faye_dartmouth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faye_dartmouth) wrote2019-12-27 10:22 am
faye_dartmouth) wrote2019-12-27 10:22 am
Entry tags:
Umbrella Academy fic: The Start of the Story (2/16)
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
PART THIRTEEN
PART FOURTEEN
PART FIFTEEN
PART SIXTEEN
-o-
Helping Allison is more gratifying than Five expects. By this point, Five is probably enjoying himself. At least, he thinks he is. It’s been so long since he’s purely enjoyed something that it’s a little hard to say for sure. At any rate, he’s quite content to keep this up. It’s still a vapid sort of plan, but Five finds he can’t help himself.
Besides, as he loiters outside Diego’s room, he feels his natural contrary nature start to kick in. Diego, with the permanent chip on his shoulder, is never going to ask for help. This makes Five all the more determined to provide it.
Well, not help. Five can break the rules of time and space to save his family, but he can’t offer them a sympathetic hand while redecorating. No, that’s not how it works. So Five will help in the only way he knows how: criticism.
“You shouldn’t hang anything there,” he says. He’s leaning against the doorframe, not having been invited in, with his arms crossed over his chest.
Diego furrows his brow as he attempts to adjust the poster he just took five minutes to ge up. “What?”
“The poster shouldn’t go there,” Five reiterates as though that should be entirely obvious. “Nothing should.”
This time, Diego looks at him with a scowl. “I think it looks good.”
“Who cares how it looks,” Five says. He gestures to the wall. “You’re not thinking practically.”
“It’s a poster,” Diego says. “It’s just decoration.”
“Exactly,” Five replies. “All the more reason it shouldn’t take precedence over things of actual importance.”
Diego is getting exasperated now. He clearly wants to tell Five to leave him the hell alone, but now that the seeds of doubt have been seeded in his mind, he can’t let it go. “What do you mean?”
Five sighs, as if this is putting him out. “Think about it,” he says, nodding to the wall. “Your thing is throwing knives. I know how much you like to do it, but if you put a poster there, you’ve filled every free wall. That means any time you get bored and want to throw, you’re going to start putting holes in the things you care about.”
The logic is good, and Diego knows it. He’s just not ready to admit it yet.
Five has no problem browbeating him into agreement. It’s a personal pleasure to show people that they’re wrong and he’s right. “If anything, you should clear this wall and reinforce it,” he continues. “An extra layer of reinforced drywall will increase strength and resistance. Your knives will stick better and you’ll have to maintain it less over time.”
At this point, Diego has no possible defense, and he seems increasingly vexed by it. Obviously, he likes he idea. More obviously, he hates that Five is right.
All the more reason for Five to continue, as smug as ever. “And really, you should take down the stuff over your bed. It looks juvenile, and it’s a waste space,” he says, pointing to the boxing posters at the head of the bed. As Diego starts to look offended, Five adds, “Try a peg board instead. They’re great to organize your weapons. It makes them accessible, and plus it just looks really cool.”
Diego now appears vaguely disturbed. “How the hell do you know about any of that?”
Five rolls his eyes. “I have more tactical training than you do,” he says. “A lot more.”
Diego inhales sharply and holds it for a moment. He seems to wrestle with his thoughts for a second before shaking his head. “You say that, but it’s still hard to believe.”
It’s Five’s turn to be offended. “Have my actions not spoken for themselves?”
“No, they have,” Diego says. He shrugs with a nod toward Five’s thin frame. “But look at you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m 13,” Five says. “But you can’t let yourself get preoccupied with appearances. It makes you vulnerable.”
His point is solid, so he’s not pleased when Diego’s comeback is: “You should really think twice about spending all your time here, with us.”
That’s not what Diego is supposed to say.
That’s not the point of this conversation.
Five regrets his own hubris immediately, but it’s too late to take it back. With a glower, he tries to stare Diego into submission. “And why the hell would I do that?”
Diego is alarmingly unalarmed. “Because you’d kick ass with other kids, man,” he says. “You’d on the top of everything, and no one would talk shit about you. You’d run anything you tried.”
This is oddly insightful. Five has not considered it. While he still finds the notion condescending, there’s a part of him that likes the idea of finally being respected. That hesitation is enough to draw him back into himself indignantly. “You assume I want to,” he scoffs. “Dominating children is below me. It’s bad enough with you all. Can you imagine actual 13 year olds? It’s a waste of my time.”
Diego is nonplussed. “Nah, man,” he says. “I’m pretty sure you’d love it.”
The confidence in Diego’s voice only infuriates Five more. Flustered, he foregoes logic and settles for an argument that will appeal more to a guy like Diego. “You’re an idiot.”
It only makes Diego chuckles as he goes over to the wall and takes down the poster. “Yeah, well, you’re a psychopath.”
There’s no defense for that, but no defense is necessary. Five will accept being a psychopath as much as Diego accepts that he’s right. After all, Diego does take down the poster. And a short while later, he asks if anyone needs anything at the hardware stores. He wants to pick up some drywall and stuff.
As far as Five’s concerned, he’s made his point.
(And he concedes nothing. Absolutely nothing.)
-o-
It only figures that when he goes to help Vanya all she wants to do is help him. She’s always been like that, but now that she’s got powers like the rest of them, it seems remarkable. It hasn’t gone to her head. Five’s not sure why it hasn’t; she could destroy them all if she wanted to, but that’s probably why Vanya is a better person than Five.
For the record, that’s the only sibling for which Five will make such a confession. And it’s only in terms of sheer power and goodness, not intellect or prowess in the field.
Still, while Five can make many observations about how things are going, she knows how to apply those observations in an interpersonal context.
To the point: she sees that Five wants to help the others decorate but refuses to even step foot in his own room.
“You don’t have to do this,” Vanya tells him finally, as he helps her unpack another box. For her, she’s not looking to collect new things. She’s just trying to make the pieces of her life finally fit where they’ve always belonged. “It’s not that hard.”
“I know,” Five says, opening a box of her music books. “But it’s better than helping Allison decide between two shades of blue.”
She laughs, but she’s not about to let it slide. “Everyone else is getting into it,” she points out. “Why aren’t you?”
She probably has some ideas about why, but that’s Vanya for you. She doesn’t like to make assumptions, even when they’re probably right. “My room is fine.”
“It’s the same room you had when you left,” she points out. “You’ve changed since then.”
Five snorts with a wry laugh. “Have I?”
“You have,” she says, gently taking the books from him. “And besides, change is good.”
“Not all change,” Five says, because he’s thinking about walking down the street going from summer to winter to the apocalypse. Some change is very, very bad. It’s hard to explain how he spent so many years just wanting to go back to the way things were. He shakes his head of the notion. “Besides, I have everything I need.”
She nods benignly, in a way that accepts his answer without agreeing with it. They unpack several more items before Five pauses and looks at her.
“Is it weird for you?” he asks suddenly. “Being here with us?”
It’s a novel thought, really. He’s changed a lot of details in the timeline, and he knows that his actions have impacted countless lives for the better and for the worse. He’s always focused on the big picture in such actions. He’s never thought about what it was like for the people he killed. He never thought about their mothers or fathers, their sisters or brothers, their children or friends. He doesn’t think about the jobs they never went back to or the hobbies they never finished. He doesn’t take time to consider the books they never finished reading or the dates they never kept.
Being back with his family, however, it’s different. He’s not seeing the impetus. He’s seeing the long term effects. The Commission talks about this in broad strokes, but it has a human element, too. This is why he was right to save the world, no matter what the Commission believes. These human things.
Yet, grasping those implications on a human level, is still hard for Five.
Vanya stops in surprise. She almost seems to consider the question for the first time. “No,” she admits. “Honestly? It feels like it’s always been this way. Like it’s always been meant to be this way.”
Regret is not a foreign emotion to Five. You can’t jump brashly into the apocalypse, get stuck for 30 years and then sell your soul and not understand regret. This is a different kind of regret, though. It’s subtler. It’s not an admission of teenage hubris or profound trauma after years of isolation. It’s not even that Five sees now how kindness could have saved the world.
It’s just that Five cares about Vanya.
And he let her down.
There’s nothing cataclysmic about that.
Yet there is nothing worse than the realization.
Swallowing hard, he opens another box and stops. With a sighs, he speaks. “I’m sorry I took you for granted when we were kids.”
That’s not what she’s expecting him to say. “You were my best friend when we were kids,” she reminds him. “The others hardly ever paid attention to me.”
Five shakes his head, because that answer is not good enough. “That just makes it worse,” he says. “I liked being around you because you listened, you made me feel better about myself. I rarely ever thought about you, what you were going through. I wasn’t any better to you than the others.”
She seems to think about that, but ultimately she shakes her head again. “We were all kids, Five,” she says. “We were all looking for security, love, a place to belong. It wasn’t your fault.”
He drops his hands from the box. “That’s the excuse we always make, but I’m not so sure it counts. I mean, no matter how old we are, we still make choices. We have to be accountable to them, even when the consequences aren’t anything we intended.”
It’s a rational explanation. Five can think of things in no other way.
Vanya, however, is not Five. “Five,” she says, stepping closer to him. The boxes are forgotten now. “You have to stop blaming yourself.”
Five is not looking for absolution. He’s not some moron who thinks that everything can be okay when you say I’m sorry. Apologies don’t mean anything. He can still hear the ones he made every day of the apocalypse as they floated on the dead wind. “But I’m to blame,” he says, matter of fact now. “We put you off to the side, and it didn’t just limit your life, but it nearly destroyed the world.”
“No,” she says, expectant and emphatic. “You have to stop blaming yourself for running off.”
Now it’s Five’s turn to be taken aback. “What?”
Vanya draws a patient breath. “You still blame yourself for walking out, for defying dad, for traveling to the future,” she says.
Five stares at her, momentarily at a total loss. It’s not clear to him how they went from home decor to psychoanalysis, but here they are. Suddenly, talking paint swatches with Allison looks pretty damn good. “I was stupid,” he finally replies. “I mean, Dad told me exactly what would happen. You told me not to. But I thought I knew better. There’s really no one else to blame.”
She’s closer to him still, sympathy written over her face. “Maybe,” she says. “But you have to stop thinking it defines you. We aren’t defined by our stupidest mistake. I mean, you, more than any of the others, keeps telling me that the apocalypse isn’t my fault. But I know that I’m the one who ended the world. Me. And twice.”
Five’s throat is tight. He doesn’t actually trust himself to speak.
Vanya doesn’t make him. Instead, she continues, voice even gentler than before. “But that’s what you guys have shown me in all of this,” she says. “I’m more than that. We can’t be judged by our weakest moment. That’s not fair. And trust me, if I can put the apocalypse behind me, then so can you.”
Five’s not looking for absolution, but when it’s offered so freely, he admits that it’s tempting. But if he were inclined to such weakness, he would have died decades ago. “It’s important not to forget,” he says, and his voice sounds oddly hoarse.
A smile barely pulls at the edges of her mouth. “Yeah, but it’s also important to move forward. You can’t do that if all you do is look back.”
Five furrows his brow quizzically. “I’m not sure you understand what that means to a guy who has traveled extensively through time.”
She doesn’t bother to attempt arguing with him. She shrugs. “Yeah, well. I’m not sure you do either.”
With that, she goes back to the unpacking, opening another box of clean bed linens.
He watches her for a few moments, unpacking her life with no more reservations. He hopes she knows that she’s lucky for that, to live the life you know you’re meant to live. Five feels good that he was a part of getting her here, getting them all here. But, try as he may, he can’t share the feeling. After the life he’s lived, he’s not sure where he belongs. He’s not even sure who he is when he looks in the mirror.
Stepping back, Five makes his way to the door. “I like your room, by the way,” he says.
“Thanks,” she replies with a smile. “You’re welcome anytime.”
It’s not an empty offer. Five almost smiles. “I may hold you to that.”
She smiles enough for both of them. “I count on it.”
What’s nice about Vanya is that she’s good a listening.
Even when you’re not saying any of the words at all.
-o-
Five has helped the rest of his siblings. It seems incomplete not to spend some time with Klaus. This is not so much an explicit plan that Five forms as it is a necessity. He doesn’t like to leave things undone. He spent 30 years in the apocalypse, desperate to close off the unfinished story of his childhood. Apparently, the OCD that kept him alive and functional has stuck.
“Um, no, I’m good,” Klaus says when Five offers to help. “I can’t think of anything.”
This is ridiculous, of course. Klaus is currently wearing a pair of speedos and a button up shirt. He’s found a pair of cowboy boots and has accessorized with a hat Allison put in the hall for the trash. His room has been cleaned only in the sense that the drawers have been emptied and all his belongings have been cut open and laid bare. In short, it looks worse now than when they started.
“You can’t possibly want to live in this mess,” Five says, feeling dismayed at the prospect. He ate cockroaches in the apocalypse, but he never forgot how to be tidy.
“Uh, this mess is the cleanest it’s been in, I don’t know, fifteen years?” Klaus says. He leans forward, whispering conspiratorially now. “I got rid of all the drugs.”
Five looks around the room, trying to appreciate this distinct. He ultimately shakes his head. “How many drugs did you have in here?”
“Not as many as you probably think,” Klaus tells him. “But more than I remembered. I must have been so high when I hid most of those because I’m telling you, I got pretty creative. I even found some in the light fixture. I don’t know how I got them up there without electrocuting myself. Really!”
Klaus sounds increasingly pleased with himself.
Five does not know what to do with his burgeoning distress. “Don’t you want to pick up, then? Now that it’s clean?”
Klaus looks around, as if he’s seeing things for the first time. “What? Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “I mean, I hate to rip it all in half and cut it all to pieces, so seems kind of silly.”
“Well, you don’t want broken stuff everywhere,” Five says. “Do you?”
This thought has clearly not occurred to Klaus. “Well. I just. I don’t have anything else?”
Five scoffs. “So, go buy some.”
This is obvious solution, and Klaus has no concept of it. “Oh,” he says. “Right, I have money now. I’m not used to having money.”
“Because you probably spend it all on drugs,” Five mutters.
“And candy,” Klaus says. “Alcohol. Sometimes food. I like waffles a lot. Do you like waffles?”
Five makes a note to talk to Luther about setting up a system to give access to Klaus’ money. For one thing, it’s not appropriate for a recovering addict to have unfettered access to large sums. Also, it’s entirely possible that Klaus would squander his entire inheritance on gummy bears and women’s scarves. That’s the kind of plan that is not cosmically relevant but still seems worthwhile to Five.
Also, he decides, Klaus cannot be trusted to do this on his own. His siblings are busy, but Five’s not.
He sighs with an overly dramatic flair. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s go.”
Klaus looks hopeful. “For waffles.”
“For home decor items, functional furniture and clothing,” Five tells him with a shake of his head. “You know, adult things.”
“Uh, but you’re not an adult,” Klaus points out.
Five rolls his eyes. “Clearly, maturity is more than age,” he says. “Now get your ass together. I’m leaving.”
He walks out with that.
Klaus scrambles to follow him.
The eagerness doesn’t make Five smile at all.
-o-
Going places with Klaus is great not because Klaus is good company. Klaus isn’t good company. Klaus is every kind of crazy in the book. He’s easily distracted, and he tries to be annoying. And he’s hungry all the time.
But Klaus can’t drive. So he never objects when Five gets behind the wheel.
That may seem like a small thing, but Five has survived a literal apocalypse. He knows to appreciate the little things.
-o-
Things are going relatively well. They pick up a new dresser and mattress, since Klaus destroyed his previous ones while ridding his room of drugs, and Klaus gets oddly attached to a few stuffed animals. Five doesn’t get it, but he lets it pass. They’re moving on to the clothing section of the department store when the simple outing takes a turn for the complicated.
That’s a euphemism. Five uses a lot of euphemisms. Corrections instead of murder. Time travel instead of crap shoot.
Complicated instead of panic attack.
Yeah, that’s right.
Five is going along, helping Klaus pick out actual clothes that normal human wear when he has a panic attack right here in the middle of the department store.
It starts when he turns from the display of pants he’s been looking at and comes face to face with a family of mannequins. There’s four of them. A father wearing a plaid shirt; a mother in capri pants. A little mannequin boy and a little mannequin girl, smiling just as plain as day.
It’s a department store.
There are lots of mannequins.
Five has come to terms with Delores.
This shouldn’t be a problem, this shouldn’t be anything.
This shouldn’t be.
Five’s breath catches. His movement freeze. His mind flashes.
It is
Somewhere, Klaus is still talking about synthetic fabrics, and Five’s vision starts to tunnel. He blinks, but the image in front of him doesn’t change, and he sees a flash of an explosion and hears the sound of his own voice screaming.
The equations are wrong. The Commission is coming. The timeline keeps falling apart.
And there are four dead bodies in the rubble.
The sky is on fire.
He lifts his gun but his finger is shaking too bad to pull the trigger. His head pounds, his chest aches, his fingers tingle. He can’t stop it, he can’t stop it, he can’t--
Someone takes his arm, and Five gasps back to the present. He thinks it’s Klaus, which would be bad enough, but it’s a store employee. She smiles at him like he’s not having an episode of PTSD right there in the men’s department. “Careful now,” she croons. “You don’t look so good.”
Five is still struggling to breathe, and he can’t quite come up with a response.
She lets go of his hand. “You should tell your brother,” she says, and her eyes slide across toward the dressing area where Klaus has somehow found a woman’s scarf to model in the mirror. “He might be able to help.”
Numbly, Five shakes his head. “He doesn’t need to know,” he replies hoarsely.
She shrugs. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world,” she tells him. Her lips turn up. “Would it?”
-o-
It wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Maybe, is all Five can think.
Most people don’t default to the apocalypse as a possible outcome of, well, anything, but most people are ignorant morons.
It wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Unless it absolutely would be.
-o-
Five doesn’t panic.
He grabs Klaus, pays the bill and drags the packages out to the car. The sun is bright and warm and Klaus is loud and whiny and Five breathes.
His heart is pounding when he starts the car, and his fingers are slick with sweat on the steering wheel as he drives the whole way home.
-o-
Coincidence.
It has to be a coincidence.
All the same, when he and Klaus get home, he goes up to Diego’s room and drags him out. Klaus can’t be around alcohol; Luther would be too overbearing to make this work. He can’t do this to Vanya, and he can’t imagine what Allison would say. Diego’s his best option.
“Where are we going?” Diego asks.
“To drink,” Five says. “A lot.”
“Dude, you’re, like, tiny,” Diego reminds him. “That hasn’t worked out so well for you in the past.”
Five smirks. “You have no idea.”
-o-
The problem is, getting drunk doesn’t help.
Not that Diego lets him get drunk, because apparently the fact that Five’s nearly twice his age means nothing to him. All he can see is a 13 year old kicking back margaritas and apparently that’s a bad thing.
Still, Five manages to get a little buzzed.
For all the good that does him.
Without his inhibitions, Five can’t escape the conclusion that is forming in his brain. The conclusion that’s been there for the past two weeks, two months, two everything.
The Commission has found him.
Two weeks in, and the Commission is here.
-o-
So, here they are.
Five is back at the beginning. Or maybe it’s the ending. Maybe it doesn’t matter, not with the Commission.
It doesn’t matter where he goes, what he does, when he exists.
He’s a man out of time, and that makes him more than the most dangerous person in the world. It makes him the most dangerous person in the time continuum. As long as Five’s alive, the Commission will follow him. They would be remiss if they didn’t.
It’s been two weeks since they got back to the present. It’s been more than a week since the week didn’t end. It’s been two weeks since Five has let himself get distracted by lesser plans. For two weeks, he got away with it. For two weeks, he got to pretend that easy and simple were things he was capable of obtaining.
In truth, he’s lucky he got two weeks. He has to wonder if the Commission is starting to lose its edge. But then, Five’s never been an optimist.
-o-
Five sleeps off the alcohol and wakes up with a headache. He blames a hangover, but he’s not stupid. He knows it has nothing to do with that. His head is pounding -- his entire body aches -- because his drunken conclusions from the previous night are still valid. If anything, they’re more valid. Diego offers him some ibuprofen, but that won’t take away the growing dread that is filling the pit of his stomach.
The thing is, and this is the part that really turns his stomach, Five is not surprised. At all.
In the sober light of day, there’s no need to pretend. He doesn’t have to obfuscate the facts anymore. Those gnawing doubts, the ones he couldn’t shake no matter how hard his siblings tried to distract him, he can acknowledge them now. He has to embrace them.
He’s been looking for impending doom since they made the jump back. He’d been able to write it off as concern over the would-be apocalypse, but it’s clearly more than that. He spent years working for the Commission. He’s followed their orders, he’s memorized their policies, he’s learned every nuance of the organization from the inside out. Simply put, he knows the Commission too well to pretend like his actions could possibly go unnoticed.
Moreover, he understands the variations of time too completely. The Butterfly Effect takes the smallest action and sees profound differences in the timeline. Five’s done more than the smallest action. He’s radically altered the course of the future. That’s not going to go unnoticed. The Commission, assuming it still exists -- an assumption Five does certainly make -- will be very aware of what he’s done.
That’s the rub, then. The Commission, from its perspective outside the timelines, actually would know far more about what Five’s done than Five himself. It’s not something he cares to admit, but he also can’t deny it: he has no idea what he’s done. Presumably, he’s saved the world and his siblings.
But at what cost?
What damage has been done to the timeline?
How stable is the continuum with all these alterations?
What will the future look like when there was never supposed to be a future?
Five had rejected the Handler’s notion that saving mankind was a mistake. He’d rejected her for his discompassion view of the end of the world.
But, now that he’s done what he set out to do, he has to acknowledge that there are very real dangers. When he had jumped back to his family that first time, it had been a process that he had taken decades to finalize. Even then, with all his work, he’d gone and gotten it wrong. His father had favored muddied analogies, but Five could keep it plain: time travel was a guarantee of nothing. It should only be used as a last resort. Even then, it should be approached with the greatest of care.
Such a conclusion had taken 30 years to solidify. 30 years of hunger, disgrace, loneliness and despair.
In that context, making the jump back had been an acceptable risk. To save his family, to save the world, he had determined it was worthwhile. And he had been careful.
That second jump, though. The one he made with seconds to go before the world imploded. That hadn’t been planned. That hadn’t been calculated.
Five had acted merely on impulse, nothing more.
In a sense, it was very understandable. Very human. For all that he’d risked to save his family, there was no way he was going to let them perish. He’d already proven he’d do anything to save them. Emotionally, therefore, such a hasty jump was a natural and expected choice.
Logically, however.
Shit, there was nothing logical about it.
Five’s got no idea what he’s actually done. He has no sense of the ramifications. In all truth, he’s actually surprised that there are no apparent catastrophic consequences already. There would be every reason to expect the world to be severely altered by their haphazard machinations, and yet, coming back to the would-be present has shown only minimal and mostly inconsequential changes to the timeline.
He’d tried, while fixing the past with his family, to put some time into his equations. He knew that the others wanted to get back to their present, and Five was mostly eager to ensure that they effectively did prevent the apocalypse. However, he knew that the jump back couldn’t be that hasty. After two less than perfect jumps, he wanted to get this one right.
The good news is that two failures provided plenty of insight into the process. With these considerations, he manages to bring them back in a more controlled fashion. His execution has improved substantially. His siblings are able to return to their adult bodies, and he times it perfectly two days before the world ended in two timelines. It’s unfortunate that there is no calculation that can get him his actual body back. It appears that he’s stuck at 13 indefinitely. The others seem concerned by this, but it’s not a show stopper for Five. Not when he knows how many other things could go wrong.
None of which is to say that things have gone perfectly.
Hell, that’s not even to say that Five doesn’t think sometimes that he’s made his biggest mistake yet.
But the key outcomes have been positive. Five set out to save his family and the world, and he’s done that. More than that, they’re closer as a family and Vanya has been included as an equal. She’s embraced her powers. Collectively, they told the old man to leave them alone before jumping back to the present, apparently no worse for wear.
Sure, there are some caveats even then. Ben is still dead. This is probably the most glaring failure of the process to the others, if only because seeing him in the past had given them reason to hope. Five had offered to look over some calculations, and the others offered to simply live things out as needed in the past to fix Ben’s accident, but Ben is the most well adjusted of them all. For Ben, being dead isn’t a showstopper either. Five believes it’s Ben’s choice, and he’ll respect that.
Plus, that actually makes the equations simpler. Controlling for Ben’s survival would be a hard variable to control, and he’s already got a lot at play in this jump. It is his intention to make this jump the last one. Possibly ever. The others have not totally grasped that, even now. They don’t understand that jumping back to their present is a luxury; it’s not survival. There’s nothing that necessitates it. They don’t understand the inherent risks involved with time travel. For all that Five’s the resident expert on such things, he doesn’t know enough to offer any guarantees.
It’s not a lesson they’re likely to learn, not when things have turned out ostensibly well. Things are substantially better than when they left. The house is still standing, which means that Pogo and Mom are still alive and well. They all come back to better lives, happier lives. They’re content to believe that everything is fine.
Five has allowed this.
For two weeks, he’s tried to believe it, too.
Those two weeks are over now.
The Commission being here isn’t a surprise, but it is a necessary catalyst.
It’s time for Five to get back down to business.
It’s time for Five to make a plan.
Not a plan for the apocalypse. Not a plan for the Academy. Not even a plan for sibling bonding and interior design. A plan to go against the Commission.
A plan to win.
-o-
Therein lies his first dilemma: does he tell the others?
Five wants to tell the others -- he does -- but he can’t think of what to tell them. He’s got nothing concrete to go on. Vague sensation and growing doubts -- it’s nothing he can substantiate.
All the same, he can’t talk himself out of it either. He can’t help it if something feels off.
Because he knows, okay? He knows that you don’t get to jump through time without repercussions. And he may not know for sure if the Commission is still out there, but how can it not be? Five knows that what he’s doing has had dramatic consequences. Someone out there is going to notice. And someone out there is going to notice. It’d be utterly naive to assume otherwise.
It’s just that he’s got no evidence.
All he’s got is this feeling in his gut and this nagging in the brain.
Part of him wishes Delores were still here, and he resists the urge to go down and take her for himself again. She’s just so damn reasonable about things like this, and she’s plaintive in her understanding of his eccentricities. She has a way of speaking common sense that Five values, and he wonders if she’d tell him that he’s crazy.
Because, honestly, he feels a little crazy.
A lot crazy.
And maybe it’s just a learned behavior. Maybe it was the solitude. Maybe it was the fact that he lost his innocence in the apocalypse. Maybe it was the way his arrogance had blown up in his face so dramatic. Hell, it could be the fact that he’s killed countless people without remorse. Or maybe it’s just an inherent personality flaw that he always thinks there’s something more.
It’s just there are these things that happen in the two weeks that they are back. They are genuinely small things, so small that no one else even bothers to notice them. But he can’t shake the way they make him pause, like strange pings on his radar he can’t explain.
Things he can’t explain are things he has to explain, and he’s pretty sure one of two things is happening. One, he is finally starting the long, slow slide into insanity, a slide that very well may unrecoverable for him at this point. Two, he’s right and the Commission is watching him.
Either way, he’s not imagining things. There is a person across the street who watches him, holding a newspaper up but never looking at it every time Five leaves the house. The delivery guy, the one Klaus calls for pizza two or three times a week, definitely stands on the stoop longer than necessary before finally ringing the bell.
Five notices because he notices everything, and weird shit will happen from time to time, but patterns? You can’t ignore that stuff.
Well, you can, if you’re a normal person.
You can’t when you’re Five.
-o-
Five’s indecision on this front goes on for another two weeks.
He has some shame about this. Five should not be prone to indecision. But no matter how many times he tries to follow the logic around, he’s stopped by sentimental reason. Mostly, his family is so happy. They are happier than they’ve ever been. And if Five starts talking about the time continuum or the threat of the Commission, he’s going to take that away.
He doesn’t want to do that. Even if it’s the right decision, he really doesn’t want to.
That’s not a plan, though.
Damn it, Five still needs a plan.
-o-
The only plan he has is that he needs to make a plan.
Also, that no one should know that he has a plan to make a plan.
Because if they know his plan to make a plan, then they’ll want to be a part of that plan. And if that happens, then the plan is too complicated and there are too many variables.
He just needs a simple plan, a clear plan, a cohesive plan.
Yeah, Five can’t say that it’s going all that well.
-o-
Five has decided to keep his doubts to himself because his family is doing so well.
It’s just that it’s so hard watching them do so well when nothing is going well for him.
Five is inherently a jealous person; he will admit to that. He’s always hated being Number Five because he resents the hell out of the fact that he’s got four siblings who were deemed better. He struggles appreciating the success of others, especially when it’s contrasted with his own failures and limitations.
So, watching his siblings happily rebuilding their lives only makes his lack of certainty about the Commission and its possible agents feel even worse.
To make matters worse, every week, they have that family dinner.
A chance to come together, enjoy each other’s company and talk. They talk about how everything is going well. Luther is looking into updated uniforms. Diego has a line one some possible connections to find jobs. Allison is close to getting joint custody of Claire. Klaus hasn’t relapsed at all and is in a knitting group. Ben can play basketball again. Vanya is always smiling.
They’re doing so wonderful that Five wants to be sick.
Sometimes, during those happy dinners, Five remembers that last family dinner with his father all those years ago. He remembers why he couldn’t stand it anymore, why he couldn’t sit still and silent while everyone else whittled away mindlessly. That feeling that festers in his gut, that need to prove himself, to do something, to achieve, was the same one that had propelled him out the front door into a future that was his and his alone.
He remembers better than he lets on. He remembers even though no one asks him.
Those first two weeks, coming back, he’d thought himself brave for resisting that urge to make a scene.
Honestly, as he shovels a dinner that he can’t taste into his mouth, he’s just not so sure anymore.
-o-
Then, to make matters worse, the others start to notice.
Not that he has anxiety about family dinner. No, they seem oblivious to that. They all seem unable to conceive that reliving his last stand every week might trigger some less than positive memories.
But they do notice that he’s on edge, and they are starting to think that he’s not okay.
Like, really not okay.
Five’s not been okay since he got back -- that much is plain -- but they’re starting to look at him like they’re worried he’s about to go off and do something stupid.
Their definition of stupid, by the way, not his. They may not understand things like mannequins and glass eyes and time travel, but Five’s never done anything without purpose.
That said, he’s supposed to keep them from worrying. That was the plan, wasn’t it? Has he messed it up so badly already?
In short, yes.
Five’s plan is in shambles. He wonders if he’s getting sloppy in his old age. He contemplates if puberty is affecting his mental capacity. Alternatively, it’s possible he’s just never been good at this. You don’t have to keep secrets when you’re traveling through time killing people. And Delores, for all her virtues, never was able to call him on all his shit.
In any case, the others know him better than he knows himself.
That may be a problem.
-o-
For the most part, Five deals with this problem by being an asshole.
Now, he’s aware that this may seem counterintuitive, but it’s not. Five’s always been an asshole, even when they were kids. He’s always been rude and arrogant and prone to condescension. Therefore, if he continues being an asshole, it can be an effective guise for most of his behaviors.
He doesn’t like the fact that most is a very subjective sort of word.
Apparently, there are a great many actions that can’t be explained by being a prick.
Case in point, Diego takes him for a run. Five ardently objects to this, but Diego believes that their training should continue if they plan to resurrect the Academy, and Five’s too tired of shit to fight him on that. Besides, running is easy. He’s always had stamina and now that he’s 13 again, he feels like he could run forever. Plus, he’s easily outpacing all his siblings on his training. He knows because Diego charts his progress on his phone, and it’s one distraction that Five actually takes pleasure in.
That’s all well and good until they take a rest break in an alley on a random morning.
Now, why did Diego choose an alley? It’s Diego. He’s strange when it comes to aesthetics, and he’s always about choosing things that make him look gritty and real. It seems that he thinks the contrast favors him when compared to Luther, but Five thinks they all seem like idiots.
At any rate, they’re taking their water break in an alley, and Diego is lecturing him about conditioning while updating their statistics in his phone when Five hears a noise.
It probably sounds innocuous to most people. A whoosh of air. A hiss. A small thump of metal on metal.
A chill goes down Five’s back.
“If your opponent can outlast you, then you’re done, you know?” Diego is explaining. “Endurance, man. It makes all the difference.”
There’s a wind.
Something rustles.
Without thinking, he’s on his feet. He’s unarmed -- damn it -- but Diego never is. Before Diego realizes what’s happening, Five has freed two knives from Diego’s sheaths, and he’s brought them to bear on the movement a split second before it rounds the corner of a dumpster.
Five’s ready for anything. He’s ready for agents. He’s ready for a hit squad. He’s ready for the Handler, put back together and filled with smiling vengeance.
With a yell, he primes himself to strike, to go for the carotid and cut.
Diego squawks in surprise.
Five bears down.
Face to face with a cat.
It’s small and grey. It stares up at Five and mewls, a small, pathetic sound. At its feet is a tin can. It purrs again, taking a step forward and rubbing its body along Five’s leg in unsolicited affection.
“Dude,” Diego says. “What the hell?”
Five is still taut, his breathing hard and fast. His heart is pounding in his chest and he can feel perspiration gathering along his brow. “I heard something,” he says, and he’s aware how that sounds while he points two knives at a cat.
“Uh, yeah,” Diego says, and he reaches around cautiously, plucking the first knife from Five’s grip. “But I think this is a bit much.”
Diego pets the cat before holding out his hand, beckoning for the second knife.
Self consciously, Five eases his stance. He turns the knife before slowly handing it back. “You can never be too sure.”
Diego raises his eyebrows. For all his talk of preparedness, he clearly thinks Five has pushed things too far.
And, given the cat and the knives and Five’s fight or flight response, Five can’t deny that it’s not a terrible conclusion.
“You okay?” Diego asks as he puts his knives away. He looks at Five with real concern. “I mean, really. You’ve been, I don’t know. Kind of off the last few weeks.”
Five wonders what Diego would deem normal, all things considered. Five’s never been one to play like the other kids, and he is well aware that he’s been even more insufferable since coming back. Of his many skills, interpersonal matters are not included. “You learn to be paranoid in my line of work,” he says, and it’s not a lie, even if it’s not entirely the truth.
Diego gives him a skeptical look. “I’m serious, man,” he says. “If you need to talk or something…”
Five huffs, brushing past his brother. “I thought we were running,” he says. “We have still have a long way back.”
Diego can’t argue that, and for that much, and possibly nothing else right now, Five is grateful.
He’s got a lot of stamina, after all.
It would be nice if all he needed it for was running.
-o-
At home, Five does the math. He calculates the probability of the Commission programming a cat for its own purposes. They could simply hijack an actual cat, use implants to enhance it for lowkey surveillance. He should have taken the thing home to see if it was real. He can’t rule out the possibility of artificial intelligence.
Ultimately, the calculations are inconclusive.
He can’t quantify a plan with robotic cats.
Damn it, what good is he at all anymore?
-o-
Second case in point: Five wants to eat lunch. Food is one of his indulgences. All those years of cockroaches, he has to admit, he doesn’t give a shit about eating healthy. Therefore, meal time in the kitchen is usually one of his best times of the day.
This particular day, however, they’re out of marshmallows.
Damn it.
How the hell are they out of marshmallows.
He’s about to lose his shit when Allison saunters in. “Hey,” she says, poking through the fridge. “Are we out of those leftovers? That rice dish that mom made?”
“Who the hell cares,” Five snaps.
She glances back at him. “Okay.”
He knows he’s being unfair. He sighs. “We’re out of marshmallows.”
She closes the fridge. “Well, there is other food….”
“But I wanted marshmallows,” Five growls. “We had a whole bag just yesterday, and I can’t find them, and I don’t understand--”
Allison holds up a hand to silence him. “Five, relax,” she says. “It’s just marshmallows.”
It’s not just marshmallows, though. It’s Five’s favorite food. It’s his one indulgence. It’s his comfort source now that Delores is gone. And he needs a way to relieve the stress right now. He needs a way to not think about the plan he doesn’t have to stop the Commission from enacting the plan he hasn’t figured out.
He needs a plan, okay?
And if he can’t have a plan, then why the hell aren’t there any marshmallows?
Five says none of that, but Allison seems to sense he’s at his limit. “Come on,” she says.
“Come where?” he snaps back.
“To the car,” she says. “We’re going out.”
Five narrows his eyes. “Why?”
“Because you’re hungry,” she tells him. “We’ll do lunch.”
He watches her, still inexplicably suspicious. It seems silly to go out; a waste of time. But as much as he hates life without marshmallows, the thought of going back upstairs to the equations he can’t finish is even harder.
Also, if he’s left to his own devices, the only plan he’ll come up with right now is to go to the supermarket and murder everyone there before taking every last bag of marshmallows for himself. This is an inappropriate response to his frustration, and he’s not going to indulge it, but it’s probably better to be safe than sorry.
Still, the idea has appeal. Five’s never liked murder, but the instant gratification of solving your problems with a pull of the trigger is something his siblings severely underestimate. He wonders if this is what Luther meant when he asked if Five had a code as a hitman: no killing over marshmallows.
“Okay,” he agrees finally.
It’s simple.
In other words, it’s the best semblance of a plan that Five’s had in weeks.
-o-
Homicidal urges and marshmallow codes aside, this is how he ends up at the restaurant with his sister. It’s a nice place -- Delores would love it -- and Five is feeling moderately at ease while he looks over the drinks menu.
This is a mistake, he knows. Allison might permit him to drink, but a waiter will never serve him alcohol. It’s silly to tempt himself, but Five can’t quite resist. He’s made peace with this when the waiter shows up and does the unthinkable.
He offers Five a kid’s menu.
“A what?” Five repeats, hoping he’s misheard.
He hasn’t. The waiter smiles as he holds up a piece of paper with word searches and a mad lib. “We recognize that some of our food is not right for younger diners,” he says. “So we have a more simplified array of options. Grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese…”
Five feels his blood start to boil.
Sure, he was going to eat a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich at home, but that doesn’t meant that he wants to eat grilled cheese. And it’s the indignity, honestly. Five knows that he’s still wearing a schoolboy uniform, and he knows that Diego’s training has done nothing to bulk up his skinny frame, and he’s sure the waiter is just trying to be polite, but what the hell?
What the actual hell?
Seriously.
“Do I look like I need a kids’ menu?” he demands. His fingers are tightening reflexively into fists and he’s subconsciously cataloguing the number of butter knives in his vicinity.
Allison smiles and tries to interject. “We’re fine, thank you,” she says. “Maybe we could have some waters?”
“Right,” the waiter says, giving Five a tentative look before trying to smile back at Allison. “A few more minutes before you order then?”
“That would be lovely, thanks,” Allison tells him.
When the waiter leaves, Allison gives him a look. “Come on, there’s no reason to be rude,” she reprimands him.
Five scoffs as he starts to look over the menu. “There’s no reason for him to be an idiot, but he gets a pass.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m serious, Five,” she says. “It’s no one’s fault that you’re 13.”
She’s trying to be diplomatic but it only reminds Five that it is someone’s fault: his.
Grinding his teeth together, he feels his body tense. “I didn’t like being 13 the first time around,” he mutters. “The second time is so much worse.”
This is hyperbole, of course. The first time he was 13, he was living by himself in an apocalyptic wasteland. Of course that had been worse. But Five does not feel like making concessions now. Or ever.
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Allison chides him. “Watching Claire grow up, I’d give anything to go back.”
“Great, then next time we time travel, I’ll project you into your 13 year old body and see how you like it,” Five snaps. He’s so angry that he can’t even read the menu descriptions, so he thinks he’ll just ask for a steak. Bloody.
Allison shrugs a little as she flips through the menu yourself. “The point is you have a choice to be happy. So you should think about making it.”
This is funny for some reason. His lips twist up sardonically. “There’s too much at stake,” he says. “In case you haven’t noticed.”
She looks up at him, quizzical. “We stopped the apocalypse. We brought the family together. Your missions are done, Five. Aren’t they?”
He stops himself short at that.
Aren’t they?
The words get caught in his throat as his mind tumbles over the signs over the last few weeks.
He swallows
Aren’t they?
Suppressing a shudder, he looks back at the menu. “I guess,” he says.
“So, there you go,” she says.
He stares hard at the menu without reading a word. There you go.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Five?”
“What?” he glances up again, realizing for the first time that he’d fallen unnaturally silent. “Yeah, of course. Like you said, why wouldn’t I be?”
She does not look convinced by this. If anything, she looks less convinced than ever.
He tries to smile to reassure her.
It feels weird as hell, but he thinks it works.
It works less when the waiter comes back and asks if they’re ready. Five launches into a tirade about the relativity of time and mankind’s limited grasp on the topic. The waiter tries to apologize, and Five proceeds to eviscerate his ineptitude before ranting about how they waste all their time making decisions that don’t matter and plans that get them nowhere.
Allison drags him out by the scruff of his neck and picks up some fast food instead.
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
PART THIRTEEN
PART FOURTEEN
PART FIFTEEN
PART SIXTEEN
-o-
Helping Allison is more gratifying than Five expects. By this point, Five is probably enjoying himself. At least, he thinks he is. It’s been so long since he’s purely enjoyed something that it’s a little hard to say for sure. At any rate, he’s quite content to keep this up. It’s still a vapid sort of plan, but Five finds he can’t help himself.
Besides, as he loiters outside Diego’s room, he feels his natural contrary nature start to kick in. Diego, with the permanent chip on his shoulder, is never going to ask for help. This makes Five all the more determined to provide it.
Well, not help. Five can break the rules of time and space to save his family, but he can’t offer them a sympathetic hand while redecorating. No, that’s not how it works. So Five will help in the only way he knows how: criticism.
“You shouldn’t hang anything there,” he says. He’s leaning against the doorframe, not having been invited in, with his arms crossed over his chest.
Diego furrows his brow as he attempts to adjust the poster he just took five minutes to ge up. “What?”
“The poster shouldn’t go there,” Five reiterates as though that should be entirely obvious. “Nothing should.”
This time, Diego looks at him with a scowl. “I think it looks good.”
“Who cares how it looks,” Five says. He gestures to the wall. “You’re not thinking practically.”
“It’s a poster,” Diego says. “It’s just decoration.”
“Exactly,” Five replies. “All the more reason it shouldn’t take precedence over things of actual importance.”
Diego is getting exasperated now. He clearly wants to tell Five to leave him the hell alone, but now that the seeds of doubt have been seeded in his mind, he can’t let it go. “What do you mean?”
Five sighs, as if this is putting him out. “Think about it,” he says, nodding to the wall. “Your thing is throwing knives. I know how much you like to do it, but if you put a poster there, you’ve filled every free wall. That means any time you get bored and want to throw, you’re going to start putting holes in the things you care about.”
The logic is good, and Diego knows it. He’s just not ready to admit it yet.
Five has no problem browbeating him into agreement. It’s a personal pleasure to show people that they’re wrong and he’s right. “If anything, you should clear this wall and reinforce it,” he continues. “An extra layer of reinforced drywall will increase strength and resistance. Your knives will stick better and you’ll have to maintain it less over time.”
At this point, Diego has no possible defense, and he seems increasingly vexed by it. Obviously, he likes he idea. More obviously, he hates that Five is right.
All the more reason for Five to continue, as smug as ever. “And really, you should take down the stuff over your bed. It looks juvenile, and it’s a waste space,” he says, pointing to the boxing posters at the head of the bed. As Diego starts to look offended, Five adds, “Try a peg board instead. They’re great to organize your weapons. It makes them accessible, and plus it just looks really cool.”
Diego now appears vaguely disturbed. “How the hell do you know about any of that?”
Five rolls his eyes. “I have more tactical training than you do,” he says. “A lot more.”
Diego inhales sharply and holds it for a moment. He seems to wrestle with his thoughts for a second before shaking his head. “You say that, but it’s still hard to believe.”
It’s Five’s turn to be offended. “Have my actions not spoken for themselves?”
“No, they have,” Diego says. He shrugs with a nod toward Five’s thin frame. “But look at you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m 13,” Five says. “But you can’t let yourself get preoccupied with appearances. It makes you vulnerable.”
His point is solid, so he’s not pleased when Diego’s comeback is: “You should really think twice about spending all your time here, with us.”
That’s not what Diego is supposed to say.
That’s not the point of this conversation.
Five regrets his own hubris immediately, but it’s too late to take it back. With a glower, he tries to stare Diego into submission. “And why the hell would I do that?”
Diego is alarmingly unalarmed. “Because you’d kick ass with other kids, man,” he says. “You’d on the top of everything, and no one would talk shit about you. You’d run anything you tried.”
This is oddly insightful. Five has not considered it. While he still finds the notion condescending, there’s a part of him that likes the idea of finally being respected. That hesitation is enough to draw him back into himself indignantly. “You assume I want to,” he scoffs. “Dominating children is below me. It’s bad enough with you all. Can you imagine actual 13 year olds? It’s a waste of my time.”
Diego is nonplussed. “Nah, man,” he says. “I’m pretty sure you’d love it.”
The confidence in Diego’s voice only infuriates Five more. Flustered, he foregoes logic and settles for an argument that will appeal more to a guy like Diego. “You’re an idiot.”
It only makes Diego chuckles as he goes over to the wall and takes down the poster. “Yeah, well, you’re a psychopath.”
There’s no defense for that, but no defense is necessary. Five will accept being a psychopath as much as Diego accepts that he’s right. After all, Diego does take down the poster. And a short while later, he asks if anyone needs anything at the hardware stores. He wants to pick up some drywall and stuff.
As far as Five’s concerned, he’s made his point.
(And he concedes nothing. Absolutely nothing.)
-o-
It only figures that when he goes to help Vanya all she wants to do is help him. She’s always been like that, but now that she’s got powers like the rest of them, it seems remarkable. It hasn’t gone to her head. Five’s not sure why it hasn’t; she could destroy them all if she wanted to, but that’s probably why Vanya is a better person than Five.
For the record, that’s the only sibling for which Five will make such a confession. And it’s only in terms of sheer power and goodness, not intellect or prowess in the field.
Still, while Five can make many observations about how things are going, she knows how to apply those observations in an interpersonal context.
To the point: she sees that Five wants to help the others decorate but refuses to even step foot in his own room.
“You don’t have to do this,” Vanya tells him finally, as he helps her unpack another box. For her, she’s not looking to collect new things. She’s just trying to make the pieces of her life finally fit where they’ve always belonged. “It’s not that hard.”
“I know,” Five says, opening a box of her music books. “But it’s better than helping Allison decide between two shades of blue.”
She laughs, but she’s not about to let it slide. “Everyone else is getting into it,” she points out. “Why aren’t you?”
She probably has some ideas about why, but that’s Vanya for you. She doesn’t like to make assumptions, even when they’re probably right. “My room is fine.”
“It’s the same room you had when you left,” she points out. “You’ve changed since then.”
Five snorts with a wry laugh. “Have I?”
“You have,” she says, gently taking the books from him. “And besides, change is good.”
“Not all change,” Five says, because he’s thinking about walking down the street going from summer to winter to the apocalypse. Some change is very, very bad. It’s hard to explain how he spent so many years just wanting to go back to the way things were. He shakes his head of the notion. “Besides, I have everything I need.”
She nods benignly, in a way that accepts his answer without agreeing with it. They unpack several more items before Five pauses and looks at her.
“Is it weird for you?” he asks suddenly. “Being here with us?”
It’s a novel thought, really. He’s changed a lot of details in the timeline, and he knows that his actions have impacted countless lives for the better and for the worse. He’s always focused on the big picture in such actions. He’s never thought about what it was like for the people he killed. He never thought about their mothers or fathers, their sisters or brothers, their children or friends. He doesn’t think about the jobs they never went back to or the hobbies they never finished. He doesn’t take time to consider the books they never finished reading or the dates they never kept.
Being back with his family, however, it’s different. He’s not seeing the impetus. He’s seeing the long term effects. The Commission talks about this in broad strokes, but it has a human element, too. This is why he was right to save the world, no matter what the Commission believes. These human things.
Yet, grasping those implications on a human level, is still hard for Five.
Vanya stops in surprise. She almost seems to consider the question for the first time. “No,” she admits. “Honestly? It feels like it’s always been this way. Like it’s always been meant to be this way.”
Regret is not a foreign emotion to Five. You can’t jump brashly into the apocalypse, get stuck for 30 years and then sell your soul and not understand regret. This is a different kind of regret, though. It’s subtler. It’s not an admission of teenage hubris or profound trauma after years of isolation. It’s not even that Five sees now how kindness could have saved the world.
It’s just that Five cares about Vanya.
And he let her down.
There’s nothing cataclysmic about that.
Yet there is nothing worse than the realization.
Swallowing hard, he opens another box and stops. With a sighs, he speaks. “I’m sorry I took you for granted when we were kids.”
That’s not what she’s expecting him to say. “You were my best friend when we were kids,” she reminds him. “The others hardly ever paid attention to me.”
Five shakes his head, because that answer is not good enough. “That just makes it worse,” he says. “I liked being around you because you listened, you made me feel better about myself. I rarely ever thought about you, what you were going through. I wasn’t any better to you than the others.”
She seems to think about that, but ultimately she shakes her head again. “We were all kids, Five,” she says. “We were all looking for security, love, a place to belong. It wasn’t your fault.”
He drops his hands from the box. “That’s the excuse we always make, but I’m not so sure it counts. I mean, no matter how old we are, we still make choices. We have to be accountable to them, even when the consequences aren’t anything we intended.”
It’s a rational explanation. Five can think of things in no other way.
Vanya, however, is not Five. “Five,” she says, stepping closer to him. The boxes are forgotten now. “You have to stop blaming yourself.”
Five is not looking for absolution. He’s not some moron who thinks that everything can be okay when you say I’m sorry. Apologies don’t mean anything. He can still hear the ones he made every day of the apocalypse as they floated on the dead wind. “But I’m to blame,” he says, matter of fact now. “We put you off to the side, and it didn’t just limit your life, but it nearly destroyed the world.”
“No,” she says, expectant and emphatic. “You have to stop blaming yourself for running off.”
Now it’s Five’s turn to be taken aback. “What?”
Vanya draws a patient breath. “You still blame yourself for walking out, for defying dad, for traveling to the future,” she says.
Five stares at her, momentarily at a total loss. It’s not clear to him how they went from home decor to psychoanalysis, but here they are. Suddenly, talking paint swatches with Allison looks pretty damn good. “I was stupid,” he finally replies. “I mean, Dad told me exactly what would happen. You told me not to. But I thought I knew better. There’s really no one else to blame.”
She’s closer to him still, sympathy written over her face. “Maybe,” she says. “But you have to stop thinking it defines you. We aren’t defined by our stupidest mistake. I mean, you, more than any of the others, keeps telling me that the apocalypse isn’t my fault. But I know that I’m the one who ended the world. Me. And twice.”
Five’s throat is tight. He doesn’t actually trust himself to speak.
Vanya doesn’t make him. Instead, she continues, voice even gentler than before. “But that’s what you guys have shown me in all of this,” she says. “I’m more than that. We can’t be judged by our weakest moment. That’s not fair. And trust me, if I can put the apocalypse behind me, then so can you.”
Five’s not looking for absolution, but when it’s offered so freely, he admits that it’s tempting. But if he were inclined to such weakness, he would have died decades ago. “It’s important not to forget,” he says, and his voice sounds oddly hoarse.
A smile barely pulls at the edges of her mouth. “Yeah, but it’s also important to move forward. You can’t do that if all you do is look back.”
Five furrows his brow quizzically. “I’m not sure you understand what that means to a guy who has traveled extensively through time.”
She doesn’t bother to attempt arguing with him. She shrugs. “Yeah, well. I’m not sure you do either.”
With that, she goes back to the unpacking, opening another box of clean bed linens.
He watches her for a few moments, unpacking her life with no more reservations. He hopes she knows that she’s lucky for that, to live the life you know you’re meant to live. Five feels good that he was a part of getting her here, getting them all here. But, try as he may, he can’t share the feeling. After the life he’s lived, he’s not sure where he belongs. He’s not even sure who he is when he looks in the mirror.
Stepping back, Five makes his way to the door. “I like your room, by the way,” he says.
“Thanks,” she replies with a smile. “You’re welcome anytime.”
It’s not an empty offer. Five almost smiles. “I may hold you to that.”
She smiles enough for both of them. “I count on it.”
What’s nice about Vanya is that she’s good a listening.
Even when you’re not saying any of the words at all.
-o-
Five has helped the rest of his siblings. It seems incomplete not to spend some time with Klaus. This is not so much an explicit plan that Five forms as it is a necessity. He doesn’t like to leave things undone. He spent 30 years in the apocalypse, desperate to close off the unfinished story of his childhood. Apparently, the OCD that kept him alive and functional has stuck.
“Um, no, I’m good,” Klaus says when Five offers to help. “I can’t think of anything.”
This is ridiculous, of course. Klaus is currently wearing a pair of speedos and a button up shirt. He’s found a pair of cowboy boots and has accessorized with a hat Allison put in the hall for the trash. His room has been cleaned only in the sense that the drawers have been emptied and all his belongings have been cut open and laid bare. In short, it looks worse now than when they started.
“You can’t possibly want to live in this mess,” Five says, feeling dismayed at the prospect. He ate cockroaches in the apocalypse, but he never forgot how to be tidy.
“Uh, this mess is the cleanest it’s been in, I don’t know, fifteen years?” Klaus says. He leans forward, whispering conspiratorially now. “I got rid of all the drugs.”
Five looks around the room, trying to appreciate this distinct. He ultimately shakes his head. “How many drugs did you have in here?”
“Not as many as you probably think,” Klaus tells him. “But more than I remembered. I must have been so high when I hid most of those because I’m telling you, I got pretty creative. I even found some in the light fixture. I don’t know how I got them up there without electrocuting myself. Really!”
Klaus sounds increasingly pleased with himself.
Five does not know what to do with his burgeoning distress. “Don’t you want to pick up, then? Now that it’s clean?”
Klaus looks around, as if he’s seeing things for the first time. “What? Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “I mean, I hate to rip it all in half and cut it all to pieces, so seems kind of silly.”
“Well, you don’t want broken stuff everywhere,” Five says. “Do you?”
This thought has clearly not occurred to Klaus. “Well. I just. I don’t have anything else?”
Five scoffs. “So, go buy some.”
This is obvious solution, and Klaus has no concept of it. “Oh,” he says. “Right, I have money now. I’m not used to having money.”
“Because you probably spend it all on drugs,” Five mutters.
“And candy,” Klaus says. “Alcohol. Sometimes food. I like waffles a lot. Do you like waffles?”
Five makes a note to talk to Luther about setting up a system to give access to Klaus’ money. For one thing, it’s not appropriate for a recovering addict to have unfettered access to large sums. Also, it’s entirely possible that Klaus would squander his entire inheritance on gummy bears and women’s scarves. That’s the kind of plan that is not cosmically relevant but still seems worthwhile to Five.
Also, he decides, Klaus cannot be trusted to do this on his own. His siblings are busy, but Five’s not.
He sighs with an overly dramatic flair. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s go.”
Klaus looks hopeful. “For waffles.”
“For home decor items, functional furniture and clothing,” Five tells him with a shake of his head. “You know, adult things.”
“Uh, but you’re not an adult,” Klaus points out.
Five rolls his eyes. “Clearly, maturity is more than age,” he says. “Now get your ass together. I’m leaving.”
He walks out with that.
Klaus scrambles to follow him.
The eagerness doesn’t make Five smile at all.
-o-
Going places with Klaus is great not because Klaus is good company. Klaus isn’t good company. Klaus is every kind of crazy in the book. He’s easily distracted, and he tries to be annoying. And he’s hungry all the time.
But Klaus can’t drive. So he never objects when Five gets behind the wheel.
That may seem like a small thing, but Five has survived a literal apocalypse. He knows to appreciate the little things.
-o-
Things are going relatively well. They pick up a new dresser and mattress, since Klaus destroyed his previous ones while ridding his room of drugs, and Klaus gets oddly attached to a few stuffed animals. Five doesn’t get it, but he lets it pass. They’re moving on to the clothing section of the department store when the simple outing takes a turn for the complicated.
That’s a euphemism. Five uses a lot of euphemisms. Corrections instead of murder. Time travel instead of crap shoot.
Complicated instead of panic attack.
Yeah, that’s right.
Five is going along, helping Klaus pick out actual clothes that normal human wear when he has a panic attack right here in the middle of the department store.
It starts when he turns from the display of pants he’s been looking at and comes face to face with a family of mannequins. There’s four of them. A father wearing a plaid shirt; a mother in capri pants. A little mannequin boy and a little mannequin girl, smiling just as plain as day.
It’s a department store.
There are lots of mannequins.
Five has come to terms with Delores.
This shouldn’t be a problem, this shouldn’t be anything.
This shouldn’t be.
Five’s breath catches. His movement freeze. His mind flashes.
It is
Somewhere, Klaus is still talking about synthetic fabrics, and Five’s vision starts to tunnel. He blinks, but the image in front of him doesn’t change, and he sees a flash of an explosion and hears the sound of his own voice screaming.
The equations are wrong. The Commission is coming. The timeline keeps falling apart.
And there are four dead bodies in the rubble.
The sky is on fire.
He lifts his gun but his finger is shaking too bad to pull the trigger. His head pounds, his chest aches, his fingers tingle. He can’t stop it, he can’t stop it, he can’t--
Someone takes his arm, and Five gasps back to the present. He thinks it’s Klaus, which would be bad enough, but it’s a store employee. She smiles at him like he’s not having an episode of PTSD right there in the men’s department. “Careful now,” she croons. “You don’t look so good.”
Five is still struggling to breathe, and he can’t quite come up with a response.
She lets go of his hand. “You should tell your brother,” she says, and her eyes slide across toward the dressing area where Klaus has somehow found a woman’s scarf to model in the mirror. “He might be able to help.”
Numbly, Five shakes his head. “He doesn’t need to know,” he replies hoarsely.
She shrugs. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world,” she tells him. Her lips turn up. “Would it?”
-o-
It wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Maybe, is all Five can think.
Most people don’t default to the apocalypse as a possible outcome of, well, anything, but most people are ignorant morons.
It wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Unless it absolutely would be.
-o-
Five doesn’t panic.
He grabs Klaus, pays the bill and drags the packages out to the car. The sun is bright and warm and Klaus is loud and whiny and Five breathes.
His heart is pounding when he starts the car, and his fingers are slick with sweat on the steering wheel as he drives the whole way home.
-o-
Coincidence.
It has to be a coincidence.
All the same, when he and Klaus get home, he goes up to Diego’s room and drags him out. Klaus can’t be around alcohol; Luther would be too overbearing to make this work. He can’t do this to Vanya, and he can’t imagine what Allison would say. Diego’s his best option.
“Where are we going?” Diego asks.
“To drink,” Five says. “A lot.”
“Dude, you’re, like, tiny,” Diego reminds him. “That hasn’t worked out so well for you in the past.”
Five smirks. “You have no idea.”
-o-
The problem is, getting drunk doesn’t help.
Not that Diego lets him get drunk, because apparently the fact that Five’s nearly twice his age means nothing to him. All he can see is a 13 year old kicking back margaritas and apparently that’s a bad thing.
Still, Five manages to get a little buzzed.
For all the good that does him.
Without his inhibitions, Five can’t escape the conclusion that is forming in his brain. The conclusion that’s been there for the past two weeks, two months, two everything.
The Commission has found him.
Two weeks in, and the Commission is here.
-o-
So, here they are.
Five is back at the beginning. Or maybe it’s the ending. Maybe it doesn’t matter, not with the Commission.
It doesn’t matter where he goes, what he does, when he exists.
He’s a man out of time, and that makes him more than the most dangerous person in the world. It makes him the most dangerous person in the time continuum. As long as Five’s alive, the Commission will follow him. They would be remiss if they didn’t.
It’s been two weeks since they got back to the present. It’s been more than a week since the week didn’t end. It’s been two weeks since Five has let himself get distracted by lesser plans. For two weeks, he got away with it. For two weeks, he got to pretend that easy and simple were things he was capable of obtaining.
In truth, he’s lucky he got two weeks. He has to wonder if the Commission is starting to lose its edge. But then, Five’s never been an optimist.
-o-
Five sleeps off the alcohol and wakes up with a headache. He blames a hangover, but he’s not stupid. He knows it has nothing to do with that. His head is pounding -- his entire body aches -- because his drunken conclusions from the previous night are still valid. If anything, they’re more valid. Diego offers him some ibuprofen, but that won’t take away the growing dread that is filling the pit of his stomach.
The thing is, and this is the part that really turns his stomach, Five is not surprised. At all.
In the sober light of day, there’s no need to pretend. He doesn’t have to obfuscate the facts anymore. Those gnawing doubts, the ones he couldn’t shake no matter how hard his siblings tried to distract him, he can acknowledge them now. He has to embrace them.
He’s been looking for impending doom since they made the jump back. He’d been able to write it off as concern over the would-be apocalypse, but it’s clearly more than that. He spent years working for the Commission. He’s followed their orders, he’s memorized their policies, he’s learned every nuance of the organization from the inside out. Simply put, he knows the Commission too well to pretend like his actions could possibly go unnoticed.
Moreover, he understands the variations of time too completely. The Butterfly Effect takes the smallest action and sees profound differences in the timeline. Five’s done more than the smallest action. He’s radically altered the course of the future. That’s not going to go unnoticed. The Commission, assuming it still exists -- an assumption Five does certainly make -- will be very aware of what he’s done.
That’s the rub, then. The Commission, from its perspective outside the timelines, actually would know far more about what Five’s done than Five himself. It’s not something he cares to admit, but he also can’t deny it: he has no idea what he’s done. Presumably, he’s saved the world and his siblings.
But at what cost?
What damage has been done to the timeline?
How stable is the continuum with all these alterations?
What will the future look like when there was never supposed to be a future?
Five had rejected the Handler’s notion that saving mankind was a mistake. He’d rejected her for his discompassion view of the end of the world.
But, now that he’s done what he set out to do, he has to acknowledge that there are very real dangers. When he had jumped back to his family that first time, it had been a process that he had taken decades to finalize. Even then, with all his work, he’d gone and gotten it wrong. His father had favored muddied analogies, but Five could keep it plain: time travel was a guarantee of nothing. It should only be used as a last resort. Even then, it should be approached with the greatest of care.
Such a conclusion had taken 30 years to solidify. 30 years of hunger, disgrace, loneliness and despair.
In that context, making the jump back had been an acceptable risk. To save his family, to save the world, he had determined it was worthwhile. And he had been careful.
That second jump, though. The one he made with seconds to go before the world imploded. That hadn’t been planned. That hadn’t been calculated.
Five had acted merely on impulse, nothing more.
In a sense, it was very understandable. Very human. For all that he’d risked to save his family, there was no way he was going to let them perish. He’d already proven he’d do anything to save them. Emotionally, therefore, such a hasty jump was a natural and expected choice.
Logically, however.
Shit, there was nothing logical about it.
Five’s got no idea what he’s actually done. He has no sense of the ramifications. In all truth, he’s actually surprised that there are no apparent catastrophic consequences already. There would be every reason to expect the world to be severely altered by their haphazard machinations, and yet, coming back to the would-be present has shown only minimal and mostly inconsequential changes to the timeline.
He’d tried, while fixing the past with his family, to put some time into his equations. He knew that the others wanted to get back to their present, and Five was mostly eager to ensure that they effectively did prevent the apocalypse. However, he knew that the jump back couldn’t be that hasty. After two less than perfect jumps, he wanted to get this one right.
The good news is that two failures provided plenty of insight into the process. With these considerations, he manages to bring them back in a more controlled fashion. His execution has improved substantially. His siblings are able to return to their adult bodies, and he times it perfectly two days before the world ended in two timelines. It’s unfortunate that there is no calculation that can get him his actual body back. It appears that he’s stuck at 13 indefinitely. The others seem concerned by this, but it’s not a show stopper for Five. Not when he knows how many other things could go wrong.
None of which is to say that things have gone perfectly.
Hell, that’s not even to say that Five doesn’t think sometimes that he’s made his biggest mistake yet.
But the key outcomes have been positive. Five set out to save his family and the world, and he’s done that. More than that, they’re closer as a family and Vanya has been included as an equal. She’s embraced her powers. Collectively, they told the old man to leave them alone before jumping back to the present, apparently no worse for wear.
Sure, there are some caveats even then. Ben is still dead. This is probably the most glaring failure of the process to the others, if only because seeing him in the past had given them reason to hope. Five had offered to look over some calculations, and the others offered to simply live things out as needed in the past to fix Ben’s accident, but Ben is the most well adjusted of them all. For Ben, being dead isn’t a showstopper either. Five believes it’s Ben’s choice, and he’ll respect that.
Plus, that actually makes the equations simpler. Controlling for Ben’s survival would be a hard variable to control, and he’s already got a lot at play in this jump. It is his intention to make this jump the last one. Possibly ever. The others have not totally grasped that, even now. They don’t understand that jumping back to their present is a luxury; it’s not survival. There’s nothing that necessitates it. They don’t understand the inherent risks involved with time travel. For all that Five’s the resident expert on such things, he doesn’t know enough to offer any guarantees.
It’s not a lesson they’re likely to learn, not when things have turned out ostensibly well. Things are substantially better than when they left. The house is still standing, which means that Pogo and Mom are still alive and well. They all come back to better lives, happier lives. They’re content to believe that everything is fine.
Five has allowed this.
For two weeks, he’s tried to believe it, too.
Those two weeks are over now.
The Commission being here isn’t a surprise, but it is a necessary catalyst.
It’s time for Five to get back down to business.
It’s time for Five to make a plan.
Not a plan for the apocalypse. Not a plan for the Academy. Not even a plan for sibling bonding and interior design. A plan to go against the Commission.
A plan to win.
-o-
Therein lies his first dilemma: does he tell the others?
Five wants to tell the others -- he does -- but he can’t think of what to tell them. He’s got nothing concrete to go on. Vague sensation and growing doubts -- it’s nothing he can substantiate.
All the same, he can’t talk himself out of it either. He can’t help it if something feels off.
Because he knows, okay? He knows that you don’t get to jump through time without repercussions. And he may not know for sure if the Commission is still out there, but how can it not be? Five knows that what he’s doing has had dramatic consequences. Someone out there is going to notice. And someone out there is going to notice. It’d be utterly naive to assume otherwise.
It’s just that he’s got no evidence.
All he’s got is this feeling in his gut and this nagging in the brain.
Part of him wishes Delores were still here, and he resists the urge to go down and take her for himself again. She’s just so damn reasonable about things like this, and she’s plaintive in her understanding of his eccentricities. She has a way of speaking common sense that Five values, and he wonders if she’d tell him that he’s crazy.
Because, honestly, he feels a little crazy.
A lot crazy.
And maybe it’s just a learned behavior. Maybe it was the solitude. Maybe it was the fact that he lost his innocence in the apocalypse. Maybe it was the way his arrogance had blown up in his face so dramatic. Hell, it could be the fact that he’s killed countless people without remorse. Or maybe it’s just an inherent personality flaw that he always thinks there’s something more.
It’s just there are these things that happen in the two weeks that they are back. They are genuinely small things, so small that no one else even bothers to notice them. But he can’t shake the way they make him pause, like strange pings on his radar he can’t explain.
Things he can’t explain are things he has to explain, and he’s pretty sure one of two things is happening. One, he is finally starting the long, slow slide into insanity, a slide that very well may unrecoverable for him at this point. Two, he’s right and the Commission is watching him.
Either way, he’s not imagining things. There is a person across the street who watches him, holding a newspaper up but never looking at it every time Five leaves the house. The delivery guy, the one Klaus calls for pizza two or three times a week, definitely stands on the stoop longer than necessary before finally ringing the bell.
Five notices because he notices everything, and weird shit will happen from time to time, but patterns? You can’t ignore that stuff.
Well, you can, if you’re a normal person.
You can’t when you’re Five.
-o-
Five’s indecision on this front goes on for another two weeks.
He has some shame about this. Five should not be prone to indecision. But no matter how many times he tries to follow the logic around, he’s stopped by sentimental reason. Mostly, his family is so happy. They are happier than they’ve ever been. And if Five starts talking about the time continuum or the threat of the Commission, he’s going to take that away.
He doesn’t want to do that. Even if it’s the right decision, he really doesn’t want to.
That’s not a plan, though.
Damn it, Five still needs a plan.
-o-
The only plan he has is that he needs to make a plan.
Also, that no one should know that he has a plan to make a plan.
Because if they know his plan to make a plan, then they’ll want to be a part of that plan. And if that happens, then the plan is too complicated and there are too many variables.
He just needs a simple plan, a clear plan, a cohesive plan.
Yeah, Five can’t say that it’s going all that well.
-o-
Five has decided to keep his doubts to himself because his family is doing so well.
It’s just that it’s so hard watching them do so well when nothing is going well for him.
Five is inherently a jealous person; he will admit to that. He’s always hated being Number Five because he resents the hell out of the fact that he’s got four siblings who were deemed better. He struggles appreciating the success of others, especially when it’s contrasted with his own failures and limitations.
So, watching his siblings happily rebuilding their lives only makes his lack of certainty about the Commission and its possible agents feel even worse.
To make matters worse, every week, they have that family dinner.
A chance to come together, enjoy each other’s company and talk. They talk about how everything is going well. Luther is looking into updated uniforms. Diego has a line one some possible connections to find jobs. Allison is close to getting joint custody of Claire. Klaus hasn’t relapsed at all and is in a knitting group. Ben can play basketball again. Vanya is always smiling.
They’re doing so wonderful that Five wants to be sick.
Sometimes, during those happy dinners, Five remembers that last family dinner with his father all those years ago. He remembers why he couldn’t stand it anymore, why he couldn’t sit still and silent while everyone else whittled away mindlessly. That feeling that festers in his gut, that need to prove himself, to do something, to achieve, was the same one that had propelled him out the front door into a future that was his and his alone.
He remembers better than he lets on. He remembers even though no one asks him.
Those first two weeks, coming back, he’d thought himself brave for resisting that urge to make a scene.
Honestly, as he shovels a dinner that he can’t taste into his mouth, he’s just not so sure anymore.
-o-
Then, to make matters worse, the others start to notice.
Not that he has anxiety about family dinner. No, they seem oblivious to that. They all seem unable to conceive that reliving his last stand every week might trigger some less than positive memories.
But they do notice that he’s on edge, and they are starting to think that he’s not okay.
Like, really not okay.
Five’s not been okay since he got back -- that much is plain -- but they’re starting to look at him like they’re worried he’s about to go off and do something stupid.
Their definition of stupid, by the way, not his. They may not understand things like mannequins and glass eyes and time travel, but Five’s never done anything without purpose.
That said, he’s supposed to keep them from worrying. That was the plan, wasn’t it? Has he messed it up so badly already?
In short, yes.
Five’s plan is in shambles. He wonders if he’s getting sloppy in his old age. He contemplates if puberty is affecting his mental capacity. Alternatively, it’s possible he’s just never been good at this. You don’t have to keep secrets when you’re traveling through time killing people. And Delores, for all her virtues, never was able to call him on all his shit.
In any case, the others know him better than he knows himself.
That may be a problem.
-o-
For the most part, Five deals with this problem by being an asshole.
Now, he’s aware that this may seem counterintuitive, but it’s not. Five’s always been an asshole, even when they were kids. He’s always been rude and arrogant and prone to condescension. Therefore, if he continues being an asshole, it can be an effective guise for most of his behaviors.
He doesn’t like the fact that most is a very subjective sort of word.
Apparently, there are a great many actions that can’t be explained by being a prick.
Case in point, Diego takes him for a run. Five ardently objects to this, but Diego believes that their training should continue if they plan to resurrect the Academy, and Five’s too tired of shit to fight him on that. Besides, running is easy. He’s always had stamina and now that he’s 13 again, he feels like he could run forever. Plus, he’s easily outpacing all his siblings on his training. He knows because Diego charts his progress on his phone, and it’s one distraction that Five actually takes pleasure in.
That’s all well and good until they take a rest break in an alley on a random morning.
Now, why did Diego choose an alley? It’s Diego. He’s strange when it comes to aesthetics, and he’s always about choosing things that make him look gritty and real. It seems that he thinks the contrast favors him when compared to Luther, but Five thinks they all seem like idiots.
At any rate, they’re taking their water break in an alley, and Diego is lecturing him about conditioning while updating their statistics in his phone when Five hears a noise.
It probably sounds innocuous to most people. A whoosh of air. A hiss. A small thump of metal on metal.
A chill goes down Five’s back.
“If your opponent can outlast you, then you’re done, you know?” Diego is explaining. “Endurance, man. It makes all the difference.”
There’s a wind.
Something rustles.
Without thinking, he’s on his feet. He’s unarmed -- damn it -- but Diego never is. Before Diego realizes what’s happening, Five has freed two knives from Diego’s sheaths, and he’s brought them to bear on the movement a split second before it rounds the corner of a dumpster.
Five’s ready for anything. He’s ready for agents. He’s ready for a hit squad. He’s ready for the Handler, put back together and filled with smiling vengeance.
With a yell, he primes himself to strike, to go for the carotid and cut.
Diego squawks in surprise.
Five bears down.
Face to face with a cat.
It’s small and grey. It stares up at Five and mewls, a small, pathetic sound. At its feet is a tin can. It purrs again, taking a step forward and rubbing its body along Five’s leg in unsolicited affection.
“Dude,” Diego says. “What the hell?”
Five is still taut, his breathing hard and fast. His heart is pounding in his chest and he can feel perspiration gathering along his brow. “I heard something,” he says, and he’s aware how that sounds while he points two knives at a cat.
“Uh, yeah,” Diego says, and he reaches around cautiously, plucking the first knife from Five’s grip. “But I think this is a bit much.”
Diego pets the cat before holding out his hand, beckoning for the second knife.
Self consciously, Five eases his stance. He turns the knife before slowly handing it back. “You can never be too sure.”
Diego raises his eyebrows. For all his talk of preparedness, he clearly thinks Five has pushed things too far.
And, given the cat and the knives and Five’s fight or flight response, Five can’t deny that it’s not a terrible conclusion.
“You okay?” Diego asks as he puts his knives away. He looks at Five with real concern. “I mean, really. You’ve been, I don’t know. Kind of off the last few weeks.”
Five wonders what Diego would deem normal, all things considered. Five’s never been one to play like the other kids, and he is well aware that he’s been even more insufferable since coming back. Of his many skills, interpersonal matters are not included. “You learn to be paranoid in my line of work,” he says, and it’s not a lie, even if it’s not entirely the truth.
Diego gives him a skeptical look. “I’m serious, man,” he says. “If you need to talk or something…”
Five huffs, brushing past his brother. “I thought we were running,” he says. “We have still have a long way back.”
Diego can’t argue that, and for that much, and possibly nothing else right now, Five is grateful.
He’s got a lot of stamina, after all.
It would be nice if all he needed it for was running.
-o-
At home, Five does the math. He calculates the probability of the Commission programming a cat for its own purposes. They could simply hijack an actual cat, use implants to enhance it for lowkey surveillance. He should have taken the thing home to see if it was real. He can’t rule out the possibility of artificial intelligence.
Ultimately, the calculations are inconclusive.
He can’t quantify a plan with robotic cats.
Damn it, what good is he at all anymore?
-o-
Second case in point: Five wants to eat lunch. Food is one of his indulgences. All those years of cockroaches, he has to admit, he doesn’t give a shit about eating healthy. Therefore, meal time in the kitchen is usually one of his best times of the day.
This particular day, however, they’re out of marshmallows.
Damn it.
How the hell are they out of marshmallows.
He’s about to lose his shit when Allison saunters in. “Hey,” she says, poking through the fridge. “Are we out of those leftovers? That rice dish that mom made?”
“Who the hell cares,” Five snaps.
She glances back at him. “Okay.”
He knows he’s being unfair. He sighs. “We’re out of marshmallows.”
She closes the fridge. “Well, there is other food….”
“But I wanted marshmallows,” Five growls. “We had a whole bag just yesterday, and I can’t find them, and I don’t understand--”
Allison holds up a hand to silence him. “Five, relax,” she says. “It’s just marshmallows.”
It’s not just marshmallows, though. It’s Five’s favorite food. It’s his one indulgence. It’s his comfort source now that Delores is gone. And he needs a way to relieve the stress right now. He needs a way to not think about the plan he doesn’t have to stop the Commission from enacting the plan he hasn’t figured out.
He needs a plan, okay?
And if he can’t have a plan, then why the hell aren’t there any marshmallows?
Five says none of that, but Allison seems to sense he’s at his limit. “Come on,” she says.
“Come where?” he snaps back.
“To the car,” she says. “We’re going out.”
Five narrows his eyes. “Why?”
“Because you’re hungry,” she tells him. “We’ll do lunch.”
He watches her, still inexplicably suspicious. It seems silly to go out; a waste of time. But as much as he hates life without marshmallows, the thought of going back upstairs to the equations he can’t finish is even harder.
Also, if he’s left to his own devices, the only plan he’ll come up with right now is to go to the supermarket and murder everyone there before taking every last bag of marshmallows for himself. This is an inappropriate response to his frustration, and he’s not going to indulge it, but it’s probably better to be safe than sorry.
Still, the idea has appeal. Five’s never liked murder, but the instant gratification of solving your problems with a pull of the trigger is something his siblings severely underestimate. He wonders if this is what Luther meant when he asked if Five had a code as a hitman: no killing over marshmallows.
“Okay,” he agrees finally.
It’s simple.
In other words, it’s the best semblance of a plan that Five’s had in weeks.
-o-
Homicidal urges and marshmallow codes aside, this is how he ends up at the restaurant with his sister. It’s a nice place -- Delores would love it -- and Five is feeling moderately at ease while he looks over the drinks menu.
This is a mistake, he knows. Allison might permit him to drink, but a waiter will never serve him alcohol. It’s silly to tempt himself, but Five can’t quite resist. He’s made peace with this when the waiter shows up and does the unthinkable.
He offers Five a kid’s menu.
“A what?” Five repeats, hoping he’s misheard.
He hasn’t. The waiter smiles as he holds up a piece of paper with word searches and a mad lib. “We recognize that some of our food is not right for younger diners,” he says. “So we have a more simplified array of options. Grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese…”
Five feels his blood start to boil.
Sure, he was going to eat a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich at home, but that doesn’t meant that he wants to eat grilled cheese. And it’s the indignity, honestly. Five knows that he’s still wearing a schoolboy uniform, and he knows that Diego’s training has done nothing to bulk up his skinny frame, and he’s sure the waiter is just trying to be polite, but what the hell?
What the actual hell?
Seriously.
“Do I look like I need a kids’ menu?” he demands. His fingers are tightening reflexively into fists and he’s subconsciously cataloguing the number of butter knives in his vicinity.
Allison smiles and tries to interject. “We’re fine, thank you,” she says. “Maybe we could have some waters?”
“Right,” the waiter says, giving Five a tentative look before trying to smile back at Allison. “A few more minutes before you order then?”
“That would be lovely, thanks,” Allison tells him.
When the waiter leaves, Allison gives him a look. “Come on, there’s no reason to be rude,” she reprimands him.
Five scoffs as he starts to look over the menu. “There’s no reason for him to be an idiot, but he gets a pass.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m serious, Five,” she says. “It’s no one’s fault that you’re 13.”
She’s trying to be diplomatic but it only reminds Five that it is someone’s fault: his.
Grinding his teeth together, he feels his body tense. “I didn’t like being 13 the first time around,” he mutters. “The second time is so much worse.”
This is hyperbole, of course. The first time he was 13, he was living by himself in an apocalyptic wasteland. Of course that had been worse. But Five does not feel like making concessions now. Or ever.
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Allison chides him. “Watching Claire grow up, I’d give anything to go back.”
“Great, then next time we time travel, I’ll project you into your 13 year old body and see how you like it,” Five snaps. He’s so angry that he can’t even read the menu descriptions, so he thinks he’ll just ask for a steak. Bloody.
Allison shrugs a little as she flips through the menu yourself. “The point is you have a choice to be happy. So you should think about making it.”
This is funny for some reason. His lips twist up sardonically. “There’s too much at stake,” he says. “In case you haven’t noticed.”
She looks up at him, quizzical. “We stopped the apocalypse. We brought the family together. Your missions are done, Five. Aren’t they?”
He stops himself short at that.
Aren’t they?
The words get caught in his throat as his mind tumbles over the signs over the last few weeks.
He swallows
Aren’t they?
Suppressing a shudder, he looks back at the menu. “I guess,” he says.
“So, there you go,” she says.
He stares hard at the menu without reading a word. There you go.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Five?”
“What?” he glances up again, realizing for the first time that he’d fallen unnaturally silent. “Yeah, of course. Like you said, why wouldn’t I be?”
She does not look convinced by this. If anything, she looks less convinced than ever.
He tries to smile to reassure her.
It feels weird as hell, but he thinks it works.
It works less when the waiter comes back and asks if they’re ready. Five launches into a tirade about the relativity of time and mankind’s limited grasp on the topic. The waiter tries to apologize, and Five proceeds to eviscerate his ineptitude before ranting about how they waste all their time making decisions that don’t matter and plans that get them nowhere.
Allison drags him out by the scruff of his neck and picks up some fast food instead.