Umbrella Academy fic: Hunger Pains (4/4)
Dec. 23rd, 2019 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
faye_dartmouthPART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
-o-
It’s probably telling that their father always thought to have a medical ward.
It’s more telling that he never built it with a waiting room in mind.
As children, if one of them were injured, they retreated back to their rooms and passed notes to each other. She used to sneak into Luther’s room, and they’d whisper to one another until their father’s heavy footsteps could be heard on the stairs. Five had been especially useful then, popping in and out of rooms behind closed doors, passing messages as requested.
Even then, they had never liked being alone.
Congregating together now, gathering chairs from nearby rooms to line the hallway, she thinks it’s ironic that separating had been their act of rebellion. If they’d wanted to hurt their father, she thinks they hurt themselves more in the process.
Survival is a strange thing, sometimes. So strange that you don’t even know what it is. You don’t know what you’ve sacrificed for it until it’s already gone.
The silence is heavy between them. It can’t last. Luther, big and strong that he is, breaks first. “So,” he says, voice almost wobbling in the oppressive quiet. No one looks at him; his eyes are locked somewhere on the floor in front of his feet. “Who saw it happen?”
At this, they do look up. Compulsory, one by one. Diego is first. He shrugs, and if it’s an effort to appear diffident, it falls expectedly short. “I just saw us, kick ass,” he says. “Textbook. All of it.”
His confidence sounds good, but it’s not reflected in the emptiness of his expression. Allison notices, but she thinks she’s probably the only one who’s paying any attention right now.
Klaus blows out a breath, long and sloppy. “Shit, I don’t even know, it happened so fast,” he says. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been that sober during a fight. Or, you know, even bothering with the fight at all.”
It’s a non-explanation that says what it needs to say. Klaus didn’t see anything.
Ben’s form is feeble, barely held together by Klaus’ divided energies.
Vanya is perched on the edge of her chair, her knuckles white from gripping it so hard. She’s as highly strung as a violin string, and the ripples in the air are not merely hyperbole. Allison suspects her sister is grappling for control on every level right now. “I don’t even know,” Vanya admits, and her voice sounds hoarse. “It was a rush, honestly. I -- don’t even remember all of it. I think I should, but I just don’t.”
Luther’s mouth twists, and Allison can see that he wants to be annoyed. He wants to play the role their dad would have played, where he would have berated them and demanded better answers. But Luther is not their father. His lips flatten out in exhortation instead. “Someone had to see something. There were six other people there in the room when Five went down.”
Luther’s not his father, but he’s smart enough to know what matters. This isn’t idle conversation. If they are going to be functional as a team, they have to be able to review matters. When something goes wrong, they have to know why or they can never make it better. That’s teamwork; that’s family.
It’s not Luther’s fault that he has no idea what he’s actually asking.
“Little bastard is wily -- and small,” Klaus reflect, shaking his head with a small chuckle. “In and out all the time. He’s there and then he’s not. I just don’t know.”
“Klaus is right,” Diego says, tipping his head in his brother’s direction. “I saw him go in and out, all over the place. It was just like old times.”
Vanya nods, even if the motion is a bit halting. She seems to focus herself, brow furrowed intently. “I saw him a few times, too. I mean, he seemed fine. As fine as you can seem in a fight.”
Luther frowns more deeply now. He’s processing this, looking for the missing link. He knows it’s missing but he hasn’t quite grasped just how far back this goes. None of them have realized this isn’t about a fight Five lost today, but one he’s been losing for weeks now. “One of us had to see something,” Luther says, almost imploring now. “I mean, Five’s one of the best fighters here. He’s got way more skill and experience. So what happened?”
He says it like this time he might get a different answer, as if there’s some critical insight that will make this make sense. Their father trained them for success, not failure, and it’s still a concept that they all struggle with, Luther especially. It’s hard for them to understand that you can do everything right and still have it go so wrong. They’re superheroes, but they’re not impervious.
They’re all needy in their own ways; they’re all blind. They’re looking for all the wrong things, even now.
“I just saw him on the ground, man,” Diego says, and his voice is taut now, his expression tense. “I saw him there, and I saw red.”
“I guess I saw the dude tackle him,” Klaus clarifies, face scrunched up thoughtfully. “You know, when he went down. They hit hard.”
Ben’s projection flickers; he’s no longer strong enough to even speak. It’s hard to say if that’s Klaus’ doing or Ben’s choice at this point.
Vanya still looks pained. “I didn’t see anything, I swear,” she says, even though she sounds like it’s an answer she hates. “I have no idea what happened.”
Allison has to look down, and she closes her eyes. It’s not fair the way a choice can play out. How one person can choose something and everyone else has to live with it. She can’t get the bereft on Vanya’s face out of her mind. She wonders if Claire looked that way when Allison first left, when she needed her mommy and her mommy wasn’t there. Collateral damage.
That hurts.
It hurts more to think that the look might be gone now, that Claire’s moved on. A point where it’s not a matter of truth and lies for her anymore, because she can’t remember any of them anyway.
“Allison?”
Allison blinks, her head clearing and her mind focusing acutely back to the moment. Luther has asked the question, but they are all looking at her, expectant.
The truth is a commodity for all of them, raised by a father who used truth sparingly and pointedly. This makes it foundational for them now, a part of the trust that binds them. For its restorative power, it is rarely absolute. If she tells them the truth, all of it, she’ll be taking that chance from Five. He’ll resent it, and next time, he might not survive the consequences.
For this reason, she hesitates. Because she wants to give her siblings they answers they need to make this situation parse, but she can’t take away Five’s fleeting chance to find truth on his own terms.
Besides, truth has context.
It’s true, Five’s low blood sugar probably led to his mistake in the fight today.
But it’s also true that Five’s resistance to eating is grounded in something much more complex. It’s about a boy who skipped a few meals just as much as it is an old man who doesn’t quite know how to start living his life in the real world again.
Admitting the whole truth will save the boy, probably. Her siblings will never leave Five alone after this, demanding his presence at every meal, watching him eat every bite until they are wholly and irrevocably satisfied.
It will also alienate that stubborn old man. Five will never take to the interference. It will either break his spirit or break the family. If he surrenders himself, he won’t be Five. If he holds onto his brashness, it’ll force him to leave.
Either choice will have devastating consequences, for Five, for the family, for the Umbrella Academy.
She has to give Five the chance.
One more chance.
In the face of irrefutable evidence, she knows her brother is stubborn but he’s not an idiot. He’s not above reproach; he’s not incapable of change. It simply has to come under duress. It has to come from himself.
At least, Allison has to put her hope in that.
Just like she has to put her hope that her siblings will understand her lie.
And she hopes that Five doesn’t squander it.
“I told you,” she says, the words almost like weights as she forces them hollowly off her tongue. Her mind replays the vivid memory, Five’s faltering, his dazed expression and weak knees before the first blow landed. “I didn’t see anything.”
The fact that they believer her, unflinchingly, does not make things easier. All her years of lies; it’s her defining feature. And her siblings don’t even think to doubt her now.
It’s a sign that she’s earned their respect, that redemption is within her grasp.
Unfortunately, it’s also a sign that she doesn’t deserve it at all.
Resigned, Luther shakes his head, looking small somehow as his shoulder slump. “It’s dangerous, what we do,” he says, as if dredging up all the old explanations, the ones that they’d tried to hold onto for so many years, even after Ben had died. The platitudes had fallen apart for each of them, slowly but surely over the years, until they’d all walked out.
Those rejected platitudes have new life now, now that it’s their choice. Volition is everything; Allison has been counting on that all along. She’s counting on it now, while Five’s lying unconscious on an examination bed and she tells lies to cover up the real reason why.
“I mean, it’s shitty luck,” Diego commiserates, sounding and looking as resigned as Luther. “But that’s why we have to work harder, train better.”
“No kidding,” Klaus says, looking more than somewhat disconcerted. He huffs, a small, self deprecating chuckle. “Of all of us, I thought I’d be the one to screw it up. Not Five. If it can happen to Five, then shit. What hope do any of us have?”
Five, as small as he is, has made a point to seem impenetrable. Maybe that’s part of this. Maybe that’s what makes it so hard for him. The pretense of strength may be the only thing he has to keep himself together. He doesn’t know who he is among them; he left first. Coming back has been hard on all of them, but for Five, who disappeared into another world, another life at 13, it’s got to be that much harder, coming home when you have no idea what home even is.
He left before he realized, like the rest of them in time, that they are more than the caricatures their father painted of them. It’s a strange world, where Luther doesn’t have to be strong and Diego doesn’t have to be accurate. Klaus doesn’t have to be connected, and Ben doesn’t have to be a monster. Vanya doesn’t have to be normal, and Allison doesn’t have to tell lies.
And Five?
Five doesn’t have to be faster and smarter.
Too bad Five would rather die trying than accept a so-called failure like that.
“Well, we just have to remember why we’re doing this,” Vanya says empathically. She musters a smile for Ben, who is just visible enough to smile back. “We’ll just do it better, do it harder. Together.”
The others nod, fully in agreement, but Allison finds her own neck stiff. Her jaw is locked; her throat is tight. She can’t fault them for their sincerity, but they haven’t seen what she sees. Maybe it’s because she’s told so many lies. She has a keener sense of the truth.
It’s too much.
Maybe that’s why Five’s fought it so long. Maybe that’s why he’s denied it so vehemently. The truth is more than unsettling; the truth can be encompassing. It can suffocate you just as much as it can free you.
Suddenly, Allison’s eyes burn and she has to blink hard to keep the tears at bay. Swallowing back the emotion, she clears her throat. “Mom’s running a full workup in there,” she says, eyes skittering over her siblings, not focusing on any of them. “We’re going to need to be ready to wait here. At least for a little bit.”
“But if it’s just a concussion--” Luther starts.
“Mom’s thorough, though,” Diego chimes in.
“And concussions can be scary shit sometimes,” Klaus says, sounding worried again. He looks to Ben, who nods sympathetically.
“Your right,” Vanya says, with a smile for Allison. “We should get changed. Get settled. Be ready for when we can see Five.”
“One of us should stay,” Luther says. “I’ll take the first shift.”
Diego springs to his feet with a wince. “Just give me ten. I’ll be back then.”
Klaus rings his hands as he gets up, Ben following suit. “If I take a few, I might be able to get Ben back. To speaking condition, I mean. I’m so scattered after this, and Ben does not appreciate being reduced to barely corporeal status again.”
Vanya nods at him, but holds her position. “I think I’ll stay,” she says, and she shrugs at Luther. “If you don’t mind.”
“No, sure,” Luther says. “There’s no orders here. We just have to do what’s best for the team.”
Allison’s eyes are burning again, harder than before. Her vision is blurry from it, and she speaks hoarsely as she steps away from her siblings. “I just need a few minutes, too,” she says. “Just a few.”
She is down the hall before anyone can reply, taking the steps two at a time past Diego and far outpacing Klaus. She’s in her room before they get to the top of the stairs, and by the time they make it to the hall, her door is closed and she finally lets herself breathe.
With the breathe comes a sob. She chokes it down, stifling it as best she can. The walls in this old house are thin, and the last thing she wants is attention right now.
No, that’s not it, she tells herself as she wipes away the tears streaking down her cheeks. This isn’t purely selfish. This isn’t just about her. She can’t have them questioning why she’s falling apart. Not her, not when this has to be about Five.
She closes her eyes, gritting her teeth together in a futile attempt to control her emotions. This isn’t just about Five, though. She’s using Five, just like Five is using food. Five’s avoiding food just like Allison has avoided her family situation. Sure, she’s done all the right steps. She’s gone through the motions, done her follow up, but so has Five. He eats when necessary; he eats under duress. But it’s not the physical act that’s a problem for either of them. Five knows he needs food just like Allison knows she needs her family. But they’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Their follow through is suspect if only because they haven’t faced the truth about the relationship.
Five’s relationship with food reflects a weakness he has.
Allison’s relationship with her daughter reflects the exact same weakness. Even when she gets custody back, it’s going to take more than that to repair her relationship with her daughter. Forcing food down Five’s food might keep him from passing out on the job, but it won’t address any of the issues that got him here.
Exhaling shakily, she steps away from the door. She steps cautiously to the bed, letting herself half collapse onto the frilled bedspread. She takes a few moments to breathe, doing her best to get her emotions back under some semblance of control.
That’s the thing about control, though. It is, perhaps, the biggest lie of all.
It is that perspective and that perspective alone that makes this lie different. This lie is not one of convenience. It’s not one of self preservation. This lie is a safety line, one last opportunity for Five to tell the truth himself.
Because that’s what this is, in the end. She understands it from experience. Five scrawls his equations all over the walls, hashing out all the variables Allison can’t imagine. But he’s solving the wrong equation. All the math, all the logic, all the variables, and the answer doesn’t mean anything because Five’s trying to answer the wrong question. He’s so busy trying to fix the world that he’s forgotten to fix himself.
And that’s the variable that matters, the only variable any of them can ever truly control. If Five can’t solve himself, then he sure as hell can’t solve anything else. Five, as smart and capable as he is, hasn’t grasped that sometimes the relationship that matters most is the relationship you have with yourself.
That was what happened to her, after all. It’s easy to reduce her story. To blame her dad or Luther. It’s easy to put the blame on Patrick or the industry she worked in. But Allison’s inability to deal with herself, her inability to look at herself honestly, hurt her more than anything else. Allison knows that now; she’s learned it the hardest way possible.
Five hasn’t.
She hopes against hope that he doesn’t kill himself before he has that chance.
That’s why she’ll tell this lie. Why she’ll defend it, hold to it, commit herself to it wholly. Because her own second chance has been hard won, but she has to believe it’s within her reach, that she can be -- and will be -- restored to her daughter.
Just like Five can be restored to the real world.
She has to believe that’s possible.
It’s the only hope she has for herself, too.
Allison wipes her cheeks again, but this time the tears have stopped. She wipes her fingers on the sheets, sniffling quietly as she gets out her phone. There are no new messages, not from Patrick, her agent or her lawyer, but it doesn’t much matter. She has to start with the variable she can control.
Hey, Patrick, she types slowly, fingers shaking so bad that it’s hard to hit the letters. Just thinking about you and Claire. Hope things are good. Give Claire a hug for me, if you can. Tell her I love her.
She finishes the text and sends it, waiting for a few minutes while her heart pounds.
Then, as an afterthought, she picks up the phone again.
And Patrick, she writes, fingers steadier this time. I should have said it before, but I’m sorry. For what I did to Claire. For what I did to you. I have to hope there’s a second chance for us, not as partners but as friends. I made a lot of mistakes. I don’t want to make them anymore. We’re all starving for love, and I never understood how I tried to pick and choose my moments until it nearly ruined us all. I can’t change the past, I know that. But I’m trying, Patrick. I’m trying to change the future. For me, for you, for Claire. For all of us.
She puts the phone down, her eyes finally dry. She doesn’t wait for a reply; she doesn’t need to. This isn’t a ploy; this isn’t a strategy. This is just the right thing to do.
With that, she opens the door, steps back out into the hall, and makes her way back to Five.
-o-
Somehow, she’s the last one there.
And somehow, she’s still just in time.
By the time she gets back, Diego has changed and Klaus has gotten himself a drink. Ben is back to a near-corporeal state, and Vanya and Luther are standing anxiously at the open door to the exam room. When she finally comes up to the rear of the group, Luther turns back. He’s solemn and sober. He’s mostly just nervous.
“Mom says he’s going to be okay,” he reports. “Just a concussion. A pretty bad one, but there are no signs of complications.”
Vanya’s smile is watery, but she adds her outlook anyway. “He’s been in and out of consciousness. Mom says we can come in, as long as we’re calm.”
The others do not need any further invitation. Allison hesitates just long enough for the others to file past her. She’s the last one in the crowded room.
In truth, it’s not an unfamiliar tableau. Injuries had always been a part of their lives, even in the intense training sessions their father had put together. For as much experience as Mom had as a mother, she had just as much as a nurse. She kept her hands folded primly while they filed around Five’s bedside.
“I will allow all of you in here for a few minutes,” she says. “Then, you will have to take turns. Your brother was hurt quite badly, and he needs to rest. I will be right in the next room if you need anything.”
She pauses, putting her hand on Five’s shoulder. It is only then that Allison realizes his eyes are open. He’s awake, even if it’s plainly apparent than he wishes that he wasn’t.
They wait respectively while Mom retreats. They wouldn’t dare question her mothering or her doctoring, but they all know she’s not one of them. Not because she’s not their mom. Not because she’s a robot. But because they are the Umbrella Academy, the seven of them. No more, no less. It will define them always, for better or for worse. It’s a bond their father forged but never understood. It’s one he tried to mend but never could control.
Ironically, as the others crowd closer to the bed, it’s Five who speaks first. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I screwed up.”
In Five’s mind, he probably intends this as a sincere confession of failure.
To the others, though, it comes across as self deprecating and they all scramble to compensate. It’s not hard to see why. Five, for all that he boasts of being the old, looks like a 13 year old kid on the best of days. Today, on what is clearly one of his worst days, he’s bruised, battered, pale and weak, hooked up to an IV and laid out on an examination table with his too-thin limbs exposed.
There’s no way any of them are going to play the blame game with him now.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Luther assures him.
“Shit happens, right?” Diego says.
“Should we go over just how many times I’ve managed to screw things up in the field?” Klaus adds lightly.
Ben nods his head, edging closer to the bed. “We’ve all been there. And then some.”
Vanya, who looks close to tears again, even as she smiles, takes his hand and squeezes it. “We just care that you’re okay.”
Five appears uncertain about their comfort. It’s clear that he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He stiffens a little under Vanya’s touch and shakes his head, though he doesn’t quite have it in him to pull away. “It was a mistake, a series of mistakes that left me compromised in the field,” he reiterates, a little more firmly this time. “My powers failed, and I was a liability instead of an asset. I screwed up.”
“Five,” Vanya says, squeezing his hand again. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“Seriously, dude, it’s a fight,” Diego says. “It’s unpredictable. You can’t come out of every fight unscatched.”
“And my powers fail me all the time,” Klaus says. “Just ask Ben.”
Ben nods. “It’s true. I spent most of the day unable to speak thanks to Klaus.”
Luther nods, looking fortified at the very sight of Five being awake and coherent. “It was an accident,” he says. “We know that you’d never do anything to intentionally compromise the team. We know that, Five. Without question.”
It’s subtle, but Allison sees Five shift uncomfortably. There’s a faint blush on his cheeks that might be easy to mistake for emotion. Allison recognizes it as embarrassment.
As if confirming her suspicions, Five looks up again, eyes meeting Allison’s. The red in his cheeks deepens.
Only then does Allison find her voice for the best version of the truth she has left.
“Come on,” she says to her siblings, even as her eyes stay locked on Five. “You heard what Mom says, Five needs rest.”
There’s an instinctive protest among them, but Allison has been silent long enough. She turns to her siblings now, her smile sure. “You guys go, get changed, clean up,” she says. “Come back when you’re done. Eat something.”
Five visibly flinches at the reference, but Allison doesn’t falter.
“I’ll stay here for a bit,” she says, and she poses it like it’s an offer, but she’s the one making the plans now. She won’t have to rumor them into cooperation; they trust her. And this time, Allison trusts herself. “I’ll make sure that Five’s ready for visitors again when you get back.”
They think it’s a casual offer, a sisterly one. It’s not so much that it’s not, but it’s more than that. How much more, they won’t know. They don’t need to know.
“Okay,” Luther says. “That’s a good plan.”
“I could go for some food,” Diego admits.
“Ooh, can we order in?” Klaus asks, already on the way out. “Chinese?”
“Indian,” Ben counters.
Vanya loiters longest. “I’m glad you’re okay, Five,” she says before finally letting go of his hand.
“He will be,” Allison promises, a long look at Five, who averts his gaze as Vanya leaves, too. “He will be.”
-o-
This time, one on one with Allison, Five doesn’t have the courage to speak first.
That’s all right.
Allison’s got more than enough courage. In fact, she doesn’t so much think of it as courage as the simple knowledge of what she has to do. She’s followed the difficult steps to get Claire back, starting with therapy and ending with an outright apology to Patrick about everything. For Five, the process is just as straightforward. That’s not to say it’s easy, but nothing important ever is.
“You didn’t tell them the truth,” she says, waiting mere seconds until the room has cleared. She holds her ground firmly at his bedside, and she refuses to look away from him. “You lied to them.”
“I didn’t,” he says, but his voice can’t quite muster confidence. His gaze flickers up but he can’t quite hold her gaze. “I simply omitted several key pieces of the truth.”
“That’s called a lie,” she tells him flatly.
He bristles, and when he looks at her now, he’s defensive. “So did you,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell them?”
“Tell them what exactly?” she asks, feigning innocence.
His jaw twitches. That red in his cheek darkens even more. “About why my powers failed. Why I passed out before that stupid oaf ever had a chance to hit me.”
“Oh,” Allison says, milking it now for effect. “You mean how you starved yourself to prove the point that you weren’t starving yourself, which led your blood sugar to drop to dangerous levels in the field, thus causing your powers to falter and putting us all at risk. That’s what you mean.”
He looks perturbed, but he has no grounds by which to deny it. “It was stupid, I know,” he says.
If he’s hoping to defuse her, he’s going to be disappointed. She arches her eyebrows without compromise. “Do you? Because you could have been killed back there. That stupid oaf would have shot you in the chest after bashing your brains in.”
He is flustered now. “I was fine.”
She decides that’s a pointless thing to debate. “Sure, but what about the rest of us?” she asks. “What about Vanya? I mean, did you think about her? Seeing you like that freaked her out. She barely has control over her powers, and you go off acting like your life doesn’t matter. It matters a lot, you asshole. If not to you, then to us.”
This time, he has to blink rapidly while he swallows. “Okay,” he relents. “You’re right.”
The admission is too simple. “I know I’m right. But it’s about damn time you started realizing what it means for you to be wrong. Not about the apocalypse or the future or anything. But about yourself.”
He wets his lips, growing more uncomfortable by the second. “If you think that, then why didn’t you tell them? Why not have them stage an intervention? That’s what you’re going for here, isn’t it?”
She scoffs at him and his attempt at being flippant. “Because it’s not my truth to tell,” she says. “And I’m hoping that after this debacle you’ll finally get why your relationship with food is a problem.”
She’s got him cornered now, as much by her own logic as by his own weakness. He draws a breath, too vexed to find another solution. His impulse is to deny it, but Five’s too smart to try that. Besides, Five’s good with denial, but he’s not that great of a liar. Allison would know.
“It’s possible,” he concedes, slowly and carefully. “That my relationship with food is a bit more problematic than I admitted.”
It’s a start, but Allison doesn’t dare soften her stance. “What relationship with food are you talking about?”
“All of it,” he says. “I mean, it’s always been a thing, back in the apocalypse, when I didn’t have a choice. Food was hard to find. It was feast or famine. It was a painful, terrifying process that simply reminded me of how badly I screwed up. There was no pleasure from it, no joy from scavenging or learning how to cook cockroaches so they didn’t taste like ash. Even after I joined the Commission, I never learned to eat on a schedule. Time didn’t have meaning them. I was in and out; disconnected. It was never a choice, Allison, you have to understand.”
“I do,” she says. “But it is a choice now. And you’re too smart, too good, Five -- to be such an idiot about this.”
He sighs. “It’s harder than I expected, all of it,” he says. “Sleeping in beds at regular intervals. Having real meals to increase my appetite. Eating balanced meals for nutrition’s sake. Even when I do eat, I find that most of it doesn’t agree with me. That first peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich nearly made me throw up when I got back, so finding the right foods has been difficult.”
It’s finally an admission she can work with, finally one with the impetus for change. “Okay,” she says, and this time she does soften. “So let me help.”
Out of instinct, she can see him stiffen. “I don’t need to be babied. I don’t need you to be some kind of mother hen. I’m twice your age, Allison.”
She shrugs. “And what do you think is happening now?” she points out. “You got everyone fawning all over you like you’re a child. So I’m not sure that rejecting help is really the way to get what you want.”
He looks annoyed by that point, but he has no means to deny it. “Point taken.”
Breaking his spirit is only part of this. It’s just the first step in restoring it into a healthier version. She sits down on his bed next to him, and it’s a sign of just how far they’ve come that he doesn’t flinch this time. “Look,” she says. “This doesn’t have to be me treating you like a child. This can be about me, helping you make choices. We can be discreet about it, just you and me.”
He seems to think about that with much less resistance than before. This is progress, Allison thinks, and she tries not to think about the cost of said progress and how close it came to ruining them. Instead, she has to believe that the progress is, inherently, the best for all of them.
There is no more time for caution. She throws away her second thoughts and embracing the kindness of her first approach and the unyielding resolve of her second. “We’ll start with things you like, things that agree with you, and we’ll eat together for accountability’s sake,” she explains. “Little things. We can keep it simple, quiet. No frills, no mess.”
He’s taking it so seriously that you might think Allison is talking about the end of the world and not a simple meal. But Five’s approach at least relates the gravitas of the situation, something they both understand acutely now. It’s a lot for him, weak as he is and laid low as he is, and when he hesitates, she worries that she’s asking for more than he’s ready to give both physically and mentally.
“Five, please,” she says. “I know I’ve been a pain in the ass lately and I get that you’re embarrassed and angry and all of it. But I want to help you. I really do. Let me help you.”
Then, his eyes meet hers once more. There’s something different in his look now. Something quiet, something tentative, something unrepentantly vulnerable. He looks like the child he says he isn’t, but when he speaks, he sounds like the man she knows him to be. “French toast.”
She blinks, taken aback. It’s not the response she’s expecting. As if there’s an expected anything when your brother’s eating disorder affects his ability to bend time and space while on the job as a superhero. Still, she can’t quite process the significance of what he’s saying. “What?”
To say he’s resigned isn’t quite right. Five has not abandoned his defenses; they have not shattered around him. Instead, he is willfully putting them aside. The openness in his expression is one of his own choosing. “I liked your French toast,” he clarifies.
Inherently, she’s skeptical. This has been a long, difficult process. Longer and more difficult than perhaps Five himself can fully conceptualize. From the first time she offered him food to seeing him pass out in the line of duty, Allison’s been on a roller coaster with her oldest and youngest brother. “So that’s why you threw it in the trash?”
He doesn’t quite muster up enough to be sheepish, but he shrugs his shoulders without defense. “I was being a bit of an asshole that day. Not my finest moment, admittedly.”
“Well, neither was today,” she quips, and they falter into silence. It’d be nice if this were easier, less awkward. But easy things are rarely the best things. Sometimes the awkward conversations are the only ones that count. The truth, after all, is inconvenient and uncomfortable. In fact, the truth, as best Allison can tell, feels a lot like this.
Two siblings, stripped down to the barest versions of themselves, unable to hide their faults and their weaknesses when you get right down to it.
Still, Allison can’t ease her anxiety, that pressing sense of inaction wherein she can’t tell if she’s doing anything right or not. She’s waited months to hear back from a judge and for Patrick to give her a second chance. She doesn’t have the emotional capacity to wait months for Five. Quite frankly, Five doesn’t have months before this problem of his gets him killed.
“So…,” he ventures finally, and for the first time he’s uncertain in the conversation.
He’s uncertain; she’s more confident than ever. “So,” she says in agreement. “Fine.”
It’s so easy that Five doesn’t much know what to do with it. “Fine what?”
She shrugs, because it seems rather self evident to her. For all that they’ve gone around and around, full of denials and accusations, Allison’s willingness to help has been an unwavering constant. “I’ll make you French toast,” she clarifies for his benefit, because she’s ready to embrace her truth, to own it. “Any time you want.”
The truth, plain and simple as it is, almost seems like too much for him. There’s a flicker of doubt across his expression, wrinkling his brow as he frowns slightly. His doubt, like her lies, are learned behaviors. They’re both signs of an inability to trust others, an inability to trust oneself. Allison’s had to work her ass off to combat that problem in herself; the least she can do is help Five do the same. “I told you,” she says, coming across just short of smug. “I care about you, even when you’re an asshole.”
He breathes, fingers fiddlings with the IV in the crook of his arm. The color in his cheeks is still lacking, and he’s still weak that she cares to see him, weaker than he cares to be seen. But that’s the great thing about the truth. It’s an equalizer. It puts you both on the same level, even when you’re both at the lowest you can be.
This time, he almost smile, the faintest flicker of expression that you might call hope. “That’s not something I used to,” he says, and she sees him grappling with the emotion before accepting it with a humility that belies his real age. “I think it’s something I’m still going to have to get used to.”
“Just like you’ll have to get used to real meals,” Allison quips now. She shrugs as the tension eases between them. “You’ll get there.” She hesitates, inclines her head. “We both will.”
Because all relationships -- no matter how far gone they seem -- deserve another chance.
-o-
In terms of the concussion, Five recovers quickly. Under Mom’s care, he receives continuous IV treatments, which restore the color to his cheeks and infuse him with the anxious energy that leaves him restless in the bed. The others are keen to coddle him, and Five chafes under their constant attention, but Allison sees that he tolerates it with more grace than normal. For those few days while he’s under observation, he eats small meals when they are provided to him, and you couldn’t say that it looked like he was happy about it, but his conscious choice to allow it is something Allison won’t overlook.
It gets more difficult for both of them when Five is allowed to leave the medical area and resume his daily activities. Five has always had a tendency to do his own thing, and the notion of accountability is one that feels foreign to both him and Allison. She’s true to her word, though. She’s keeps it quiet. She doesn’t make a big deal out of meals, and she makes no indications to the others that Five’s diet is of any particular concern.
To that end, Five keeps his word, too. When she seeks him out at meal time, he puts up no fight. They work off his suggestions, starting with bread, rice and fruit to start. The meals are small, understated affairs, and she adds in more ingredients as Five shows interest. Within a week, they are eating French toast for breakfast, ham and cheese sandwiches at lunch and spaghetti noodles with simple marinara sauce. Five is not very fond of dairy -- it doesn’t agree with him -- and red meats tend to cause him problems, but they soon determine that chicken, fish and lentils are apt sources of protein.
Peanut butter, as it turns out, is still a favorite, and once they switch to gluten free marshmallows and whole wheat bread, it becomes Five’s favorite dessert. He has one in the afternoon, and Allison makes him one at bedtime, too. When he protests, she rolls her eyes. “Are you worried about your waistline? Because last I checked, you have the metabolism of a 13 year old. You might as well enjoy it.”
She tries to get him to cut back on coffee, but compromises with him until he drinks two cups a day and gives up all alcohol.
“Except on rare occasions,” he clarifies.
She doesn’t know what a rare occasion is when you live in a family of superheroes, but Allison consents. He’s eating vegetables now, and he’s developed a taste for pasta. He enjoys Cinnamon Toast Crunch exclusively for breakfast cereal, and he’s partial to Greek yogurt with scant vanilla and honey flavoring. He’s adept in the kitchen, able to follow recipes implicitly, and he bakes a nicer cake than Allison.
Within a month, Allison is no longer making meals for Five. Now, they are making them together. Five picks out new recipes, identifies alterations he wants to make, and they eat together on a daily basis. One day, he invites Vanya to join them. Klaus meanders through another day and Five says he can stay. He plans meals with Luther, Diego and even Ben until Allison thinks that meal time may be the best part of Five’s day.
Allison, still waiting for a call from the judge about the custody arrangement, thinks it may actually be the best part of her day, too.
-o-
Still, it’s been a month.
Five’s come a long, long way in a month. A long way in restoring his relationship with food. For him, it’s almost nonstop progress, unfettered by nothing.
Allison, on the other hand, has made exactly no progress in a month. Patrick hasn’t texted her back, and her lawyer is no longer taking her calls. She’s growing desperate, honestly. She looks into other legal counsel, but they all tell her the same thing.
You have to wait.
You just have to wait.
They say it like it’s simple, so very, very simple. Like she’s not starving herself to death, day after day without hearing her daughter’s voice.
A month, after all, is a very long time.
-o-
After a sleepless night, Allison oversleeps. She’s groggy when she finally wakes, and she feels like shit. She’d like to stay in bed, if she’s honest. But she made a promise.
She has to keep her promises.
If not to Claire, then to Five.
Down the stairs she trudges, hair unkempt and still in her pajamas. No one else is awake yet, and Allison tries not to think about the training schedule and team building exercise to come. It’s going to take all she has to just get through breakfast.
One simple meal.
The thought of it turns her stomach.
She’s contemplating what to make, and she has mostly decided that they’ll keep it simple with toast and peanut butter when she comes into the kitchen. To her surprise, she’s not the first one there. In fact, the place is a mess with pans and bowls everywhere. At the counter, Five is studiously glaring down, a spatula waving with a threatening motion in his hand as he scowls at the skillet that is in front of him on the counter.
He vigorously flips something and there is fresh sizzling. Turning, he produces a plate and marches to the table. The table, Allison realizes belatedly, as been set and prepared. There are place setting and fresh glasses of orange juice alongside two steaming mugs of coffee. He uses the spatula to transfer items to both plates before stepping back with a sigh.
“I’m not sure I did it right, but there you go,” he says.
Allison stares at him, then she stares at the table.
“You’re supposed to eat,” he says, sounding put out. “That’s the whole point of breakfast.”
Confused, she makes her way to the table and looks down. She recognizes the food on the plate, though she can’t quite understand why. “You made French toast?”
He’s back at the skillet with a harrumph that makes him sound older than he looks. “I told you. I like French toast. I figured I should know how to make it myself.”
There’s logic to this, and that’s how he’s presenting it. A logical, sensible choice.
But there’s sentiment to it, too.
Allison picks up her fork and reaches for the syrup. “You made it yourself?”
“You’ve cooked for me a lot over the last month,” he replies. She hears him flip a piece of toast. “I figured I might as well do what I can to return the favor.”
It’s as close as Five is going to get to saying thank you.
Allison pours the syrup over her toast, and takes a bite. She chews; she swallows. “Not bad.”
It’s as close as she’s going to come to saying you’re-welcome.
She eats a few more biters in silence, waiting as Five finishes the next piece and serves it to himself. With that, he sits down across from her. He reaches for the syrup, pours himself a helping, and hesitates. Allison mops up the last of her syrup with her final bite of toast before Five finally puts his fork down.
“French toast,” he says, and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out an envelope. He holds it out. “And this.”
He looks nervous somehow, younger than he has any right to look. It’s an uncertain gesture, though Allison has no idea why.
He gestures at her with it, eyebrows up expectantly.
Allison takes it slowly, almost reluctantly.
“It’s for you,” he says. “Open it.”
She watches him as he watches her, her fingers sliding under the seal. She opens it without looking at it, and she has it unfolded before she finally looks down at scans it. The words are typed and formal, and she has to go back and read it more carefully as she tries to make sense of it.
Her stomach roils, and she blinks her eyes. In shock, she reads the letter again.
And again.
“Five,” she says, almost breathless. Her eyes are locked on the page, unable to tear away. “Is this--?”
Five nods across the table. “From the judge, the official court order,” he confirms what she’s read three times now but can’t bring her brain to process. “It legally restores your custody rights as of today.”
She looks up at him now, all but gaping. “But -- how?”
He shrugs, attempting to look nonchalant. “It was easy enough. I flashed into the judge’s office, moved it up the docket for her.”
“But--”
He rolls his eyes. “I didn’t do anything untoward, don’t worry,” he says. “I wanted this to be right. It’s your relationship with your daughter. I didn’t cut corners. I just put it at the top of the pile. That’s all.”
She looks back down at it, almost unable to believe that it’s real. “But why?”
He affects the most casual demeanor as he bypasses his coffee and takes his orange juice in hand instead. “Because relationships require presence. Sure, you need to choose the give value to the relationship, and you need to exhibit self awareness, but that’s not everything. I spent weeks thinking about food and not eating. It nearly killed me just like spending years alone in the apocalypse nearly drove me insane. I’ve seen how much you’ve put into our relationship, and I know the difference it’s made just by having you be here,” he explains more eloquently than he has a right to sound. “I simply believe that your relationship with Claire deserves the same amount of attention. Convincing the judge of the same was easy enough. Most people, when presented with the facts, are far more reasonable than I am, it seems.”
She stares at him long and hard, watches as he takes a drink and reaches for his fork again. He takes his first bite of French toast when Allison gets up from her chair and stalks around the table. She’s not sure if she’s going to laugh or cry, yell or sob, so when she reaches down and envelopes him in a hug, she’s just as surprised as he is.
Beneath her touch, she feels him tense, but he doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t say anything.
Apparently, Five’s relationship with food is not the only thing to have changed in this past month.
When she does pull away, both of their eyes are wet. Five looks assiduously at his plate, as if he’s never seen a breakfast he’s more interested in. “You should go call Patrick. Tell him the news.”
Allison shakes her head, looking at the pile of French toast on the table between them. “But breakfast--”
Five smiles. “I think I can eat on my own this time.”
Because relationships start with a presence.
But they endure with trust.
-o-
Back up in her room, the door is locked and her bed is unmade. She’s wide awake now, her fingers trembling as she picks up her phone and brings up Patrick’s number.
All her months of waiting.
It’s a simple as sitting down and making the call.
It’s funny, as long as she’s waited, and she’s afraid. She wonders if this is what it was like for Five, to be surrounded by food but not eat it. It’s not that he didn’t want to, it’s that it’d been so long that he’d literally forgotten how. Allison had spent a month teaching him the basics.
Now, it seems, it’s her turn.
She pulls up Patrick’s number, ignores the time difference, and places the call. It takes a second to connect, and starts to ring a few times. Then, across the country, Patrick groggily answers. “Hello?”
“Patrick, hi,” she says, swallowing back her nerves as her stomach churns anxiously. “I know it’s early--”
“No, it’s okay,” he says, and she hears him rustling as if getting out of bed. “I was waiting for you to call, actually. I got a notice from my lawyer yesterday. The paperwork came through?”
Allison has to bite her lip, her excitement is building. “Yeah,” she says. “I just got notice, too.”
“That’s great,” he says, and he sounds like he actually means it. “I know Claire will be so happy to hear it. I thought I’d have my lawyer give yours a call later today, starting ironing out some of the details.”
Allison blinks, the tears in her eyes both happy and terrified. The most basic version of hope she’s ever known. “Sure, yeah,” she says, fiddling with her hair. She takes a breath. “Or, you know. We could talk about it. You and me.”
There’s a hesitation on the line, and Allison worries for a moment that she’s gone too far. But when Patrick speaks, he sounds pleasantly surprised. “Yeah, I’d like that,” he says slowly. “I think I’d like that a lot.”
Excitement building, Allison lets out a nervous laugh as a smile breaks wide across her face. “Great, great,” she says. “But do you think -- um. I mean. Is it possible--”
She’s faltering. She’s scared. Relationships require presence, and she’s starting from square one with Patrick and with Claire. Running in the opposite direction would be easier. She also thinks it’ll probably kill her. She has to make a choice. She’s going to make her choice.
“Do you think I could talk to her?” she blurts, the words coming out with a rush of emotion that flushes her cheeks red. “This morning. Right now.”
This time, Patrick doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I think so,” he says. “You’ve earned it. Just a sec.”
The tears are burning now as the joy explodes in her chest with a palpable sensation. She’s lightheaded with giddiness, her heart thudding in anticipation.
On the line, she hears Patrick calling. “Jess -- hey,” his voice echoes distantly. “Can you bring Claire here?”
Her mind is reeling; her skin feels like it’s electric. By the time the phone rustles again, it feels like there are fireworks going off in her head and her vision has tunneled precariously. She’s going to throw up if she’s not careful, but she swallow it back when another voice comes over the line.
“Hello?”
It’s a small voice, but not as small as she remembers. It’s young and innocent, and she can see Claire in her head, her curly hair and a little nightgown with slipper socks on her feet. She knows Claire must be a lot bigger than the last time she saw her daughter, but she can still recognize her voice.
She will always recognize her voice.
“Hey, baby,” she says, fighting back the tears now. “It’s me. It’s Mommy.”
“Mommy?” Claire asks, and the word is laden with disbelief.
“Yeah,” Allison confirms.
“Is it really you?” Claire asks. “It’s been so long.”
“I know it has, and I’m sorry for that,” Allison says. She blinks rapidly as a few tears escape down her cheeks. “It’s been longer than I wanted.”
“I missed you,” Claire tells her.
It’s almost too much. Allison feels like her heart is going to burst right through her chest. “I’ve missed you, too, baby. I’ve missed you, too.”
The line is almost vibrating with electricity now. Allison can feel it tingling up and down her spine. “Are things going to be better now?”
It’s such a simple question, such an innocent question. Allison has to close her eyes, unable to do anything about the fresh tears that slid down her cheeks. There was a time when she would have replied with a rumor, an empty promise she had every hope but no means of keeping. The truth is not quite as comforting, but it’s much more palpable. It’s the difference between a small snack and a full meal
“I can’t say for sure, baby, but I can promise you I’ll try. You have my word, Claire,” Allison says, eyes open now. Open and ready. She swallows again as she smiles. “I’m going to try.”
-o-
The thing with eating is that once you start, you just want more. Relationships, as it turns out, function a lot the same way. You don’t realize how much you need them until you get a little bit. Then, that little bit is never enough. So you’ll sit down for every meal, you’ll spend hours in the kitchen, you’ll deal with the messy dishes. Because the relationship is worth it.
No, the relationship is everything. It’s what keeps you alive.
Allison knows -- she really does know -- that rebuilding her relationship with her daughter won’t be easy. But she has to think, if Five can rebuild his own strained relationship with food, the one that nearly got him killed, then anything is possible.
You can do it the easy way. You can do it the hard way.
You can even do it the Hargreeves way.
They seem to get there in the end, and that’s what counts.
That’s what really counts.
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
-o-
It’s probably telling that their father always thought to have a medical ward.
It’s more telling that he never built it with a waiting room in mind.
As children, if one of them were injured, they retreated back to their rooms and passed notes to each other. She used to sneak into Luther’s room, and they’d whisper to one another until their father’s heavy footsteps could be heard on the stairs. Five had been especially useful then, popping in and out of rooms behind closed doors, passing messages as requested.
Even then, they had never liked being alone.
Congregating together now, gathering chairs from nearby rooms to line the hallway, she thinks it’s ironic that separating had been their act of rebellion. If they’d wanted to hurt their father, she thinks they hurt themselves more in the process.
Survival is a strange thing, sometimes. So strange that you don’t even know what it is. You don’t know what you’ve sacrificed for it until it’s already gone.
The silence is heavy between them. It can’t last. Luther, big and strong that he is, breaks first. “So,” he says, voice almost wobbling in the oppressive quiet. No one looks at him; his eyes are locked somewhere on the floor in front of his feet. “Who saw it happen?”
At this, they do look up. Compulsory, one by one. Diego is first. He shrugs, and if it’s an effort to appear diffident, it falls expectedly short. “I just saw us, kick ass,” he says. “Textbook. All of it.”
His confidence sounds good, but it’s not reflected in the emptiness of his expression. Allison notices, but she thinks she’s probably the only one who’s paying any attention right now.
Klaus blows out a breath, long and sloppy. “Shit, I don’t even know, it happened so fast,” he says. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been that sober during a fight. Or, you know, even bothering with the fight at all.”
It’s a non-explanation that says what it needs to say. Klaus didn’t see anything.
Ben’s form is feeble, barely held together by Klaus’ divided energies.
Vanya is perched on the edge of her chair, her knuckles white from gripping it so hard. She’s as highly strung as a violin string, and the ripples in the air are not merely hyperbole. Allison suspects her sister is grappling for control on every level right now. “I don’t even know,” Vanya admits, and her voice sounds hoarse. “It was a rush, honestly. I -- don’t even remember all of it. I think I should, but I just don’t.”
Luther’s mouth twists, and Allison can see that he wants to be annoyed. He wants to play the role their dad would have played, where he would have berated them and demanded better answers. But Luther is not their father. His lips flatten out in exhortation instead. “Someone had to see something. There were six other people there in the room when Five went down.”
Luther’s not his father, but he’s smart enough to know what matters. This isn’t idle conversation. If they are going to be functional as a team, they have to be able to review matters. When something goes wrong, they have to know why or they can never make it better. That’s teamwork; that’s family.
It’s not Luther’s fault that he has no idea what he’s actually asking.
“Little bastard is wily -- and small,” Klaus reflect, shaking his head with a small chuckle. “In and out all the time. He’s there and then he’s not. I just don’t know.”
“Klaus is right,” Diego says, tipping his head in his brother’s direction. “I saw him go in and out, all over the place. It was just like old times.”
Vanya nods, even if the motion is a bit halting. She seems to focus herself, brow furrowed intently. “I saw him a few times, too. I mean, he seemed fine. As fine as you can seem in a fight.”
Luther frowns more deeply now. He’s processing this, looking for the missing link. He knows it’s missing but he hasn’t quite grasped just how far back this goes. None of them have realized this isn’t about a fight Five lost today, but one he’s been losing for weeks now. “One of us had to see something,” Luther says, almost imploring now. “I mean, Five’s one of the best fighters here. He’s got way more skill and experience. So what happened?”
He says it like this time he might get a different answer, as if there’s some critical insight that will make this make sense. Their father trained them for success, not failure, and it’s still a concept that they all struggle with, Luther especially. It’s hard for them to understand that you can do everything right and still have it go so wrong. They’re superheroes, but they’re not impervious.
They’re all needy in their own ways; they’re all blind. They’re looking for all the wrong things, even now.
“I just saw him on the ground, man,” Diego says, and his voice is taut now, his expression tense. “I saw him there, and I saw red.”
“I guess I saw the dude tackle him,” Klaus clarifies, face scrunched up thoughtfully. “You know, when he went down. They hit hard.”
Ben’s projection flickers; he’s no longer strong enough to even speak. It’s hard to say if that’s Klaus’ doing or Ben’s choice at this point.
Vanya still looks pained. “I didn’t see anything, I swear,” she says, even though she sounds like it’s an answer she hates. “I have no idea what happened.”
Allison has to look down, and she closes her eyes. It’s not fair the way a choice can play out. How one person can choose something and everyone else has to live with it. She can’t get the bereft on Vanya’s face out of her mind. She wonders if Claire looked that way when Allison first left, when she needed her mommy and her mommy wasn’t there. Collateral damage.
That hurts.
It hurts more to think that the look might be gone now, that Claire’s moved on. A point where it’s not a matter of truth and lies for her anymore, because she can’t remember any of them anyway.
“Allison?”
Allison blinks, her head clearing and her mind focusing acutely back to the moment. Luther has asked the question, but they are all looking at her, expectant.
The truth is a commodity for all of them, raised by a father who used truth sparingly and pointedly. This makes it foundational for them now, a part of the trust that binds them. For its restorative power, it is rarely absolute. If she tells them the truth, all of it, she’ll be taking that chance from Five. He’ll resent it, and next time, he might not survive the consequences.
For this reason, she hesitates. Because she wants to give her siblings they answers they need to make this situation parse, but she can’t take away Five’s fleeting chance to find truth on his own terms.
Besides, truth has context.
It’s true, Five’s low blood sugar probably led to his mistake in the fight today.
But it’s also true that Five’s resistance to eating is grounded in something much more complex. It’s about a boy who skipped a few meals just as much as it is an old man who doesn’t quite know how to start living his life in the real world again.
Admitting the whole truth will save the boy, probably. Her siblings will never leave Five alone after this, demanding his presence at every meal, watching him eat every bite until they are wholly and irrevocably satisfied.
It will also alienate that stubborn old man. Five will never take to the interference. It will either break his spirit or break the family. If he surrenders himself, he won’t be Five. If he holds onto his brashness, it’ll force him to leave.
Either choice will have devastating consequences, for Five, for the family, for the Umbrella Academy.
She has to give Five the chance.
One more chance.
In the face of irrefutable evidence, she knows her brother is stubborn but he’s not an idiot. He’s not above reproach; he’s not incapable of change. It simply has to come under duress. It has to come from himself.
At least, Allison has to put her hope in that.
Just like she has to put her hope that her siblings will understand her lie.
And she hopes that Five doesn’t squander it.
“I told you,” she says, the words almost like weights as she forces them hollowly off her tongue. Her mind replays the vivid memory, Five’s faltering, his dazed expression and weak knees before the first blow landed. “I didn’t see anything.”
The fact that they believer her, unflinchingly, does not make things easier. All her years of lies; it’s her defining feature. And her siblings don’t even think to doubt her now.
It’s a sign that she’s earned their respect, that redemption is within her grasp.
Unfortunately, it’s also a sign that she doesn’t deserve it at all.
Resigned, Luther shakes his head, looking small somehow as his shoulder slump. “It’s dangerous, what we do,” he says, as if dredging up all the old explanations, the ones that they’d tried to hold onto for so many years, even after Ben had died. The platitudes had fallen apart for each of them, slowly but surely over the years, until they’d all walked out.
Those rejected platitudes have new life now, now that it’s their choice. Volition is everything; Allison has been counting on that all along. She’s counting on it now, while Five’s lying unconscious on an examination bed and she tells lies to cover up the real reason why.
“I mean, it’s shitty luck,” Diego commiserates, sounding and looking as resigned as Luther. “But that’s why we have to work harder, train better.”
“No kidding,” Klaus says, looking more than somewhat disconcerted. He huffs, a small, self deprecating chuckle. “Of all of us, I thought I’d be the one to screw it up. Not Five. If it can happen to Five, then shit. What hope do any of us have?”
Five, as small as he is, has made a point to seem impenetrable. Maybe that’s part of this. Maybe that’s what makes it so hard for him. The pretense of strength may be the only thing he has to keep himself together. He doesn’t know who he is among them; he left first. Coming back has been hard on all of them, but for Five, who disappeared into another world, another life at 13, it’s got to be that much harder, coming home when you have no idea what home even is.
He left before he realized, like the rest of them in time, that they are more than the caricatures their father painted of them. It’s a strange world, where Luther doesn’t have to be strong and Diego doesn’t have to be accurate. Klaus doesn’t have to be connected, and Ben doesn’t have to be a monster. Vanya doesn’t have to be normal, and Allison doesn’t have to tell lies.
And Five?
Five doesn’t have to be faster and smarter.
Too bad Five would rather die trying than accept a so-called failure like that.
“Well, we just have to remember why we’re doing this,” Vanya says empathically. She musters a smile for Ben, who is just visible enough to smile back. “We’ll just do it better, do it harder. Together.”
The others nod, fully in agreement, but Allison finds her own neck stiff. Her jaw is locked; her throat is tight. She can’t fault them for their sincerity, but they haven’t seen what she sees. Maybe it’s because she’s told so many lies. She has a keener sense of the truth.
It’s too much.
Maybe that’s why Five’s fought it so long. Maybe that’s why he’s denied it so vehemently. The truth is more than unsettling; the truth can be encompassing. It can suffocate you just as much as it can free you.
Suddenly, Allison’s eyes burn and she has to blink hard to keep the tears at bay. Swallowing back the emotion, she clears her throat. “Mom’s running a full workup in there,” she says, eyes skittering over her siblings, not focusing on any of them. “We’re going to need to be ready to wait here. At least for a little bit.”
“But if it’s just a concussion--” Luther starts.
“Mom’s thorough, though,” Diego chimes in.
“And concussions can be scary shit sometimes,” Klaus says, sounding worried again. He looks to Ben, who nods sympathetically.
“Your right,” Vanya says, with a smile for Allison. “We should get changed. Get settled. Be ready for when we can see Five.”
“One of us should stay,” Luther says. “I’ll take the first shift.”
Diego springs to his feet with a wince. “Just give me ten. I’ll be back then.”
Klaus rings his hands as he gets up, Ben following suit. “If I take a few, I might be able to get Ben back. To speaking condition, I mean. I’m so scattered after this, and Ben does not appreciate being reduced to barely corporeal status again.”
Vanya nods at him, but holds her position. “I think I’ll stay,” she says, and she shrugs at Luther. “If you don’t mind.”
“No, sure,” Luther says. “There’s no orders here. We just have to do what’s best for the team.”
Allison’s eyes are burning again, harder than before. Her vision is blurry from it, and she speaks hoarsely as she steps away from her siblings. “I just need a few minutes, too,” she says. “Just a few.”
She is down the hall before anyone can reply, taking the steps two at a time past Diego and far outpacing Klaus. She’s in her room before they get to the top of the stairs, and by the time they make it to the hall, her door is closed and she finally lets herself breathe.
With the breathe comes a sob. She chokes it down, stifling it as best she can. The walls in this old house are thin, and the last thing she wants is attention right now.
No, that’s not it, she tells herself as she wipes away the tears streaking down her cheeks. This isn’t purely selfish. This isn’t just about her. She can’t have them questioning why she’s falling apart. Not her, not when this has to be about Five.
She closes her eyes, gritting her teeth together in a futile attempt to control her emotions. This isn’t just about Five, though. She’s using Five, just like Five is using food. Five’s avoiding food just like Allison has avoided her family situation. Sure, she’s done all the right steps. She’s gone through the motions, done her follow up, but so has Five. He eats when necessary; he eats under duress. But it’s not the physical act that’s a problem for either of them. Five knows he needs food just like Allison knows she needs her family. But they’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Their follow through is suspect if only because they haven’t faced the truth about the relationship.
Five’s relationship with food reflects a weakness he has.
Allison’s relationship with her daughter reflects the exact same weakness. Even when she gets custody back, it’s going to take more than that to repair her relationship with her daughter. Forcing food down Five’s food might keep him from passing out on the job, but it won’t address any of the issues that got him here.
Exhaling shakily, she steps away from the door. She steps cautiously to the bed, letting herself half collapse onto the frilled bedspread. She takes a few moments to breathe, doing her best to get her emotions back under some semblance of control.
That’s the thing about control, though. It is, perhaps, the biggest lie of all.
It is that perspective and that perspective alone that makes this lie different. This lie is not one of convenience. It’s not one of self preservation. This lie is a safety line, one last opportunity for Five to tell the truth himself.
Because that’s what this is, in the end. She understands it from experience. Five scrawls his equations all over the walls, hashing out all the variables Allison can’t imagine. But he’s solving the wrong equation. All the math, all the logic, all the variables, and the answer doesn’t mean anything because Five’s trying to answer the wrong question. He’s so busy trying to fix the world that he’s forgotten to fix himself.
And that’s the variable that matters, the only variable any of them can ever truly control. If Five can’t solve himself, then he sure as hell can’t solve anything else. Five, as smart and capable as he is, hasn’t grasped that sometimes the relationship that matters most is the relationship you have with yourself.
That was what happened to her, after all. It’s easy to reduce her story. To blame her dad or Luther. It’s easy to put the blame on Patrick or the industry she worked in. But Allison’s inability to deal with herself, her inability to look at herself honestly, hurt her more than anything else. Allison knows that now; she’s learned it the hardest way possible.
Five hasn’t.
She hopes against hope that he doesn’t kill himself before he has that chance.
That’s why she’ll tell this lie. Why she’ll defend it, hold to it, commit herself to it wholly. Because her own second chance has been hard won, but she has to believe it’s within her reach, that she can be -- and will be -- restored to her daughter.
Just like Five can be restored to the real world.
She has to believe that’s possible.
It’s the only hope she has for herself, too.
Allison wipes her cheeks again, but this time the tears have stopped. She wipes her fingers on the sheets, sniffling quietly as she gets out her phone. There are no new messages, not from Patrick, her agent or her lawyer, but it doesn’t much matter. She has to start with the variable she can control.
Hey, Patrick, she types slowly, fingers shaking so bad that it’s hard to hit the letters. Just thinking about you and Claire. Hope things are good. Give Claire a hug for me, if you can. Tell her I love her.
She finishes the text and sends it, waiting for a few minutes while her heart pounds.
Then, as an afterthought, she picks up the phone again.
And Patrick, she writes, fingers steadier this time. I should have said it before, but I’m sorry. For what I did to Claire. For what I did to you. I have to hope there’s a second chance for us, not as partners but as friends. I made a lot of mistakes. I don’t want to make them anymore. We’re all starving for love, and I never understood how I tried to pick and choose my moments until it nearly ruined us all. I can’t change the past, I know that. But I’m trying, Patrick. I’m trying to change the future. For me, for you, for Claire. For all of us.
She puts the phone down, her eyes finally dry. She doesn’t wait for a reply; she doesn’t need to. This isn’t a ploy; this isn’t a strategy. This is just the right thing to do.
With that, she opens the door, steps back out into the hall, and makes her way back to Five.
-o-
Somehow, she’s the last one there.
And somehow, she’s still just in time.
By the time she gets back, Diego has changed and Klaus has gotten himself a drink. Ben is back to a near-corporeal state, and Vanya and Luther are standing anxiously at the open door to the exam room. When she finally comes up to the rear of the group, Luther turns back. He’s solemn and sober. He’s mostly just nervous.
“Mom says he’s going to be okay,” he reports. “Just a concussion. A pretty bad one, but there are no signs of complications.”
Vanya’s smile is watery, but she adds her outlook anyway. “He’s been in and out of consciousness. Mom says we can come in, as long as we’re calm.”
The others do not need any further invitation. Allison hesitates just long enough for the others to file past her. She’s the last one in the crowded room.
In truth, it’s not an unfamiliar tableau. Injuries had always been a part of their lives, even in the intense training sessions their father had put together. For as much experience as Mom had as a mother, she had just as much as a nurse. She kept her hands folded primly while they filed around Five’s bedside.
“I will allow all of you in here for a few minutes,” she says. “Then, you will have to take turns. Your brother was hurt quite badly, and he needs to rest. I will be right in the next room if you need anything.”
She pauses, putting her hand on Five’s shoulder. It is only then that Allison realizes his eyes are open. He’s awake, even if it’s plainly apparent than he wishes that he wasn’t.
They wait respectively while Mom retreats. They wouldn’t dare question her mothering or her doctoring, but they all know she’s not one of them. Not because she’s not their mom. Not because she’s a robot. But because they are the Umbrella Academy, the seven of them. No more, no less. It will define them always, for better or for worse. It’s a bond their father forged but never understood. It’s one he tried to mend but never could control.
Ironically, as the others crowd closer to the bed, it’s Five who speaks first. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I screwed up.”
In Five’s mind, he probably intends this as a sincere confession of failure.
To the others, though, it comes across as self deprecating and they all scramble to compensate. It’s not hard to see why. Five, for all that he boasts of being the old, looks like a 13 year old kid on the best of days. Today, on what is clearly one of his worst days, he’s bruised, battered, pale and weak, hooked up to an IV and laid out on an examination table with his too-thin limbs exposed.
There’s no way any of them are going to play the blame game with him now.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Luther assures him.
“Shit happens, right?” Diego says.
“Should we go over just how many times I’ve managed to screw things up in the field?” Klaus adds lightly.
Ben nods his head, edging closer to the bed. “We’ve all been there. And then some.”
Vanya, who looks close to tears again, even as she smiles, takes his hand and squeezes it. “We just care that you’re okay.”
Five appears uncertain about their comfort. It’s clear that he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He stiffens a little under Vanya’s touch and shakes his head, though he doesn’t quite have it in him to pull away. “It was a mistake, a series of mistakes that left me compromised in the field,” he reiterates, a little more firmly this time. “My powers failed, and I was a liability instead of an asset. I screwed up.”
“Five,” Vanya says, squeezing his hand again. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“Seriously, dude, it’s a fight,” Diego says. “It’s unpredictable. You can’t come out of every fight unscatched.”
“And my powers fail me all the time,” Klaus says. “Just ask Ben.”
Ben nods. “It’s true. I spent most of the day unable to speak thanks to Klaus.”
Luther nods, looking fortified at the very sight of Five being awake and coherent. “It was an accident,” he says. “We know that you’d never do anything to intentionally compromise the team. We know that, Five. Without question.”
It’s subtle, but Allison sees Five shift uncomfortably. There’s a faint blush on his cheeks that might be easy to mistake for emotion. Allison recognizes it as embarrassment.
As if confirming her suspicions, Five looks up again, eyes meeting Allison’s. The red in his cheeks deepens.
Only then does Allison find her voice for the best version of the truth she has left.
“Come on,” she says to her siblings, even as her eyes stay locked on Five. “You heard what Mom says, Five needs rest.”
There’s an instinctive protest among them, but Allison has been silent long enough. She turns to her siblings now, her smile sure. “You guys go, get changed, clean up,” she says. “Come back when you’re done. Eat something.”
Five visibly flinches at the reference, but Allison doesn’t falter.
“I’ll stay here for a bit,” she says, and she poses it like it’s an offer, but she’s the one making the plans now. She won’t have to rumor them into cooperation; they trust her. And this time, Allison trusts herself. “I’ll make sure that Five’s ready for visitors again when you get back.”
They think it’s a casual offer, a sisterly one. It’s not so much that it’s not, but it’s more than that. How much more, they won’t know. They don’t need to know.
“Okay,” Luther says. “That’s a good plan.”
“I could go for some food,” Diego admits.
“Ooh, can we order in?” Klaus asks, already on the way out. “Chinese?”
“Indian,” Ben counters.
Vanya loiters longest. “I’m glad you’re okay, Five,” she says before finally letting go of his hand.
“He will be,” Allison promises, a long look at Five, who averts his gaze as Vanya leaves, too. “He will be.”
-o-
This time, one on one with Allison, Five doesn’t have the courage to speak first.
That’s all right.
Allison’s got more than enough courage. In fact, she doesn’t so much think of it as courage as the simple knowledge of what she has to do. She’s followed the difficult steps to get Claire back, starting with therapy and ending with an outright apology to Patrick about everything. For Five, the process is just as straightforward. That’s not to say it’s easy, but nothing important ever is.
“You didn’t tell them the truth,” she says, waiting mere seconds until the room has cleared. She holds her ground firmly at his bedside, and she refuses to look away from him. “You lied to them.”
“I didn’t,” he says, but his voice can’t quite muster confidence. His gaze flickers up but he can’t quite hold her gaze. “I simply omitted several key pieces of the truth.”
“That’s called a lie,” she tells him flatly.
He bristles, and when he looks at her now, he’s defensive. “So did you,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell them?”
“Tell them what exactly?” she asks, feigning innocence.
His jaw twitches. That red in his cheek darkens even more. “About why my powers failed. Why I passed out before that stupid oaf ever had a chance to hit me.”
“Oh,” Allison says, milking it now for effect. “You mean how you starved yourself to prove the point that you weren’t starving yourself, which led your blood sugar to drop to dangerous levels in the field, thus causing your powers to falter and putting us all at risk. That’s what you mean.”
He looks perturbed, but he has no grounds by which to deny it. “It was stupid, I know,” he says.
If he’s hoping to defuse her, he’s going to be disappointed. She arches her eyebrows without compromise. “Do you? Because you could have been killed back there. That stupid oaf would have shot you in the chest after bashing your brains in.”
He is flustered now. “I was fine.”
She decides that’s a pointless thing to debate. “Sure, but what about the rest of us?” she asks. “What about Vanya? I mean, did you think about her? Seeing you like that freaked her out. She barely has control over her powers, and you go off acting like your life doesn’t matter. It matters a lot, you asshole. If not to you, then to us.”
This time, he has to blink rapidly while he swallows. “Okay,” he relents. “You’re right.”
The admission is too simple. “I know I’m right. But it’s about damn time you started realizing what it means for you to be wrong. Not about the apocalypse or the future or anything. But about yourself.”
He wets his lips, growing more uncomfortable by the second. “If you think that, then why didn’t you tell them? Why not have them stage an intervention? That’s what you’re going for here, isn’t it?”
She scoffs at him and his attempt at being flippant. “Because it’s not my truth to tell,” she says. “And I’m hoping that after this debacle you’ll finally get why your relationship with food is a problem.”
She’s got him cornered now, as much by her own logic as by his own weakness. He draws a breath, too vexed to find another solution. His impulse is to deny it, but Five’s too smart to try that. Besides, Five’s good with denial, but he’s not that great of a liar. Allison would know.
“It’s possible,” he concedes, slowly and carefully. “That my relationship with food is a bit more problematic than I admitted.”
It’s a start, but Allison doesn’t dare soften her stance. “What relationship with food are you talking about?”
“All of it,” he says. “I mean, it’s always been a thing, back in the apocalypse, when I didn’t have a choice. Food was hard to find. It was feast or famine. It was a painful, terrifying process that simply reminded me of how badly I screwed up. There was no pleasure from it, no joy from scavenging or learning how to cook cockroaches so they didn’t taste like ash. Even after I joined the Commission, I never learned to eat on a schedule. Time didn’t have meaning them. I was in and out; disconnected. It was never a choice, Allison, you have to understand.”
“I do,” she says. “But it is a choice now. And you’re too smart, too good, Five -- to be such an idiot about this.”
He sighs. “It’s harder than I expected, all of it,” he says. “Sleeping in beds at regular intervals. Having real meals to increase my appetite. Eating balanced meals for nutrition’s sake. Even when I do eat, I find that most of it doesn’t agree with me. That first peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich nearly made me throw up when I got back, so finding the right foods has been difficult.”
It’s finally an admission she can work with, finally one with the impetus for change. “Okay,” she says, and this time she does soften. “So let me help.”
Out of instinct, she can see him stiffen. “I don’t need to be babied. I don’t need you to be some kind of mother hen. I’m twice your age, Allison.”
She shrugs. “And what do you think is happening now?” she points out. “You got everyone fawning all over you like you’re a child. So I’m not sure that rejecting help is really the way to get what you want.”
He looks annoyed by that point, but he has no means to deny it. “Point taken.”
Breaking his spirit is only part of this. It’s just the first step in restoring it into a healthier version. She sits down on his bed next to him, and it’s a sign of just how far they’ve come that he doesn’t flinch this time. “Look,” she says. “This doesn’t have to be me treating you like a child. This can be about me, helping you make choices. We can be discreet about it, just you and me.”
He seems to think about that with much less resistance than before. This is progress, Allison thinks, and she tries not to think about the cost of said progress and how close it came to ruining them. Instead, she has to believe that the progress is, inherently, the best for all of them.
There is no more time for caution. She throws away her second thoughts and embracing the kindness of her first approach and the unyielding resolve of her second. “We’ll start with things you like, things that agree with you, and we’ll eat together for accountability’s sake,” she explains. “Little things. We can keep it simple, quiet. No frills, no mess.”
He’s taking it so seriously that you might think Allison is talking about the end of the world and not a simple meal. But Five’s approach at least relates the gravitas of the situation, something they both understand acutely now. It’s a lot for him, weak as he is and laid low as he is, and when he hesitates, she worries that she’s asking for more than he’s ready to give both physically and mentally.
“Five, please,” she says. “I know I’ve been a pain in the ass lately and I get that you’re embarrassed and angry and all of it. But I want to help you. I really do. Let me help you.”
Then, his eyes meet hers once more. There’s something different in his look now. Something quiet, something tentative, something unrepentantly vulnerable. He looks like the child he says he isn’t, but when he speaks, he sounds like the man she knows him to be. “French toast.”
She blinks, taken aback. It’s not the response she’s expecting. As if there’s an expected anything when your brother’s eating disorder affects his ability to bend time and space while on the job as a superhero. Still, she can’t quite process the significance of what he’s saying. “What?”
To say he’s resigned isn’t quite right. Five has not abandoned his defenses; they have not shattered around him. Instead, he is willfully putting them aside. The openness in his expression is one of his own choosing. “I liked your French toast,” he clarifies.
Inherently, she’s skeptical. This has been a long, difficult process. Longer and more difficult than perhaps Five himself can fully conceptualize. From the first time she offered him food to seeing him pass out in the line of duty, Allison’s been on a roller coaster with her oldest and youngest brother. “So that’s why you threw it in the trash?”
He doesn’t quite muster up enough to be sheepish, but he shrugs his shoulders without defense. “I was being a bit of an asshole that day. Not my finest moment, admittedly.”
“Well, neither was today,” she quips, and they falter into silence. It’d be nice if this were easier, less awkward. But easy things are rarely the best things. Sometimes the awkward conversations are the only ones that count. The truth, after all, is inconvenient and uncomfortable. In fact, the truth, as best Allison can tell, feels a lot like this.
Two siblings, stripped down to the barest versions of themselves, unable to hide their faults and their weaknesses when you get right down to it.
Still, Allison can’t ease her anxiety, that pressing sense of inaction wherein she can’t tell if she’s doing anything right or not. She’s waited months to hear back from a judge and for Patrick to give her a second chance. She doesn’t have the emotional capacity to wait months for Five. Quite frankly, Five doesn’t have months before this problem of his gets him killed.
“So…,” he ventures finally, and for the first time he’s uncertain in the conversation.
He’s uncertain; she’s more confident than ever. “So,” she says in agreement. “Fine.”
It’s so easy that Five doesn’t much know what to do with it. “Fine what?”
She shrugs, because it seems rather self evident to her. For all that they’ve gone around and around, full of denials and accusations, Allison’s willingness to help has been an unwavering constant. “I’ll make you French toast,” she clarifies for his benefit, because she’s ready to embrace her truth, to own it. “Any time you want.”
The truth, plain and simple as it is, almost seems like too much for him. There’s a flicker of doubt across his expression, wrinkling his brow as he frowns slightly. His doubt, like her lies, are learned behaviors. They’re both signs of an inability to trust others, an inability to trust oneself. Allison’s had to work her ass off to combat that problem in herself; the least she can do is help Five do the same. “I told you,” she says, coming across just short of smug. “I care about you, even when you’re an asshole.”
He breathes, fingers fiddlings with the IV in the crook of his arm. The color in his cheeks is still lacking, and he’s still weak that she cares to see him, weaker than he cares to be seen. But that’s the great thing about the truth. It’s an equalizer. It puts you both on the same level, even when you’re both at the lowest you can be.
This time, he almost smile, the faintest flicker of expression that you might call hope. “That’s not something I used to,” he says, and she sees him grappling with the emotion before accepting it with a humility that belies his real age. “I think it’s something I’m still going to have to get used to.”
“Just like you’ll have to get used to real meals,” Allison quips now. She shrugs as the tension eases between them. “You’ll get there.” She hesitates, inclines her head. “We both will.”
Because all relationships -- no matter how far gone they seem -- deserve another chance.
-o-
In terms of the concussion, Five recovers quickly. Under Mom’s care, he receives continuous IV treatments, which restore the color to his cheeks and infuse him with the anxious energy that leaves him restless in the bed. The others are keen to coddle him, and Five chafes under their constant attention, but Allison sees that he tolerates it with more grace than normal. For those few days while he’s under observation, he eats small meals when they are provided to him, and you couldn’t say that it looked like he was happy about it, but his conscious choice to allow it is something Allison won’t overlook.
It gets more difficult for both of them when Five is allowed to leave the medical area and resume his daily activities. Five has always had a tendency to do his own thing, and the notion of accountability is one that feels foreign to both him and Allison. She’s true to her word, though. She’s keeps it quiet. She doesn’t make a big deal out of meals, and she makes no indications to the others that Five’s diet is of any particular concern.
To that end, Five keeps his word, too. When she seeks him out at meal time, he puts up no fight. They work off his suggestions, starting with bread, rice and fruit to start. The meals are small, understated affairs, and she adds in more ingredients as Five shows interest. Within a week, they are eating French toast for breakfast, ham and cheese sandwiches at lunch and spaghetti noodles with simple marinara sauce. Five is not very fond of dairy -- it doesn’t agree with him -- and red meats tend to cause him problems, but they soon determine that chicken, fish and lentils are apt sources of protein.
Peanut butter, as it turns out, is still a favorite, and once they switch to gluten free marshmallows and whole wheat bread, it becomes Five’s favorite dessert. He has one in the afternoon, and Allison makes him one at bedtime, too. When he protests, she rolls her eyes. “Are you worried about your waistline? Because last I checked, you have the metabolism of a 13 year old. You might as well enjoy it.”
She tries to get him to cut back on coffee, but compromises with him until he drinks two cups a day and gives up all alcohol.
“Except on rare occasions,” he clarifies.
She doesn’t know what a rare occasion is when you live in a family of superheroes, but Allison consents. He’s eating vegetables now, and he’s developed a taste for pasta. He enjoys Cinnamon Toast Crunch exclusively for breakfast cereal, and he’s partial to Greek yogurt with scant vanilla and honey flavoring. He’s adept in the kitchen, able to follow recipes implicitly, and he bakes a nicer cake than Allison.
Within a month, Allison is no longer making meals for Five. Now, they are making them together. Five picks out new recipes, identifies alterations he wants to make, and they eat together on a daily basis. One day, he invites Vanya to join them. Klaus meanders through another day and Five says he can stay. He plans meals with Luther, Diego and even Ben until Allison thinks that meal time may be the best part of Five’s day.
Allison, still waiting for a call from the judge about the custody arrangement, thinks it may actually be the best part of her day, too.
-o-
Still, it’s been a month.
Five’s come a long, long way in a month. A long way in restoring his relationship with food. For him, it’s almost nonstop progress, unfettered by nothing.
Allison, on the other hand, has made exactly no progress in a month. Patrick hasn’t texted her back, and her lawyer is no longer taking her calls. She’s growing desperate, honestly. She looks into other legal counsel, but they all tell her the same thing.
You have to wait.
You just have to wait.
They say it like it’s simple, so very, very simple. Like she’s not starving herself to death, day after day without hearing her daughter’s voice.
A month, after all, is a very long time.
-o-
After a sleepless night, Allison oversleeps. She’s groggy when she finally wakes, and she feels like shit. She’d like to stay in bed, if she’s honest. But she made a promise.
She has to keep her promises.
If not to Claire, then to Five.
Down the stairs she trudges, hair unkempt and still in her pajamas. No one else is awake yet, and Allison tries not to think about the training schedule and team building exercise to come. It’s going to take all she has to just get through breakfast.
One simple meal.
The thought of it turns her stomach.
She’s contemplating what to make, and she has mostly decided that they’ll keep it simple with toast and peanut butter when she comes into the kitchen. To her surprise, she’s not the first one there. In fact, the place is a mess with pans and bowls everywhere. At the counter, Five is studiously glaring down, a spatula waving with a threatening motion in his hand as he scowls at the skillet that is in front of him on the counter.
He vigorously flips something and there is fresh sizzling. Turning, he produces a plate and marches to the table. The table, Allison realizes belatedly, as been set and prepared. There are place setting and fresh glasses of orange juice alongside two steaming mugs of coffee. He uses the spatula to transfer items to both plates before stepping back with a sigh.
“I’m not sure I did it right, but there you go,” he says.
Allison stares at him, then she stares at the table.
“You’re supposed to eat,” he says, sounding put out. “That’s the whole point of breakfast.”
Confused, she makes her way to the table and looks down. She recognizes the food on the plate, though she can’t quite understand why. “You made French toast?”
He’s back at the skillet with a harrumph that makes him sound older than he looks. “I told you. I like French toast. I figured I should know how to make it myself.”
There’s logic to this, and that’s how he’s presenting it. A logical, sensible choice.
But there’s sentiment to it, too.
Allison picks up her fork and reaches for the syrup. “You made it yourself?”
“You’ve cooked for me a lot over the last month,” he replies. She hears him flip a piece of toast. “I figured I might as well do what I can to return the favor.”
It’s as close as Five is going to get to saying thank you.
Allison pours the syrup over her toast, and takes a bite. She chews; she swallows. “Not bad.”
It’s as close as she’s going to come to saying you’re-welcome.
She eats a few more biters in silence, waiting as Five finishes the next piece and serves it to himself. With that, he sits down across from her. He reaches for the syrup, pours himself a helping, and hesitates. Allison mops up the last of her syrup with her final bite of toast before Five finally puts his fork down.
“French toast,” he says, and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out an envelope. He holds it out. “And this.”
He looks nervous somehow, younger than he has any right to look. It’s an uncertain gesture, though Allison has no idea why.
He gestures at her with it, eyebrows up expectantly.
Allison takes it slowly, almost reluctantly.
“It’s for you,” he says. “Open it.”
She watches him as he watches her, her fingers sliding under the seal. She opens it without looking at it, and she has it unfolded before she finally looks down at scans it. The words are typed and formal, and she has to go back and read it more carefully as she tries to make sense of it.
Her stomach roils, and she blinks her eyes. In shock, she reads the letter again.
And again.
“Five,” she says, almost breathless. Her eyes are locked on the page, unable to tear away. “Is this--?”
Five nods across the table. “From the judge, the official court order,” he confirms what she’s read three times now but can’t bring her brain to process. “It legally restores your custody rights as of today.”
She looks up at him now, all but gaping. “But -- how?”
He shrugs, attempting to look nonchalant. “It was easy enough. I flashed into the judge’s office, moved it up the docket for her.”
“But--”
He rolls his eyes. “I didn’t do anything untoward, don’t worry,” he says. “I wanted this to be right. It’s your relationship with your daughter. I didn’t cut corners. I just put it at the top of the pile. That’s all.”
She looks back down at it, almost unable to believe that it’s real. “But why?”
He affects the most casual demeanor as he bypasses his coffee and takes his orange juice in hand instead. “Because relationships require presence. Sure, you need to choose the give value to the relationship, and you need to exhibit self awareness, but that’s not everything. I spent weeks thinking about food and not eating. It nearly killed me just like spending years alone in the apocalypse nearly drove me insane. I’ve seen how much you’ve put into our relationship, and I know the difference it’s made just by having you be here,” he explains more eloquently than he has a right to sound. “I simply believe that your relationship with Claire deserves the same amount of attention. Convincing the judge of the same was easy enough. Most people, when presented with the facts, are far more reasonable than I am, it seems.”
She stares at him long and hard, watches as he takes a drink and reaches for his fork again. He takes his first bite of French toast when Allison gets up from her chair and stalks around the table. She’s not sure if she’s going to laugh or cry, yell or sob, so when she reaches down and envelopes him in a hug, she’s just as surprised as he is.
Beneath her touch, she feels him tense, but he doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t say anything.
Apparently, Five’s relationship with food is not the only thing to have changed in this past month.
When she does pull away, both of their eyes are wet. Five looks assiduously at his plate, as if he’s never seen a breakfast he’s more interested in. “You should go call Patrick. Tell him the news.”
Allison shakes her head, looking at the pile of French toast on the table between them. “But breakfast--”
Five smiles. “I think I can eat on my own this time.”
Because relationships start with a presence.
But they endure with trust.
-o-
Back up in her room, the door is locked and her bed is unmade. She’s wide awake now, her fingers trembling as she picks up her phone and brings up Patrick’s number.
All her months of waiting.
It’s a simple as sitting down and making the call.
It’s funny, as long as she’s waited, and she’s afraid. She wonders if this is what it was like for Five, to be surrounded by food but not eat it. It’s not that he didn’t want to, it’s that it’d been so long that he’d literally forgotten how. Allison had spent a month teaching him the basics.
Now, it seems, it’s her turn.
She pulls up Patrick’s number, ignores the time difference, and places the call. It takes a second to connect, and starts to ring a few times. Then, across the country, Patrick groggily answers. “Hello?”
“Patrick, hi,” she says, swallowing back her nerves as her stomach churns anxiously. “I know it’s early--”
“No, it’s okay,” he says, and she hears him rustling as if getting out of bed. “I was waiting for you to call, actually. I got a notice from my lawyer yesterday. The paperwork came through?”
Allison has to bite her lip, her excitement is building. “Yeah,” she says. “I just got notice, too.”
“That’s great,” he says, and he sounds like he actually means it. “I know Claire will be so happy to hear it. I thought I’d have my lawyer give yours a call later today, starting ironing out some of the details.”
Allison blinks, the tears in her eyes both happy and terrified. The most basic version of hope she’s ever known. “Sure, yeah,” she says, fiddling with her hair. She takes a breath. “Or, you know. We could talk about it. You and me.”
There’s a hesitation on the line, and Allison worries for a moment that she’s gone too far. But when Patrick speaks, he sounds pleasantly surprised. “Yeah, I’d like that,” he says slowly. “I think I’d like that a lot.”
Excitement building, Allison lets out a nervous laugh as a smile breaks wide across her face. “Great, great,” she says. “But do you think -- um. I mean. Is it possible--”
She’s faltering. She’s scared. Relationships require presence, and she’s starting from square one with Patrick and with Claire. Running in the opposite direction would be easier. She also thinks it’ll probably kill her. She has to make a choice. She’s going to make her choice.
“Do you think I could talk to her?” she blurts, the words coming out with a rush of emotion that flushes her cheeks red. “This morning. Right now.”
This time, Patrick doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I think so,” he says. “You’ve earned it. Just a sec.”
The tears are burning now as the joy explodes in her chest with a palpable sensation. She’s lightheaded with giddiness, her heart thudding in anticipation.
On the line, she hears Patrick calling. “Jess -- hey,” his voice echoes distantly. “Can you bring Claire here?”
Her mind is reeling; her skin feels like it’s electric. By the time the phone rustles again, it feels like there are fireworks going off in her head and her vision has tunneled precariously. She’s going to throw up if she’s not careful, but she swallow it back when another voice comes over the line.
“Hello?”
It’s a small voice, but not as small as she remembers. It’s young and innocent, and she can see Claire in her head, her curly hair and a little nightgown with slipper socks on her feet. She knows Claire must be a lot bigger than the last time she saw her daughter, but she can still recognize her voice.
She will always recognize her voice.
“Hey, baby,” she says, fighting back the tears now. “It’s me. It’s Mommy.”
“Mommy?” Claire asks, and the word is laden with disbelief.
“Yeah,” Allison confirms.
“Is it really you?” Claire asks. “It’s been so long.”
“I know it has, and I’m sorry for that,” Allison says. She blinks rapidly as a few tears escape down her cheeks. “It’s been longer than I wanted.”
“I missed you,” Claire tells her.
It’s almost too much. Allison feels like her heart is going to burst right through her chest. “I’ve missed you, too, baby. I’ve missed you, too.”
The line is almost vibrating with electricity now. Allison can feel it tingling up and down her spine. “Are things going to be better now?”
It’s such a simple question, such an innocent question. Allison has to close her eyes, unable to do anything about the fresh tears that slid down her cheeks. There was a time when she would have replied with a rumor, an empty promise she had every hope but no means of keeping. The truth is not quite as comforting, but it’s much more palpable. It’s the difference between a small snack and a full meal
“I can’t say for sure, baby, but I can promise you I’ll try. You have my word, Claire,” Allison says, eyes open now. Open and ready. She swallows again as she smiles. “I’m going to try.”
-o-
The thing with eating is that once you start, you just want more. Relationships, as it turns out, function a lot the same way. You don’t realize how much you need them until you get a little bit. Then, that little bit is never enough. So you’ll sit down for every meal, you’ll spend hours in the kitchen, you’ll deal with the messy dishes. Because the relationship is worth it.
No, the relationship is everything. It’s what keeps you alive.
Allison knows -- she really does know -- that rebuilding her relationship with her daughter won’t be easy. But she has to think, if Five can rebuild his own strained relationship with food, the one that nearly got him killed, then anything is possible.
You can do it the easy way. You can do it the hard way.
You can even do it the Hargreeves way.
They seem to get there in the end, and that’s what counts.
That’s what really counts.
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Date: 2020-10-05 05:47 am (UTC)Awe loved all parts of this!!
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Date: 2020-10-12 09:37 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for commenting! I do love these characters :)
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Date: 2020-11-25 10:18 pm (UTC)Yeah I never knew livejournal existed until I cane across your fics, but I am happy I found them :)