoke, Five stopped.
“We would, though, Five,” she said, echoing Luther’s sentiment but her appeal was much more fundamental. She always had had that power over Five. “We want you with us, and we want to be a family. No hiding. No running. Just a real family.”
The sentiment was just as overdone as all the rest, but Five felt his insides churn. His logic fought against it, but he wasn’t going to win that battle. Not with Vanya. He couldn’t argue with her.
Still stewing in his inevitable acceptance of everything he wanted to reject, Klaus got up and slung an arm around his shoulder. “Besides,” he crooned. “You being a teenager again? This will be so much fun!”
Five scowled, shoving his hands in his pockets. He huffed as he looked darkly and Klaus and the rest of his pathetic siblings. “I can’t possibly imagine how.”
“Well, start with driving a car,” Luther offered, as though trying to be genuinely helpful. “If we get you an identity -- some paperwork or whatever -- you could get your driver’s permit in a few months. And then, after that, your own license. You’d still have to follow the rules of the road, but--”
Five shook of Klaus and started pacing again. “I’m still not seeing how this whole breaking laws to follow the law thing works.”
“It’s not perfect, we know that,” Ben said, standing behind the couch near the others.
“Uh, yeah,” Five said, turning on his heel and going back the other way. “It’s inane.”
“I don’t like breaking laws either, okay?” Allison said. “But it’s a necessary exception for you.”
“And I really do think you’re overthinking this, bro,” Klaus said. “I mean, think about it! A teenager! You! Teenagers get to have all the fun. Being a kid is the best.”
Five frowned. “I don’t want to be a kid.”
“Why not?” Ben asked. “What would be so bad about it?”
Ben was always the calm and reasonable sort, and that had always been something Five had liked about him.
Except when he didn’t like it.
At all.
Like right now when Five was feeling anything but calm and reasonable. “Because, it’s pointless,” he said. “I’m a trained fighter, an assassin. You put me in the system as some 13 year old and what? Now I’m supposed to go to school?”
He’d said it facetiously, and he felt immediately irritated that no one seemed to think that was a stupid, feigned suggestion.
“Well?” Ben asked. “Do you want to?”
The insinuation was now making him slightly murderous. This was not an exaggeration, but Ben was already dead, so that worked in his favor. With some effort, he managed to curb the emotion long enough to grit out his obvious answer. “No.”
Although their insinuation had been abhorrently naive, his siblings are not complete morons. Just partial ones. Sensing Five’s disposition, they retreated from that point quickly enough.
“Well, there are plenty of ways around that,” Allison assured him. “Homeschooling.”
“And I’m sure you can pass all the tests,” Vanya said quickly. “Get your GED. You have options, Five. Lots of options.”
He growled. “Sure, and one of them is to keep driving and not get caught.”
“Five, please,” Vanya implored him.
Which wasn’t fair.
None of this was fair.
All he’d ever done was try to save them. He’d risked everything, he’d sacrificed his sanity -- and for what? For one missed calculation to condemn him to this? This kind of humiliation?
He was 58 years old. He was nearly twice their ages. It was bad enough to be stuck in this body, but to have them act like this was who he was?
He shook his head, his stomach all but turning. “No,” he said. “I can’t do this.”
Luther drew himself up, coming to his full height. It would have been impressive were Five not so very confident that he could still kill his brother if he wanted.
For the record, right now he did kind of want to.
But he was an adult. He had restraint.
Teenagers didn’t have restraint.
“Five, this isn’t a debate,” he said. “We’re going to get the paperwork, and we’re going to make an effort.”
Lip curling into a sneer, Five asked, “Why?”
“Because if you don’t, you put the whole academy at risk,” he said. “If you choose not to be a legal teenager, then you can’t be part of what we do. You can’t go on missions. You’d be here, at home, all the time with Mom and Pogo.”
Well, damn it.
Pragmatism, of all things.
Five pressed his lips together thinly and exhaled. He was pissed as hell, but he couldn’t deny the point.
“Fine,” he said, turning to stalk toward his room. “But I hate you all.”
“Aw, look,” Klaus said. “He’s sounding more like a teenager already!”
Five flipped him off as he stormed up the stairs.
-o-
Five consented, but he certainly wasn’t going to help them with it. He was going about his business, living his life as he wanted, when they presented him with the paperwork a few weeks later. It was official in all the ways that mattered, and the name read Five Hargreeves on the inevitably forged birth certificate. His date of birth had been changed, and the social security number was false, but Five didn’t actually care about that as much as he had suggested he did.
He sighed, looking it over.
“No one thought it was weird?” he said. “Given that there is still a real missing Five Hargreeves out there?”
“If it makes you feel better, we tried to restore your old identity,” Diego said. He shrugged. “My cop friends told me that’d be a mess though.”
“You’d be lost in the system for years,” Allison agreed.
“We had to make a few connections,” Luther said.
“We? I had the connections,” Klaus said. “I’ve always been good with fake IDs. Really good.”
“These are the best you can get,” Ben assured him. “We did it right.”
They did it right by doing it all wrong, but Five couldn’t deny that their intentions were good.
That was the thing, wasn’t it?
Their intentions really were good. They wanted him to be one of them; they wanted the academy to be legitimate. They wanted him to have a chance at a normal life, to grow up.
Funny, it seemed like they were the ones who wanted to grow up.
So here he was, doing it for all of them.
So here they were, doing it together.
He sighed again.
“Surely the press will pick up on it, though?” Five asked, looking up at them. “I mean, pretending like I was born 13 years ago and that I’m not the long lost Hargreeves brother--”
“The public will believe what they want to believe,” Vanya said, smiling at him now. “And Dad was always secretive about stuff. I mean, we’re coming back with a Number Eight now. Do you really think it’ll seem so strange?”
Five looked at the paperwork again.
It was all in order.
He looked up at his siblings.
It was all very much in order.
“Fine,” he said. “But this is just paperwork, okay? Formalities. I am not a child, and I will not tolerate being treated as one.”
The statement was clear and definitive and impossible to argue.
Five took comfort in that.
-o-
Comfort, as it turned out, was a fantasy.
Clear and definitive statements were irrelevant.
Nothing was impossible to argue.
That was how Five ended up at the department store with Allison. She had badgered him relentlessly about updating his wardrobe for nearly two weeks before he had agreed, but when they got there, she had the audacity to steer him toward the boys department.
“You know,” she said. “So you can look like--”
He made a face, incredulous. “Like what? Kids my age?”
“So you can fit in,” she said easily, frustratingly unruffled. “The schoolboy shorts weren’t even in style when you were actually a kid. Surely you want something a little less…”
Five rolled his eyes. “Antiquated?”
“I was going to say ridiculous,” she said.
His cheeks reddened inexplicably and he stuff his hands in his pockets. He didn’t like the uniform, that was true, but he didn’t want to be lectured on it by some Hollywood starlet. “I don’t mind new clothes,” he said. “But the boys section? Really?”
Allison shrugged, gesturing at the racks of clothes and the small mannequins wearing stupid looking outfits and impractical sunglasses. “Why not?” she said. “I mean, if we go to the men’s section, nothing is going to fit you anyway.”
That wasn’t exactly what Five wanted to hear, but continuing this line of defense was going to get him nowhere fast. “Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll start here.”
She looked encouraged.
Then, she looked a little confused.
Five shrugged at her. “What?”
“Well,” she said. She hesitated. “You have to start looking.”
Five looked out at the racks again and realized the implications. “Oh,” he said. “Right.”
He swallowed, suddenly anxious. There were a lot of racks here. There was a lot of clothes.
He bit his lip. “What am I looking for anyway?”
Allison, for all her composure, was a little taken aback by his question. “Well, anything,” she said. “What do you like?”
That question was odd to him, really. In the apocalypse, he’d scrounged for anything that fit him. Personal taste had been mostly an afterthought as he looked for things that fit well, wore well and so on. With the Commission, he’d been brought into a professional dress code that suited him well enough though he had no real opinion on.
In short, he didn’t know what he liked.
At all.
It took Allison about three seconds to realize this. “You’ve never been clothes shopping before,” she said.
He shrugged, hoping to look nonchalant. “It’s never come up.”
“So you don’t know what you like,” she continued on the line of thought.
He was getting perturbed now. Not embarrassed; perturbed. “It’s superfluous.”
“Okay,” Allison said, clearly choosing not to engage this line of thought. She set out for the first rack and pulled out a shirt. “Well, let’s just start with first impressions. Instincts. Do you like this?”
She was holding up a shirt.
There was colorful cartoon superheroes on it.
Five turned his gaze to Allison. “Are you serious?” he asked. “I look 13, not seven.”
Hastily, she seemed aware of her mistake. She put the shirt back on the rack and shuffled through several more garments before pulling another shirt. “Okay, okay,” she said. “This. How about this?”
This one was at least presumably age appropriate for a 13 year old. It was clearly an athletic cut with a large logo that Five presumed to be trendy. He imagined real teenagers wore that kind of thing to school; maybe a few of them even wore such clothing to actual sporting events. Five had never been to an actual sporting event -- or a school for that matter -- so he wasn’t sure he had any context to judge.
Nor did he have any context for his own use. “It’s not exactly professional.”
Allison gave him a look in return. “Well, yeah,” she said. She nodded at it, giving the hanger a small shake. “Teenagers aren’t professionals, though.”
There were so many things wrong with that sentence that he didn’t have the energy to contradict her properly. This was likely to be a long day, if Allison had anything to say about it, and if he was going to play along with this stupid and elaborate charade his siblings had concocted, he was going to have to make some margin of peace with at least elements of his unfortunate present situation.
He reached out, jabbing at the garment. “But it’s not even practical,” he said. “Look at the cut. It’s clearly loose, hanging away from the body. That sort of style is a hazard in combat.”
Allison wrinkled her nose. “So then don’t wear it during combat.”
Five wrinkled his nose back. “Then where should I wear it?”
Allison’s eyebrows went up. “Anywhere,” she said. “You know. For fun. When we’re not on the job.”
She was saying that like it was obvious, but Five had no idea what she was talking about. He shook his head, at a loss. “I don’t even know what you mean by that.”
“You’re not always on the job, Five,” she said. She tilted her head. “You do know that, right?”
For some reason, it was like she had physically struck him. “But I’m a professional!”
“Wearing schoolboy shorts,” Allison pointed out. She put the shirt back on the rack. “You know, maybe we shouldn’t bother. Just stick with the uniform.”
She had successfully turned that point around, and Five growled in acceptance. “I don’t know what to do,” he hissed.
She pointed at the store again, making a wide, sweeping gesture. “Just browse. Try something on,” she said. “Make an effort.”
Make an effort was an understatement. Their shopping trip took three hours from start to finish, and by try something on, Allison had clearly meant try everything on. Five was so sick of clothing by the end that he was ready to dismember the mannequins, but with Allison’s pervasive sense of control and calm, he managed to purchase a pair of jeans, a pair of khakis, neutral black tennis shoes and several nondescript striped polo shirts. With his nerves frayed and worn, he even agreed to white athletic socks and a zip-up hoodie.
Five felt like shit when it was over, but Allison looked pretty pleased with herself. Growing up couldn’t happen fast enough.
Still, the next day, when he went to get dressed, he didn’t pull out a freshly pressed uniform. Instead, he put on his khakis and a polo shirt. Not because he liked them, for the record.
But because he liked the other option less.
-o-
Five went several weeks agreeably wearing clothing that made him fit in. He still preferred his training garb, but he had no actual objections to more comfortable clothes. Pragmatically speaking, dressing in schoolboy shorts was rather a hard sell. If they were going with this ridiculous notion that Five was a teenager, then wearing this style of clothing was an acceptable consequence he was willing to endure.
As far as he was concerned, that was that.
Unfortunately, Five was not the only one concerned.
It was likely that he should have expected further meddling -- these were his siblings, after all. Idiots, the whole lot of them -- but he’d been willfully naive when you got right down to it. He’d wanted to think that life could go on as it was, no problems whatsoever.
Then, one morning, Diego sat down next to him at breakfast. “Hey,” he said, folding a whole piece of toast in his mouth and chewing obnoxiously. He swallows with obvious effort while Five took a sip of his coffee. “You and me. We’re hanging out today.”
Five regarded him skeptically. There were still crumbs on his poorly kept facial hair. “Why?”
Diego shrugged. “It’s what brothers do, right?”
Five saw no point in arguing that. “Okay,” he said. “Extra training?”
“No, man, no,” Diego said, reaching for another piece of bread. “Like let’s hang out. Have fun.”
Five regarded him with even more skepticism as he ate the second piece of toast in two bites, washing it down with a noisy swig of orange juice. “Fun?”
“Hobbies, right?” Diego said. “You got to have a hobby or something?”
“I tend to do equations or read,” Five said.
Diego rolled his eyes. “Fun shit, man,” he said. “Come on. Something fun.”
Five’s eyes narrowed. “Is this another ploy to make me be a teenager?”
Diego held up his hands. “Not my idea, for the record,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s as bad as you do.”
Five glowered. “You’re treating me like a child. I don’t need you to tell me what hobbies to enjoy. I don’t even know what teenagers do.”
“They play sports--”
“I train--”
“They skateboard--”
“Pointlessly dangerous--”
“Fine,” Diego said. “Video games. They play video games.”
Five made a face, as if that was the most ridiculous thing he’d heard yet. And he’d heard a lot of ridiculous things from his family recently. “That’s an utter waste of time.”
“But they’re pretty fun,” Diego said. Then he stopped. “But you wouldn’t know that. You’ve never played a video game, have you?”
Five scowled despite himself. “Dad never let us,” he said. “And there was no electricity in the apocalypse.”
Diego grabbed one last piece of toast. “That’s it, then,” he said. “We’ll hang out and play video games today.”
“Do I have a choice in the matter?”
Diego grinned. “Nope,” he said, shoving the last piece of toast in his mouth. “Meet me in my room in a few!”
Five shook his head and took another sip of his coffee.
What the hell, he thought.
What. The. Hell.
-o-
Five had no actual reason to comply, but then, what else was he going to do today. Eliciting conflict with his siblings was exhausting and counterproductive. They had managed to emotionally compromise him, and now their personal leverage over him was at risk of becoming a liability, but still.
Five showed up at Diego’s room in exactly ten minutes, more or less as requested. There was a certain inevitability about it all, and Five was all about fighting the battles that mattered. In the grander scheme of things, resisting his brother’s attempts to teach him video games might seem valid in principle, but it would be exhausting in execution. The last thing he needed was another family meeting about his need to embrace this second go at the teenage years.
These were the sorts of probabilities he’d never thought to calculated all those long years in the apocalypse. Sometimes, he wished he had. Not that it would have actually changed anything, but still.
Five stood, bristled and at attention in the doorway of Diego’s room. He pursed his lips expectantly, watching while his brother hastily unfurled an array of cords and disentangled a few controllers. He watched unobtrusively for several long moments, noting how Diego fiddled with the cables between one HDMI jack and the next before rocking back on his heels and snorted.
Diego snorted back. “Just give me a sec,” he muttered, pressing the remote for a different input. The screen shifted to black.
Five raised his eyebrows. “This seems unnecessarily difficult,” he said. “I thought the point was to have fun not learn about wiring.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Diego said. “I’m just trying to get the Switch hooked up. I’ve been using the PS4 more lately.”
“Okay,” Five said. “And we’re not playing that because?”
“Because,” Diego said, finally getting a picture on the screen, showing the Switch’s apparent startup page. “We’re playing Mario Kart.”
Diego was now busily checking the charges on the controllers. “Mario Kart?” Five asked.
“Sure,” Diego said. He glanced back, opting for a plug in controller instead when the charge was clearly dead. “You’ve heard of it, right?”
Five had spent his life a damn wasteland where humanity was dead. Then, he’d spent his time jumping through history killing people. It wasn’t just that he hadn’t had time for video games, he had literally had no access to the technology. Pop culture was hardly relevant to him, seeing as it was dead for most of his life and he’d spent so much time popping in and out of culture that he couldn’t tie himself to anything concrete.
Nonetheless, he scoffed. “Yes, I’ve heard of Mario Kart, smart ass.”
Diego grinned, finally handing him a remote as the Switch reached its home screen. “Good,” he said. “So I don’t have to explain to you the point.”
Five gave Diego a wary look, but joined him on the bed facing the TV. “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “I find the whole process rather pointless.”
Diego hurriedly moved the extra cords out of the way. “But you get the gist of the game,” he said, clicking on the icon for Mario Kart. “Like, racing?”
Five made a face as the game started up. “Yeah, I got that,” he said. “What I don’t get, however, is why we’re playing a game that is clearly marketed to children.”
This time, Diego returned his look, as if noting that Five looked like one of said children. Wisely, he did not comment on that. Instead, he shrugged. “This is one of Nintendo’s iconic titles. Everyone loves Mario Kart.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Five quipped, watching as Diego picked a race circuit colored with red mushrooms and mooing cows.
“Well, okay, fine,” Diego said, clicking through a few more screens without taking time to really look at them. “But most of my other shit is all rated M.”
Five shrugged. “So?”
“So,” Diego said. He nodded at Five. “You don’t qualify.”
Five stared at him, unamused.
“I’m serious, dude,” Diego said. “You’re legally 13.”
“And I’m a trained assassin,” Five returned. “Any violence or language I may encounter in this context would be laughable to the things I’ve experienced in real life.”
Diego reached over and pressed a button to make Five join the game. “All the more reason for you to start breaking the habit.”
Five watched, still wholly unimpressed, as he was able to scroll through a host of silly, cartoon characters and accompanying vehicles that look increasingly ridiculous one after the next. Not a one of them actually looked like a capable racing vehicle, and not a single character was appropriately geared for a race. “We really can play the other games,” he said. “I wouldn’t tell anyone, if that makes you feel better.”
Diego’s face reddened, and he shook his head. “No, man. Just no,” he said. He looked at Five. “Look, I want to do this thing right, okay? If we’re playing by the rules now, then we’re playing by the rules. I just want to show you that it doesn’t all have to be bad, okay? We can still do the job; we can still have fun.”
Five was not remotely convinced on any of those points, but he wasn’t a robot. He wasn’t devoid of emotion and he wasn’t heartless. In short, he was not immune to the inherent plea in his brother’s words.
As much as his siblings wanted to make this whole process about Five, he knew better. This was a process for all of them, and as much as they wanted to help him, Five needed to help them just as much.
“Fine,” Five conceded, finally selecting one stupid looking character and a woefully pathetic looking car with a flippant shrug. “How hard can it be anyway?”
That question was supposed to be rhetorical.
And, in many ways, it was.
Just not in the way Five had expected.
You see, video games?
Could be hard.
Really, damn hard.
Even the ones marketed to children.
Five had ample experience with everything in real life, but he found the virtual application wanting. The controls were not true to life; the in-game reactions did not mimic real situations. Five’s acuity was lost in translation, and the computer programmed elements were designed to be intentionally disruptive at the most annoying possible times.
In short, Five was bad at video games.
Like, really bad.
So bad that after coming in 10th again after nearly 30 minutes of lackluster performance, Five had had enough. Angry at his cartoon characters hanging head and disappointed slump, Five threw his controller at the screen in a fit of rage.
His aim in the game was terrible, but in real life, he was spot on.
It cracked the screen nearly in half.
Diego jumped to his feet in utter dismay. “Dude! What the hell!”
Five, still fuming, crossed his arms over his chest. “This game is insufficient!”
Diego did not appear to think that was a valid answer. He gaped, gesturing to the broken television in apparent horror. “So you broke my TV?”
Five rolled his eyes. “It’s just a TV,” he said. “And not even a very good one. I’ll buy you another.”
This did not have the desired effect of satisfying Diego. If anything, it almost made his brother more apoplectic. “But you’re not supposed to break the TV!”
Five jabbed his finger at the TV. “Well, the game was asking for it,” he said. “The logistics aren’t realistic, and the command controls are sluggish. It doesn’t work like a real car on a real course.”
“Because it’s a game!” Diego said, almost roaring at him. He stopped himself, shook his head and gave a short laugh of indignation. “Like, that’s the point. It’s not supposed to be real!”
“But the whole thing is counterintuitive,” Five argued. He shrugged, feeling helpless now. “I mean, the whole concept of hoarding skills and tricks? And bananas? On a race course? What kind of traction do these tires have anyway?”
Diego took a long, measured breath. “Again, Five,” he said, slowly and decisively. “It’s just a game.”
“Sure, but what’s the point?” he said. “Even for a recreational pastime, it has to has some redeeming qualities.”
“Well, sure, it’s fun,” Diego said. He pointed at the screen, incredulous. “It’s supposed to be fun!”
“Then it failed on that front, too,” Five said, matter of fact and wholly unapologetic. “It wasn’t fun at all.”
Diego put his own remote down and rubbed his forehead. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m beginning to see that.”
At this point, Five was beginning to feel slightly -- ever so slightly -- guilty.
He had just broken Diego’s TV.
Sighing, he shook his head at his own sentimentality. “Maybe we’ll have to try a different game this time.”
Diego looked up at him.
Five shrugged, not quite sheepish. “On my TV.”
Diego seemed to be struggling for self control, but if Five could grow up, then so could Diego. “Fine,” he said, pointing a finger harshly at Five. “But if I break your TV--”
“I know, I know,” Five conceded as Diego reached for his collection of games. “I have it coming.”
-o-
The next game they tried was a first person shooter game, but Diego said that since it didn’t involve killing human targets it would be acceptable. A lot of teenagers play Halo, apparently.
Five was better at this game in substantial ways. Over the next few weeks, in fact, Five was able to hold his own. It was what you would call a compromise.
Diego allowed Five to play a video game more of his skill level and interest.
And Five stopped throwing controllers at television sets.
A win-win all around.
-o-
Five accepted his new wardrobe. He didn’t mind playing video games with Diego. These were small, acceptable changes to his life, and Five considered himself content.
He had never been looking for happy.
In truth, he doubted he knew what happy even looked like. He wouldn’t be likely to recognize it if it hit him in the face.
But this was good. This was acceptable. This left him without want.
As far as Five was concerned, therefore, that really should have been that.
His siblings, as always, had very different ideas.
-o-
“Okay, look,” Klaus said, sitting down on Five’s bed utterly invited. Five was at the wall, erasing the remnants of his last equation so he could get started on his next. He had invested a lot of money in chalk, you see. “Here’s the thing.”
Five didn’t look up. He saw no need to encourage whatever Klaus was about to say.
“We need to do something,” Klaus said.
It sounded rather dramatic, so Five spared his brother a look. Klaus was quite serious. “Do something about what?”
“About you!” Klaus said, flopping back on the bed and sprawling himself wide. “And your untempered youth!”
Five sighed and went back to his erasing. Clearly, this was only Klaus’ kind of dramatic, which was to say it was not dramatic at all to Five. “My youth is quite tempered, thank you.”
Klaus sat up again. “Exactly my point! It’s tempered when it’s supposed to be untempered!”
Tiredly, Five maneuvered a chair to stand on, reaching for a higher layer of chalk. He was pleased that at least he’d hit his growth spurt early so he was skinny at 13 but not short. “Klaus, do you have a point to any of this?”
“Of course I do!” Klaus said, for some reason sounding offended. “We’re all supposed to be doing our part.”
Five wrinkled his nose, scrubbing off a particularly complex part of the equation with some fondness. “Our part in what?”
“In raising you right!” Klaus rejoined.
Five looked back at him, both horrified and amused. “I agreed to legally be a child,” he said. “Not actually live like one.”
Klaus shook his head. “You went clothes shopping with Allison.”
“A practical gesture--”
“You play video games with Diego.”
That one was harder to deny. “It’s not a child’s video game.”
“That’s even worse!” Klaus said, sounding unreasonably distressed now. “You’re using up all your teenage rebellion on video games! With Diego!”
Klaus flopped back again, wailing with what sounded uncomfortably like real tears.
Five sighed again. This whole thing was wearisome, but it was best not to let it continue. He got off the chair and made his way to the bed. “Okay, fine,” he said, willing himself to play this game -- for Klaus’ peace of mind and his own. “What sort of untempered thing would you like to do together?”
Klaus sat up, looking considerably brighter. “Really?”
“Well, within reason,” Five said.
Klaus barely seemed to hear him. “I had been thinking of a few ideas, you know.”
Five found that to be disconcerting, but no response from him was required at the moment. Besides, he was a little worried that further engagement would only encourage Klaus more than absolutely necessary to fulfill the bonds of familial obligation.
“Like, so, I thought about a lot of stuff, but I started with sneaking out,” Klaus explained, rambling and unnecessarily long winded. He was looking at the ceiling thoughtfully, as if this was a serious consideration for him. “Because those are my best memories, sneaking out, subterfuge, the whole nine yards. But, you know, Dad’s dead and so it just doesn’t have the same weight anymore, does it? It just wouldn’t be as much fun because there’d be literally no one trying to stop us.”
There was actual some semblance of logic there, but Five would not acknowledge it. Klaus wasn’t particularly ready to listen anyway.
“And so I kept thinking and I thought of other stuff, you know, petty crimes, a step up from jaywalking and loitering,” Klaus continued, fingers flitting through the air as his voice meandered on. “And I thought about shoplifting, which was one of my first crimes, and is always very, very fun. And exciting. It’s exciting, and I thought, you like excitement. You seem like you could be an adrenaline junkie.”
He lifted his head to look at Five, as if positing some kind of question.
He didn’t wait for Five to answer it, however. “And I’m good at shoplifting,” Klaus said. “Like really good at it.”
Five made a face. This time, he couldn’t quite hold his tongue. “If you count getting caught as good.”
“Caught but not arrested,” Klaus said. He held up a finger and nodded sagely. “That takes real talent.”
“You were simply too annoying to incarcerate,” Five reasoned.
Klaus flitted his hand through the air. “You know, it’s not important,” he said. “That wasn’t my best attempt, but I decided against it. I mean, shoplifting is a rush, right? But I think we have to keep things legal, strictly speaking. The last thing we need is you in juvie. For you. And for juvie.”
Five found this notion to be unsettling on a number of levels. Rather than explore these levels, he figured getting out of this conversation was probably the best option. There was no way out but through, so Five pragmatically kept Klaus to task. “So what did you have in mind?”
Klaus was overly encouraged. “Right, so, I thought, you know, what little things do teenagers do? What are your classic acts of rebellion?” he said. “And you know, I thought about vandalism--”
“I thought we were talking legal--”
“And then I was thinking, you know, alcohol. Binge drinking. That’s a thing, right?” Klaus said.
“Still not legal,” Five reminded him. “And I already drink.”
Klaus held up a finger haltingly. “Not anymore, though.”
“Because you guys are all assholes,” Five agreed.
“Well, yeah,” Klaus said. He pointed at Five. “You are a kid.”
Five was getting perturbed again, and his temper was going to get the better of him. “And I thought you were here to push me into untempered territory.”
“Yes, yes, but, you know, not vices you already indulge more than you should,” Klaus said. “Which led me to think, you know, what’s quintessential to teenage rebellion? Drugs!”
Five fully gave up on any hope of returning to his eraser work. The thought of math was long gone. This conversation with Klaus had killed more brain cells than he cared to spare.
Klaus leaned forward, as if they were conspiring together. “In my experience at 13, drugs are great. I mean, they’re great at any age, but they’re really good at 13,” he said, starting to get distracted. Somehow, he pulled himself back to whatever point he was trying to make. “But yeah, that’s still illegal. And you on drugs is probably not something I need to see, and I think the others would string me up if I tried it.”
This was now getting exhaustingly tedious. “So what then? What’s your master plan?”
Klaus smiled, brighter than ever. “We keep it legal,” he said. “Legally addictive substances that do unnecessary harm to your body but feel oh-so-good.”
Klaus said it like it was something obvious, but Five made a face. Maybe those lost brain cells were starting to affect him negatively. “What are you talking about?”
“Food, Five,” Klaus said readily. “Sugar. Old. Salt. Chemical additives. High fructose corn syrup. Food dyes. The stuff that will block your arteries, give you cancer and bloat your gut -- none of which you have to worry about at all because look at you! You’re 13!”
That was unexpected. For some reason, Five felt let down. It wasn’t like he’d had high expectations or something, but Klaus had a unique talent for making you feel worse without even trying sometimes. “I don’t like that kind of food,” he said, still cringing a little at the thought of that damn apocalypse Twinkie. He’d been sick for a week; it’d almost killed him. And yes, Five did hold a grudge when it mattered.
“But you haven’t tried it,” Klaus implored him.
“I have,” Five said.
“No, you don’t get to bring up apocalypse Twinkie because that doesn’t count,” Klaus said, almost warning Five now. “Eating a Twinkie that went bad while scavenging at the end of the world is not the same thing as exploring the wonders of your teenage tastebuds. You have to eat it the right way.”
Five scoffed. “What’s the right way?”
“Uh, not scavenging for things that are past expiration date, for one thing,” Klaus said. Then, he smiled brighter, practically glowing now. “And also, the right way, my dear Five, is with me.”
Well, shit, Five thought. That was about the worst and best possible answer he’d heard in awhile.
-o-
Klaus was surprisingly organized about it all. He was downright systematic, taking Five religiously to a fast food joint once a week. They went out for dessert twice a week, and on the other days, Klaus insisted that they hit up the local convenience store to buy whatever shitty food looked appealing that day.
Five decided to approach it as a challenge. If he saw food as an enemy he had to conquer or a plight he had to face, then he could look at the menu and order the crappiest looking thing there. He could pick up some prepackaged garbage and actually think it was worth getting, He could chug milkshakes, sodas and even the occasional energy drink.
And it wasn’t all without some success. Five discovered that chicken nuggets were pretty good while fried fish gave him the runs. He found a liking for peanut butter cups and Fun Dip, but he thought that Snickers was highly overrated. He preferred a classic vanilla shake over anything else, but yes, hard serve ice cream was far superior to soft serve. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t eat a Blizzard if you gave him one, thank you very much.
After several weeks, Five has found a few additions he will consider making to his diet full time. For fun.
Things were going well until Klaus tried to get him to eat a Twinkie, and the ensuing debate turned into a physical altercation that left Klaus to declare that Five no longer needed his instruction on teenage eating habits.
That suited both of them just fine.
-o-
Then, it was Vanya’s turn.
By this point, Five was well aware that this was a thing, that this would continue to be a thing, and that he ought to start expecting it in order to manage it with minimal stress and fuss. Therefore, he knew he’d received would-be interventions from Allison, Diego and Klaus. Given the lack of order, it was hard to say who would be next, but he was pleasantly surprised when it was Vanya.
She, of course, approached the situation in typical Vanya fashion. She was excessively polite, soft spoken and apologetic. She was also quite to the point. These were some of the reasons why he had always liked Vanya best. Vanya knew how to say something without obfuscating it and without being annoying.
To make her point, she brought it up while they were eating lunch one day.
“So do you have plans this afternoon?” she asked.
“I was hoping for some extra training time,” Five said, pausing to take a large and satisfying bite of his banana. “Either that, or I might tweak a few equations.”
Vanya nodded. Her sandwich was basically gone, and she was fiddling with a few carrot sticks on her plate. “So, no real plans,” she said. “I mean, it’s just fun stuff.”
It was a testament to how well Vanya knew and respected him that she could call training and math fun without any hint of irony at all.
He really did love Vanya best.
“Pretty much, yeah,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He popped the rest of the banana in his mouth. “How about you?”
“Well, nothing, really,” she said. “So, you know. I was thinking we could spend some time together.”
This suggestion in and of itself wasn’t so unusual. Now that they were back and the world wasn’t ending, he and Vanya spent a decent amount of time together. They often ate meals together, and they enjoyed various cultural attractions in each other’s company. Vanya had an affinity for museums, and since all museums had been blown up during Five’s actual teenage years, he was more than keen to see things put together in person.
“Sure,” he said readily. “What did you have in mind?”
Somehow, he hadn’t thought about how enjoying culture was the antithesis of a lost childhood.
Vanya, however, did.
“It’s going to sound silly, but I was thinking we could listen to music,” she said.
He cocked his head. “Like, your violin?”
She laughed in self deprecation. “No, no, not like that,” she said. “Like, music. Other people’s. Dad’s always had records and there’s still a whole collection down in the study, but there’s other stuff, too. Other things other than records.”
“Yes, I know what music is,” Five said, though that still didn’t explain the intent behind her suggestion.
“Oh, I know, I know,” she said quickly, a note of apology evident in her voice as she chuckled at herself. “But you know, you don’t probably even know what you like in terms of music. So, I thought maybe we’d try to find out.”
This suggestion was both natural and curious. He looked contemplative. “I never got into it as a kid,” he said. “Dad’s stuff was boring. Luther’s stuff too loud.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s what’s cool about music. Everyone has their own tastes, unique to them. And you--”
She gestured at him with a smile.
“--you went away before you ever had the chance,” she said. “I mean, all those years in the apocalypse? Nothing but the sound of your own voice. I don’t know how you did it. I know I neer would have made it for the silence alone.”
He had acclimated some to bringing the apocalypse up in casual speech, but sometimes it still made him frown. He didn’t much like thinking about it, though when he was able to think back without teetering on the edge of a panic attack, it did seem like progress.
Vanya made it easier, at least.
He smiled back at her. “Well, you of all people understand isolation.”
If Five was still prone to the occasional flashback, Vanya’s collectedness was nothing short of a miracle. For all that she’d endured in her life, she was coping remarkably well. She was still inextricably Vanya, but she had adapted to the revelations about her true nature better than you might have expected.
Five wasn’t surprised, though. He’d always seen Vanya’s inner strength. It was just nice to see her embracing it for herself finally.
“I do, you’re right,” she said. “Which is why I keep coming back to music for our teenage thing together. Music was so important to me as a teenager. It gave me a purpose, an identity.”
He sighed a little. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said. “I know the others put you up to it, this whole lost childhood project they have going.”
“Hey,” she said, a little offended. “This isn’t me following orders and this certainly isn’t me giving you some kind of pity party. Music is very important to me, and I want to share it with you.”
He drew his lips closed, and wisely didn’t disagree.
Her expression softened again. “Besides, I didn’t get to know you as a teenager,” she said. “I mean, yes, you lost your childhood, but I lost out on it, too. We lost so much time together. So, I don’t know. This is my chance to show you who I was. We can reclaim a little of that time we lost the first time around.”
That answer would have been utterly annoying coming from anyone else. But Vanya -- and only Vanya -- could pull it off. He drew a long breath and nodded. “Okay,” he agreed. “You and I have a date with music this afternoon.”
Vanya looked positively chuffed. “Awesome,” she said. “I can’t wait to start.”