Chapter Text
Footsteps echoed through the stairway. Measured ones, ones of someone lost in thought.
Creak.
The footsteps stopped. A curse broke the silence, boyish voice with a sharp edge to it. Frustrated footsteps continued echoing.
He couldn’t believe he forgot about that floorboard again. Diego had been right for once; he should remember it by now. It could very well be the thing to ruin their grand escape.
Five chuckled to himself. Grand escape is one certainly a way to call something that doesn’t even have a proper plan yet.
His thoughts came back to Diego and their conversation from a few minutes ago. His brother had been the next one on the list of siblings to convince, however he didn’t expect him to come to confront him about it before he even had the chance to.
Thankfully it had gone way better than his previous stunt with Allison. So much for enduring through the insufferable braid train. Vanya agreeing was probably the best thing to come out of it.
Thud!
The sudden noise from up top caused him to misstep and fumble his way into a spatial jump.
When he reappeared at the top floor, he stumbled into his room like a mad man, brain immediately screaming at him that something was very wrong.
He turned and felt his heart stop.
Time moved in slow-motion as his mind struggled to process the image before him.
His sister’s book laid on the ground, pages spewed open, unable to stay closed due to its’ spine being worn thin in a flaming hellscape. The same sister stood above it, her youthful face staring it down with dread, confusion and unmistakable fury etched into her features.
He had never seen her this mad before.
She turned to him, no doubt noticing his ungraceful entrance, and Five took a step back, mind yelling at him “Danger! Danger!” despite being faced with his own sibling.
“Five.” Vanya ground out. The unsaid warning in her tone dragged the boy out of his thoughts. Time resumed its’ normal pace in a swift, dizzying moment.
“Vanya.” He replied, a mask of calm sliding into place. He hoped to defuse whatever this was as quickly as possible. Hopefully with the least number of consequences.
But knowing his luck, that won’t be the case.
“Five, what is this?”
Five could swear the house shook with the question.
“Look, Vanya, I can explain, alright?”
“Explain what, Five? That I grow into hating my life so much, that I write a whole autobiography about it? That in some- in some version of the world you left and never came back?” Fat tears slid over her eyelashes and traveled to the ground in heavy numbers as her face crumpled. Coincidentally landing directly onto the source of her sorrows.
His sister’s anger never lasted long, always turning into tears sooner or later.
“Why wouldn’t you tell me about this, Five? She whispered, voice catching on silent sobs.
Five was at a loss, “Vanya, I-” Suddenly, his brows furrowed in concern, “Are you okay?”
At some point during their conversation, Vanya paled drastically, breath coming out in short gasps and bangs sticking to her glistening face. Five had chalked it up to the crying, but this was quickly becoming distressing.
The lights flickered on and off above them. The house wasn’t handling the situation either.
Panic flooded her brown eyes, “Five- I need my pills.” She gasped out.
Five didn’t waste time blinking to his sister’s room and throwing open her bedside drawer. Things clattered to the ground as he searched for the familiar orange bottle. It didn’t occur to him why said sister didn’t already have a bottle on her.
A bright orange caught his eye as the item flew out along with the others. In his haste to catch the small bottle mid-air, he accidentally succeeded in flinging it in an entirely different direction, wanting to kick himself as he did so.
You’d think after training to be a child soldier since basically infancy he’d have excellent reflexes, but apparently not.
He groaned as it fell beneath the bedside table. As he crouched down to look under, he saw the bottle rolling away further as if taunting him.
Angrily, he snatched the bottle and blinked out of the now-messy room. He would help Vanya tidy it back up later.
With a flash of blinding blue light, he reappeared back in his room, “Vanya, I got the pills-!” His brain blanked as he trailed off, noticing a concerning lack of Vanya in the room. Panic seized his chest.
He whirled around, uselessly looking around for his stressed sister, “Shit, Vanya? Vanya!”
Was she hiding somewhere?
Heart racing, he flung his closet doors open. The hinges squeaked in protest, but he paid them no mind. Throwing hangers with uniforms out in a hurry proved to also be useless, because the closet was empty.
He shivered, fear starting to cloud his mind, and turned around only to freeze in his step. A breeze was blowing through his open window, curtains swishing from side to side with it.
He didn’t remember leaving his window open.
Five let out a breath of relief, adrenaline leaving his body at the sudden realization.
At least he had a way of reaching her.
It was cold.
It shouldn’t be as cold as it was. The lightest breeze occasionally blew by, and yet she was freezing.
She should go back. She knew it was a stupid idea to just suddenly disappear on Five, but she felt as if she couldn’t breathe properly in that moment. Fresh air sounded as the best solution. She simply couldn’t stay there. The horrifying book along with the flickering lights were really freaking her out. Thankfully the fresh air really did help in calming her down.
Maybe a part of her wanted to avoid Five, but that wasn’t something she wanted to think about right now.
“Vanya!”
She jumped about a mile in the air as her brother’s head abruptly popped up from the same fire escape she had previously used to climb up here. He was panting and sweaty but surprisingly looked relieved to see her.
Conflicting feelings swirled inside of her at the fact that he had found her. She tucked her arms closer to herself and nestled her face into them, choosing to remain silent. He speed-walked over to her, glancing over the ledge of the roof with a frown. She could feel as he stood above her, staring her down, judging-
Something rattled in front of her face, and she startled, head snapping up and away from the intrusion of space.
Her pill bottle was held in front of her. Five met her eyes as she gingerly took it from his outstretched hand. She couldn’t even begin to guess what was going on in that head of his. “Thank you.” She nodded with genuine gratitude, before popping a single pill into her mouth and swallowing it dry as always.
Her brother sat down beside her whilst she did so, looking towards the horizon with an unreadable expression, his gaze a million miles away.
He continued doing so despite her already having taken her pills. She would’ve thought he’d say something by now.
Quite frankly, his silence was slowly starting to make her nervous. She fidgeted with her hands, fingers twisting into each other before separating and repeating the motion over again.
“Are you angry at me?”
Five looked back at her with calculating eyes, “No, why would you think so?”
“Oh, well, it’s nothing I just thought that, y’know, you might be angry because I found the book,” she looked away, bitterness snapping at the edges of her thoughts, “which was clearly something you didn’t want anyone to see.”
When she looked back, his mouth was set in a tight line, eyes searching for something in her own. “Okay,” he said slowly, as if testing the waters, ” then tell me why you were snooping around in my bedroom and we can put that part of the situation behind us.”
“I was helping mom with sorting and putting away all of your clothes.” She paused, feeling awkward, “I was thinking while I was putting away Ben’s I might do yours as well, since you’re on the same floor.”
“And what piece of clothing goes into a bedside table?” He raised an eyebrow at her, expression deadpan.
She flushed, “I don’t know! I didn’t know where some things belonged. Klaus puts clothes into his bedside table!”
“It’s Klaus.”
“I know!” burying her face in her hands, she sighed, “Look, I didn’t mean to look through your stuff, I promise. It was an accident.”
She felt Five move his arm to hers, not quite touching, more like hovering over her shoulder, hesitant. It was gone again before she could properly acknowledge it. “It’s- fine, I believe you.”
Vanya didn’t respond and let the silence stretch on. She noticed Five start to subtly fidget out of the corner of her eye and felt guilty about the muted satisfaction of seeing him just as nervous as she had been minutes prior.
She heaved out a sigh and unfolded herself into more of a person than a wobbly ball. She gazed at the city buildings in the distance, hearing the honks of cars and a child babbling loudly somewhere below. “I wrote about you all as if I resented you.” She finally whispered. Her voice got watery as she went on. “And I didn’t even read the whole book.”
Her brother seemed to think about his words before commenting, “Yeah, it- It certainly was bold,” Five nudged her shoulder and sat closer to her, “but probably deserved.”
“What do you mean?” she scrubbed at her eyes, which were getting blurrier by the second.
“Considering what you wrote, it was clear we didn’t treat you right.” His shoulder brushed against hers as he shrugged, “Maybe things aren’t as bad right, now, so you can’t see the bigger picture. But obviously it got worse as time went on. It always gets worse.”
She chanced a glance at him and was slightly concerned as Five’s eyes glazed over and his pause wasn’t ending. Just as she was about to speak up‒maybe ask him if he was having a stroke‒he continued. Her worries lessened as he turned to her, apparently back in the present, “And honestly, you’re making it worse than it is. Sure, you were harsh, but not to the point of someone hating you over it or anything.”
She accepted that as it was, knowing Five wouldn’t let her argue any further, and rubbed her eyes again, mulling over the other thoughts going on a rampage in her head. She would much rather not think about them at all, and just forget all of this ever happened, but some of her questions were nagging at her like a spoiled child, begging to be answered. To be understood.
“I- How come- I wrote about you leaving and not coming back. But you did come back to us.”
The boy grimaced, “I would try to explain it to you, but I’m not sure you’d understand. No offense. It’s a lot of time junk and theories.”
“I want to try. To understand, I mean. It’s worth a shot, right?”
Five shrugged and agreed, “I guess.”
He took a deep breath and began, “Okay, so imagine, there was the original timeline. It started out exactly as ours did. We were born, got adopted, grew up in the academy, I time-travelled, you get it.” “Uh-huh.” “Well, so, I time-travelled to the future, hence why you grew up without me in that timeline. But the moment I time-travelled backwards I basically completely changed the past, therefore creating our timeline.” Taking another breath, he finished, “So, I came back to you guys, but there still existed a timeline, where I did not.” And looked towards Vanya with raised brows. “Did that make sense?”
Honestly, she thought her brother’s explanation would be way lengthier than it ended up being. She…kind of understood? But also, it just made her a bit dizzy thinking about it all.
“I’m not surprised, if not. I may be the resident smartass about space and time, but as much as I would like to be, I’m not an expert at it. I don’t fully understand it myself.” Five huffed, sounding frustrated with himself.
That would be Five for you, always frustrated when faced with something he can’t solve.
She quickly shook herself out of her stupor, feeling the texture of one of her braids to give her hands something to do, “No, you explained it well. It’s just, original timeline, this timeline, changing the future. It’s a little bit hard to wrap your head around.”
Her brother nodded, frowning, but understanding.
A sudden thought struck her. Why was Five in such a hurry to come back when he wanted to know more about the future-?
“Are you angry at me?”
Her train of thought sputtered to a stop. The sudden question made her previous thoughts resurface. Was she angry at him?
She furrowed her brows and set her mouth in a tight line, unfamiliar feelings swirling making a mess out of both her head, and heart.
She didn’t know what to say.
“I’m” A pause, “not angry. But I still feel” Vanya sighed, struggling to find the words that could describe the uncomfortable tightness in her chest, “upset. At you, for keeping the book to yourself. And at myself, for blowing up on you like that.”
She didn’t have to wait long for a response, her brother responding only after a couple of seconds, “That’s fair.”
Flabbergasted by his care-free response, she stared at him.
“It is.” Five shrugged, “It was a pretty asshole thing of me to do, keeping it from you all, you especially. Hence why it was also completely understandable for you to ‘blow up’ on me.”
She agreed with him. Quietly.
They sat in silence, content to let the time pass by for a few moments. Her brother’s gaze trailed after a flock of birds flying above them, gray clouds making them almost invisible in the evening sky. She gazed with him, enjoying the familiar sound of their caws and chirps.
“Do you want to be alone for a bit?”
Vanya closed her eyes and nodded. She heard Five wordlessly get up, one of his joints cracking as he did so. He didn’t seem acknowledge it, instead parting with few soft-spoken words, “I’m glad you’re alright, Vanya.”
The nearly silent taps of his footsteps faded into the sound of the street as he assumedly went back to his bedroom. One of the birds fluttered onto the roof a few feet behind her.
She let out a long sigh and continued sitting on the cold concrete, content to let reality wash over her for a few seconds. She unconsciously listened to everything, yet nothing at the same time, and found that she wasn’t particularly cold anymore.
How particular.