Umbrella Academy fic: Minor Wounds and Big Deals
Title: Minor Wounds and Big Deals
Disclaimer: I own nothing here.
A/N: A fluffy fic set in a fixed post S1 universe. Fills my minor injury square in hc_bingo. Unbeta’ed.
Summary: Five’s definitely dealt with worse.
-o-
It’s no big deal.
That’s Five’s fallback excuse these days.
No, not an excuse. Five isn’t in the habit of making excuses. It’s simply his honest assessment of most situations. After all, he’s survived an apocalypse. He’s a trained temporal assassin. Living at home with his siblings fighting typical crime really isn’t that big of a deal in comparison.
So the cases are not that big of deal. The trials of learning to live with people again is not that big of deal. Being 13 again is not a big deal. And training is never a big deal.
Even minor training accidents?
Yeah, you guessed it. Not a big deal.
In fact, Five barely notices that he’s been cut until he’s back in his bedroom, stripping from his training clothes after a particularly grueling day of training. They have to engage in full combat training from time to time in order to streamline their fighting styles as a team. This is especially important as the Umbrella Academy develops its tenor, and Five is aware that other members need more support with the basics of hand to hand. It’s not a big deal to spend those extra hours making sure they’re up to the task.
Five’s used to hard. He’s used to strenuous. He’s used to loneliness and failure and pain.
It’s no big deal.
He eyes the wound in the mirror as he removes the undershirt, which has been plastered against his side by blood. He knows that the sight of blood can be distressing to some, but he also knows that it tends to look like more than it is. When he throws the blood shirt on the floor, he cranes his neck to get a better look at the wound itself.
It’s long, but it’s mostly shallow. It runs mostly superficially across his stomach, but there’s a deeper part of the puncture far to the side. There is a chunk of skin missing, but it doesn’t seem to have penetrated the lower layers of the skin and it certainly hasn’t hit anything vital. It just needs to be cleaned and treated with a few quick stitches, and Five will be fine. It’ll be sore tomorrow, but it’s still a minor wound.
He’s definitely dealt with worse.
With a sigh, he knows there’s no choice but to deal with it. These things don’t magically heal themselves, and it’s not like he needs to go tell the others that he needs someone to hold his hand for a minor wound. Getting down to business, Five breaks out his first aid kit -- they all have them, to be fair, that’s not just him being weird -- and he unscrews the rubbing alcohol before angling his torso back slightly. The first dribble of alcohol down his torn flesh stings. He pours more -- faster, harder -- and the pain spikes bad enough to make his vision go white at the edges. He blinks it away while his ears are still ringing and pours a little more. Five’s not a sadist, and he’s not some extremist who believes that pain is inherently good for you. He is merely a pragmatist. Pain in his line of work is unavoidable. If you’re going to go through the bother of ripping your flesh open, then you’re going to have to endure a great deal of pain putting it back together.
The only logical way to avoid this progression of events is to avoid injury. That’s easier said than done in his line of work. Therefore, there’s really nothing to be done for it except grit his teeth and get through tit.
When he is satisfied that the wound has been sufficiently sanitized, Five puts the half empty bottle of alcohol aside and reaches for the needle and thread. Most first aid kits have gauze and band aids, but that sort of thing is woefully insufficient for the needs of the Umbrella Academy. Mom has a full medical suite in downstairs, and they have each been equipped with the supplies needed for some pretty extreme triage. It’s more than enough, then, to handle a minor wound like this.
Still, Five thinks as he wrinkles his nose, stitching up yourself has never been an easy task. The angle, the fine motor control -- it’s generally a mess. Five’s not the squeamish sort -- it’s always been a luxury he can’t afford -- but he has to admit, he hates this bit. There’s no particular significance to the process. It’s just painful and difficult to do. Sure, any moron can stab themselves with a needle, but it takes effort to inflict that kind of pain with neat results.
And Five does prefer neat results. People are stupid about scare, they think that jagged ones look cool, but to Five’s mind, they look messy. Slipshod.
Five, after all, is a professional.
Therefore, he hates the way his fingers are shaking as he makes the first stitch. He has to blanch as the needle pokes through the tender flesh, and dragging it all the way through to the other side of the wound almost makes him keen. He has tears in his eyes as he draws the first stitch closed.
Breathing through his nose, he wills his shaky fingers to calm a little bit as he approaches the second stitch.
This one, however, is worse than the first. It steals his breath, and for a moment he thinks he might pass out. He closes his eyes and lets it pass, keeping his eyes closed for several moments more as he tries to regain his composure.
When he opens his eyes, he’s surprised to see that he’s not alone.
Standing in the doorway, looking horrified and angry, is Allison.
Five presses his lips together in a thin line and curses himself for not closing the door. He’s spent too much time on his own; he’s still not good at remembering that other people actually exist in inconvenient ways. He’s managed to stop peeing in corners, but that’s really about the only advancement he’s made in regards to normal human self awareness.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asks, sounding abjectly incredulous.
Five raises his eyebrows, the bloody needle still in his hand while the raw wound leaks blood down his front. Her timing is inconvenient to say the least, and her question is ridiculous. “What are you doing?” he asks instead.
She lets out a short laugh, as if his question is almost hard for her to take seriously. “I’m checking on you -- you left kind of quickly after training and I got worried,” she says. “And with good reason. What the hell, Five?”
Five shrugs and regrets it slightly. His injured side hurts like a son of a bitch. “Well, we were done, weren’t we?”
She all but rolls her eyes. “With training, sure.”
It’s clearly a half finished thought. If she’s waiting for him to guess her meaning, he’s far too tired for that. He’s in pain, and he is still bleeding. “So?”
This time, she readily scoffs. “So,” she says emphatically. “Why didn’t you tell us you were hurt?”
It is almost odd to him that she is genuinely offended that he’s handling this perfectly fine on his own. Like she wants it to be a big deal. “This?” he asks, gesturing to the wound. “It’s not a big deal.”
If it weren’t still bleeding, he’d have a more compelling case, but still.
She purses her lips, crossing her arms over her chest. “Hate to break it to you, Five, but this looks kind of like a big deal,” she says and she nods to the room around him.
He glances around and he must concede, it is a bit of a macabre tableau. The bloody scraps of his clothing have been strewn everywhere, leaving smears of blood on the floor and bed. The first aid kit is sprawled across his desk, the pieces left a mess in his haste to stop the bleeding. And he is still holding that damn needle while his side stubbornly leaks fresh rivulets of blood.
Still, he goes for nonchalance. “It looks worse than it is.”
His utter nonchalance, though well executed, only seems to heighten the scope of her incredulity. “Five, you were clearly stabbed.”
“Not stabbed,” he corrects her. He looks down, making a point to start up his stitching again. The blood loss is not significant and this wound is minor, but still. He’s starting to get light headed, so he needs to deal with this. He finishes the stitch with a muffled, involuntary grunt of pain. “Cut.”
She is unimpressed in the way that only Allison can be in the face of a bloody wound. “A knife when through your flesh,” she says shortly. “Kind of the same thing.”
He completes another stitch, but it’s harder to keep the pain in check now. He forcibly grimaces. “Stabbed has more intentionality,” he says. “This was an accident; incidental contact from sparring.”
“Seriously?” she asks. “You’re parsing semantics while you bleed to death.”
“I’m not bleeding to death,” he says, seething a little now. “It’s a minor injury.”
“No, Five,” she says, more insistent now. “It’s not minor at all.”
“Sure it is,” he says, and he gestures to it as if the red, leaky mess somehow justifies his position. “It’s a flesh wound.”
Allison is many things, but she is not a woman who takes shit. Typically, Five likes that about her. It is, however, a bit inconvenient at the moment. “That’s why you’re stitching yourself up without any painkiller?”
Five forces himself through another stitch, his eyes burning as he completes it and his throat threatens to seize. “Yeah, well,” he says, voice sounding slightly strained. “Painkillers dull the senses. Makes stitching a whole lot harder.”
Her face screws up, almost like she’s appalled now. “Do you even hear yourself?”
He’s tired and he’s bleeding and he takes less shit than Allison. He looks up and stares her down. “Of course I do,” he snaps, because he has no more patience for sentiment at the moment. Survival, he’s learned, is ruthless. He has trained himself to adapt accordingly. “This is just how it’s done, Allison.”
Allison, though, she isn’t a pushover like the others. She can’t be outwitted like Luther, and she can’t be talked down like Diego. She can’t be cajoled like Klaus or ignored like Ben. She can’t even be placated like Vanya.
No, not Allison.
She rises to his defiance, and calls the bluff he doesn’t realize he’s making. “In the apocalypse, maybe. With the Commission, sure,” she says with a keenness Five has failed to anticipate at all. “But you’re not in either of those places, in case you’ve failed to notice.”
It’s his turn to scoff. “You’re being overly sentimental,” he says plaintively. “I’ve got this totally under control, so if you don’t mind--”
He looks down, ready to make another stitch. He hesitates, though, when his vision blurs and his ears start ringing again. He has to plant his feet firmly on the ground to ride out the wave of dizziness, and when his mind clears, Allison has crossed closer to him, her hand on top of his.
“But I do mind,” she says, and she’s looking at him intently now. “Because you’ve got this under control, but we’ve got you. We trust you, Five, so it’s about time you trusted us. It has to be mutual or this -- the Umbrella Academy -- it just doesn’t work.”
Five’s still woozy, but he can’t deny that makes sense.
It makes a lot of sense.
All his habits, all his patterns -- are set for a party of one. Five’s used to fighting solo, but he’s got a whole team behind him. A family.
And that? Right there?
Well, that is a big deal.
In fact, it’s the biggest deal ever.
“Huh,” he says dumbly after a long second of contemplation. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought of it like that.”
“Well, it’s time you started,” Allison says, her grip steady on him.
He looks up at her. “You really want to help?” he asks, his fingers loosening on the needle.
“I do,” she says, her grip unyielding. “We all do.”
He hesitates, starting to tremble a little bit now. “This really is minor, Allison.”
She nods, eyes locked on his eyes. “And we want the minor -- and the major,” she says. “We want it all, Five.”
He swallows, throat feeling dry. He blinks his eyes rapidly and tries to keep the whiteness from encroaching any more than it already is. “The Umbrella Academy?”
She doesn’t hesitate; she doesn’t waver. “No, Five,” she says. “The family.”
With that, he lets go of the needle. It slips easily from his grasp as she takes it up. He lets her guide him to the bed, settling him gently down onto his back as she brushes his supplies out of the way. He shudders for a moment, goosebumps breaking out over his exposed skin as she kneels on the ground next to him. Her fingers are steady and sure as she approaches, and he winces as the needle pierces his flesh.
The sensation builds to a pitch and then deadens, and Five drifts away for a moment, before she cuts the needle loose and rests a hand on his shoulder. He lifts his head blearily, and studies the neat line of stitches for a long moment as she gets to her feet once more. He’s studying the stitches, thinking how much better they look compared to his normal work, when she appears at his bedside again. She holds out her hand, and Five dumbly reaches up to her. She drops two pills in his sticky, bloody fingers and nods.
“Swallow those,” she orders.
Five complies, accepting a cup of water she has produced from nowhere to wash them down. When the pills are down, she takes the cup and puts it on the bedside table before throwing a blanket over him and sighing.
“Okay,” she says. “You’re going to rest now.”
Despite the fact that he’s lying there compliantly, he wrinkles his brow. “Why?”
She looks vaguely bemused now. “Because you’re exhausted.”
To his utter surprise, she’s right. Five is exhausted. It’s possible that he’s lost more blood than he realized, but it’s also possible that he’s simply never let himself be taken care of before and he’s forgotten how to assess his own weakness.
In short, it’s possible he’s been tired for weeks, months, years.
She moves quietly to the door and turns out the light. “I’ll check on you in a bit,” she says. “I’d stay, but I don’t want to be creepy.”
He gathers a breath, musters his strength, and looks after her. “Allison?”
She stops, turning around in the doorway. “Yeah?”
“I know this is a minor wound,” he says, the words a little halting. He licks his lips and almost smiles. “But I think maybe this is a big deal after all.”
“Yeah,” Allison agrees, smiling in return. “I think maybe it is, too.”
With that she closes the door and Five closes his eyes and lets himself finally rest.
Disclaimer: I own nothing here.
A/N: A fluffy fic set in a fixed post S1 universe. Fills my minor injury square in hc_bingo. Unbeta’ed.
Summary: Five’s definitely dealt with worse.
-o-
It’s no big deal.
That’s Five’s fallback excuse these days.
No, not an excuse. Five isn’t in the habit of making excuses. It’s simply his honest assessment of most situations. After all, he’s survived an apocalypse. He’s a trained temporal assassin. Living at home with his siblings fighting typical crime really isn’t that big of a deal in comparison.
So the cases are not that big of deal. The trials of learning to live with people again is not that big of deal. Being 13 again is not a big deal. And training is never a big deal.
Even minor training accidents?
Yeah, you guessed it. Not a big deal.
In fact, Five barely notices that he’s been cut until he’s back in his bedroom, stripping from his training clothes after a particularly grueling day of training. They have to engage in full combat training from time to time in order to streamline their fighting styles as a team. This is especially important as the Umbrella Academy develops its tenor, and Five is aware that other members need more support with the basics of hand to hand. It’s not a big deal to spend those extra hours making sure they’re up to the task.
Five’s used to hard. He’s used to strenuous. He’s used to loneliness and failure and pain.
It’s no big deal.
He eyes the wound in the mirror as he removes the undershirt, which has been plastered against his side by blood. He knows that the sight of blood can be distressing to some, but he also knows that it tends to look like more than it is. When he throws the blood shirt on the floor, he cranes his neck to get a better look at the wound itself.
It’s long, but it’s mostly shallow. It runs mostly superficially across his stomach, but there’s a deeper part of the puncture far to the side. There is a chunk of skin missing, but it doesn’t seem to have penetrated the lower layers of the skin and it certainly hasn’t hit anything vital. It just needs to be cleaned and treated with a few quick stitches, and Five will be fine. It’ll be sore tomorrow, but it’s still a minor wound.
He’s definitely dealt with worse.
With a sigh, he knows there’s no choice but to deal with it. These things don’t magically heal themselves, and it’s not like he needs to go tell the others that he needs someone to hold his hand for a minor wound. Getting down to business, Five breaks out his first aid kit -- they all have them, to be fair, that’s not just him being weird -- and he unscrews the rubbing alcohol before angling his torso back slightly. The first dribble of alcohol down his torn flesh stings. He pours more -- faster, harder -- and the pain spikes bad enough to make his vision go white at the edges. He blinks it away while his ears are still ringing and pours a little more. Five’s not a sadist, and he’s not some extremist who believes that pain is inherently good for you. He is merely a pragmatist. Pain in his line of work is unavoidable. If you’re going to go through the bother of ripping your flesh open, then you’re going to have to endure a great deal of pain putting it back together.
The only logical way to avoid this progression of events is to avoid injury. That’s easier said than done in his line of work. Therefore, there’s really nothing to be done for it except grit his teeth and get through tit.
When he is satisfied that the wound has been sufficiently sanitized, Five puts the half empty bottle of alcohol aside and reaches for the needle and thread. Most first aid kits have gauze and band aids, but that sort of thing is woefully insufficient for the needs of the Umbrella Academy. Mom has a full medical suite in downstairs, and they have each been equipped with the supplies needed for some pretty extreme triage. It’s more than enough, then, to handle a minor wound like this.
Still, Five thinks as he wrinkles his nose, stitching up yourself has never been an easy task. The angle, the fine motor control -- it’s generally a mess. Five’s not the squeamish sort -- it’s always been a luxury he can’t afford -- but he has to admit, he hates this bit. There’s no particular significance to the process. It’s just painful and difficult to do. Sure, any moron can stab themselves with a needle, but it takes effort to inflict that kind of pain with neat results.
And Five does prefer neat results. People are stupid about scare, they think that jagged ones look cool, but to Five’s mind, they look messy. Slipshod.
Five, after all, is a professional.
Therefore, he hates the way his fingers are shaking as he makes the first stitch. He has to blanch as the needle pokes through the tender flesh, and dragging it all the way through to the other side of the wound almost makes him keen. He has tears in his eyes as he draws the first stitch closed.
Breathing through his nose, he wills his shaky fingers to calm a little bit as he approaches the second stitch.
This one, however, is worse than the first. It steals his breath, and for a moment he thinks he might pass out. He closes his eyes and lets it pass, keeping his eyes closed for several moments more as he tries to regain his composure.
When he opens his eyes, he’s surprised to see that he’s not alone.
Standing in the doorway, looking horrified and angry, is Allison.
Five presses his lips together in a thin line and curses himself for not closing the door. He’s spent too much time on his own; he’s still not good at remembering that other people actually exist in inconvenient ways. He’s managed to stop peeing in corners, but that’s really about the only advancement he’s made in regards to normal human self awareness.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asks, sounding abjectly incredulous.
Five raises his eyebrows, the bloody needle still in his hand while the raw wound leaks blood down his front. Her timing is inconvenient to say the least, and her question is ridiculous. “What are you doing?” he asks instead.
She lets out a short laugh, as if his question is almost hard for her to take seriously. “I’m checking on you -- you left kind of quickly after training and I got worried,” she says. “And with good reason. What the hell, Five?”
Five shrugs and regrets it slightly. His injured side hurts like a son of a bitch. “Well, we were done, weren’t we?”
She all but rolls her eyes. “With training, sure.”
It’s clearly a half finished thought. If she’s waiting for him to guess her meaning, he’s far too tired for that. He’s in pain, and he is still bleeding. “So?”
This time, she readily scoffs. “So,” she says emphatically. “Why didn’t you tell us you were hurt?”
It is almost odd to him that she is genuinely offended that he’s handling this perfectly fine on his own. Like she wants it to be a big deal. “This?” he asks, gesturing to the wound. “It’s not a big deal.”
If it weren’t still bleeding, he’d have a more compelling case, but still.
She purses her lips, crossing her arms over her chest. “Hate to break it to you, Five, but this looks kind of like a big deal,” she says and she nods to the room around him.
He glances around and he must concede, it is a bit of a macabre tableau. The bloody scraps of his clothing have been strewn everywhere, leaving smears of blood on the floor and bed. The first aid kit is sprawled across his desk, the pieces left a mess in his haste to stop the bleeding. And he is still holding that damn needle while his side stubbornly leaks fresh rivulets of blood.
Still, he goes for nonchalance. “It looks worse than it is.”
His utter nonchalance, though well executed, only seems to heighten the scope of her incredulity. “Five, you were clearly stabbed.”
“Not stabbed,” he corrects her. He looks down, making a point to start up his stitching again. The blood loss is not significant and this wound is minor, but still. He’s starting to get light headed, so he needs to deal with this. He finishes the stitch with a muffled, involuntary grunt of pain. “Cut.”
She is unimpressed in the way that only Allison can be in the face of a bloody wound. “A knife when through your flesh,” she says shortly. “Kind of the same thing.”
He completes another stitch, but it’s harder to keep the pain in check now. He forcibly grimaces. “Stabbed has more intentionality,” he says. “This was an accident; incidental contact from sparring.”
“Seriously?” she asks. “You’re parsing semantics while you bleed to death.”
“I’m not bleeding to death,” he says, seething a little now. “It’s a minor injury.”
“No, Five,” she says, more insistent now. “It’s not minor at all.”
“Sure it is,” he says, and he gestures to it as if the red, leaky mess somehow justifies his position. “It’s a flesh wound.”
Allison is many things, but she is not a woman who takes shit. Typically, Five likes that about her. It is, however, a bit inconvenient at the moment. “That’s why you’re stitching yourself up without any painkiller?”
Five forces himself through another stitch, his eyes burning as he completes it and his throat threatens to seize. “Yeah, well,” he says, voice sounding slightly strained. “Painkillers dull the senses. Makes stitching a whole lot harder.”
Her face screws up, almost like she’s appalled now. “Do you even hear yourself?”
He’s tired and he’s bleeding and he takes less shit than Allison. He looks up and stares her down. “Of course I do,” he snaps, because he has no more patience for sentiment at the moment. Survival, he’s learned, is ruthless. He has trained himself to adapt accordingly. “This is just how it’s done, Allison.”
Allison, though, she isn’t a pushover like the others. She can’t be outwitted like Luther, and she can’t be talked down like Diego. She can’t be cajoled like Klaus or ignored like Ben. She can’t even be placated like Vanya.
No, not Allison.
She rises to his defiance, and calls the bluff he doesn’t realize he’s making. “In the apocalypse, maybe. With the Commission, sure,” she says with a keenness Five has failed to anticipate at all. “But you’re not in either of those places, in case you’ve failed to notice.”
It’s his turn to scoff. “You’re being overly sentimental,” he says plaintively. “I’ve got this totally under control, so if you don’t mind--”
He looks down, ready to make another stitch. He hesitates, though, when his vision blurs and his ears start ringing again. He has to plant his feet firmly on the ground to ride out the wave of dizziness, and when his mind clears, Allison has crossed closer to him, her hand on top of his.
“But I do mind,” she says, and she’s looking at him intently now. “Because you’ve got this under control, but we’ve got you. We trust you, Five, so it’s about time you trusted us. It has to be mutual or this -- the Umbrella Academy -- it just doesn’t work.”
Five’s still woozy, but he can’t deny that makes sense.
It makes a lot of sense.
All his habits, all his patterns -- are set for a party of one. Five’s used to fighting solo, but he’s got a whole team behind him. A family.
And that? Right there?
Well, that is a big deal.
In fact, it’s the biggest deal ever.
“Huh,” he says dumbly after a long second of contemplation. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought of it like that.”
“Well, it’s time you started,” Allison says, her grip steady on him.
He looks up at her. “You really want to help?” he asks, his fingers loosening on the needle.
“I do,” she says, her grip unyielding. “We all do.”
He hesitates, starting to tremble a little bit now. “This really is minor, Allison.”
She nods, eyes locked on his eyes. “And we want the minor -- and the major,” she says. “We want it all, Five.”
He swallows, throat feeling dry. He blinks his eyes rapidly and tries to keep the whiteness from encroaching any more than it already is. “The Umbrella Academy?”
She doesn’t hesitate; she doesn’t waver. “No, Five,” she says. “The family.”
With that, he lets go of the needle. It slips easily from his grasp as she takes it up. He lets her guide him to the bed, settling him gently down onto his back as she brushes his supplies out of the way. He shudders for a moment, goosebumps breaking out over his exposed skin as she kneels on the ground next to him. Her fingers are steady and sure as she approaches, and he winces as the needle pierces his flesh.
The sensation builds to a pitch and then deadens, and Five drifts away for a moment, before she cuts the needle loose and rests a hand on his shoulder. He lifts his head blearily, and studies the neat line of stitches for a long moment as she gets to her feet once more. He’s studying the stitches, thinking how much better they look compared to his normal work, when she appears at his bedside again. She holds out her hand, and Five dumbly reaches up to her. She drops two pills in his sticky, bloody fingers and nods.
“Swallow those,” she orders.
Five complies, accepting a cup of water she has produced from nowhere to wash them down. When the pills are down, she takes the cup and puts it on the bedside table before throwing a blanket over him and sighing.
“Okay,” she says. “You’re going to rest now.”
Despite the fact that he’s lying there compliantly, he wrinkles his brow. “Why?”
She looks vaguely bemused now. “Because you’re exhausted.”
To his utter surprise, she’s right. Five is exhausted. It’s possible that he’s lost more blood than he realized, but it’s also possible that he’s simply never let himself be taken care of before and he’s forgotten how to assess his own weakness.
In short, it’s possible he’s been tired for weeks, months, years.
She moves quietly to the door and turns out the light. “I’ll check on you in a bit,” she says. “I’d stay, but I don’t want to be creepy.”
He gathers a breath, musters his strength, and looks after her. “Allison?”
She stops, turning around in the doorway. “Yeah?”
“I know this is a minor wound,” he says, the words a little halting. He licks his lips and almost smiles. “But I think maybe this is a big deal after all.”
“Yeah,” Allison agrees, smiling in return. “I think maybe it is, too.”
With that she closes the door and Five closes his eyes and lets himself finally rest.