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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-
With the right attitude and renewed focus, Five is able to make his weight gain, and he is advancing in Diego’s complicated fitness regimen. He can now run a full mile without being winded, and he can do 20 pushups before his arms give out.
The day when Five completes two full miles, Diego is nearly beside himself with giddiness. He’s so damn happy that he takes Five out for doughnuts and orders a pair of black coffees. The waitress gives him a funny look.
“You heard me,” Diego tells her. “The kids wants a coffee, too.”
She raises his eyebrows but scribbles it down, ducking away from the table without further comment. It’s Five who continues staring at Diego in surprise.
“I thought coffee wasn’t a healthy part of my diet,” he says. “I thought the family agreed I couldn’t have any.”
Diego shrugs with defined indifference. “We nixed it because you were underweight. You’re not underweight anymore.”
Five narrows his eyes, suddenly skeptical. It’s a good answer, but he suspects it’s not the whole answer. “I’ve been at weight for a week now. Why today?”
“Well, you pushed yourself today. You pushed yourself hard,” Diego says. “Out there, when we were going at it today, I saw something in you that I haven’t seen in a long time. I saw that spark, that thing that makes you Five. That thing that made you fight tooth and nail to get back to us.” He is leaning forward now, pointing his finger at Five. “I saw that Five who saved us and the world. That Five? He could do whatever the hell he wanted.”
Diego is being sincere, and Five always struggles in the face of sincerity. He’s trained himself to look for an ulterior motive, a secondary meaning, and there’s nothing lying behind Diego’s word except pride. Well, pride and possibly affection.
He keeps himself very still, aware of the itch in his fingers that says this is a good time to jump. That would be rude, however. Also, it would mean he wouldn’t get the coffee Diego has ordered him. He swallows, flexing his fingers experimentally, before finally trusting himself to speak. “But I’m not that Five anymore.”
There’s no need to explain how. They don’t need to talk about the months at the hands of the Commission. They don’t need to talk about the torture, the isolation, the genetic manipulation. They don’t need to talk about the nightmares and the angry outbursts or his homicidal instincts.
Five is grateful sometimes for how well his family takes such things in stride.
Diego sits back, making a face. “And that’s why you don’t get alcohol,” he says dismissively. “But coffee every now and then? I mean, I don’t see why the hell not.”
This is unexpected.
Five realizes a second later that this is good.
He cocks his head, curious. “Every now and then?”
Diego’s eyes widen knowingly. He quickly clarifies his previous statement. “Once a week.”
Five decides to push his luck. “Once a day.”
Diego chuffs in bemusement. “Twice a week.”
Five’s not one to quit, but he’s also invariably pragmatic. He can’t remember the last time he had coffee. He probably shouldn’t waste this. “And on special occasions.”
Diego bobs his head in satisfaction. “Deal.”
It’s not smugness Five feels. It’s not concession. It’s something different. Compromise? That sense of togetherness when they all pull their weight. He remembers that feeling from when they finally saved the world, when they finally put their talents and minds together, and how easy it had been. It’s been a long time since things have been easy.
Maybe it can be that way again.
Maybe it’s that way now.
Before he has to say something else, the waitress returns and deposits two black coffees on the table. She gives a lingering little look, but Five ignores her while Diego smiles politely and thanks her for the both of them. For his part, Five picks up his cup and holds it close to his nose. He smells it, the aroma from the beans filling his nose.
He smiles.
When he takes a sip, it is hard and bitter, and it burns the whole way down his throat. It feels it, like fire in his chest, and the warmth from the caffeine spreads throughout his body, all the way to his fingers and toes. It’s not particularly special, the blend of coffee, but it’s possibly the best cup he’s had in his entire life.
Diego is watching him with a grin. “Good, huh?”
Five keeps smiling. “The best,” he says before he takes another long, comforting sip. He wonders, with some keenness, what the reward will be when he runs five miles.
He closes his eyes and soaks it in.
He may just have to make a point to find out.
-o-
Coffee is a trace of normal, which is more than welcome. Because the normal things are important when so much of his life is still abnormal.
Now, to be fair, things have never exactly been normal for the Umbrella Academy. Their father had trained them to be superheroes, which meant they had been forced to endure unusual things from very young ages. While most kids played with toys, Five and his siblings had learned hand to hand combat. Other kids signed up for team sports like soccer; the Hargreeves siblings raced each other for sheer dominance.
All that is still to say that normal is relative. They created their own normal.
Five’s not aiming for that, even.
He’s just aiming for a day without any flashbacks.
They are fewer and further between, to be fair. He talks about his experiences, which helps contain the impulses, and when he can strip the memories of their emotional power, he tends to deal with them better. All of this, unfortunately, does not guarantee that the flashbacks don’t arise in the first place.
They do.
More than Five would like.
He catches himself, standing in dark rooms, afraid to turn on the light for fear of the surge of electricity. He starts a shower with plenty of hot water and accidentally zones out until it’s cold as ice. He will still reread the same page in a book 10 times before regaining his focus, and the sound of laughter from another room still makes him flinch.
It’s not normal.
But maybe it’s his normal.
And the thing is this: he still turns on the light. He turns off the shower. He finally turns the page. And sometimes -- just sometimes -- he’ll go see what’s so funny.
He had been right, way back before the apocalypse. Everything about them had always been crazy. This isn’t the life he chose.
But what the hell.
He might as well live it.
-o-
For the record, Five still thinks board games are a waste of time.
That doesn’t mean he’s not really good at them.
Ultimately, Allison is not enough competition to make Scrabble interesting. She’s moderately better at Boggle, but Five finds the repetition increasingly tedious. After he sighs enough, she finally asks, “What? You don’t want to play?”
“We have played these two games for weeks now,” Five points out. Scrabble is open on the coffee table between them. Allison has pulled up a chair across the way, and Five is sitting on the sofa. “Aren’t you getting a little bored?”
She frowns thoughtfully. The game is halfway setup, and she pauses. “I don’t know. Not really.”
Five stares at her. She’s not a liar anymore, except all the times she is. “Seriously?”
She blushes slightly at the catch. “Well, I’m just trying to pick games you like.”
“But I didn’t even want to play games in the first place,” Five reminds her.
“Hence the reason I’m catering to you,” she shoots back.
He shakes his head, matter of fact. “That might be a nice sentiment, but it’s getting a little tedious, don’t you think?” he asks, arching his eyebrows. “I mean, it’d be more fun to play these games if I had an opponent with a more expansive vocabulary.”
Allison squawks. “Well, thank you!”
He sighs again, feeling put out. “It’s not an insult. It’s just a fact. It’s not like I think less of you because you have a lower IQ.”
She snorts. “Uh, yeah. That sort of feels like an insult.”
With a groan, he flops back on the couch. She may have a lower IQ but that doesn’t mean she’s not right. “Fine. I’m sorry.”
It’s not overly sentimental, but Allison tells enough lies to recognize a truth. She also understands the inherent value, coming from Five. That doesn’t mean that Allison is going to make him work for it. She plays nice sometimes, but Allison is just as vicious as Diego sometimes. “What was that?” she asks, leaning forward like she didn’t hear him.
Five glares at her, but he has no choice but to play along. “I said I’m sorry,” he repeats, enunciating the words louder. This time, he adds a note of contempt along with the sincerity for good measure.
She looks inordinately pleased. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
He sits himself up a little bit more, but it’s minimal effort. “What? Yes,” he says. He takes a second to think about that legitimately. “I actually feel pretty good today, compared to the average day.”
She mixes the letter tiles absently. “You sure about that?”
This time, he sits up in earnest. “Just because I said I was sorry doesn’t mean that I’m not well,” he says. “I’m more than capable of knowing when I’m wrong.”
“Sure, you are,” she says. “But you’re not great at admitting it all the time.”
“I believe I was very forthcoming about how I screwed up time travel,” he says defensively.
“Uh huh,” she says. She makes a face. “But let’s put it this way. My vocabulary is limited the same way your people skills are limited.”
He has to concede that. The analogy is apt. “That’s fair.”
With that, she seems satisfied. She nods to the game board. “So if not Scrabble, then what? Do you have another game in mind?”
It’s meaningful, Five thinks, that he doesn’t argue against the idea of games altogether. He could, and she might even listen. But he finds, on some level, that maybe he doesn’t actually want to argue against it.
Instead, he does his best not to look interested when he asks, “What else do we have?”
She blows out a breath, looking up as she thinks. “Um. Man. We haven’t had family game night in awhile.”
“Just your weekly torture sessions with me,” Five quips.
She shakes her head at him dismissively. “Yeah, and for those I only picked the super boring ones due to your total lack of a sense of fun.”
Five rolls his eyes. “This is increasingly charming.”
“Oh, um. Risk. We have Risk.”
Five wrinkles his nose. “I can barely stomach a game for 30 minutes. I’d rather not play one for three hours.”
Allison chuckles in relief. “Thank God; I hate that game,” she says. “Oh, what about Life?”
“Too inane,” Five says. “None of the career options are remotely appealing, and the way you are shuffled through mundane trivialities is unappealing.”
“All right,” she says, and she doesn’t have to roll her eyes; Five can hear it in her voice. Her lips twist ruefully. “I saw Candyland up there still.”
“Candyland?” Five asks. “When the hell did we ever have Candyland?”
“We played it all the time as kids,” Allison says. “It’s a vintage edition. It was Ben’s favorite. He and Klaus played it for hours.”
“That’s disturbing,” Five says. “And somewhat telling.”
“Oh, come on,” Allison chides him, starting to pick up the pieces to Scrabble. “It’s just a kid’s game.”
“And we were never kids,” Five reminds her.
She gives him a clinical look. “Looking at you, you’re still one.”
His glare deepens. “Not one who plays Candyland.”
“Fine, fine,” Allison says. “What about Monopoly? Diego was always challenging Luther to a game of Monopoly. If I didn’t play with them, it usually ended in a fight.”
Five considers this. Not his brothers’ inability to play a simple game, but the game itself. As far as games go, Monopoly is not without its merits. It requires strategy, and the more cutthroat you are, the more successful you could be. It’s a game for the ambitious. “That could work.”
“Okay,” Allison says, putting the last of the pieces away and putting the lid on Scrabble. “But I have to warn you, I’m pretty good at Monopoly.”
Five lifts a shoulder coolly. “Well, it can’t be worse than your Scrabble game.”
She scoffs, confident and cool herself as she gets to her feet. “Consider yourself warned,” she says. “I’m playing to win today.”
It only occurs to Five now that she might not have been playing that way all along.
He sits up a little straighter.
It seems like things have just started to get interesting.
-o-
Allison doesn’t win; Five bankrupts her soon enough.
He refuses to allow himself to think that it’s bad that this is the highlight of his day.
-o-
It’s one hell of a highlight.
That just means there are lowlights, as well.
Beyond the nightmares and the flashbacks and the barely controlled panic attacks, Five also has an unfortunate habit of talking to himself. It’s never intentional, which Five supposes doesn’t make it better, and it’s more often than he generally tries to let on. He’ll be doing little things, like getting dress or making the bed. Sometimes he’s fishing in the fridge for a snack or rifling through Dad’s library looking for something new to read. The next thing he knows, he’s thoroughly engaged in a conversation about how they need to expand their book collection when he realizes, belatedly, that no one else is in the room.
He sighs, dropping his arms and shaking his head. “Again? Really?”
In response, he shrugs. “It’s not that weird.”
“And it’s not that normal,” Five argues back. He rubs a hand across his forehead. “You have to maintain a separation between reality and fantasy, even within the timeline variations. We need to know what’s real and let the rest go.”
He gestures emphatically. “You what’s real. You know you’re talking to yourself.”
“So why don’t you stop?” Five demands. He curls his fist and pounds it absently on the bookcase.
“Is it really so bad?”
Five glares. “You want to get better, don’t you?”
“Oh, and now you’re going to say that Delores was bad for you, too.”
“No,” Five says, inclining his head. “But Delores is gone now.”
“Exactly.”
“No, Delores is gone,” Five insists. “And now there are other options for company. Options way better than you.”
To that, he has no reply.
-o-
For dinner, one night, Klaus waltzes down to the kitchen and presents Five with a cookbook.
“What’s this for?” he asks.
“Um, for cooking,” Klaus says.
Five gives it another cursory look, wondering if that has some meaning he’s missing. “So?”
“So, you look through and find things you want to try,” Klaus says.
Five stares at him, still at a loss. All his years in the apocalypse, he spent a lot of time reading. He read fiction, nonfiction. He read physics, chemistry, anatomy, geology. He read political treatises and philosophical theories. He read the literature of the greats, and challenged himself with the most advanced thinking he could find. He read medical textbooks, foreign language textbooks, everything.
Everything except cookbooks.
Given the lack of access to good ingredients, reading about food had been mostly unappealing. The thought of a recipe made his stomach hurt almost preemptively, and in the apocalypse, there was no way to satiate that pain.
Wary, he looks at Klaus.
Klaus sighs with more drama than necessary. “It’s not going to attack you!” he says. “I just thought, I don’t know. I’m always picking what we make for dinner. And I thought maybe you’d like to pick for once. You know, get invested in the process.”
Five is instantly skeptical. It takes him a moment to realize that this is a habitual response and not something drawn from this particular context. In fact, there’s no reason to suspect any ulterior motive from Klaus. Since becoming sober, Klaus has been nothing but forthright. He can rival Luther in terms of being sincere.
That is, naturally, the only point of commonality between those two particular brothers, but such a comparison is not relevant to the point.
The point being: Klaus is trying to be nice.
It goes against Five’s instincts to reply in kind.
That’s probably the reason why he should try so hard, then.
Five looks back down at the cookbook. He opens it.
Klaus sits down next to him, apparently encouraged. “We can do anything,” he says. “It is dinner time, but you know, whatever. We could try an omelette. I don’t think I’ll be good at omelettes, but maybe quiche? Quiche could work.”
Five flips a few pages, skimming the titles uncertainly.
“Or, you know, skip the main course, go straight for dessert,” Klaus suggests enthusiastically. “I know you keep saying you’re not big into sweets, but maybe we can change that.”
This seems unlikely to Five on first impulse.
But then, maybe his first impulses aren’t his best impulses.
And maybe unlikely things are really just par for the course, as far as the Hargreeves family is concerned.
He turns a few more pages until he lands on a section for cakes. The first one listed is a classic chocolate cake with few frills. Five doesn’t have a lot of opinions about this, but it seems good enough. The turns the book toward Klaus and points at the picture. “This one,” he says.
Klaus looks at it. He frowns a little and then raises his eyebrows. “Chocolate cake?”
Five shrugs. “Why not?”
Klaus looks at him, seemingly impressed. “Why not indeed?”
-o-
There are actually many reasons why not. Neither Klaus nor Five can bake, and they had a house full of stocked food. If they were truly in want of good baked goods, all they had to do was ask Mom and she would be only too happy to comply. And when the cake is done, Five is hard pressed to say that the results justify the efforts.
After two hours of fighting over the recipe, the cake is nothing short of pathetic. It’s burned on the edges, brown and crunch. The mixture has clearly not been stirred enough; there are little bits of white, fully cooked egg visible throughout. The texture beyond that isn’t much better. It’s excessively dense, and it’s stodgy in the mouth.
Klaus deals with this lackluster result with enthusiasm. He throws together homemade buttercream, which is mostly just butter and sugar whipped within an inch of its life. It’s too runny, sliding down the sides, and Five almost thinks that a bad Twinkie looks more appetizing.
“Wow,” Klaus says, stuffing another big forkful into his mouth. “This is amazing.”
Amazingly bad, maybe. Five pokes at his with a fork. He can list at least ten things that make this cake not amazing.
Klaus, however, is oblivious as he takes another generous bite. “The texture’s a little thick, but you know, that means you get to chew it longer and you can really taste the chocolate when you do that,” he explains. He prepares another bite vigorously. “And I actually think the egg bits are really interesting. Makes me feel like I’m eating breakfast. Ha! Cake for breakfast! It’s brilliant! We should market it!”
Five is not sure who would possibly buy improperly baked cake, but he gives Klaus another look. There might be a market with drug addicts, it seems. The problem is that drug addicts don’t generally have a lot of spare money to spend on anything other than drugs.
That’s one problem, anyway.
There are many problems with the notion of marketing poorly baked cake.
Klaus has almost devoured his slice by now. “Ugh, I love this cake!” he says, more resounding than before. He closes his eyes in apparent joy. “I want to marry this cake. I know it’s a big deal about letting guys marry guys, but do you think they’d be okay if I marry this cake?”
Five is a little awed by this point. It’s so ridiculous, it’s so over the top, it’s so...sincere. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Klaus opens his eyes, looking at Five a little taken aback. “Well, not about marrying the cake, probably,” he says. “I mean, cake would be really messy in bed, like, really messy--”
“No,” Five says. “You’re serious that you love this cake? That you think it’s really worth something?”
Klaus looks like only Klaus can. Wide eyes make him look young. The openness is written all over his expression. “Yeah,” he says. “I think it’s worth everything.”
Five thinks about that as he takes a bit. He forces himself to swallow the poor tasting cake. It really is the worst cake he’s ever had, and yet, he suspects that Klaus is probably right.
After all, Five’s lived his whole life, making choices based on the end results. He’s necessarily believed that the ends justify the means. But maybe that’s not how it is -- at least, not anymore. Maybe this time Five doesn’t have to live for an endgame. Maybe he just gets to live. Maybe that’s the plan.
Living.
One bad bake at a time.
-o-
As the days go by, Five doesn’t starts to be able to control his thoughts better. Not completely by any stretch of the imagination, but he recognizes problematic thoughts sooner and he prevents them from taking hold. It’s a tactic that can be explained by cognitive behavior theory, and Five likes to have the technical rational behind it even if he knows on a more guttural level that it’s really just about the time and persistence his family has put into grounding him to the here and now.
He’s never realized that was a problem for him before. This is probably what his father had talked about when he said that time travel could contaminate the mind, but his harsh declarations had never provided any nuance to make it seem applicable. Not that Five would have necessarily listened, but there’s no way to know. All he knows is that his instincts veer toward the inconstant as a default, wherein he assumes that nothing is permanent and that reality is flexible. This can be empowering, as it had been when he stopped the apocalypse, but when you want to live an actual life, it’s hard to shake it long enough to do anything resembling living.
It’s easy to forget where he is. It’s easy to forget when he is. It’s easy to think it’s the end of the world or the Commission and harder to grasp the reality that those events are behind him, if not literally than metaphorically. Taking the moments as they come helps, and Five sees a marked improvement day after day, week after week.
By the time two months have passed, Five has developed the ability to focus his mind sufficiently. His increased attention span is still prone to easy distractions, especially in terms of flashbacks, but he can hold a train of thought long enough to follow it to a logical conclusion more often than not.
Incidentally, this development makes doing his calculations much easier. He fights the impulse sometimes, to quantify his existence, but he finds comfort in the numbers and after enough encouragement from his family, he starts in on a fresh wall in the attic that has been allotted for the task. The caveat is that he must always tell them what he is trying to calculate, and anything resembling the odds of the end of the world is strictly prohibited. The possibility of interference from the Commission is something that they do not expressly disallow, but only because Five himself has not been able to ask the question yet.
What he does set about, however, is his own recovery. It helps, he thinks, to see it spelled out. He likes giving a number to how far he’s come. He likes looking at how the variables are increasingly positive, balancing out the negative factors on the other side. It’s progress, more tangible than the other indications that his siblings go on about.
It’s not perfect, though. As he analyzes his own psychological patterns, he sees a persistence streak that does not look likely to decrease at any point in the near future. In fact, when he maps out the probability, it looks like flashbacks and overwhelming urges will be part of his life forever. The odds suggest that such influences will decrease in intensity, but by his calculations, he will continue to suffer habitual breakdowns with at least one severe setback every year for the rest of his life. More in these first few years after being reunited with his family.
In sum, his prognosis is not one of complete recovery. Five is never going to get over this. He’s never going to put it behind him, and the forward progress will slow down substantially in the coming months. That said, the odds are increasingly in his favor that he will be able to live a long and productive life as a member of the Umbrella Academy. It’s likely that he will be able to participate with the team on missions. He’ll be able to be a meaningful part of the family.
They’re not perfect odds.
But what the hell.
Five’s worked with worse odds before.
-o-
Ben starts a book club.
That’s what he calls it, but Five is dubious. The club only includes the two of them and all they do is sit around and read. They don’t even read the same book, and although Ben asks Five what he’s reading, Five rarely shares relevant plot details and instead rants on obscure points with which he finds disagreement.
This seems to please Ben rather a lot.
Five thinks it’s weird, but he can find no compelling reason to disagree. It’s quiet. It’s enjoyable. It’s productive. Honestly, it’s Five’s favorite part of the week.
Most of the time.
However, when Five’s having a bad day, when he negative variables can’t be factored out, book club is nearly unbearable. Five sits in a chair and tries to read, growing increasingly frustrated as the pages all look the same and he rereads the same paragraph five times. Finally, when he gets too fed up when trying to read Catch-22, he growls despite himself. His impulse is to rip the book in two. He fights that back and throws it across the room instead.
Ben, who is somehow curled up in a chair nearby, looks over the top of his book with his eyebrows up. “Don’t like that one?”
Five’s too frustrated to be genuinely embarrassed. Besides, his siblings have seen worse from him. Far worse. “I don’t know if I like it,” he admits hotly. “I can’t stop rereading the same paragraph. I can’t focus.”
Ben, who is ever present, is ever patient. “Well, you know that happens from time to time. It’ll pass.”
Five’s jaw tightens, and he blushes despite himself. “And then it’ll keep coming back,” he mutters. His posture is taught, sitting stiffly on the chair, a stark contrast to Ben’s ease. “This is stupid.”
“It’s not stupid--”
“It is,” Five snaps back. “This whole thing is stupid. Book club is stupid. Us, sitting around here, reading.”
“You like book club,” Ben reasons.
“Apparently not!” Five says, his voice unsteady. “Because I keep throwing books across the room.”
Ben furrows his brow slightly as he puts his own book down. “This is the first time you’ve done that.”
“But it’s not the first time I’ve wanted to,” Five says. He shakes his head, short, harsh motions. “I can’t focus at all. I can’t even think.”
“You’re obviously thinking,” Ben says, and Five doesn’t look at him. He looks at Ben’s copy of Oliver Twist instead. “It’s just a question of what you’re thinking about.”
Of course Ben knows how to get to the real issue. All his siblings know. Five’s the smart one, but they’ve got this figured out while he struggles to put things together on a daily basis. Most of the time, he accepts that well enough, but it burns with resentment in his chest right now.
Resentment or denial, Five concedes he doesn’t know which. Because he keeps thinking about the medical lab at the Commission. The ear he doesn’t have itches, and something aches where his third kidney once grew. He can feel the scalpel as it cuts into his skin, deep enough to hurt, deep enough that he still has the scars.
His breathing is tight when he finally answers Ben’s question. “I’m not thinking about anything.”
Five is a bad liar. There was no one to lie to in the apocalypse. He sooner killed people rather than bother with falsehood at the Commission. He still hates how pitiful he sounds.
How pitiful he feels.
He hates feeling like that. He hates it more than he hates the weakness, the neediness. He hates it more than the craziness and the flashbacks and the impulses he must talk himself out of indulging.
Somehow, the fact that Ben doesn’t call him on it makes it worse.
Getting up, Ben crosses the room. He moves slowly and purposefully, and as he reaches the far wall he seems to brace himself. Ghosts can breathe, or Five would swear he’s taking a breath, but Five knows that Ben has to work harder than his siblings to do these normal things. Sure, ghosts can move freely through walls, but it takes a lot of concentration for Ben to be able to manifest enough to interact with the physical world -- especially without Klaus present in the room.
For a second, Five ponders why it matters now -- what the hell Ben is trying to accomplish -- but he bends down, transparent fingers locking around the book Five has thrown carelessly across the room.
He picks it up and straightens, flipping through it as he walks back to his chair. By the time he sits down, he finds the creased page and skims it. Five’s urge to rip the book from Ben’s noncorporeal hands and rip it in half is probably over the top. He grits his teeth as Ben starts to read.
“PASSAGE.”
Five is still gritting his teeth when Ben looks up.
“Is this the right place?” Ben asks.
Instead of violence, Five presses his lips together. “No, the next page. I finished that one.”
Ben flips the page and starts again. “PASSAGE.”
He looks up to Five, presumably for his approval. The fact that Five does not threaten to leave seems to be enough of a validation. Ben always did have kind of low standards for his siblings.
After several paragraphs, Five can’t take it anymore. “What are you doing exactly?” he demands.
Ben glances at Five over the top of the book. “Reading. What does it sound like.”
Five huffs. “Yes I know you’re reading,” he says. “But that’s my book.”
“It’s Dad’s book,” Ben points out.
“But I was reading it!”
“No, you were trying to read it,” Ben says. “This is book club.”
Those two sentences technically make sense, but Five furrows his brow because they don’t make any sense together. “So?”
“So,” Ben says. “Book club means that we read together.”
There still seems to be something logically absent to Five. “Yeah?” he asks, expectantly. “And?”
“And,” Ben says. “If you can’t read on your own, then I’ll just have to do it for you.”
Five shakes his head, at a loss. “I don’t get it.”
“It has to be together,” Ben says. “Or not at all.”
That’s the kind of thing that sounds nice, and okay, it does sound nice. But practically speaking, it’s a little harder to grasp. Like, it’s one thing to make sure that Five doesn’t lose his mind. Exercise, playing games, making dinner -- that’s all shit, but Five can make parse as a necessary part of keeping himself grounded. But Ben is talking about...well, what is Ben talking about?
Reading together?
Five makes a face. “That’s weird.”
Ben is completely nonplussed. “No, it’s not.”
Five’s pride, fractured as it is, is as resilient as the rest of him. Maybe moreso, sometimes. “I know how to read a damn book; any book,” he mutters crossly. “I’m not a child.”
Ben tips his head a little. “I’ll spare you the joke,” he says. “And really, Five. You’re just thinking about this wrong. It’s a book. It’s just a book, Five. It’s one you want to read, isn’t it?”
Five swallows hard and is forced to nod. It’s one he’s liked for decades. He’s reread it several times, though his copy had fallen apart when he left it in an acidic rain during his second decade in the apocalypse. He’d not gotten around to rereading it since. “Yes.”
“Okay,” Ben says. He nods at the book. “Then let me help.”
It’s not just reading, then.
It’s not just book club.
Maybe it’s just family. And maybe family is a necessity the same way that sleep and exercise and food and recreation is. Maybe this is what you do. Five can’t remember sometimes; he’s spent more of his life alone than he cares to admit. For all that he’s focused on getting back to his family, he’s not actually very good with them. To him, none of it is normal or natural.
It’s possible, therefore, that Ben isn’t trying to make him feel stupid. It’s possible that Ben’s not trying to show him that he’s lesser. It’s possible that Ben just wants to help him do life together.
Moreover, it’s possible that’s all family is, when you strip it down to its barest working parts. Family is life together. From the big stuff to the little stuff.
From the apocalypse to book club.
Finally, he accepts that there’s just one answer left. It’s probably been the only answer all along, but he can recognize it now. “Okay.”
Ben smiles a little as he adjusts his grip on the book and starts to read again.
“PASSAGE.”
Five settles back, hesitant at first, as he tries to get comfortable. Book club is still a little awkard to him, but it makes more sense now.
It makes a lot of sense now.
-o-
It’s not all mind over matter; it can’t be. Five stills has acute responses to strangely ordinary things. There are strange noises, unusual smells, small flashes of movement: these are triggers that are impossible to avoid, and his response varies between outright murder and complete emotional collapse. Sometimes, he’s a killer, trained to respond to cues without question. Other times, he’s a traumatized victim who wants to run as far away from the people he cares about.
The trick, then, is to stop trusting himself. This is easier said than done. He’s survived a lot in his life, mostly by trusting his own instincts and his own skills above all else. It’s hard to convince himself that the opposite is true now, that he’s better off here with his family. He has to remember, though, that he’s trusting their instincts. He’s trusting their skills. He’s trusting their love.
He hates this as much as he needs it. There are days that he accepts it with as much grace as he can muster. There are other days that he locks himself in his bedroom and rips his pillow to shreds.
But there’s always the next day.
And the next.
Permanence is not something Five has ever fully grasped.
He may just get it yet.
-o-
As usual, Vanya does it best.
She takes him out on long, rambling walks, and they meander together through busy streets, bustling parks and friendly shopping districts. This is an unusual approach, to say the least. Most of his siblings seem afraid to let him out in public. Sure, Diego will take him out to train, but they always stay within a few blocks of home. The others have taken him out for necessities, and he’s been taken to a few restaurants, but it’s always a limited excursion with a dedicated purpose.
Vanya’s walks are entirely the opposite. There’s no point to the excursion. In essence, the excursion is the point.
The effect is layered. First of all, it’s a way to Five to re-acclimate to life. He needs to learn to deal with normal triggers. He has to be able to hear a car backfiring. He needs to be able to walk through a crowd of people. He has to be okay with the sound of children laughing.
It would be wrong to assume this is exclusively a training exercise, however. Not coming from Vanya, at any rate. No, she probably wants him to see that life has gone on. She wants him to see that the world isn’t ending, that he’s succeeded on this front. She wants him to enjoy the labor of his work; she wants him to see that the sacrifices, which are many, have not been entirely in vain.
Five’s not sure if she realizes the last effect, but it is probably the most telling one for him personally. The way she walks with him, casual and easy in public, makes him feel like she trusts him. He’s crazy; he’s an assassin.
And she trusts him completely.
This is why Vanya will always be the best.
The walk today takes them through the park, where they loop around several times before Vanya lazily leads them back home. They’ve crossed the same crossroads several times when Vanya finally apologizes. “I can’t believe it; I’m actually going in circles.”
Five noticed quite some time ago, but he hasn’t felt compelled to say anything. “It’s a nice day; I feel good. It’s not a problem.”
She still looks sheepish. “I didn’t mean to take the long way back,” she says. “Do you mind?”
That’s a question then, isn’t it?
Well, shit.
Five’s been taking the long way back for the better part of 40 years. For the first time in all of that, he finally feels like he’s getting somewhere.
“No,” he says. “I don’t mind at all.”
Because Vanya will talk about violin solos and songs in E flat. She’ll talk about speaking French and how hard it is to find a reliable renter to lease your apartment in the city. She’ll talk about learning needlepoint with Mom and taking care of the birds on the roof with Pogo. She talks about learning to use her powers. She talks about making peace with her brothers. She talks about spending time with Allison, and she talks about how much she’s glad that Ben’s back, that they’re all back.
It’s good to have goals, of course, and that’s what his family provides for him.
But it’s also good to live in the moment, and that’s what Five hasn’t been able to do throughout the course of his entire life.
Vanya is giving him that; she’s giving him the moment.
She smiles like she knows. “Okay,” she says, nudging him lightly. “Then let’s keep walking. We’ll get home sooner or later.”
Sooner than Five deserves.
Later than he’s wanted.
But, as he falls into step next to Vanya, he knows the timing doesn’t matter as long as he gets there in the end.
-o-
You see, Five’s not okay. He knows he’s not. He probably never will be. He’s angry and he’s trigger happy and he’s got instinct he’ll be fighting his entire life.
But he’s okay. Because all those moments, when he forgets himself, he doesn’t forget them. Sure, it’s taken months longer than expected, but time is no longer an extenuating factor. For once, time is on their side.
He thinks about that, sometimes. He thinks about the Handler, out there, somewhere in time and space. She’s biding her time, like she always is, waiting for Five to come back to her. That’s her plan, a meticulous, well thought out plan. She’s waiting for him to give in to what she has determined to be inevitable.
Five believed her once.
He doesn’t believe her anymore.
She can wait a little longer.
As far as Five’s concerned, she can wait forever.
-o-
As much as everything has changed, it’s funny to Five that some things have stayed the same. For all the patterns that his recovery has forced to change, the one that his siblings keep bringing him back to is the family dinner.
He’s never properly understood the importance of a family dinner, not when he was actually 13 and not after saving the world. It’s not until he loses himself that he finds the value that had been there all along. To be sure, Five can’t know with much confidence why their father insisted on such regimented nightly meals, but he knows what it means to his siblings.
He knows it’s a reminder to Luther that there’s a family to lead. For Diego, it’s his chance to prove his worth to them. Allison uses it as her medium to be honest with them all. Klaus celebrates with them another day of sobriety, and Ben is just so happy to be there at all. Vanya finds the beauty in something normal, which is important enough for all of them to cling to.
When Five sits down now, it’s because he’s here. He’s part of them. There’s no guarantee about tomorrow. He can’t change the past. But he can take this moment and appreciate it. There’s nothing to leverage. There’s no utilitarian value. There’s just the seven of them, the family they were forced to be, the family they chose to be.
At first, dinners are quiet and awkward with forced politeness and careful chitchat. During these early dinners, after Five has been rescued, they are keenly aware that he is volatile and easily triggered. They work hard to make a safe place for him, which just means it’s frustrating and pointless.
During these early dinners, Five had hardly been hungry, and he had been anything but sociable. He doesn’t remember much about them, in all honesty; he had struggled with his on frustrating pointlessness to the point of distraction. He had grown increasingly disillusioned with them, and he had barely forced himself to show up at all.
They’re different now.
No, they’re not.
Five’s different.
As he eats more, he listens more. As he listens, he responds. As he responds, his siblings engage. Within six months, they’re talking freely and openly, eating plentiful portions. It’s progress, to be sure.
Then, one night, they start talking about their plans.
It starts in a way that is strangely familiar.
“I thought we’d put the Academy back together,” Luther suggests brightly.
Despite his best efforts to sound spontaneous, Luther has clearly been harboring this notion ever since they got back -- possibly before, possibly since they all moved out and he spent four years on the stupid moon -- but he says it like he’s trying to suggest it’s some kind of inspiration and not the inevitable outcome of their shared experiences.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Allison is the first to agree. “I think that’s a good idea,” she says.
Diego, being his typical obtuse self, looks thoughtful. “The Academy together? Working as a team? Would be much more effective at saving people.”
Klaus shrugs indifferently even though he cares immensely. “I had no foreseeable future goals, so, you know, I’m in,” he says. He makes a vague gesture with his hand. “I could also, you know, still use some accountability.”
“We just found each other,” Ben saysl. “It’d be a shame to let that go now.”
It’s sentimental, but Ben’s the only one who can pull it off. And not just because he’s dead. But because he’s Ben and that’s what Ben does. Five suspects that’s why he was Number Six when clearly he could kill any of them on a whim.
Vanya grins. She still sits at the end of the table, opposite the empty chair where their father used to sit. They used to forget about her there, turned toward their father all the time. It’s not that way anymore. They’re turned toward her now, the utter novelty of it all. “I’m in, of course,” she enthuses. She’s happier now, so much happier than before. Complete in a way that Five can’t quite explain but knows implicitly. “I mean, this is all I’ve wanted for, like, ever.”
That’s that, then.
They’re all beaming, proud and content of this series of predictable sentiment, when they finally look to Five.
He looks back.
Because that’s what he does.
That’s all he can do.
Five has spent most of his life looking back.
His family is ready to look forward.
Turns out, so is he.
“Before we do that,” he says. “There’s something else I want to do first.”
They’re surprised; they’re worried; they’re not sure.
But Five is.
He nods, more convinced than ever that he knows the right way forward, the best possible plan. “I need to redecorate my room.”
It’s a simple statement. His siblings look at him like he’s speaking gibberish. It’s Luther who finally manages to speak on behalf of them all. “What?”
Five shrugs, because suddenly this is very obvious to him. “Well, my room was childish when I was really 13. Now it just seems unreasonable,” he says. “Besides, you all did it. I didn’t.”
“Uh, yeah,” Diego says. “You didn’t want to.”
“You did kind of make a big deal about it,” Allison agrees.
This is not relevant. Five understands the situation differently now. “I didn’t see the value at the time.”
“And, what?” Klaus asks, sounding duly skeptical without being mean. “You do now?”
“Yeah,” he says. Because he’s not sure of a lot of things, sometimes, but he’s sure of this. “I think I do.”
Ben leans forward with an earnest nod. “That’s good. That’s really good.”
Five has changed a lot, but he is still Five. At the overt sentiment, he rolls his eyes. “It’s simply overdue,” he says. “It’s not the most complicated plan I’ve ever had, but I’d like to make it happen.”
It’s Vanya who finally smiles. “Then let’s do it.”
-o-
It’s Five’s plan, but he honestly has no idea where to start. Fortunately, his siblings seem adept at this sort of thing. Luther hangs a few pictures for him, and Ben rustles up a chalkboard to hang where the dart board used to be. Allison helps him pick paint colors (chalkboard paints, she says, obviously pleased with herself), and Diego comes up with a practical layout that will maximize his wall space for when the equations get out of hand.
While the painting is complete, Klaus takes Five to the store and they shop for accessories together. With Klaus’ help, Five comes home with a new bedspread, updated pillows, a curtain, two rugs, a lamp and a chair. He also comes home with a stuffed dog at Klaus’ absolute insistence.
“His name is Mr. Pennycrumb,” Klaus says. “Isn’t he the best?”
Five tolerates this.
It seems like a step in the right direction.
-o-
The others do a lot, but it’s Vanya who stays with him for the nitty gritty. She helps him box up his stuff and sort through it. When the room is ready, fresh paint on the walls and pictures hung, she goes through his things with him to decide what goes back in.
“You don’t have to do this,” Five tells her.
She opens another box. “I know.”
“I’m serious,” Five says. “I got this.”
She looks up at him, quizzical. “I’m not here because you can’t do it. I’m here because I want to help.”
Five’s trying to sound like he has it together, but her vote of confidence shakes him. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t trust me. I’m not a very good liar.”
“You’re really not,” Vanya agrees. She smiles. “But I get it.”
It’s not clear what she gets: Five’s reasons for lying or his inability to pull it off. Maybe she just gets him.
He hesitates, looking at the open box of childhood mementos in front of him. “I still blame myself, you know.”
She’s sorting through his books. “Oh?”
“For running off. For failing to save you,” he says quietly. “And now, for the plan that got us here. For letting the Commission break me.”
Vanya stops, putting the books down. “They didn’t break you.”
Five cocks his head. “You all have barely held me together these last six months.”
“Five, the things you survived with the Commission -- the fact that you’re here at al is a testament to how good you are,” she says.
“I would have imploded without you, all of you,” he says. “I would have gone right back to them, and you know it.”
“So?” Vanya says. “Don’t you remember? That we can’t judge ourselves by our weakest moments? I’m still the girl who caused the apocalypse. Twice. All you did was dare to have emotions.”
She has no idea how audacious it sounds to him: to have emotions.
Starting the apocalypse actually sounds less fraught. “I thought I’d be stronger, though. I thought I had a plan.”
“Your plan was perfect,” she tells him pointedly. She nods. “And you were strong enough to last until we got there. And you’re strong every day that you keep going. That’s all life is, Five. You just keep going.”
The smile that twists his lips is rueful. He thinks about 30 years of solitude. He thinks about killing people for the Commission. He thinks about exploding moons and small interrogation chambers. He thinks about medical laboratories and secluded dungeons.
That’s the past now.
He looks forward, and he sees fresh paint on the walls and new furniture. Metaphor can’t save you, Five knows this, but the symbolism is telling.
This is where he is now.
This is where he is.
It’s not perfect, sure. But the simple fact is that it’s better than where he’s been.
He looks down at his box of things again.
Vanya hedges. “I know it’s not what you planned, Five--”
“I can live with it,” he says, and he looks up to meet her eyes. “I can live with it.”
Thank God this is Vanya; she knows what he’s saying.
In truth, she’s probably known it longer than he has.
There’s no apocalypse.
There’s no Commission.
Something bad will happen someday, sure.
But for now there’s only family.
“You sure you’re okay?” Vanya asks.
“Yeah,” he says, and he means it this time. “I really am okay.”
-o-
This is where the story begins.
Not too early, not too late. All according to plan.
It seems Five’s finally got it right.
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-
With the right attitude and renewed focus, Five is able to make his weight gain, and he is advancing in Diego’s complicated fitness regimen. He can now run a full mile without being winded, and he can do 20 pushups before his arms give out.
The day when Five completes two full miles, Diego is nearly beside himself with giddiness. He’s so damn happy that he takes Five out for doughnuts and orders a pair of black coffees. The waitress gives him a funny look.
“You heard me,” Diego tells her. “The kids wants a coffee, too.”
She raises his eyebrows but scribbles it down, ducking away from the table without further comment. It’s Five who continues staring at Diego in surprise.
“I thought coffee wasn’t a healthy part of my diet,” he says. “I thought the family agreed I couldn’t have any.”
Diego shrugs with defined indifference. “We nixed it because you were underweight. You’re not underweight anymore.”
Five narrows his eyes, suddenly skeptical. It’s a good answer, but he suspects it’s not the whole answer. “I’ve been at weight for a week now. Why today?”
“Well, you pushed yourself today. You pushed yourself hard,” Diego says. “Out there, when we were going at it today, I saw something in you that I haven’t seen in a long time. I saw that spark, that thing that makes you Five. That thing that made you fight tooth and nail to get back to us.” He is leaning forward now, pointing his finger at Five. “I saw that Five who saved us and the world. That Five? He could do whatever the hell he wanted.”
Diego is being sincere, and Five always struggles in the face of sincerity. He’s trained himself to look for an ulterior motive, a secondary meaning, and there’s nothing lying behind Diego’s word except pride. Well, pride and possibly affection.
He keeps himself very still, aware of the itch in his fingers that says this is a good time to jump. That would be rude, however. Also, it would mean he wouldn’t get the coffee Diego has ordered him. He swallows, flexing his fingers experimentally, before finally trusting himself to speak. “But I’m not that Five anymore.”
There’s no need to explain how. They don’t need to talk about the months at the hands of the Commission. They don’t need to talk about the torture, the isolation, the genetic manipulation. They don’t need to talk about the nightmares and the angry outbursts or his homicidal instincts.
Five is grateful sometimes for how well his family takes such things in stride.
Diego sits back, making a face. “And that’s why you don’t get alcohol,” he says dismissively. “But coffee every now and then? I mean, I don’t see why the hell not.”
This is unexpected.
Five realizes a second later that this is good.
He cocks his head, curious. “Every now and then?”
Diego’s eyes widen knowingly. He quickly clarifies his previous statement. “Once a week.”
Five decides to push his luck. “Once a day.”
Diego chuffs in bemusement. “Twice a week.”
Five’s not one to quit, but he’s also invariably pragmatic. He can’t remember the last time he had coffee. He probably shouldn’t waste this. “And on special occasions.”
Diego bobs his head in satisfaction. “Deal.”
It’s not smugness Five feels. It’s not concession. It’s something different. Compromise? That sense of togetherness when they all pull their weight. He remembers that feeling from when they finally saved the world, when they finally put their talents and minds together, and how easy it had been. It’s been a long time since things have been easy.
Maybe it can be that way again.
Maybe it’s that way now.
Before he has to say something else, the waitress returns and deposits two black coffees on the table. She gives a lingering little look, but Five ignores her while Diego smiles politely and thanks her for the both of them. For his part, Five picks up his cup and holds it close to his nose. He smells it, the aroma from the beans filling his nose.
He smiles.
When he takes a sip, it is hard and bitter, and it burns the whole way down his throat. It feels it, like fire in his chest, and the warmth from the caffeine spreads throughout his body, all the way to his fingers and toes. It’s not particularly special, the blend of coffee, but it’s possibly the best cup he’s had in his entire life.
Diego is watching him with a grin. “Good, huh?”
Five keeps smiling. “The best,” he says before he takes another long, comforting sip. He wonders, with some keenness, what the reward will be when he runs five miles.
He closes his eyes and soaks it in.
He may just have to make a point to find out.
-o-
Coffee is a trace of normal, which is more than welcome. Because the normal things are important when so much of his life is still abnormal.
Now, to be fair, things have never exactly been normal for the Umbrella Academy. Their father had trained them to be superheroes, which meant they had been forced to endure unusual things from very young ages. While most kids played with toys, Five and his siblings had learned hand to hand combat. Other kids signed up for team sports like soccer; the Hargreeves siblings raced each other for sheer dominance.
All that is still to say that normal is relative. They created their own normal.
Five’s not aiming for that, even.
He’s just aiming for a day without any flashbacks.
They are fewer and further between, to be fair. He talks about his experiences, which helps contain the impulses, and when he can strip the memories of their emotional power, he tends to deal with them better. All of this, unfortunately, does not guarantee that the flashbacks don’t arise in the first place.
They do.
More than Five would like.
He catches himself, standing in dark rooms, afraid to turn on the light for fear of the surge of electricity. He starts a shower with plenty of hot water and accidentally zones out until it’s cold as ice. He will still reread the same page in a book 10 times before regaining his focus, and the sound of laughter from another room still makes him flinch.
It’s not normal.
But maybe it’s his normal.
And the thing is this: he still turns on the light. He turns off the shower. He finally turns the page. And sometimes -- just sometimes -- he’ll go see what’s so funny.
He had been right, way back before the apocalypse. Everything about them had always been crazy. This isn’t the life he chose.
But what the hell.
He might as well live it.
-o-
For the record, Five still thinks board games are a waste of time.
That doesn’t mean he’s not really good at them.
Ultimately, Allison is not enough competition to make Scrabble interesting. She’s moderately better at Boggle, but Five finds the repetition increasingly tedious. After he sighs enough, she finally asks, “What? You don’t want to play?”
“We have played these two games for weeks now,” Five points out. Scrabble is open on the coffee table between them. Allison has pulled up a chair across the way, and Five is sitting on the sofa. “Aren’t you getting a little bored?”
She frowns thoughtfully. The game is halfway setup, and she pauses. “I don’t know. Not really.”
Five stares at her. She’s not a liar anymore, except all the times she is. “Seriously?”
She blushes slightly at the catch. “Well, I’m just trying to pick games you like.”
“But I didn’t even want to play games in the first place,” Five reminds her.
“Hence the reason I’m catering to you,” she shoots back.
He shakes his head, matter of fact. “That might be a nice sentiment, but it’s getting a little tedious, don’t you think?” he asks, arching his eyebrows. “I mean, it’d be more fun to play these games if I had an opponent with a more expansive vocabulary.”
Allison squawks. “Well, thank you!”
He sighs again, feeling put out. “It’s not an insult. It’s just a fact. It’s not like I think less of you because you have a lower IQ.”
She snorts. “Uh, yeah. That sort of feels like an insult.”
With a groan, he flops back on the couch. She may have a lower IQ but that doesn’t mean she’s not right. “Fine. I’m sorry.”
It’s not overly sentimental, but Allison tells enough lies to recognize a truth. She also understands the inherent value, coming from Five. That doesn’t mean that Allison is going to make him work for it. She plays nice sometimes, but Allison is just as vicious as Diego sometimes. “What was that?” she asks, leaning forward like she didn’t hear him.
Five glares at her, but he has no choice but to play along. “I said I’m sorry,” he repeats, enunciating the words louder. This time, he adds a note of contempt along with the sincerity for good measure.
She looks inordinately pleased. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
He sits himself up a little bit more, but it’s minimal effort. “What? Yes,” he says. He takes a second to think about that legitimately. “I actually feel pretty good today, compared to the average day.”
She mixes the letter tiles absently. “You sure about that?”
This time, he sits up in earnest. “Just because I said I was sorry doesn’t mean that I’m not well,” he says. “I’m more than capable of knowing when I’m wrong.”
“Sure, you are,” she says. “But you’re not great at admitting it all the time.”
“I believe I was very forthcoming about how I screwed up time travel,” he says defensively.
“Uh huh,” she says. She makes a face. “But let’s put it this way. My vocabulary is limited the same way your people skills are limited.”
He has to concede that. The analogy is apt. “That’s fair.”
With that, she seems satisfied. She nods to the game board. “So if not Scrabble, then what? Do you have another game in mind?”
It’s meaningful, Five thinks, that he doesn’t argue against the idea of games altogether. He could, and she might even listen. But he finds, on some level, that maybe he doesn’t actually want to argue against it.
Instead, he does his best not to look interested when he asks, “What else do we have?”
She blows out a breath, looking up as she thinks. “Um. Man. We haven’t had family game night in awhile.”
“Just your weekly torture sessions with me,” Five quips.
She shakes her head at him dismissively. “Yeah, and for those I only picked the super boring ones due to your total lack of a sense of fun.”
Five rolls his eyes. “This is increasingly charming.”
“Oh, um. Risk. We have Risk.”
Five wrinkles his nose. “I can barely stomach a game for 30 minutes. I’d rather not play one for three hours.”
Allison chuckles in relief. “Thank God; I hate that game,” she says. “Oh, what about Life?”
“Too inane,” Five says. “None of the career options are remotely appealing, and the way you are shuffled through mundane trivialities is unappealing.”
“All right,” she says, and she doesn’t have to roll her eyes; Five can hear it in her voice. Her lips twist ruefully. “I saw Candyland up there still.”
“Candyland?” Five asks. “When the hell did we ever have Candyland?”
“We played it all the time as kids,” Allison says. “It’s a vintage edition. It was Ben’s favorite. He and Klaus played it for hours.”
“That’s disturbing,” Five says. “And somewhat telling.”
“Oh, come on,” Allison chides him, starting to pick up the pieces to Scrabble. “It’s just a kid’s game.”
“And we were never kids,” Five reminds her.
She gives him a clinical look. “Looking at you, you’re still one.”
His glare deepens. “Not one who plays Candyland.”
“Fine, fine,” Allison says. “What about Monopoly? Diego was always challenging Luther to a game of Monopoly. If I didn’t play with them, it usually ended in a fight.”
Five considers this. Not his brothers’ inability to play a simple game, but the game itself. As far as games go, Monopoly is not without its merits. It requires strategy, and the more cutthroat you are, the more successful you could be. It’s a game for the ambitious. “That could work.”
“Okay,” Allison says, putting the last of the pieces away and putting the lid on Scrabble. “But I have to warn you, I’m pretty good at Monopoly.”
Five lifts a shoulder coolly. “Well, it can’t be worse than your Scrabble game.”
She scoffs, confident and cool herself as she gets to her feet. “Consider yourself warned,” she says. “I’m playing to win today.”
It only occurs to Five now that she might not have been playing that way all along.
He sits up a little straighter.
It seems like things have just started to get interesting.
-o-
Allison doesn’t win; Five bankrupts her soon enough.
He refuses to allow himself to think that it’s bad that this is the highlight of his day.
-o-
It’s one hell of a highlight.
That just means there are lowlights, as well.
Beyond the nightmares and the flashbacks and the barely controlled panic attacks, Five also has an unfortunate habit of talking to himself. It’s never intentional, which Five supposes doesn’t make it better, and it’s more often than he generally tries to let on. He’ll be doing little things, like getting dress or making the bed. Sometimes he’s fishing in the fridge for a snack or rifling through Dad’s library looking for something new to read. The next thing he knows, he’s thoroughly engaged in a conversation about how they need to expand their book collection when he realizes, belatedly, that no one else is in the room.
He sighs, dropping his arms and shaking his head. “Again? Really?”
In response, he shrugs. “It’s not that weird.”
“And it’s not that normal,” Five argues back. He rubs a hand across his forehead. “You have to maintain a separation between reality and fantasy, even within the timeline variations. We need to know what’s real and let the rest go.”
He gestures emphatically. “You what’s real. You know you’re talking to yourself.”
“So why don’t you stop?” Five demands. He curls his fist and pounds it absently on the bookcase.
“Is it really so bad?”
Five glares. “You want to get better, don’t you?”
“Oh, and now you’re going to say that Delores was bad for you, too.”
“No,” Five says, inclining his head. “But Delores is gone now.”
“Exactly.”
“No, Delores is gone,” Five insists. “And now there are other options for company. Options way better than you.”
To that, he has no reply.
-o-
For dinner, one night, Klaus waltzes down to the kitchen and presents Five with a cookbook.
“What’s this for?” he asks.
“Um, for cooking,” Klaus says.
Five gives it another cursory look, wondering if that has some meaning he’s missing. “So?”
“So, you look through and find things you want to try,” Klaus says.
Five stares at him, still at a loss. All his years in the apocalypse, he spent a lot of time reading. He read fiction, nonfiction. He read physics, chemistry, anatomy, geology. He read political treatises and philosophical theories. He read the literature of the greats, and challenged himself with the most advanced thinking he could find. He read medical textbooks, foreign language textbooks, everything.
Everything except cookbooks.
Given the lack of access to good ingredients, reading about food had been mostly unappealing. The thought of a recipe made his stomach hurt almost preemptively, and in the apocalypse, there was no way to satiate that pain.
Wary, he looks at Klaus.
Klaus sighs with more drama than necessary. “It’s not going to attack you!” he says. “I just thought, I don’t know. I’m always picking what we make for dinner. And I thought maybe you’d like to pick for once. You know, get invested in the process.”
Five is instantly skeptical. It takes him a moment to realize that this is a habitual response and not something drawn from this particular context. In fact, there’s no reason to suspect any ulterior motive from Klaus. Since becoming sober, Klaus has been nothing but forthright. He can rival Luther in terms of being sincere.
That is, naturally, the only point of commonality between those two particular brothers, but such a comparison is not relevant to the point.
The point being: Klaus is trying to be nice.
It goes against Five’s instincts to reply in kind.
That’s probably the reason why he should try so hard, then.
Five looks back down at the cookbook. He opens it.
Klaus sits down next to him, apparently encouraged. “We can do anything,” he says. “It is dinner time, but you know, whatever. We could try an omelette. I don’t think I’ll be good at omelettes, but maybe quiche? Quiche could work.”
Five flips a few pages, skimming the titles uncertainly.
“Or, you know, skip the main course, go straight for dessert,” Klaus suggests enthusiastically. “I know you keep saying you’re not big into sweets, but maybe we can change that.”
This seems unlikely to Five on first impulse.
But then, maybe his first impulses aren’t his best impulses.
And maybe unlikely things are really just par for the course, as far as the Hargreeves family is concerned.
He turns a few more pages until he lands on a section for cakes. The first one listed is a classic chocolate cake with few frills. Five doesn’t have a lot of opinions about this, but it seems good enough. The turns the book toward Klaus and points at the picture. “This one,” he says.
Klaus looks at it. He frowns a little and then raises his eyebrows. “Chocolate cake?”
Five shrugs. “Why not?”
Klaus looks at him, seemingly impressed. “Why not indeed?”
-o-
There are actually many reasons why not. Neither Klaus nor Five can bake, and they had a house full of stocked food. If they were truly in want of good baked goods, all they had to do was ask Mom and she would be only too happy to comply. And when the cake is done, Five is hard pressed to say that the results justify the efforts.
After two hours of fighting over the recipe, the cake is nothing short of pathetic. It’s burned on the edges, brown and crunch. The mixture has clearly not been stirred enough; there are little bits of white, fully cooked egg visible throughout. The texture beyond that isn’t much better. It’s excessively dense, and it’s stodgy in the mouth.
Klaus deals with this lackluster result with enthusiasm. He throws together homemade buttercream, which is mostly just butter and sugar whipped within an inch of its life. It’s too runny, sliding down the sides, and Five almost thinks that a bad Twinkie looks more appetizing.
“Wow,” Klaus says, stuffing another big forkful into his mouth. “This is amazing.”
Amazingly bad, maybe. Five pokes at his with a fork. He can list at least ten things that make this cake not amazing.
Klaus, however, is oblivious as he takes another generous bite. “The texture’s a little thick, but you know, that means you get to chew it longer and you can really taste the chocolate when you do that,” he explains. He prepares another bite vigorously. “And I actually think the egg bits are really interesting. Makes me feel like I’m eating breakfast. Ha! Cake for breakfast! It’s brilliant! We should market it!”
Five is not sure who would possibly buy improperly baked cake, but he gives Klaus another look. There might be a market with drug addicts, it seems. The problem is that drug addicts don’t generally have a lot of spare money to spend on anything other than drugs.
That’s one problem, anyway.
There are many problems with the notion of marketing poorly baked cake.
Klaus has almost devoured his slice by now. “Ugh, I love this cake!” he says, more resounding than before. He closes his eyes in apparent joy. “I want to marry this cake. I know it’s a big deal about letting guys marry guys, but do you think they’d be okay if I marry this cake?”
Five is a little awed by this point. It’s so ridiculous, it’s so over the top, it’s so...sincere. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Klaus opens his eyes, looking at Five a little taken aback. “Well, not about marrying the cake, probably,” he says. “I mean, cake would be really messy in bed, like, really messy--”
“No,” Five says. “You’re serious that you love this cake? That you think it’s really worth something?”
Klaus looks like only Klaus can. Wide eyes make him look young. The openness is written all over his expression. “Yeah,” he says. “I think it’s worth everything.”
Five thinks about that as he takes a bit. He forces himself to swallow the poor tasting cake. It really is the worst cake he’s ever had, and yet, he suspects that Klaus is probably right.
After all, Five’s lived his whole life, making choices based on the end results. He’s necessarily believed that the ends justify the means. But maybe that’s not how it is -- at least, not anymore. Maybe this time Five doesn’t have to live for an endgame. Maybe he just gets to live. Maybe that’s the plan.
Living.
One bad bake at a time.
-o-
As the days go by, Five doesn’t starts to be able to control his thoughts better. Not completely by any stretch of the imagination, but he recognizes problematic thoughts sooner and he prevents them from taking hold. It’s a tactic that can be explained by cognitive behavior theory, and Five likes to have the technical rational behind it even if he knows on a more guttural level that it’s really just about the time and persistence his family has put into grounding him to the here and now.
He’s never realized that was a problem for him before. This is probably what his father had talked about when he said that time travel could contaminate the mind, but his harsh declarations had never provided any nuance to make it seem applicable. Not that Five would have necessarily listened, but there’s no way to know. All he knows is that his instincts veer toward the inconstant as a default, wherein he assumes that nothing is permanent and that reality is flexible. This can be empowering, as it had been when he stopped the apocalypse, but when you want to live an actual life, it’s hard to shake it long enough to do anything resembling living.
It’s easy to forget where he is. It’s easy to forget when he is. It’s easy to think it’s the end of the world or the Commission and harder to grasp the reality that those events are behind him, if not literally than metaphorically. Taking the moments as they come helps, and Five sees a marked improvement day after day, week after week.
By the time two months have passed, Five has developed the ability to focus his mind sufficiently. His increased attention span is still prone to easy distractions, especially in terms of flashbacks, but he can hold a train of thought long enough to follow it to a logical conclusion more often than not.
Incidentally, this development makes doing his calculations much easier. He fights the impulse sometimes, to quantify his existence, but he finds comfort in the numbers and after enough encouragement from his family, he starts in on a fresh wall in the attic that has been allotted for the task. The caveat is that he must always tell them what he is trying to calculate, and anything resembling the odds of the end of the world is strictly prohibited. The possibility of interference from the Commission is something that they do not expressly disallow, but only because Five himself has not been able to ask the question yet.
What he does set about, however, is his own recovery. It helps, he thinks, to see it spelled out. He likes giving a number to how far he’s come. He likes looking at how the variables are increasingly positive, balancing out the negative factors on the other side. It’s progress, more tangible than the other indications that his siblings go on about.
It’s not perfect, though. As he analyzes his own psychological patterns, he sees a persistence streak that does not look likely to decrease at any point in the near future. In fact, when he maps out the probability, it looks like flashbacks and overwhelming urges will be part of his life forever. The odds suggest that such influences will decrease in intensity, but by his calculations, he will continue to suffer habitual breakdowns with at least one severe setback every year for the rest of his life. More in these first few years after being reunited with his family.
In sum, his prognosis is not one of complete recovery. Five is never going to get over this. He’s never going to put it behind him, and the forward progress will slow down substantially in the coming months. That said, the odds are increasingly in his favor that he will be able to live a long and productive life as a member of the Umbrella Academy. It’s likely that he will be able to participate with the team on missions. He’ll be able to be a meaningful part of the family.
They’re not perfect odds.
But what the hell.
Five’s worked with worse odds before.
-o-
Ben starts a book club.
That’s what he calls it, but Five is dubious. The club only includes the two of them and all they do is sit around and read. They don’t even read the same book, and although Ben asks Five what he’s reading, Five rarely shares relevant plot details and instead rants on obscure points with which he finds disagreement.
This seems to please Ben rather a lot.
Five thinks it’s weird, but he can find no compelling reason to disagree. It’s quiet. It’s enjoyable. It’s productive. Honestly, it’s Five’s favorite part of the week.
Most of the time.
However, when Five’s having a bad day, when he negative variables can’t be factored out, book club is nearly unbearable. Five sits in a chair and tries to read, growing increasingly frustrated as the pages all look the same and he rereads the same paragraph five times. Finally, when he gets too fed up when trying to read Catch-22, he growls despite himself. His impulse is to rip the book in two. He fights that back and throws it across the room instead.
Ben, who is somehow curled up in a chair nearby, looks over the top of his book with his eyebrows up. “Don’t like that one?”
Five’s too frustrated to be genuinely embarrassed. Besides, his siblings have seen worse from him. Far worse. “I don’t know if I like it,” he admits hotly. “I can’t stop rereading the same paragraph. I can’t focus.”
Ben, who is ever present, is ever patient. “Well, you know that happens from time to time. It’ll pass.”
Five’s jaw tightens, and he blushes despite himself. “And then it’ll keep coming back,” he mutters. His posture is taught, sitting stiffly on the chair, a stark contrast to Ben’s ease. “This is stupid.”
“It’s not stupid--”
“It is,” Five snaps back. “This whole thing is stupid. Book club is stupid. Us, sitting around here, reading.”
“You like book club,” Ben reasons.
“Apparently not!” Five says, his voice unsteady. “Because I keep throwing books across the room.”
Ben furrows his brow slightly as he puts his own book down. “This is the first time you’ve done that.”
“But it’s not the first time I’ve wanted to,” Five says. He shakes his head, short, harsh motions. “I can’t focus at all. I can’t even think.”
“You’re obviously thinking,” Ben says, and Five doesn’t look at him. He looks at Ben’s copy of Oliver Twist instead. “It’s just a question of what you’re thinking about.”
Of course Ben knows how to get to the real issue. All his siblings know. Five’s the smart one, but they’ve got this figured out while he struggles to put things together on a daily basis. Most of the time, he accepts that well enough, but it burns with resentment in his chest right now.
Resentment or denial, Five concedes he doesn’t know which. Because he keeps thinking about the medical lab at the Commission. The ear he doesn’t have itches, and something aches where his third kidney once grew. He can feel the scalpel as it cuts into his skin, deep enough to hurt, deep enough that he still has the scars.
His breathing is tight when he finally answers Ben’s question. “I’m not thinking about anything.”
Five is a bad liar. There was no one to lie to in the apocalypse. He sooner killed people rather than bother with falsehood at the Commission. He still hates how pitiful he sounds.
How pitiful he feels.
He hates feeling like that. He hates it more than he hates the weakness, the neediness. He hates it more than the craziness and the flashbacks and the impulses he must talk himself out of indulging.
Somehow, the fact that Ben doesn’t call him on it makes it worse.
Getting up, Ben crosses the room. He moves slowly and purposefully, and as he reaches the far wall he seems to brace himself. Ghosts can breathe, or Five would swear he’s taking a breath, but Five knows that Ben has to work harder than his siblings to do these normal things. Sure, ghosts can move freely through walls, but it takes a lot of concentration for Ben to be able to manifest enough to interact with the physical world -- especially without Klaus present in the room.
For a second, Five ponders why it matters now -- what the hell Ben is trying to accomplish -- but he bends down, transparent fingers locking around the book Five has thrown carelessly across the room.
He picks it up and straightens, flipping through it as he walks back to his chair. By the time he sits down, he finds the creased page and skims it. Five’s urge to rip the book from Ben’s noncorporeal hands and rip it in half is probably over the top. He grits his teeth as Ben starts to read.
“PASSAGE.”
Five is still gritting his teeth when Ben looks up.
“Is this the right place?” Ben asks.
Instead of violence, Five presses his lips together. “No, the next page. I finished that one.”
Ben flips the page and starts again. “PASSAGE.”
He looks up to Five, presumably for his approval. The fact that Five does not threaten to leave seems to be enough of a validation. Ben always did have kind of low standards for his siblings.
After several paragraphs, Five can’t take it anymore. “What are you doing exactly?” he demands.
Ben glances at Five over the top of the book. “Reading. What does it sound like.”
Five huffs. “Yes I know you’re reading,” he says. “But that’s my book.”
“It’s Dad’s book,” Ben points out.
“But I was reading it!”
“No, you were trying to read it,” Ben says. “This is book club.”
Those two sentences technically make sense, but Five furrows his brow because they don’t make any sense together. “So?”
“So,” Ben says. “Book club means that we read together.”
There still seems to be something logically absent to Five. “Yeah?” he asks, expectantly. “And?”
“And,” Ben says. “If you can’t read on your own, then I’ll just have to do it for you.”
Five shakes his head, at a loss. “I don’t get it.”
“It has to be together,” Ben says. “Or not at all.”
That’s the kind of thing that sounds nice, and okay, it does sound nice. But practically speaking, it’s a little harder to grasp. Like, it’s one thing to make sure that Five doesn’t lose his mind. Exercise, playing games, making dinner -- that’s all shit, but Five can make parse as a necessary part of keeping himself grounded. But Ben is talking about...well, what is Ben talking about?
Reading together?
Five makes a face. “That’s weird.”
Ben is completely nonplussed. “No, it’s not.”
Five’s pride, fractured as it is, is as resilient as the rest of him. Maybe moreso, sometimes. “I know how to read a damn book; any book,” he mutters crossly. “I’m not a child.”
Ben tips his head a little. “I’ll spare you the joke,” he says. “And really, Five. You’re just thinking about this wrong. It’s a book. It’s just a book, Five. It’s one you want to read, isn’t it?”
Five swallows hard and is forced to nod. It’s one he’s liked for decades. He’s reread it several times, though his copy had fallen apart when he left it in an acidic rain during his second decade in the apocalypse. He’d not gotten around to rereading it since. “Yes.”
“Okay,” Ben says. He nods at the book. “Then let me help.”
It’s not just reading, then.
It’s not just book club.
Maybe it’s just family. And maybe family is a necessity the same way that sleep and exercise and food and recreation is. Maybe this is what you do. Five can’t remember sometimes; he’s spent more of his life alone than he cares to admit. For all that he’s focused on getting back to his family, he’s not actually very good with them. To him, none of it is normal or natural.
It’s possible, therefore, that Ben isn’t trying to make him feel stupid. It’s possible that Ben’s not trying to show him that he’s lesser. It’s possible that Ben just wants to help him do life together.
Moreover, it’s possible that’s all family is, when you strip it down to its barest working parts. Family is life together. From the big stuff to the little stuff.
From the apocalypse to book club.
Finally, he accepts that there’s just one answer left. It’s probably been the only answer all along, but he can recognize it now. “Okay.”
Ben smiles a little as he adjusts his grip on the book and starts to read again.
“PASSAGE.”
Five settles back, hesitant at first, as he tries to get comfortable. Book club is still a little awkard to him, but it makes more sense now.
It makes a lot of sense now.
-o-
It’s not all mind over matter; it can’t be. Five stills has acute responses to strangely ordinary things. There are strange noises, unusual smells, small flashes of movement: these are triggers that are impossible to avoid, and his response varies between outright murder and complete emotional collapse. Sometimes, he’s a killer, trained to respond to cues without question. Other times, he’s a traumatized victim who wants to run as far away from the people he cares about.
The trick, then, is to stop trusting himself. This is easier said than done. He’s survived a lot in his life, mostly by trusting his own instincts and his own skills above all else. It’s hard to convince himself that the opposite is true now, that he’s better off here with his family. He has to remember, though, that he’s trusting their instincts. He’s trusting their skills. He’s trusting their love.
He hates this as much as he needs it. There are days that he accepts it with as much grace as he can muster. There are other days that he locks himself in his bedroom and rips his pillow to shreds.
But there’s always the next day.
And the next.
Permanence is not something Five has ever fully grasped.
He may just get it yet.
-o-
As usual, Vanya does it best.
She takes him out on long, rambling walks, and they meander together through busy streets, bustling parks and friendly shopping districts. This is an unusual approach, to say the least. Most of his siblings seem afraid to let him out in public. Sure, Diego will take him out to train, but they always stay within a few blocks of home. The others have taken him out for necessities, and he’s been taken to a few restaurants, but it’s always a limited excursion with a dedicated purpose.
Vanya’s walks are entirely the opposite. There’s no point to the excursion. In essence, the excursion is the point.
The effect is layered. First of all, it’s a way to Five to re-acclimate to life. He needs to learn to deal with normal triggers. He has to be able to hear a car backfiring. He needs to be able to walk through a crowd of people. He has to be okay with the sound of children laughing.
It would be wrong to assume this is exclusively a training exercise, however. Not coming from Vanya, at any rate. No, she probably wants him to see that life has gone on. She wants him to see that the world isn’t ending, that he’s succeeded on this front. She wants him to enjoy the labor of his work; she wants him to see that the sacrifices, which are many, have not been entirely in vain.
Five’s not sure if she realizes the last effect, but it is probably the most telling one for him personally. The way she walks with him, casual and easy in public, makes him feel like she trusts him. He’s crazy; he’s an assassin.
And she trusts him completely.
This is why Vanya will always be the best.
The walk today takes them through the park, where they loop around several times before Vanya lazily leads them back home. They’ve crossed the same crossroads several times when Vanya finally apologizes. “I can’t believe it; I’m actually going in circles.”
Five noticed quite some time ago, but he hasn’t felt compelled to say anything. “It’s a nice day; I feel good. It’s not a problem.”
She still looks sheepish. “I didn’t mean to take the long way back,” she says. “Do you mind?”
That’s a question then, isn’t it?
Well, shit.
Five’s been taking the long way back for the better part of 40 years. For the first time in all of that, he finally feels like he’s getting somewhere.
“No,” he says. “I don’t mind at all.”
Because Vanya will talk about violin solos and songs in E flat. She’ll talk about speaking French and how hard it is to find a reliable renter to lease your apartment in the city. She’ll talk about learning needlepoint with Mom and taking care of the birds on the roof with Pogo. She talks about learning to use her powers. She talks about making peace with her brothers. She talks about spending time with Allison, and she talks about how much she’s glad that Ben’s back, that they’re all back.
It’s good to have goals, of course, and that’s what his family provides for him.
But it’s also good to live in the moment, and that’s what Five hasn’t been able to do throughout the course of his entire life.
Vanya is giving him that; she’s giving him the moment.
She smiles like she knows. “Okay,” she says, nudging him lightly. “Then let’s keep walking. We’ll get home sooner or later.”
Sooner than Five deserves.
Later than he’s wanted.
But, as he falls into step next to Vanya, he knows the timing doesn’t matter as long as he gets there in the end.
-o-
You see, Five’s not okay. He knows he’s not. He probably never will be. He’s angry and he’s trigger happy and he’s got instinct he’ll be fighting his entire life.
But he’s okay. Because all those moments, when he forgets himself, he doesn’t forget them. Sure, it’s taken months longer than expected, but time is no longer an extenuating factor. For once, time is on their side.
He thinks about that, sometimes. He thinks about the Handler, out there, somewhere in time and space. She’s biding her time, like she always is, waiting for Five to come back to her. That’s her plan, a meticulous, well thought out plan. She’s waiting for him to give in to what she has determined to be inevitable.
Five believed her once.
He doesn’t believe her anymore.
She can wait a little longer.
As far as Five’s concerned, she can wait forever.
-o-
As much as everything has changed, it’s funny to Five that some things have stayed the same. For all the patterns that his recovery has forced to change, the one that his siblings keep bringing him back to is the family dinner.
He’s never properly understood the importance of a family dinner, not when he was actually 13 and not after saving the world. It’s not until he loses himself that he finds the value that had been there all along. To be sure, Five can’t know with much confidence why their father insisted on such regimented nightly meals, but he knows what it means to his siblings.
He knows it’s a reminder to Luther that there’s a family to lead. For Diego, it’s his chance to prove his worth to them. Allison uses it as her medium to be honest with them all. Klaus celebrates with them another day of sobriety, and Ben is just so happy to be there at all. Vanya finds the beauty in something normal, which is important enough for all of them to cling to.
When Five sits down now, it’s because he’s here. He’s part of them. There’s no guarantee about tomorrow. He can’t change the past. But he can take this moment and appreciate it. There’s nothing to leverage. There’s no utilitarian value. There’s just the seven of them, the family they were forced to be, the family they chose to be.
At first, dinners are quiet and awkward with forced politeness and careful chitchat. During these early dinners, after Five has been rescued, they are keenly aware that he is volatile and easily triggered. They work hard to make a safe place for him, which just means it’s frustrating and pointless.
During these early dinners, Five had hardly been hungry, and he had been anything but sociable. He doesn’t remember much about them, in all honesty; he had struggled with his on frustrating pointlessness to the point of distraction. He had grown increasingly disillusioned with them, and he had barely forced himself to show up at all.
They’re different now.
No, they’re not.
Five’s different.
As he eats more, he listens more. As he listens, he responds. As he responds, his siblings engage. Within six months, they’re talking freely and openly, eating plentiful portions. It’s progress, to be sure.
Then, one night, they start talking about their plans.
It starts in a way that is strangely familiar.
“I thought we’d put the Academy back together,” Luther suggests brightly.
Despite his best efforts to sound spontaneous, Luther has clearly been harboring this notion ever since they got back -- possibly before, possibly since they all moved out and he spent four years on the stupid moon -- but he says it like he’s trying to suggest it’s some kind of inspiration and not the inevitable outcome of their shared experiences.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Allison is the first to agree. “I think that’s a good idea,” she says.
Diego, being his typical obtuse self, looks thoughtful. “The Academy together? Working as a team? Would be much more effective at saving people.”
Klaus shrugs indifferently even though he cares immensely. “I had no foreseeable future goals, so, you know, I’m in,” he says. He makes a vague gesture with his hand. “I could also, you know, still use some accountability.”
“We just found each other,” Ben saysl. “It’d be a shame to let that go now.”
It’s sentimental, but Ben’s the only one who can pull it off. And not just because he’s dead. But because he’s Ben and that’s what Ben does. Five suspects that’s why he was Number Six when clearly he could kill any of them on a whim.
Vanya grins. She still sits at the end of the table, opposite the empty chair where their father used to sit. They used to forget about her there, turned toward their father all the time. It’s not that way anymore. They’re turned toward her now, the utter novelty of it all. “I’m in, of course,” she enthuses. She’s happier now, so much happier than before. Complete in a way that Five can’t quite explain but knows implicitly. “I mean, this is all I’ve wanted for, like, ever.”
That’s that, then.
They’re all beaming, proud and content of this series of predictable sentiment, when they finally look to Five.
He looks back.
Because that’s what he does.
That’s all he can do.
Five has spent most of his life looking back.
His family is ready to look forward.
Turns out, so is he.
“Before we do that,” he says. “There’s something else I want to do first.”
They’re surprised; they’re worried; they’re not sure.
But Five is.
He nods, more convinced than ever that he knows the right way forward, the best possible plan. “I need to redecorate my room.”
It’s a simple statement. His siblings look at him like he’s speaking gibberish. It’s Luther who finally manages to speak on behalf of them all. “What?”
Five shrugs, because suddenly this is very obvious to him. “Well, my room was childish when I was really 13. Now it just seems unreasonable,” he says. “Besides, you all did it. I didn’t.”
“Uh, yeah,” Diego says. “You didn’t want to.”
“You did kind of make a big deal about it,” Allison agrees.
This is not relevant. Five understands the situation differently now. “I didn’t see the value at the time.”
“And, what?” Klaus asks, sounding duly skeptical without being mean. “You do now?”
“Yeah,” he says. Because he’s not sure of a lot of things, sometimes, but he’s sure of this. “I think I do.”
Ben leans forward with an earnest nod. “That’s good. That’s really good.”
Five has changed a lot, but he is still Five. At the overt sentiment, he rolls his eyes. “It’s simply overdue,” he says. “It’s not the most complicated plan I’ve ever had, but I’d like to make it happen.”
It’s Vanya who finally smiles. “Then let’s do it.”
-o-
It’s Five’s plan, but he honestly has no idea where to start. Fortunately, his siblings seem adept at this sort of thing. Luther hangs a few pictures for him, and Ben rustles up a chalkboard to hang where the dart board used to be. Allison helps him pick paint colors (chalkboard paints, she says, obviously pleased with herself), and Diego comes up with a practical layout that will maximize his wall space for when the equations get out of hand.
While the painting is complete, Klaus takes Five to the store and they shop for accessories together. With Klaus’ help, Five comes home with a new bedspread, updated pillows, a curtain, two rugs, a lamp and a chair. He also comes home with a stuffed dog at Klaus’ absolute insistence.
“His name is Mr. Pennycrumb,” Klaus says. “Isn’t he the best?”
Five tolerates this.
It seems like a step in the right direction.
-o-
The others do a lot, but it’s Vanya who stays with him for the nitty gritty. She helps him box up his stuff and sort through it. When the room is ready, fresh paint on the walls and pictures hung, she goes through his things with him to decide what goes back in.
“You don’t have to do this,” Five tells her.
She opens another box. “I know.”
“I’m serious,” Five says. “I got this.”
She looks up at him, quizzical. “I’m not here because you can’t do it. I’m here because I want to help.”
Five’s trying to sound like he has it together, but her vote of confidence shakes him. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t trust me. I’m not a very good liar.”
“You’re really not,” Vanya agrees. She smiles. “But I get it.”
It’s not clear what she gets: Five’s reasons for lying or his inability to pull it off. Maybe she just gets him.
He hesitates, looking at the open box of childhood mementos in front of him. “I still blame myself, you know.”
She’s sorting through his books. “Oh?”
“For running off. For failing to save you,” he says quietly. “And now, for the plan that got us here. For letting the Commission break me.”
Vanya stops, putting the books down. “They didn’t break you.”
Five cocks his head. “You all have barely held me together these last six months.”
“Five, the things you survived with the Commission -- the fact that you’re here at al is a testament to how good you are,” she says.
“I would have imploded without you, all of you,” he says. “I would have gone right back to them, and you know it.”
“So?” Vanya says. “Don’t you remember? That we can’t judge ourselves by our weakest moments? I’m still the girl who caused the apocalypse. Twice. All you did was dare to have emotions.”
She has no idea how audacious it sounds to him: to have emotions.
Starting the apocalypse actually sounds less fraught. “I thought I’d be stronger, though. I thought I had a plan.”
“Your plan was perfect,” she tells him pointedly. She nods. “And you were strong enough to last until we got there. And you’re strong every day that you keep going. That’s all life is, Five. You just keep going.”
The smile that twists his lips is rueful. He thinks about 30 years of solitude. He thinks about killing people for the Commission. He thinks about exploding moons and small interrogation chambers. He thinks about medical laboratories and secluded dungeons.
That’s the past now.
He looks forward, and he sees fresh paint on the walls and new furniture. Metaphor can’t save you, Five knows this, but the symbolism is telling.
This is where he is now.
This is where he is.
It’s not perfect, sure. But the simple fact is that it’s better than where he’s been.
He looks down at his box of things again.
Vanya hedges. “I know it’s not what you planned, Five--”
“I can live with it,” he says, and he looks up to meet her eyes. “I can live with it.”
Thank God this is Vanya; she knows what he’s saying.
In truth, she’s probably known it longer than he has.
There’s no apocalypse.
There’s no Commission.
Something bad will happen someday, sure.
But for now there’s only family.
“You sure you’re okay?” Vanya asks.
“Yeah,” he says, and he means it this time. “I really am okay.”
-o-
This is where the story begins.
Not too early, not too late. All according to plan.
It seems Five’s finally got it right.
