![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
faye_dartmouthPART 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-
Five follows, though he’s not sure what she thinks she will figure out. They find the location of the rat’s demise, and she methodically starts to clean it up. Five stands by idly, not sure if he’s supposed to help her or not.
When she’s finished, she turns her attention to him. She musters up something for him to change into before throwing his soiled clothing into the trash. Then, she washes him off and then proceeds to scrub him clean, using hot water and plenty of soap. She repeats this process a number of times until Five’s skin is red and raw from her ministrations.
After making sure he’s clean, she finishes up the kitchen. She disinfects every surface before taking out the garbage, and she comes back to the kitchen before scouring her own hands clean.
The blood is gone when she finishes, but only in appearance. Bloodstains never go away, not when they’ve soaked into your soul. That’s overly dramatic, Five knows that, but he thinks it might be true. He thinks it might be the last true thing he can remember before he loses his mind entirely.
“Okay,” she says, matter of fact when she done. She turns to face him. For some reason, she’s smiling. “Did you ever get your snack?”
Five stares at her. “What?”
“Your snack,” she says. “You came down her for a snack, right?”
It seems like an eternity ago. Reflecting, he realizes it could have been seconds for all that he knows. “Oh,” he says. He furrows his brow, trying to remember. “I didn’t get that far.”
“Okay, then,” she says, gesturing to the table. “You sit down. One snack coming up.”
-o-
He sits.
Vanya makes a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich and presents it to him. There’s no flourish involved, but she looks quite pleased with herself. She sits across from him like she hasn’t just spent an hour cleaning up from Five’s murder of a rat.
She waits, and he realizes belatedly that she’s waiting for him to take a bite. Considering everything, Five can think of no reason not to oblige her. In a perfunctory fashion, he picks up the sandwich and takes a bite.
This seems to put her instantly at ease. “Is it good?”
He understands, vaguely, that the question is a request for affirmation. It is less clear to him why he can’t reply. Instead, he chewed around the bread and peanut butter for far longer than necessary.
Fortunately, this seems to satisfy her. She sits back, arms folded across her chest like she’s achieved something significant. “See, it is good.”
He chews long and hard before he swallows. Then, he pins her with a quizzical look. “So you’re really not going to talk about what just happened.”
It’s a bit to the point, more than Five is used to these days, but it always is easier talking to Vanya. She’ll ask questions about sandwiches; not about Five’s murderous impulses. There’s something endearing about that, though Five has to conclude that it’s a dangerous amount of short-sightedness at this point.
Her expression hardly flickers. “What? You heard a noise. It’s not like we don’t have enemies. We all have to be on our guard.”
He narrows his gaze. “On our guard, yes,” he says. “But I slaughtered a rat.”
“So?” she asks, making a face. “It’s a rat, Five. There are far too many of them in the city as it is.”
It would be easy to chalk such a response up to protective instincts, especially with one of his other siblings. But Vanya is different. Vanya doesn’t lie. Vanya is telling the truth, plain and simple and utterly naive.
“Sure,” Five says. “A rat that I ripped in two. With my bare hands.”
He’s never been one to waste time on denials. He’ll obfuscate issues as necessary -- or at least, he used to. Truth is a difficult concept for him these days, which is why it’s so strange to him that he wants to spell it out so clearly now. Maybe all this time he’s spent not speaking the truth isn’t helping. Maybe he needs to say it. Or maybe he just needs someone else to hear it.
Vanya seems to accept that this conversation will no longer be about the intrinsic value of midnight snacks. She lets out a little breath. “Well, we know about your training. It has given you a distinct skill set. It’s not exactly a surprise that it comes up from time to time in daily life. How could it not?”
She makes it sound very nice and simple. She’s convincing, Five will give her that. There’s a part of him that wants to leave it at that, but he can’t. There’s just no way for him to pretend. “I’m a murderer, Vanya.”
He’s admitted to killing people. He’s never hidden the fact that he’s an assassin -- not just any assassin, but the best. He’s used the number of people he’s killed to boost his own credibility. But he’s avoided real questions with a moral relativism that equates his actions to nothing more than survival.
He’s never said it like this.
This puts weight on the action, denoting a necessary consequence that he’s never sought before. Before, when he thought he had more in common with his family than the Commission. The illusion is gone now.
She looks shaken, if only slightly, by his bluntness. “You did what you had to do.”
She’ll give him a pass. She’ll still buy into the justifications.
Face taut, he shakes his head. “No, you have to listen to what I’m saying,” he says. “I’m an actual murderer. I’m the kind of person they lock in jail and throw away the key. I’m the kind of person that makes people believe in the death penalty. I’m not a good person, Vanya. Not even a little bit.”
There’s something in his words that frightens her, but of course it’s not the right thing. Adamant, she shakes her head. “You did what you had to do. You didn’t have any other way to get back to us. If you hadn’t gone with the Commission, if you hadn’t taken the Handler’s deal, then we’d all be dead right now. The world we be over. You saved the world. You saved us. Five, you saved me.”
She’s being nice; she’s being too nice. Five feels his heart rate quicken. “You’re being naive. Dangerously so.”
“No,” she says, undeterred. “This is what family is.”
Five’s heard this. Five keeps hearing this, and he does what he can to believe them, but his instincts fight it. It’s a constant push and pull with him, family or his calling, and he’s not sure he can tip the scales in is family’s favor much longer. “That’s stupidity is what it is,” he says, voice starting to rise. The dawn is approaching, but there’s nothing to be done for it. “What if it hadn’t been a rat making the noise? What if it had been Klaus, looking for something to eat? What if it had been Diego, playing with his stupid little knives? What if it had been you, hm? Just going about your business.”
Vanya furrows her brow. “It wasn’t, though. And you wouldn’t do that. You know the difference between a rat and your family.”
He scoffs. “Do you even hear yourself?” he demands, voice starting to pitch wildly. “I am readily admitting to you that I didn’t know what the sound was and I didn’t have any idea until after I’d attacked. And I didn’t exactly go to disable, did I? I ripped it in two. The human neck is surprisingly easy to break; don’t think I couldn’t do it.”
She blinks, a flash of horror on her face, even as she covers it quickly. “You wouldn’t. I know you, Five.”
“No, you know who I used to be,” he says, and now he’s the one being adamant. The house is creaking with the rising sun, and he wonders if anything he says or does is private here. “You haven’t come to terms with who I am now, who the Commission made me to be. This incident, right here, proves it. I’m not in control, and you all like to think you’ve got this, but you’re babysitting a time bomb. There’s no way to know when or why I’ll explode, but it is pretty clear that someone is going to get hurt, which is the opposite of what I wanted when I started this.”
His chest is tight. It’s not merely the emotional exertion. It’s not the physical toll. It’s more.
Vanya sits forward again. “Nothing like that is going to happen as long as we’re together.”
“It will,” he says, insists. “The longer you deny it, the more dangerous this becomes.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “You’re getting better, Five. We’re watching you get better.”
“Am I?” he asks, and his voice breaks. Puberty; it’s puberty. How is he still going through puberty?
“Yes,” she says, emboldened now. She gestures at him. “I mean, look at you. You’re gaining weight, you’re working out. You’re reading, playing games, all of it. I was there when we got you out, Five. I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit for how far you’ve come, for what you’ve overcome.”
She’s making excuses. Her reasons may be pure, but that purity won’t save her. Not from Five. “You all know I’m insane. That’s why no one will leave me alone. That’s why Ben woke you up when I disappeared. Because I’m not getting better, not in the ways that actually matter.”
Her face reddens a little and her breathing catches. He’s getting closer to the point there, at least. “We know you’re traumatized. It’s not the same thing.”
He leans forward now, ignoring the sandwich on the table in front of him. The smell of peanut butter is oddly unsettling all of a sudden, like maybe he doesn’t know his own taste buds anymore. It probably doesn’t matter; nothing matters. Just this: “You can call it traumatized and you can pretend I’m some sort of victim, but that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the very real risk you are taking. All of you.”
At that, she looks incredulous. She almost looks hurt, like he’s off and slapped her across the face. “It changes everything,” she says. She tilts her head, invoking compassion. “Five, you are a victim in all of this. You need us right now.”
It’s his turn to recoil. The word victim is a slap in return, and his body tingles. The energy builds in his fists, but he’s not sure what he wants to do. Blink out of here? Wrap his hands around her throat and squeeze? He inhales and exhales rapidly, hot air through his nostrils. “But you need to get as far away from me as possible,” he says. “You’re better off without me.”
“Without you, we’d all be dead,” she says. She gestures across the table at him. “Five, we’re not going to leave you alone.”
Her voice is so plain, so vulnerable. Vanya suffered for thinking herself normal in many ways, but the clarity in moments like these is clearly derived from the fact that she doesn’t think of herself first ever. So much has changed for her, and Five can’t decide if it’s reassuring that this much is the same or not.
It doesn’t matter, he reminds himself.
Vanya’s vulnerability is a problem, one that Five cannot probably rectify. In truth, he’s starting to believe that there’s nothing more he can give -- nothing except, of course, his absence. An absence that logically makes sense -- the only sense. But Vanya comes at him with emotion, and Five has nothing for that.
Nothing.
Desperation changes you in a lot of different ways. Some people break.
Other people get mad and shoot for the first target they see.
It’s no surprise, then, what Five does next.
He snorts, caustically and diminutively. “Is this you being a superhero?” he asks. “Is that it? You have power now, so you think you’re going to save the world, save us all. Save me.”
She doesn’t seem taken aback by his tone; she does know him better than the others. “I’m going to try.”
“Fine,” he snarls. “But you have to suck it up and do the job right. That’s what it means to be a hero. That’s what it means to save the world. You have to make the difficult choices and the hard calls.”
“But what hard calls? Five--”
“Saving me is stopping me,” he says, almost yelling now. “You want to save the world? Save the family? You stop me. You stop me right here and right now. If you use your powers, rip me in two, you’ll save all of them -- and me. You can’t trust me, Vanya, and you can’t control me. I don’t even have control anymore. So you stop me.”
Finally, she looks horrified. After all he’s done, after all she’s seen, this is what turns her. It’s been a long time coming. “Don’t be ridiculous--”
A long time coming, and it still misses the mark. He shakes his head. “I’m not being ridiculous!” he shouts back. “You are! You all are! You mill around this house and you act like you don’t see what’s happening. You pretend like I’m going to get better. You go along like this is where I belong when it’s painfully obvious that the only place I will belong is the Commission. They’re killer -- I’m a killer. It only makes sense. They made me exactly how they wanted me, and there’s no other place in time or space where I will ever make sense. Even if I wanted to fight it, it’s my DNA. And the longer we keep up the charade, the more likely it is to end it total disaster.”
The color has drained from her face now, and she shakes her head right back. “No, that’s not true,” she says. “We get to decide how it ends. We have a choice.”
“Choices made without enough knowledge to make them valid,” Five say back. His heart is pounding furiously now, like he’s staring down an opponent who has a gun to his head. “And choices based on factors entirely outside our control. Just look at us. We’re only here, together in the Academy, because of our DNA.”
“Sure, and we all made the choice to come together as a family,” Vanya argues back.
“That choice is made with the reality of our DNA already as a given,” Five insists. “I mean, you can’t actually be this stupid. Because that’s what you’re being right now: stupid. Tactically, I’m a risk. Logically, I’m a problem. Even emotionally, you can save the others from further hardship if I’m not here. But you won’t admit that because you are still operating until the foolish delusion that we can make the choice to have things be okay. That’s the kind of short sighted strategy that gets people killed, Vanya. That ends the world.”
This time, she blanches.
Just a little.
Five sees his opening and exploits it ruthlessly. “This all goes to show that you may be able to control your powers to some degree, but you’re still not ready to be a superhero,” he says, voice picking up steam now. “You have no experience and no training, and it seriously impedes your judgment. So, great, maybe you’re not going to explode and destroy all of mankind again, but you’re still a risk to everyone you care about because you’re willfully moronic!”
He’s breathing heavy, and he can feel a sweat breaking out on his brow. His pulse is thrumming; adrenaline is coursing through him. It’s the thrill of the kill. He told Luther once that it never brought him pleasure, but he has to reconsider now and accept that possibility that it was, perhaps, a lie.
Or, at the very least, that it’s not true anymore.
Shit, he doesn’t even recognize himself anymore, seething over a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich like it’s the most important thing in the world.
Vanya, for all that Five is spewing at her, finds her resolve. For all that he’s accused her of being weak, her strength is clear.
As is her folly.
“We love you, Five, and that’s what matters. That’s the only thing that matters,” she tells him with no regard to any of his warnings. “And you have to know that. You have to believe how much we love you.”
His eyes are burning. He’s not sure why. Five doesn’t understand. Through the tightness in his throat, he asks, “Do I?”
It’s a vulnerable question, damn it.
Vanya is not as tactically inefficient as he has suggested. She seizes upon it unyieldingly. “Yes,” she says. Her tone brokers no more argument, and Five feels the adrenaline reach a fevered pitch that he breathes through with effort. She doesn’t wait for him to recuperate, however. She finishes with an invective: “That’s the one thing you can’t doubt even when you doubt everything else, even yourself. We love you.”
Five blinks hard, and looks down at the sandwich. He tries to remember that it tasted good at the start. He tries to remember.
She reaches her hand across the table, placing it just short of his own. “Believe it, Five. Believe me.”
In the end, Five is right about this much: he has absolutely no choice.
-o-
Vanya says they love him.
Five’s DNA says his a remorseless killer.
Five complies as best he can, but the two founding realities of his existence are diametrically opposed. His compliance can only take him so far before these two warring factions of himself are going to have to be reckoned.
The family you choose.
The DNA you can’t change.
Five tries to be rational about it. He tries to map out the equations. He tries to determine the odds, explain the pros and cons. None of it works. His focus has been shattered; there’s nothing let of it.
When he tries to do simple math, the Handler is drumming her fingers across the table at him. He looks up and she smirks. “I think we already know the answer, Five. You can’t add the numbers because you don’t want to, is all.”
When he tries to read, it’s just as bad. He stares at a single page for 30 minutes while Delores sighs on the couch next to him. He doesn’t look at her; he doesn’t have to. She misses him. “I can’t come back now,” he tries to explain. But she knew it before he did.
Even in the shower, when he’s trying to escape, he hears the clerk over the pounding of the water against his skin. “What is your plan, Five? What’s the plan?” Five can still hear him laughing when he turns off the water and reaches for a towel.
Over dinner, when they eat together as a family, his siblings tell stories. They talk about the way things used to be, the ways things could be. When they laugh, Five’s voice doesn’t work, but he can feel the sensation like electricity up and down his skin. A shock to the system. He forces himself to smile; that’s the right reaction but the shock never fades.
Whenever he has a free moment, and he has a lot of free moments, his mind wanders. He finds himself thinking of ways to kill people, and the more time he spends around his siblings, the more he considers them the victims. After all, what is the force required to break Luther’s windpipe? What is the trajectory a knife would need to fully sever Diego’s aorta? Where would he need to place his hands to snap Allison’s neck in a single movement? What shoes would he need to wear to kick Klaus’ skull in with the least amount of effort? Is it possible to eviscerate a ghost? Vanya is so small; he thinks it’s possible to rip off her limbs with his hands and watch her bleed to death.
Death is inevitable.
Sometimes he thinks about going out and finding a random victim right away, just to get it over with. Maybe if he satisfies the impulse, he’ll spare his family.
But that’s crazy.
This whole thing is crazy.
What is Five going to do?
He needs a plan, of course. But he doesn’t have a plan. He has ideas about death and destruction, he has his family’s bidding, but Five’s seen the future, hasn’t he? He thought he changed it, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe his own personal apocalypse is still pending, maybe it’s always pending as long as he stays here.
He is making a choice, Vanya is right. He’s making the choice to put them at risk. He’s making the choice to spare their feelings at the cost of their lives. It’s the choice between being the monster they don’t realize he is and the monster they fear he could be.
From downstairs, he hears someone call his name.
“Five? Are you coming? Dinner’s on the table!”
He closes his eyes, squeezes them shut. He can’t do this, he can’t.
“We’re all waiting!”
They’re waiting for something that’s never going to happen. Five’s never going to be their 13 year old brother again. He’s never going to be the confident asshole who came back with a plan to save them -- twice. Those versions of himself are gone, they don’t exist anymore. Five’s not able to go back. Not even time travel will fix this. Nothing will fix this.
“Five?”
There are footsteps on the stairs, and Five feels his chest convulse. He looks at his hands. How many times has he used his hands to kill? Too many to count. How many times has he used these hands to hug? He can’t even remember. There’s something wrong with him. Maybe that’s the Commission’s doing; maybe the Commission just cut away the sentimental inhibitions to reveal who he really was.
“Five!”
It’s time to make the choice.
It’s time to finish the plan.
“Five!”
He balls his fists, closes his eyes, and disappears.
-o-
It doesn’t last, though.
He shouldn’t be surprised.
Nothing lasts forever.
Nothing.
-o-
He comes back to himself in the warehouse.
He’s not surprised. Instead, he’s overcome by the inevitability of it. Of course the warehouse. Always the warehouse. That’s the plan, right?
Que sera sera.
Standing there, he looks around. He takes it in, the ruined walls, the light above him that’s long since burned out. It’s empty; there’s no sign of life. There’s only him.
He knows he can still make the call. He knows that the Handler will still take his call. He knows she’s somewhere across time and space, waiting. Waiting for him.
This is the plan.
Isn’t this the plan?
Five’s breathing catches and he blinks his eyes, but it doesn’t nothing to clear his rapidly blurring vision.
He doesn’t know if this is the plan.
It seems like the plan, but he knows it’s not the plan his siblings want. But his siblings don’t know; maybe they don’t understand.
He gasps, trying to fill his lungs. He sees white at the edges of his vision, and he has to brace his feet while his slight frame wavers.
Maybe it’s the wrong plan. Maybe it’s the right plan.
What plan is Five talking about anyway?
He can’t breathe. There’s air all around him, but his lungs don’t know how to process it. His throat seizes now and his head is light. Everything is weak. He’s going to fall.
Five has to remember the plan.
The plan, the plan, the plan.
The white fills his vision and the next thing he knows, Five’s on the floor. He keels over, and there’s a keening sound. He realizes rather belatedly that the sound is coming from his own constricted throat.
He has to call the Handler.
He has to go home.
What is the damn plan?
He’s railing now, gasping like a fish out of water. The white is being replaced by darkness now, and he flushes hot before going very, very cold.
Five doesn’t know what the plan is.
Five doesn’t have a plan.
It’s not a revelation, but the finality of it is too much. Five’s being pulled in two vastly different directions, and without a clear sense of purpose, he has no defense against either. He’s lost. He’s well and truly lost, and he can’t bring himself back because he doesn’t know where he’s meant to be.
He doesn’t know who he’s meant to be.
Is he the person his family says?
Is he the person the Commission created?
His oxygen deprived brain can take no more. He’s ready to be done; he’s ready to quit; he’s ready to admit his defeat. He chokes and closes his eyes.
And maybe that’s finally the end.
-o-
Five’s getting ahead of himself, though. Endings are rarely predictable. They don’t tend to be dramatic or eventful. Endings are usually quiet. They are a natural conclusion to things. They are inevitable.
Which is to say: that’s not where this story ends.
Nearly a year after the apocalypse that wasn’t, Five has a panic attack in a warehouse. He’s trapped between his DNA and his family, and he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t have a plan, and that leaves him bereft in a way in which he takes no pride.
The story doesn’t end with defeat.
The story doesn’t end with victory.
See, that’s the point. Five doesn’t know how it ends.
Because it hasn’t ended yet.
-o-
Five comes back to himself slowly. He’s still in the warehouse, but now he’s on the ground, perched on the ground with his knees pulled up tight against his chest. It’s not cold, but he’s trembling. At the very least, he’s breathing again. In and out. In and out. His cheeks are wet.
He stays like that for awhile.
Then he stays like that awhile longer.
In and out.
In and out.
He’s still sitting there when he hears a sound. His instincts are deadened, and he doesn’t think to move. Whatever is coming for him, he’ll accept.
It could be seconds. It could be minutes. It could be forever.
“Five?”
In and out.
“Five, talk to us.”
In and out.
“Five, please.”
He looks up, and there’s Vanya.
Next to her, the others are fanned out.
He’s not surprised.
He’s not anything.
He licked his lips, and it takes him a moment to realize he can speak. “How did you find me?”
He watches as they each register the question. Concern, fear, anxiety, relief.
“We’re your family,” Luther says. “We’ll always find you.”
“Besides,” Diego adds. “It’s not like we haven’t found you here before.”
Five exhales shakily. He nods vaguely and drags in a breath. “I don’t think I can keep doing this?”
“Doing what?” Allison asks. “Five, what are you doing?”
When he laughs, it’s an odd, tremulous sound. “Sitting around the Academy, milling around in the present, waiting for myself to hurt you.”
They all looked pained by the admission. Pained but not surprised. Klaus wrinkles up his nose. “But why do you think that?” he says. “I mean, really, why? All the things we’ve managed to do, all the ways we’ve defied the odds -- defied fate, even -- and why do you think that you’re going to end up hurting us?”
“Because fate isn’t real, and you can’t beat 100 percent odds,” he says. He tries to still the trembling in his arms and legs, but there’s nothing he can do. “Que sera sera. It’s in my DNA. I can’t fight that. You can try, but you’ll lose, sooner or later. You’ll lose.”
“Like hell we can’t,” Diego says.
“You’re not giving us or yourself enough credit,” Ben says.
Five shakes his head, because he can’t. He can’t listen to platitudes. He can’t listen to wishful thinking. He can’t. “You don’t understand that I’ve been trying,” he says, and his voice is so raw that it might break. “I keep fighting it every day, and every day, I lose a little bit more. It’s just a matter of time.”
A few of his siblings hang their heads. Vanya kneels down to look at him levelly. “You should have told us just how bad this was.”
“Why?” Five asks her. And he’s actually asking. “So you could tell me that it wasn’t my fault?”
Luther crouches down too. “Well, it’s not.”
Five’s gut twists. “But it is.”
Allison goes ahead and just sits down. “Why?”
“Because I made a plan, and I have to see it through,” he says, trying to remember. “I made a plan and you keep trying to talk me out of it, but it’s still the same plan, and you can’t talk me out of it anymore.”
Diego sits down, too. “Talk you out of what?”
Five’s chest constricts again, and he remembers to make his lungs breathe. “Out of going back. To the Commission.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Ben implores, and he’s squatting near the ground even in his noncorporeal state. “The whole plan was to get you out of there.”
“It took a lot of work, too,” Diego says. “That shit wasn’t easy.”
Five’s shoulders slump. He’s not mad. He’s not defiant. He’s nothing. “We thought that was the plan. We thought it was a foolproof plan, but we didn’t see their counterplay. They knew they couldn’t chase us back down again, so they didn’t plan for that. They made the perfect plan so that I would come back willingly, of my own accord.”
Luther looks like this hurts him. Physically hurts him. “But why? Why go back after all they did to you?”
Five looks at Luther. He looks at Diego and Allison and Klaus and Ben and Vanya. He looks at them and his heart breaks. His sanity is already shattered, but it’s his heart that’s going to pieces now. “To save you.”
Klaus flops down, letting his arms flail in obvious frustration. “And we’re back to that? Already? Because I really thought we were done with that.”
Five has no response to that.
Klaus looks to his siblings, and when no one jumps in, he seems to shrug to himself. “I thought that this is what we thought was wrong in the first place. With all those other versions of the plan. And I thought we had agreed not to do that anymore. How has anything changed?”
Five lets out a ragged breath. “You don’t understand. Everything has changed.”
“Uh, I do understand,” Klaus says. “The plan went sideways, things were shitty, there were unintended consequences, blah, blah, blah.”
Five stares at him. “Blah, blah, blah? They altered my DNA so I am innately a killer. That’s not an unintended consequences. That renders the plan unusable.”
“No, Klaus is right,” Diego says. “Shit happened, and it was worse than we thought. But the plan’s still the plan.”
“And besides,” Luther says. “It’s not your plan anymore, Five. It’s our plan.”
At his wits end, Five shakes his head. “But what possible role can I play in it?”
“The part of our brother,” Allison says. “The only part we ever wanted you to play.”
“But I’m an assassin,” Five says. “I’m a killer.”
“Those are things you’ve done, not who you are,” Ben says stolidly.
“But there’s no plan for this!” Five says. The panic rises again. “I don’t know how to do this without a plan! What is the plan?”
As his vision threatens to dim again, he looks at them each in turn. He looks at Luther, strong and steady. He looks at Diego, passionate in his defense. He looks at Allison, practical and realistic. He looks at Klaus, gentle and sentimental. He looks at Ben, wise and good. He looks at Vanya, compassion etched into her warm, familiar features.
And he realizes something very important.
He realizes they’re right.
There is a plan for this.
There’s a very explicit plan that his siblings have been telling him all along. They’ve been living it out in the little things, day after day.
But that’s not the revelation, not really.
The revelation is this: while Five’s been waiting for the plan to fail, it’s actually been working.
Even in the difficult ways, even in the ways he feels like he’s failing, he’s not. Five’s not complying with their orders because his DNA tells him to. He’s complying with their orders despite what his DNA is telling him. He’s complying because he innately trusts them as much as he innately distrusts himself. Maybe more.
His family has a plan.
His family has all the plans.
No doubt, on his own, Five will fail. On his own, Five will revert to the person he never intended to be. On his own, Five will go back to the Commission and become the killer they have decided he should be.
And it’s entirely possible that his family is technically safer without him, but he knows what losing them did to him. Is he so conceited to think that he’s the only one here who loves his family recklessly? Does he really think that they could handle losing him any better than he handled losing them? Is that what he wants to do to them? To set them off on a wild goose chase to change all of time and space to bring them back together, back where they all belong?
Therefore, by logical deduction, Five knows that if his family will not recover from losing him, then that means that the risk of him staying is inherently and necessarily worthwhile.
That conclusion is the critical turning point. It’s the one thing to ground him in the insanity he doesn’t understand. It’s the one thing he need to fight back the impulses. It’s the thing he needs to overcome his own genetic makeup.
It’s a choice, in the end.
Sitting there, knees to his chest, Five surveys his family again. The equation is still written out on his wall, and he remembers. He remembers that these are variables he’s already accounted for. And he knows -- he knows -- that it all adds up in the end because of one simple fact.
The plan never changed: Save the family.
At all costs.
At every cost.
Luther’s long term goals. Diego’s fitness regimen. Allison’s daily activities. Klaus’ cooking antics. Ben’s reading. Vany’s conversations.
Taken together, they spell out a step by step family recovery plan.
The knowledge doesn’t change how scared Five is, however. He’s still trembling when he speaks again. “I’m an unpredictable variable,” he admits. “I don’t think I trust myself anymore.”
“Then don’t,” Vanya says, plain and simple. “Don’t trust yourself. Trust us.”
His eyes are burning again, and he almost smiles. “There’s a lot at stake here,” he says. “What they did to me is real. I’ve changed, and I don’t -- I don’t know--”
He can’t finish. The words don’t come.
Vanya reaches over to him, her hands clasped around his. “But we do,” she says. And she smiles as she lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “And the rest we’ll figure out together.”
His voice is small; he feels small. “But what if it doesn’t work?”
What if he loses control?
What if he hurts someone?
What if he can’t fight who he is?
“It has to work,” Vanya says while the others nod in solidarity. “It’s your plan, after all.”
He laughs again, and this time, when the tears track down his face, he understands why they’re there. “No,” he corrects her. “It’s our plan.”
She still smiling as she guides him to his feet. Luther crowds close on one side, Diego on the other, but Five’s legs support him. He takes a shaky step forward, hand in hand with Vanya. Allison and Klaus lead with Ben glancing behind him to smile.
“Come on,” Vanya coaches, as Five takes another step forward. “It’s time to go home.”
-o-
It’s a long way home. Several blocks feel like miles. The minutes feel like lifetimes. Five feels like an entirely different person by the time he gets back, by the time they tuck him into bed and tell him that things are going to be okay.
They’re not foolish to promise.
Five isn’t weak for listening.
He looks at the numbers scrawled on the wall.
The numbers are never wrong.
Five certainly is, but then, that’s why he needs his family. Because numbers don’t always translate to real life the way you think.
That’s the plan, anyway.
Five closes his eyes to sleep.
That really is the plan.
-o-
When Five wakes up, he wants to feel like everything is better. Like it all makes sense now.
It’s not exactly like that.
Things are better, if only because it’s hard to imagine them being much worse, but it’s not better. Five’s breakdown in the warehouse is a turning point, but it’s certainly not a quick fix. Five is still Five, after all. Even when you finally make a choice, that doesn’t mean that things are going to be easy. You can know the destination, and the journey will still be hard. Probably harder than you think.
That’s the way it is in Five’s life, after all. There’s some comfort in knowing that he has a penchant for this kind of thing, for making rash decisions without understanding the actual scope of the consequences. Five has a unique talent for being right and being very, very wrong.
Naturally, that doesn’t make for the best story. But this isn’t the best story. This isn’t some story of unrealistic drivel, where people choose family and the rest of the world falls into place. Those stories aren’t real, and the people who tell them are liars in their own ways. That’s not Five’s story.
No, Five’s story is that things are still pretty hard. Some days are really bad; others are just sort of bad. In truth, he doesn’t find this discouraging but he looks at the lengthy equation on the wall and remembers all the variables he had to factor out along the way, the errant x’s and y’s to finally get the solution.
It’s something about perspective, if it’s anything. Five’s been crippled for these last few months thinking about all the ways he can’t do what needs to be done. Now, when that sense of helplessness reaches a breaking point, he looks back and realizes that he has done what needs to be done, every single time.
So it’s not a very good story, but it is a story that’s moving forward. It has been all along.
Five’s just able to appreciate it a little bit better now.
-o-
Of the many changes that occur when Five settles back in at the Academy, one of the most telling is Luther. He’s still very calm and steady, and he never makes sudden moves or raises his voice around Five. Things are gentle, and he’s always asking if Five’s okay.
Where this used to be suffocating, Luther has now opted for more nighttime shifts. This is awkward in certain ways, but Five’s pride has already been taken apart. And, unlike Ben who would stare at him all night, Luther sleeps.
It doesn’t look comfortable, Luther’s large body smushed into a tiny chair. He sleeps sitting up with his head tipped back and his mouth open. But for all that Five thinks that waking up to see a hulking figure at his bedside will be disconcerting, it’s really not. Mostly because Five sleeps better than before. Not perfectly, mind you, but Luther’s deep and steady breathing in the dead of night is a comfort.
And every night, without fail, Luther says the same thing to Five before they kip off. “If you need anything tonight--”
After several weeks, Five rolls his eyes. “You’ll be right there, I know,” he says. He nods at Luther. “It’s kind of hard to miss you.”
Luther blushes because he’s Luther. “I mean it, Five. Anything you need--”
“I got it, I got it,” he mutters. “Now go to sleep.”
Five says it like he takes it for granted, because he actually does.
And Luther grins at him like that’s the best thing he’s heard in his whole life.
-o-
It’s not just words, either. When Five wakes up from a nightmare screaming, Luther is always there, awake and alert within seconds. “Five, you’re okay,” he says without prompting. “You’re okay.”
It takes Five several moments before he can calm down again, before he can get his wits about him enough to settle back down into bed.
“What was it this time?” Luther asks quietly.
Five swallows back a biting reply. He forces a smile in the darkness instead. “The shock therapy,” he admits. He shifts uncomfortably on the bed. “I can still feel it.”
Luther sighs a little. “That’s better than the experiments, though. You usually take longer recovering from those.”
Five shrugs. “The most realistic ones are the ones in the cell.”
Luther winces sympathetically. “Yeah, I forgot about those.”
Five exhales, long and slow. “They’re not as real as they used to be.”
“You think you’ll ever stop having them?” Luther asks him.
“Probably not,” Five says. “But dreams are just manifestations of the subconscious. They don’t mean anything.”
Luther nods in agreement. “No. I guess they don’t.”
No, Five tells himself as he closes his eyes again to settle back to sleep. They’re scary and unsettling; they’re exhausting and nerve-wracking. But they really don’t mean anything at all.
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-
Five follows, though he’s not sure what she thinks she will figure out. They find the location of the rat’s demise, and she methodically starts to clean it up. Five stands by idly, not sure if he’s supposed to help her or not.
When she’s finished, she turns her attention to him. She musters up something for him to change into before throwing his soiled clothing into the trash. Then, she washes him off and then proceeds to scrub him clean, using hot water and plenty of soap. She repeats this process a number of times until Five’s skin is red and raw from her ministrations.
After making sure he’s clean, she finishes up the kitchen. She disinfects every surface before taking out the garbage, and she comes back to the kitchen before scouring her own hands clean.
The blood is gone when she finishes, but only in appearance. Bloodstains never go away, not when they’ve soaked into your soul. That’s overly dramatic, Five knows that, but he thinks it might be true. He thinks it might be the last true thing he can remember before he loses his mind entirely.
“Okay,” she says, matter of fact when she done. She turns to face him. For some reason, she’s smiling. “Did you ever get your snack?”
Five stares at her. “What?”
“Your snack,” she says. “You came down her for a snack, right?”
It seems like an eternity ago. Reflecting, he realizes it could have been seconds for all that he knows. “Oh,” he says. He furrows his brow, trying to remember. “I didn’t get that far.”
“Okay, then,” she says, gesturing to the table. “You sit down. One snack coming up.”
-o-
He sits.
Vanya makes a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich and presents it to him. There’s no flourish involved, but she looks quite pleased with herself. She sits across from him like she hasn’t just spent an hour cleaning up from Five’s murder of a rat.
She waits, and he realizes belatedly that she’s waiting for him to take a bite. Considering everything, Five can think of no reason not to oblige her. In a perfunctory fashion, he picks up the sandwich and takes a bite.
This seems to put her instantly at ease. “Is it good?”
He understands, vaguely, that the question is a request for affirmation. It is less clear to him why he can’t reply. Instead, he chewed around the bread and peanut butter for far longer than necessary.
Fortunately, this seems to satisfy her. She sits back, arms folded across her chest like she’s achieved something significant. “See, it is good.”
He chews long and hard before he swallows. Then, he pins her with a quizzical look. “So you’re really not going to talk about what just happened.”
It’s a bit to the point, more than Five is used to these days, but it always is easier talking to Vanya. She’ll ask questions about sandwiches; not about Five’s murderous impulses. There’s something endearing about that, though Five has to conclude that it’s a dangerous amount of short-sightedness at this point.
Her expression hardly flickers. “What? You heard a noise. It’s not like we don’t have enemies. We all have to be on our guard.”
He narrows his gaze. “On our guard, yes,” he says. “But I slaughtered a rat.”
“So?” she asks, making a face. “It’s a rat, Five. There are far too many of them in the city as it is.”
It would be easy to chalk such a response up to protective instincts, especially with one of his other siblings. But Vanya is different. Vanya doesn’t lie. Vanya is telling the truth, plain and simple and utterly naive.
“Sure,” Five says. “A rat that I ripped in two. With my bare hands.”
He’s never been one to waste time on denials. He’ll obfuscate issues as necessary -- or at least, he used to. Truth is a difficult concept for him these days, which is why it’s so strange to him that he wants to spell it out so clearly now. Maybe all this time he’s spent not speaking the truth isn’t helping. Maybe he needs to say it. Or maybe he just needs someone else to hear it.
Vanya seems to accept that this conversation will no longer be about the intrinsic value of midnight snacks. She lets out a little breath. “Well, we know about your training. It has given you a distinct skill set. It’s not exactly a surprise that it comes up from time to time in daily life. How could it not?”
She makes it sound very nice and simple. She’s convincing, Five will give her that. There’s a part of him that wants to leave it at that, but he can’t. There’s just no way for him to pretend. “I’m a murderer, Vanya.”
He’s admitted to killing people. He’s never hidden the fact that he’s an assassin -- not just any assassin, but the best. He’s used the number of people he’s killed to boost his own credibility. But he’s avoided real questions with a moral relativism that equates his actions to nothing more than survival.
He’s never said it like this.
This puts weight on the action, denoting a necessary consequence that he’s never sought before. Before, when he thought he had more in common with his family than the Commission. The illusion is gone now.
She looks shaken, if only slightly, by his bluntness. “You did what you had to do.”
She’ll give him a pass. She’ll still buy into the justifications.
Face taut, he shakes his head. “No, you have to listen to what I’m saying,” he says. “I’m an actual murderer. I’m the kind of person they lock in jail and throw away the key. I’m the kind of person that makes people believe in the death penalty. I’m not a good person, Vanya. Not even a little bit.”
There’s something in his words that frightens her, but of course it’s not the right thing. Adamant, she shakes her head. “You did what you had to do. You didn’t have any other way to get back to us. If you hadn’t gone with the Commission, if you hadn’t taken the Handler’s deal, then we’d all be dead right now. The world we be over. You saved the world. You saved us. Five, you saved me.”
She’s being nice; she’s being too nice. Five feels his heart rate quicken. “You’re being naive. Dangerously so.”
“No,” she says, undeterred. “This is what family is.”
Five’s heard this. Five keeps hearing this, and he does what he can to believe them, but his instincts fight it. It’s a constant push and pull with him, family or his calling, and he’s not sure he can tip the scales in is family’s favor much longer. “That’s stupidity is what it is,” he says, voice starting to rise. The dawn is approaching, but there’s nothing to be done for it. “What if it hadn’t been a rat making the noise? What if it had been Klaus, looking for something to eat? What if it had been Diego, playing with his stupid little knives? What if it had been you, hm? Just going about your business.”
Vanya furrows her brow. “It wasn’t, though. And you wouldn’t do that. You know the difference between a rat and your family.”
He scoffs. “Do you even hear yourself?” he demands, voice starting to pitch wildly. “I am readily admitting to you that I didn’t know what the sound was and I didn’t have any idea until after I’d attacked. And I didn’t exactly go to disable, did I? I ripped it in two. The human neck is surprisingly easy to break; don’t think I couldn’t do it.”
She blinks, a flash of horror on her face, even as she covers it quickly. “You wouldn’t. I know you, Five.”
“No, you know who I used to be,” he says, and now he’s the one being adamant. The house is creaking with the rising sun, and he wonders if anything he says or does is private here. “You haven’t come to terms with who I am now, who the Commission made me to be. This incident, right here, proves it. I’m not in control, and you all like to think you’ve got this, but you’re babysitting a time bomb. There’s no way to know when or why I’ll explode, but it is pretty clear that someone is going to get hurt, which is the opposite of what I wanted when I started this.”
His chest is tight. It’s not merely the emotional exertion. It’s not the physical toll. It’s more.
Vanya sits forward again. “Nothing like that is going to happen as long as we’re together.”
“It will,” he says, insists. “The longer you deny it, the more dangerous this becomes.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “You’re getting better, Five. We’re watching you get better.”
“Am I?” he asks, and his voice breaks. Puberty; it’s puberty. How is he still going through puberty?
“Yes,” she says, emboldened now. She gestures at him. “I mean, look at you. You’re gaining weight, you’re working out. You’re reading, playing games, all of it. I was there when we got you out, Five. I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit for how far you’ve come, for what you’ve overcome.”
She’s making excuses. Her reasons may be pure, but that purity won’t save her. Not from Five. “You all know I’m insane. That’s why no one will leave me alone. That’s why Ben woke you up when I disappeared. Because I’m not getting better, not in the ways that actually matter.”
Her face reddens a little and her breathing catches. He’s getting closer to the point there, at least. “We know you’re traumatized. It’s not the same thing.”
He leans forward now, ignoring the sandwich on the table in front of him. The smell of peanut butter is oddly unsettling all of a sudden, like maybe he doesn’t know his own taste buds anymore. It probably doesn’t matter; nothing matters. Just this: “You can call it traumatized and you can pretend I’m some sort of victim, but that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the very real risk you are taking. All of you.”
At that, she looks incredulous. She almost looks hurt, like he’s off and slapped her across the face. “It changes everything,” she says. She tilts her head, invoking compassion. “Five, you are a victim in all of this. You need us right now.”
It’s his turn to recoil. The word victim is a slap in return, and his body tingles. The energy builds in his fists, but he’s not sure what he wants to do. Blink out of here? Wrap his hands around her throat and squeeze? He inhales and exhales rapidly, hot air through his nostrils. “But you need to get as far away from me as possible,” he says. “You’re better off without me.”
“Without you, we’d all be dead,” she says. She gestures across the table at him. “Five, we’re not going to leave you alone.”
Her voice is so plain, so vulnerable. Vanya suffered for thinking herself normal in many ways, but the clarity in moments like these is clearly derived from the fact that she doesn’t think of herself first ever. So much has changed for her, and Five can’t decide if it’s reassuring that this much is the same or not.
It doesn’t matter, he reminds himself.
Vanya’s vulnerability is a problem, one that Five cannot probably rectify. In truth, he’s starting to believe that there’s nothing more he can give -- nothing except, of course, his absence. An absence that logically makes sense -- the only sense. But Vanya comes at him with emotion, and Five has nothing for that.
Nothing.
Desperation changes you in a lot of different ways. Some people break.
Other people get mad and shoot for the first target they see.
It’s no surprise, then, what Five does next.
He snorts, caustically and diminutively. “Is this you being a superhero?” he asks. “Is that it? You have power now, so you think you’re going to save the world, save us all. Save me.”
She doesn’t seem taken aback by his tone; she does know him better than the others. “I’m going to try.”
“Fine,” he snarls. “But you have to suck it up and do the job right. That’s what it means to be a hero. That’s what it means to save the world. You have to make the difficult choices and the hard calls.”
“But what hard calls? Five--”
“Saving me is stopping me,” he says, almost yelling now. “You want to save the world? Save the family? You stop me. You stop me right here and right now. If you use your powers, rip me in two, you’ll save all of them -- and me. You can’t trust me, Vanya, and you can’t control me. I don’t even have control anymore. So you stop me.”
Finally, she looks horrified. After all he’s done, after all she’s seen, this is what turns her. It’s been a long time coming. “Don’t be ridiculous--”
A long time coming, and it still misses the mark. He shakes his head. “I’m not being ridiculous!” he shouts back. “You are! You all are! You mill around this house and you act like you don’t see what’s happening. You pretend like I’m going to get better. You go along like this is where I belong when it’s painfully obvious that the only place I will belong is the Commission. They’re killer -- I’m a killer. It only makes sense. They made me exactly how they wanted me, and there’s no other place in time or space where I will ever make sense. Even if I wanted to fight it, it’s my DNA. And the longer we keep up the charade, the more likely it is to end it total disaster.”
The color has drained from her face now, and she shakes her head right back. “No, that’s not true,” she says. “We get to decide how it ends. We have a choice.”
“Choices made without enough knowledge to make them valid,” Five say back. His heart is pounding furiously now, like he’s staring down an opponent who has a gun to his head. “And choices based on factors entirely outside our control. Just look at us. We’re only here, together in the Academy, because of our DNA.”
“Sure, and we all made the choice to come together as a family,” Vanya argues back.
“That choice is made with the reality of our DNA already as a given,” Five insists. “I mean, you can’t actually be this stupid. Because that’s what you’re being right now: stupid. Tactically, I’m a risk. Logically, I’m a problem. Even emotionally, you can save the others from further hardship if I’m not here. But you won’t admit that because you are still operating until the foolish delusion that we can make the choice to have things be okay. That’s the kind of short sighted strategy that gets people killed, Vanya. That ends the world.”
This time, she blanches.
Just a little.
Five sees his opening and exploits it ruthlessly. “This all goes to show that you may be able to control your powers to some degree, but you’re still not ready to be a superhero,” he says, voice picking up steam now. “You have no experience and no training, and it seriously impedes your judgment. So, great, maybe you’re not going to explode and destroy all of mankind again, but you’re still a risk to everyone you care about because you’re willfully moronic!”
He’s breathing heavy, and he can feel a sweat breaking out on his brow. His pulse is thrumming; adrenaline is coursing through him. It’s the thrill of the kill. He told Luther once that it never brought him pleasure, but he has to reconsider now and accept that possibility that it was, perhaps, a lie.
Or, at the very least, that it’s not true anymore.
Shit, he doesn’t even recognize himself anymore, seething over a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich like it’s the most important thing in the world.
Vanya, for all that Five is spewing at her, finds her resolve. For all that he’s accused her of being weak, her strength is clear.
As is her folly.
“We love you, Five, and that’s what matters. That’s the only thing that matters,” she tells him with no regard to any of his warnings. “And you have to know that. You have to believe how much we love you.”
His eyes are burning. He’s not sure why. Five doesn’t understand. Through the tightness in his throat, he asks, “Do I?”
It’s a vulnerable question, damn it.
Vanya is not as tactically inefficient as he has suggested. She seizes upon it unyieldingly. “Yes,” she says. Her tone brokers no more argument, and Five feels the adrenaline reach a fevered pitch that he breathes through with effort. She doesn’t wait for him to recuperate, however. She finishes with an invective: “That’s the one thing you can’t doubt even when you doubt everything else, even yourself. We love you.”
Five blinks hard, and looks down at the sandwich. He tries to remember that it tasted good at the start. He tries to remember.
She reaches her hand across the table, placing it just short of his own. “Believe it, Five. Believe me.”
In the end, Five is right about this much: he has absolutely no choice.
-o-
Vanya says they love him.
Five’s DNA says his a remorseless killer.
Five complies as best he can, but the two founding realities of his existence are diametrically opposed. His compliance can only take him so far before these two warring factions of himself are going to have to be reckoned.
The family you choose.
The DNA you can’t change.
Five tries to be rational about it. He tries to map out the equations. He tries to determine the odds, explain the pros and cons. None of it works. His focus has been shattered; there’s nothing let of it.
When he tries to do simple math, the Handler is drumming her fingers across the table at him. He looks up and she smirks. “I think we already know the answer, Five. You can’t add the numbers because you don’t want to, is all.”
When he tries to read, it’s just as bad. He stares at a single page for 30 minutes while Delores sighs on the couch next to him. He doesn’t look at her; he doesn’t have to. She misses him. “I can’t come back now,” he tries to explain. But she knew it before he did.
Even in the shower, when he’s trying to escape, he hears the clerk over the pounding of the water against his skin. “What is your plan, Five? What’s the plan?” Five can still hear him laughing when he turns off the water and reaches for a towel.
Over dinner, when they eat together as a family, his siblings tell stories. They talk about the way things used to be, the ways things could be. When they laugh, Five’s voice doesn’t work, but he can feel the sensation like electricity up and down his skin. A shock to the system. He forces himself to smile; that’s the right reaction but the shock never fades.
Whenever he has a free moment, and he has a lot of free moments, his mind wanders. He finds himself thinking of ways to kill people, and the more time he spends around his siblings, the more he considers them the victims. After all, what is the force required to break Luther’s windpipe? What is the trajectory a knife would need to fully sever Diego’s aorta? Where would he need to place his hands to snap Allison’s neck in a single movement? What shoes would he need to wear to kick Klaus’ skull in with the least amount of effort? Is it possible to eviscerate a ghost? Vanya is so small; he thinks it’s possible to rip off her limbs with his hands and watch her bleed to death.
Death is inevitable.
Sometimes he thinks about going out and finding a random victim right away, just to get it over with. Maybe if he satisfies the impulse, he’ll spare his family.
But that’s crazy.
This whole thing is crazy.
What is Five going to do?
He needs a plan, of course. But he doesn’t have a plan. He has ideas about death and destruction, he has his family’s bidding, but Five’s seen the future, hasn’t he? He thought he changed it, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe his own personal apocalypse is still pending, maybe it’s always pending as long as he stays here.
He is making a choice, Vanya is right. He’s making the choice to put them at risk. He’s making the choice to spare their feelings at the cost of their lives. It’s the choice between being the monster they don’t realize he is and the monster they fear he could be.
From downstairs, he hears someone call his name.
“Five? Are you coming? Dinner’s on the table!”
He closes his eyes, squeezes them shut. He can’t do this, he can’t.
“We’re all waiting!”
They’re waiting for something that’s never going to happen. Five’s never going to be their 13 year old brother again. He’s never going to be the confident asshole who came back with a plan to save them -- twice. Those versions of himself are gone, they don’t exist anymore. Five’s not able to go back. Not even time travel will fix this. Nothing will fix this.
“Five?”
There are footsteps on the stairs, and Five feels his chest convulse. He looks at his hands. How many times has he used his hands to kill? Too many to count. How many times has he used these hands to hug? He can’t even remember. There’s something wrong with him. Maybe that’s the Commission’s doing; maybe the Commission just cut away the sentimental inhibitions to reveal who he really was.
“Five!”
It’s time to make the choice.
It’s time to finish the plan.
“Five!”
He balls his fists, closes his eyes, and disappears.
-o-
It doesn’t last, though.
He shouldn’t be surprised.
Nothing lasts forever.
Nothing.
-o-
He comes back to himself in the warehouse.
He’s not surprised. Instead, he’s overcome by the inevitability of it. Of course the warehouse. Always the warehouse. That’s the plan, right?
Que sera sera.
Standing there, he looks around. He takes it in, the ruined walls, the light above him that’s long since burned out. It’s empty; there’s no sign of life. There’s only him.
He knows he can still make the call. He knows that the Handler will still take his call. He knows she’s somewhere across time and space, waiting. Waiting for him.
This is the plan.
Isn’t this the plan?
Five’s breathing catches and he blinks his eyes, but it doesn’t nothing to clear his rapidly blurring vision.
He doesn’t know if this is the plan.
It seems like the plan, but he knows it’s not the plan his siblings want. But his siblings don’t know; maybe they don’t understand.
He gasps, trying to fill his lungs. He sees white at the edges of his vision, and he has to brace his feet while his slight frame wavers.
Maybe it’s the wrong plan. Maybe it’s the right plan.
What plan is Five talking about anyway?
He can’t breathe. There’s air all around him, but his lungs don’t know how to process it. His throat seizes now and his head is light. Everything is weak. He’s going to fall.
Five has to remember the plan.
The plan, the plan, the plan.
The white fills his vision and the next thing he knows, Five’s on the floor. He keels over, and there’s a keening sound. He realizes rather belatedly that the sound is coming from his own constricted throat.
He has to call the Handler.
He has to go home.
What is the damn plan?
He’s railing now, gasping like a fish out of water. The white is being replaced by darkness now, and he flushes hot before going very, very cold.
Five doesn’t know what the plan is.
Five doesn’t have a plan.
It’s not a revelation, but the finality of it is too much. Five’s being pulled in two vastly different directions, and without a clear sense of purpose, he has no defense against either. He’s lost. He’s well and truly lost, and he can’t bring himself back because he doesn’t know where he’s meant to be.
He doesn’t know who he’s meant to be.
Is he the person his family says?
Is he the person the Commission created?
His oxygen deprived brain can take no more. He’s ready to be done; he’s ready to quit; he’s ready to admit his defeat. He chokes and closes his eyes.
And maybe that’s finally the end.
-o-
Five’s getting ahead of himself, though. Endings are rarely predictable. They don’t tend to be dramatic or eventful. Endings are usually quiet. They are a natural conclusion to things. They are inevitable.
Which is to say: that’s not where this story ends.
Nearly a year after the apocalypse that wasn’t, Five has a panic attack in a warehouse. He’s trapped between his DNA and his family, and he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t have a plan, and that leaves him bereft in a way in which he takes no pride.
The story doesn’t end with defeat.
The story doesn’t end with victory.
See, that’s the point. Five doesn’t know how it ends.
Because it hasn’t ended yet.
-o-
Five comes back to himself slowly. He’s still in the warehouse, but now he’s on the ground, perched on the ground with his knees pulled up tight against his chest. It’s not cold, but he’s trembling. At the very least, he’s breathing again. In and out. In and out. His cheeks are wet.
He stays like that for awhile.
Then he stays like that awhile longer.
In and out.
In and out.
He’s still sitting there when he hears a sound. His instincts are deadened, and he doesn’t think to move. Whatever is coming for him, he’ll accept.
It could be seconds. It could be minutes. It could be forever.
“Five?”
In and out.
“Five, talk to us.”
In and out.
“Five, please.”
He looks up, and there’s Vanya.
Next to her, the others are fanned out.
He’s not surprised.
He’s not anything.
He licked his lips, and it takes him a moment to realize he can speak. “How did you find me?”
He watches as they each register the question. Concern, fear, anxiety, relief.
“We’re your family,” Luther says. “We’ll always find you.”
“Besides,” Diego adds. “It’s not like we haven’t found you here before.”
Five exhales shakily. He nods vaguely and drags in a breath. “I don’t think I can keep doing this?”
“Doing what?” Allison asks. “Five, what are you doing?”
When he laughs, it’s an odd, tremulous sound. “Sitting around the Academy, milling around in the present, waiting for myself to hurt you.”
They all looked pained by the admission. Pained but not surprised. Klaus wrinkles up his nose. “But why do you think that?” he says. “I mean, really, why? All the things we’ve managed to do, all the ways we’ve defied the odds -- defied fate, even -- and why do you think that you’re going to end up hurting us?”
“Because fate isn’t real, and you can’t beat 100 percent odds,” he says. He tries to still the trembling in his arms and legs, but there’s nothing he can do. “Que sera sera. It’s in my DNA. I can’t fight that. You can try, but you’ll lose, sooner or later. You’ll lose.”
“Like hell we can’t,” Diego says.
“You’re not giving us or yourself enough credit,” Ben says.
Five shakes his head, because he can’t. He can’t listen to platitudes. He can’t listen to wishful thinking. He can’t. “You don’t understand that I’ve been trying,” he says, and his voice is so raw that it might break. “I keep fighting it every day, and every day, I lose a little bit more. It’s just a matter of time.”
A few of his siblings hang their heads. Vanya kneels down to look at him levelly. “You should have told us just how bad this was.”
“Why?” Five asks her. And he’s actually asking. “So you could tell me that it wasn’t my fault?”
Luther crouches down too. “Well, it’s not.”
Five’s gut twists. “But it is.”
Allison goes ahead and just sits down. “Why?”
“Because I made a plan, and I have to see it through,” he says, trying to remember. “I made a plan and you keep trying to talk me out of it, but it’s still the same plan, and you can’t talk me out of it anymore.”
Diego sits down, too. “Talk you out of what?”
Five’s chest constricts again, and he remembers to make his lungs breathe. “Out of going back. To the Commission.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Ben implores, and he’s squatting near the ground even in his noncorporeal state. “The whole plan was to get you out of there.”
“It took a lot of work, too,” Diego says. “That shit wasn’t easy.”
Five’s shoulders slump. He’s not mad. He’s not defiant. He’s nothing. “We thought that was the plan. We thought it was a foolproof plan, but we didn’t see their counterplay. They knew they couldn’t chase us back down again, so they didn’t plan for that. They made the perfect plan so that I would come back willingly, of my own accord.”
Luther looks like this hurts him. Physically hurts him. “But why? Why go back after all they did to you?”
Five looks at Luther. He looks at Diego and Allison and Klaus and Ben and Vanya. He looks at them and his heart breaks. His sanity is already shattered, but it’s his heart that’s going to pieces now. “To save you.”
Klaus flops down, letting his arms flail in obvious frustration. “And we’re back to that? Already? Because I really thought we were done with that.”
Five has no response to that.
Klaus looks to his siblings, and when no one jumps in, he seems to shrug to himself. “I thought that this is what we thought was wrong in the first place. With all those other versions of the plan. And I thought we had agreed not to do that anymore. How has anything changed?”
Five lets out a ragged breath. “You don’t understand. Everything has changed.”
“Uh, I do understand,” Klaus says. “The plan went sideways, things were shitty, there were unintended consequences, blah, blah, blah.”
Five stares at him. “Blah, blah, blah? They altered my DNA so I am innately a killer. That’s not an unintended consequences. That renders the plan unusable.”
“No, Klaus is right,” Diego says. “Shit happened, and it was worse than we thought. But the plan’s still the plan.”
“And besides,” Luther says. “It’s not your plan anymore, Five. It’s our plan.”
At his wits end, Five shakes his head. “But what possible role can I play in it?”
“The part of our brother,” Allison says. “The only part we ever wanted you to play.”
“But I’m an assassin,” Five says. “I’m a killer.”
“Those are things you’ve done, not who you are,” Ben says stolidly.
“But there’s no plan for this!” Five says. The panic rises again. “I don’t know how to do this without a plan! What is the plan?”
As his vision threatens to dim again, he looks at them each in turn. He looks at Luther, strong and steady. He looks at Diego, passionate in his defense. He looks at Allison, practical and realistic. He looks at Klaus, gentle and sentimental. He looks at Ben, wise and good. He looks at Vanya, compassion etched into her warm, familiar features.
And he realizes something very important.
He realizes they’re right.
There is a plan for this.
There’s a very explicit plan that his siblings have been telling him all along. They’ve been living it out in the little things, day after day.
But that’s not the revelation, not really.
The revelation is this: while Five’s been waiting for the plan to fail, it’s actually been working.
Even in the difficult ways, even in the ways he feels like he’s failing, he’s not. Five’s not complying with their orders because his DNA tells him to. He’s complying with their orders despite what his DNA is telling him. He’s complying because he innately trusts them as much as he innately distrusts himself. Maybe more.
His family has a plan.
His family has all the plans.
No doubt, on his own, Five will fail. On his own, Five will revert to the person he never intended to be. On his own, Five will go back to the Commission and become the killer they have decided he should be.
And it’s entirely possible that his family is technically safer without him, but he knows what losing them did to him. Is he so conceited to think that he’s the only one here who loves his family recklessly? Does he really think that they could handle losing him any better than he handled losing them? Is that what he wants to do to them? To set them off on a wild goose chase to change all of time and space to bring them back together, back where they all belong?
Therefore, by logical deduction, Five knows that if his family will not recover from losing him, then that means that the risk of him staying is inherently and necessarily worthwhile.
That conclusion is the critical turning point. It’s the one thing to ground him in the insanity he doesn’t understand. It’s the one thing he need to fight back the impulses. It’s the thing he needs to overcome his own genetic makeup.
It’s a choice, in the end.
Sitting there, knees to his chest, Five surveys his family again. The equation is still written out on his wall, and he remembers. He remembers that these are variables he’s already accounted for. And he knows -- he knows -- that it all adds up in the end because of one simple fact.
The plan never changed: Save the family.
At all costs.
At every cost.
Luther’s long term goals. Diego’s fitness regimen. Allison’s daily activities. Klaus’ cooking antics. Ben’s reading. Vany’s conversations.
Taken together, they spell out a step by step family recovery plan.
The knowledge doesn’t change how scared Five is, however. He’s still trembling when he speaks again. “I’m an unpredictable variable,” he admits. “I don’t think I trust myself anymore.”
“Then don’t,” Vanya says, plain and simple. “Don’t trust yourself. Trust us.”
His eyes are burning again, and he almost smiles. “There’s a lot at stake here,” he says. “What they did to me is real. I’ve changed, and I don’t -- I don’t know--”
He can’t finish. The words don’t come.
Vanya reaches over to him, her hands clasped around his. “But we do,” she says. And she smiles as she lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “And the rest we’ll figure out together.”
His voice is small; he feels small. “But what if it doesn’t work?”
What if he loses control?
What if he hurts someone?
What if he can’t fight who he is?
“It has to work,” Vanya says while the others nod in solidarity. “It’s your plan, after all.”
He laughs again, and this time, when the tears track down his face, he understands why they’re there. “No,” he corrects her. “It’s our plan.”
She still smiling as she guides him to his feet. Luther crowds close on one side, Diego on the other, but Five’s legs support him. He takes a shaky step forward, hand in hand with Vanya. Allison and Klaus lead with Ben glancing behind him to smile.
“Come on,” Vanya coaches, as Five takes another step forward. “It’s time to go home.”
-o-
It’s a long way home. Several blocks feel like miles. The minutes feel like lifetimes. Five feels like an entirely different person by the time he gets back, by the time they tuck him into bed and tell him that things are going to be okay.
They’re not foolish to promise.
Five isn’t weak for listening.
He looks at the numbers scrawled on the wall.
The numbers are never wrong.
Five certainly is, but then, that’s why he needs his family. Because numbers don’t always translate to real life the way you think.
That’s the plan, anyway.
Five closes his eyes to sleep.
That really is the plan.
-o-
When Five wakes up, he wants to feel like everything is better. Like it all makes sense now.
It’s not exactly like that.
Things are better, if only because it’s hard to imagine them being much worse, but it’s not better. Five’s breakdown in the warehouse is a turning point, but it’s certainly not a quick fix. Five is still Five, after all. Even when you finally make a choice, that doesn’t mean that things are going to be easy. You can know the destination, and the journey will still be hard. Probably harder than you think.
That’s the way it is in Five’s life, after all. There’s some comfort in knowing that he has a penchant for this kind of thing, for making rash decisions without understanding the actual scope of the consequences. Five has a unique talent for being right and being very, very wrong.
Naturally, that doesn’t make for the best story. But this isn’t the best story. This isn’t some story of unrealistic drivel, where people choose family and the rest of the world falls into place. Those stories aren’t real, and the people who tell them are liars in their own ways. That’s not Five’s story.
No, Five’s story is that things are still pretty hard. Some days are really bad; others are just sort of bad. In truth, he doesn’t find this discouraging but he looks at the lengthy equation on the wall and remembers all the variables he had to factor out along the way, the errant x’s and y’s to finally get the solution.
It’s something about perspective, if it’s anything. Five’s been crippled for these last few months thinking about all the ways he can’t do what needs to be done. Now, when that sense of helplessness reaches a breaking point, he looks back and realizes that he has done what needs to be done, every single time.
So it’s not a very good story, but it is a story that’s moving forward. It has been all along.
Five’s just able to appreciate it a little bit better now.
-o-
Of the many changes that occur when Five settles back in at the Academy, one of the most telling is Luther. He’s still very calm and steady, and he never makes sudden moves or raises his voice around Five. Things are gentle, and he’s always asking if Five’s okay.
Where this used to be suffocating, Luther has now opted for more nighttime shifts. This is awkward in certain ways, but Five’s pride has already been taken apart. And, unlike Ben who would stare at him all night, Luther sleeps.
It doesn’t look comfortable, Luther’s large body smushed into a tiny chair. He sleeps sitting up with his head tipped back and his mouth open. But for all that Five thinks that waking up to see a hulking figure at his bedside will be disconcerting, it’s really not. Mostly because Five sleeps better than before. Not perfectly, mind you, but Luther’s deep and steady breathing in the dead of night is a comfort.
And every night, without fail, Luther says the same thing to Five before they kip off. “If you need anything tonight--”
After several weeks, Five rolls his eyes. “You’ll be right there, I know,” he says. He nods at Luther. “It’s kind of hard to miss you.”
Luther blushes because he’s Luther. “I mean it, Five. Anything you need--”
“I got it, I got it,” he mutters. “Now go to sleep.”
Five says it like he takes it for granted, because he actually does.
And Luther grins at him like that’s the best thing he’s heard in his whole life.
-o-
It’s not just words, either. When Five wakes up from a nightmare screaming, Luther is always there, awake and alert within seconds. “Five, you’re okay,” he says without prompting. “You’re okay.”
It takes Five several moments before he can calm down again, before he can get his wits about him enough to settle back down into bed.
“What was it this time?” Luther asks quietly.
Five swallows back a biting reply. He forces a smile in the darkness instead. “The shock therapy,” he admits. He shifts uncomfortably on the bed. “I can still feel it.”
Luther sighs a little. “That’s better than the experiments, though. You usually take longer recovering from those.”
Five shrugs. “The most realistic ones are the ones in the cell.”
Luther winces sympathetically. “Yeah, I forgot about those.”
Five exhales, long and slow. “They’re not as real as they used to be.”
“You think you’ll ever stop having them?” Luther asks him.
“Probably not,” Five says. “But dreams are just manifestations of the subconscious. They don’t mean anything.”
Luther nods in agreement. “No. I guess they don’t.”
No, Five tells himself as he closes his eyes again to settle back to sleep. They’re scary and unsettling; they’re exhausting and nerve-wracking. But they really don’t mean anything at all.
