Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Viktor, Klaus, and Allison went into the Hargeeves house, met their estranged father and revived stepmother, and then got somehow cajoled into letting this known danger to humanity strap electrodes into their minds.

“This is really not a good idea,” Klaus murmured, eyes squeezed shut. “I mean, who knows how scintillating getting electrified this way can be? I could mess everything up all over again-”

Allison groped blindly to place a hand on his arm and assure him, “No, you won’t. You’ve been doing great for years now! Back out if you want, but I think you can handle just a little bit of weird.”

Klaus forced himself to nod, and called out to Viktor. “You know, these missions got rough. No need to subject yourself to them-”

“I’m part of the team now. Not just for the fun stuff,” he insisted. That was fair enough, really.

The machine began to whine as it kicked into gear, and they all braced as the patchwork memories slipped into place.

And everything came back. The mission. The tank they weren’t meant to open. Ben opening it. The girl inside it. Their dad, with a gun, shooting them both, in front of them all.

The Reginald of now brushed off the action. Tried to justify it, almost. But there was no going around how sickening it was. How unneeded.

This changed everything.

Up until three hours ago, Jennifer had been working in the same diner she had been for a decade, and probably would have been for the rest of her life, in the same town she had lived in since she was seven, and had never felt a desire to leave it.

Up until three hours ago, the strangest thing in Jennifer’s life was that she had been found as an adolescent within the belly of a giant squid, with no memory of anything at all, raving about something called the Cleanse, which even she had no understanding of.

Then it turned out that her entire town was populated by gun-toting lunatics who were willing to just fire on a nice, innocent tourist family, who might have some very strange and a little titillating abilities on the side.

She just couldn’t get Ben out of her head. He was such an asshole. He enraged her. Something in him made her entire body sing. She felt a little delirious now, thinking about it so much.

“It’s because you haven’t had enough water,” a voice said, and something cold pressed into her hands. Muscle memory allowed her fingers to curl around the glass and bring it to her lips.

The chain of events was confusing to follow. What had made the townspeople suddenly start firing, why she had been dragged away like that, how Ben’s tentacles had finally been exposed- and then the arms which had closed around her, and dragged far, far away from the noise.

She found out that her kidnapper’s name was Teddy, and technically this was the reverse of a kidnapping, because she was pretty sure he was sixteen. They were presumably in his house, and some pressing had him tell her that it was in ‘The City’. Which didn’t make any sense. What city? She had asked Teddy over and over again, and he got more upset with every repitition.

Because apparently this was just The City.

“Why have you brought me here?” she asked, running a hand over her wrist, which had developed some strange glowing rash at some point during the panicky exit from New Grumswick. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

She knew that, somehow. Every part of her screamed that she was in the wrong place. There was somewhere she could be happy and perfect, forever. She just knew it. Not back at New Grumswick, but somewhere better. She just hadn’t known it before this moment.

“I’m supposed to be with Ben,” she told Teddy, and her entire being sung with the truth in that.

“Well, funnily enough, that’s going to destroy this world and countless others. So I’m afraid that that can’t happen,” Teddy told her, hovering uncertainly with his shoulders squared, as if he was afraid that she’d fight him on this. She had half a mind to do just that, but she also felt- really, really tired.

“Wow, little bro, I didn’t know you cared about things like that!” another, cheerier voice spoke up.

Jen blinked through the haze to see a girl in pink and white sports shorts and a matching sweatshirt standing over her, casually swinging around a foot-long katana.

Where she had even come from, Jen had no earthly idea. It was like she had just appeared, like she was always meant to be there.

“Gwen,” Teddy greeted, and the way he was talking was weird. He was both weary but also not fully registering her as a threat, even if he seemed to recognize who she was. “Of course I care about the wellbeing of the entire world. Why would you ever think I wouldn’t be?”

“Hey, Teddy!” she waved, “God, it’s been, what? Two days? The status quo changes fast,” she kicked her feet out and continued to talk, “And, anyways, I didn’t think you were one to get invested in fictional stuff to this extent. A bit clingy, aren’t you?”

“They’re real, Gwen!” Teddy’s voice was shaking. “Please, they’re real. You have to see sense.”

The conversation happening in front of her was going right over her head, and Jen had no choice but to watch it unfold in front of her, wondering if she was about to be murdered.

Gwen snorted, “Wowww, you don’t really believe that? This is, like, a fiction within a fiction, baby bro. You’ve got a lot left to learn,” she swiveled her head around to look at Jen, “And fear not, neither of us are here to kill you, even if you don’t understand what’s happening. Why don’t you hand over that point of view, so that one of the experts can tell the story with the needed context?”

“What?” she croaked, bewildered.

Gwen continued to make grabby hands at her, until she sighed and shook her head, “Of course you don’t know how to do that. Nevermind, then. Let’s talk about Ben.”

“Ben?” she didn’t see the connection. But she did feel heat rising up her cheeks at the mere mention of his name. Oh, Ben. How had she overlooked him so easily before? She wanted nothing more than to go to him. Be by his side. Subsume him and be subsumed by him.

Wow, pump the brakes, that was creepily obsessive.

“No, it’s romantic!” Gwen announced, wiping tears that were building up in her eyes.

“Forgive my sister, she doesn’t know what romance is,” Teddy turned his ear towards the stairs. “You hear anything?”

“Something that already happened in the previous chapter,” Gwen told him. He cursed and hurried to check that out, leaving Gwen and Jen alone.

There were a lot of things she wasn’t being told, she just knew it. And out of all the people, Gwen looked to be the one to know more, and actually be willing to explain.

Jen could have picked any number of topics to pry about, but in the end, there was only one thing she could bring herself to care about. “Can you help me find Ben?”

Gwen gave her finger-guns, “You got it. Think you can stand?”

Jen had felt strangely feverish since the attack, and when she stood up, her head swam with a wave of dizziness, but Gwen’s hands carefully clasped hers and drew her in, circling the room in a slow, clumsy dance with no tune.

“What are we doing?” she giggled, tripping over herself.

“Searching for a gap within the words,” Gwen explained, nonsensically. “Try to keep ahold of that POV, will you? Things are about to get a little bumpy.”

The floor was intact. She had seen it herself. But then her feet were touching nothing, and she was falling-

When Wiccan came to him, eyes heavy and clothes covered in soil, Speed felt no glee.

There was no pleasure to be taken in the fact that his brother had to come around the hard way. That more suffering was inflicted on them all.

Prodigy’s presence was still palpable. Not in any way that mattered, but it kept him sane. Sane enough to clumsily wrap his brother into a hug as the man trembled, too exhausted to even cry. It wasn’t much comfort, as he’d forgotten how to do that long ago, but it had to be enough.

“Fine,” Wiccan said. “Let’s try your plan. Think you’re ready for it?”

“Been ready for a long time coming.”

Diego had spent nearly a day in whatever this nightmare dimension was, and he was already sick of it and wanted to go home.

He wasn’t saying this to make a point about how the reality he disliked was the better option. This place just wasn’t a functional state of living.

Whatever that rift in the Poole house was, it had sent him tumbling into some alternate version of New York City. Everywhere he went, there were monsters, aliens, killer robots duking it out. And heroes. So many goddamn heroes. All from comic books he’d barely glanced at as a kid.

They were bright pinpricks of color, standing out amongst the grey urban landscape but still seeming so unimaginably small against the villains.

Less than twenty four hours here. And he had nearly been set on fire, crushed by rubble, had a car thrown at him, eaten by a tentacle monster, chased by escaped zoo animals, and electrified by some kind of sentient humanoid lump of concentrated electricity.

He wasn’t even trying to seek out trouble. He gave up on that somewhere after his close brush with fire. And he was still barely surviving. How were all these people acting so normal about this?

He ended up limping back to the alley, in a false hope that the portal which had brought him here was still open.

It wasn’t.

Diego was tired.

He didn’t know how he ended up on the roofs that night, watching the fight continue to happen. There was a dragon now, breathing fire at the skyline. Seemed to be in the opposite direction, though.

“My sister’s sorting that out. Don’t worry about it,” a voice said next to him, making him flinch.

Some guy was sitting next to him. Thirties or above, if he had to guess. Dressed in some lame blue uniform, and a cape over it. Legs swinging down over the edge of the roof without a fear in the world. Granted, Diego was doing the same thing, but there was just this aura around the guy. Like he wasn’t scared not because he didn’t give a fuck, but because there was nothing in the world to be scared of.

Diego had finely honed instincts to sniff out suspects. Even a decade couldn’t rust them. And everything in him was screaming that there was something wrong with this guy.

“Who are you?” he asked, voice sore and cracked from not speaking.

“Billy Kaplan,” the man replied, looking at him. “And you’re Diego Hargreeves. Enjoying the jaunt?”

There were stars in his eyes, now that Diego was looking at him. Stars in his eyes and on his clothes. Seriously demented shit.

“Don’t worry, by the way. I made ‘chapters’ change to seal up the hole. You just got lucky enough to slip out in time. Or unlucky, considering your experiences here.”

“Yeah. Hasn’t been the best,” Diego scoffed. “You know this world is completely made up, right?”

“On the contrary, it’s your world that’s made up, if you want to think of it like that. We simply put the comics in to make her think she was in the Real World. But all the other changes we made – like taking out the internet and shit – must have clued her in on that being a crock of shit.”

Okay then. Not even going to ask who ‘she’ was.

Dude had a serious staring problem. Diego could feel his eyes drilling into his neck.

“You got a problem?” he snapped, when he didn’t make any effort to say what was weighing on him.

“Enjoying the stay?” Billy asked. “It’s quite the view, I know.”

Diego snorted, “From a distance, maybe. Up close, it’s totally fucked.”

“It’s chaos. But not the bad kind,” Billy smiled, turning to look at the skyline again. “When it’s gone… I would do anything to bring it back.”

“Maybe you would. Not me.”

“Wanna go back?” Billy asked, hugging his knees. “I can do it right, and make sure she doesn’t notice. But I don’t know what she’ll do to you after that. Obviously you’ve already caught her attention, I feel her on you.”

Diego’s hackles raised. “Just what’re you accusing me of? I’m loyal as fuck. Hell yeah, I’m going to go back to my family.”

Billy raised his hands consolingly. “Not what I meant. Chill out. I know you’re not that kind of guy.”

“We’ve known each other for ten minutes.”

“And yet…” Billy shrugged. “I know it anyway,” then he extended his arm lazily, splaying fingers wide, which lit up in a blue glow. His voice reverberated with power that Diego realized had been humming underneath from the beginning, “Takeustotheroot.”

Like a bubble popping, suddenly, he was standing in a narrow hall, of a regular house. A bedroom door was open at the end, and through it, there was a large mass of writhing light, boxy and fractal-like in appearance, changing with every blink. It looked almost like the Kugelblitz, except less like a miniature sun, and more like a series of multicolored three-foot-long pipe cleaners shoved together into a vague boxy shape.

Billy was leaving him behind to walk inside, so Diego followed him too. “What is that thing?” he asked, not lacking the spatial awareness to see the notes and papers hung up in the room. The papers on city planning. The books on world history. The diagrams of carbon cycles and volcanism. It was such a strange series of subjects to be dedicated to, in a room where this had coincidentally popped up.

“Your world,” Billy replied. “Or, I suppose, an abstraction of it. It used to only be one line – bluish green, naturally – but someone on the inside did something to it and now it’s split off everywhere. I think the Marigold might have been the reason. Suits our purposes, so we never tried to fix it. Now, wheredoyoubelong? Ah, there we go,” he hovered a finger over one of the multitudes.

“Hey, what the fuck?” Diego asked.

Billy looked up at him in surprise. “Oh, yeah. I… may have created your universe. With some help. Don’t worry about it.”

“I think I will, actually. Was this like Klaus meeting the girl on the bike? Was any of this real?” his mind was slowly tearing itself apart, like it had been doing all day.

“Just because something’s made up doesn’t mean it’s not real, man,” Billy informed him.

“The hell it doesn’t, you little-” Diego tried to rush him, but instead only ended up tripping on the edge of a carpet he could’ve sworn wasn’t there, and nearly breaking his neck. “Fuck, shit!”

“We aren’t supposed to say those words,” the lisping voice of his daughter informed him. “And we aren’t supposed to run on the carpets.”

Diego flipped himself over, looking at the eggshell ceiling and bright yellow light. The carpet was scratchy and familiar.

He was home.

His breath caught in his lungs. Holy shit, he was home.

“Diego!” Lila screamed, suddenly there too.

Diego realized he had his shoes on, even though he was clearly all the way upstairs in the children’s playroom. But Lila didn’t chide him about that. She just rushed forward and pulled him into a hug.

“Where the hell were you?” she shook him. He just held her tight, crying silently into her shoulder.

It had been less than twenty four hours.

And he returned close to broken.

“God, I missed you guys,” he whispered, gathering Gracie up into a hug as well. “Sorry for disappearing on you. What’d I miss?”

She looked torn between forgiving him, before finally relenting. “Me and Five checked out the Tibedeaus’ office. It took awhile, but we found some correspondence they forgot to trash, forwarding one of the documents that are phasing through from the timeline before The Reset.”

Timelines.

God, he didn’t want to hear about timelines right now.

“I think I met God,” he decided to say. “And he said there’s a bunch of alternate timelines going in tandem because the Marigold broke the timestream when it was released to turn into us.”

She looked at him for a moment. He almost expected her to not believe her. And then she said: “Well, that explains the Subway station.”

“What?”

“I was going to get to that part! So, you notice that Five hasn’t been using his space jumps? Turns out, his powers changed too. Now, his space jumps – and mine, by extension, when I copy him – take him to this Subway system, with a really confusing map, and all the stations are like the same point he left, but in an alternate timeline.”

Huh. Mindfuck. “He didn’t mention that,” he said, trying to not sound gutted over it.

“Have you met the prick? He wouldn’t mention a bullet wound,” Lila brushed off. She didn’t know how right she was. “Okay, so the correspondence. Was talking about Ben’s death, but in the original original timeline, according to Five. So, he went to the others, who were investigating that-”

“-by going to Dad’s house,” Diego remembered. “They figure out what happened?”

Lila made a face. “Allison told me, but I don’t want to say it in front of Gracie.”

Ah, right. Because his daughter was staring at this exchange, having heard everything. He looked at her, and she grinned brightly at him, enough to nearly make his heart burst. He scooped her up, making her scream with laughter as he nuzzled her sharply.

“Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?” he made her promise. Perhaps a little under duress. “It’s just pretend talk. Top secret.”

“Okay!” she agreed, charging out of the room the second he let her go.

“I’ll ask Allison about the gory details when I call her,” he promised Lila, who was watching the interaction with a misty look in her eye. “It’s nothing close to apocalyptic, is it?”

Lila made a pained expression.

Fuck that, then.

Ben had truly expected that weird girl with the teleporting ability to abandon him in the woods.

It was whatever, he didn’t even know her, so expecting her to have his back more than his siblings was the height of stupidity.

Not that those guys were his actual siblings. But still.

He was alone in the woods, making the thankless trudge towards civilization that he wasn’t sure existed, but this was the direction he had picked this morning, and was too far down now to give up.

Then there was a sound, almost like a zipper being pulled, but more electric. Followed quickly by several footsteps, crunching on dead leaves. He turned and found Gwen, standing there with her katana swiveling around lazily. But that was unimportant, because behind her was…

Was…

“Jennifer,” he gasped, the lovelorn cry torn from his throat.

She stumbled a little as she rushed towards him, pulling him into a hug. Her skin burnt against his, like fire or acid, but he pressed his eyes shut to ignore that reality, in favor of feeling her hair tickling his face, and the scent of her lotion.

A strange glow still managed to work its way through his eyelids. But it didn’t matter, because there was nothing in his life better than this. Nothing that could be outdone by this.

There was rustling all around them, as if a powerful gust of wind had blown through, all without touching them. The charred smell of something burning was overtaking Jennifer’s lotion.

Gwen Poole whistled, impressed. “Damn, I don’t want to be here when things go nuclear. But I’m happy for you lovebirds! Ciao!”

When he opened his eyes, the world around them was scorched.

What did it matter, when he had all that he ever needed, right here in his arms? All that he ever would need. All that he would ever be.

Jennifer pulled him into a kiss, feverish and excitable, and he eagerly followed her lead.

Viktor had tried to grow past this. To convince himself that he didn’t need his father’s approval or disapproval to exist. And yet, he sat in Reginald’s car, front passenger seat, and the excitement at being acknowledged was coming right back.

Nope. Don’t let him get to you. Viktor wanted to save his brother’s life and the entire world. This wasn’t at all about Reginald’s approval of him.

“I thought that Jennifer was out of the picture,” Klaus drawled from the backseat, where he had laid himself across, and had buckled all three seatbelts on. “Why do we think that she and Ben have reunited?”

“The energy readings,” Reginald explained. “Durango and Marigold seek each other out naturally, and the result is a unique radioactive signature that is currently surging through the entire country, growing stronger every passing second. Both hosts have to be killed, or all of time and space will be wiped out. All except one correct timeline. And I hate to inform you of this, but we are not the correct one.”

“The universe is almost like a computer,” Viktor pointed out, remembering their time in the Hotel Oblivion. “Someone made this. Made everything. So what’s the point of the Durango, then? Just to… destroy it all?”

“The Marigold was a creation from a person I loved very much. A twisting of reality that I do not think the creator of this reality intended,” Reginald admitted. “And the Durango spawned to oppose it, like all forces work. Traveling from world to world, getting killed off, and moving to another. Seeking for a Marigold to return this world to its base state, instead of the confusing mess it has become. We will oppose the Cleanse, though, right, my children?” he looked at them both.

The cleanse. The great new threat Five and Lila had warned them about.

“Wait, hold on, by your logic, if we kill it, then Jennifer just goes to another dimension,” Klaus pointed out. “And then this whole circus begins again, and we can’t do anything about it. Great!”

“Which means that I’m right,” Viktor realized smugly. “We need to extract the Marigold and Durango from them both and isolate the materials. It’s the only way.”

Reginald scowled at having been out-logicked. He stepped on the gas and the car lurched forward – making Klaus wail in a panic – “Well then, you best hope we reach there on time.”

It was happening again. Five was losing track of his siblings.

Diego had vanished, which wasn’t good, considering where he had been last. Viktor was going on a save-the-world quest with their dad, of all people, and Klaus was going for moral support. The last time he saw Luther, he’d been heading into the den of lions that was the CIA to gather some intel Five was certain was hidden in there that had something to do with this Keeper business, and calling him to see how that was going was out of the question.

Lila – the only one he could say had the spine for this work anymore – had told him to bugger off as she stayed with her kids and tried to work something out. And Allison-

Well, Allison was doing the same. But not before she passed along what they had learned at the Hargreeves mansion, that had convinced Klaus of all people to ignore all previous warning signs and trust Reggie anyway.

The end of the world as they knew it.

The end of all worlds as they knew it.

He could fix that. He knew he could. Just find his original timeline – because that massive Hotel Oblivion wasn’t a reset button, it searched for the ideal timeline picked out by the person and moved all residents inside to that place, meaning his old universe was still somewhere out there, in very poor condition.

Once he found it, he could warp back in time, and stop Ben from ever touching Jennifer there, and put an end to the Cleanse right there and then.

This was the right solution.

It was just a matter of finding his original timeline, in this subway.

How long had he been searching for it? Felt like months, years. There was nothing to keep track of time. Not his age, not the sun, not the hunger cramps tying his stomach into knots. Not even the trains, which came and went erratically.

Five had tried to think mechanically about it. Work through the map carefully, with a system that he could keep track of. But somewhere around the seventieth station, he started losing his grip on reality. Just started transferring at random and taking wild stabs. Looking at the stations, noting what was different about them, going topside and leaving just as soon.

He was starting to think the changes were nothing of importance. That they meant nothing at all really. Some bit of trash here, a puddle there. Nothing comprehensible, or a pattern he could follow. Nothing except for the handprints, on the corner of the wall, right beyond the turnstiles.

There were always two. Or signs of there being two. Sometimes one was missing, replaced with an ashy smudge that made it look like it had been burnt off. The one on the left – if it was there – was always the same shade of blue. The one on the right changed constantly, going from dull to light pink, sometimes changing fully into a murky grey.

It had to mean something. He just wasn’t sure what.

He had resorted to eating the subway rats, and collecting water from suspiciously dripping pipes that seemed to hold liquid that was clear enough for him to make do.

This wasn’t a good setup, and as such he began to lose time, dehydrated and starved as he stumbled aimlessly through the Subway, begging, hoping, for a single human face. Just the one. Anyone. Please.

And then he found one. The weird guy with the patriotic suit who he hadn’t seen since he had left this place to help his siblings fight the fake townspeople. Five had begun to thing the thing had lied to him about waiting.

“Tick, talk,” it said, with intensity this time. Or perhaps it just sounded like that to Five because this was the first proper speech he was hearing in a very long time. But he didn’t want to argue with it, when it moved slightly down the platform, where he could hear another train approaching.

The Entity could be leading him to certain death. This could be a trap by any number of people. Maybe it was colluding with the Tibedeaus or Reggie or any number of people. But at least it was something or than this mindless wandering.

So he followed it. Through every train, every change, every station. The creature rarely looked back, but always kept a pace that Five could easily keep up with.

This routine went on for maybe a few hours, until Five was met by another face. His own.

His heart lurched in excitement, before tempering itself in case he had accidentally mistaken his own reflection for a person again. But the face in the window was no reflection. It truly was him, a little older, perhaps, but not unrecognizably so.

Five looked at him. The figure glanced at him, and then looked away, continuing on his way without a second thought. Unlike the Entity, the double made no attempt to let him follow.

But the Entity was on the move again, drifting in the vague direction that the other Five had also gone down, which was a good sign. Five rushed after it, around the corner where he had just barely lost sight of the man, to find- A deli.

Max’s Delicatessen. Smelling like good, warm, mouthwatering food of the likes he had never seen before. Chatter was wafting through the doors, and inside the people moving about were also him. And yet he found no itchiness. No homicidal rage.

With great caution, he ventured inside.

Viktor looked at the rotting, scalded remains of the forest ranger , feeling sick to his stomach.

“Do you understand now?” Reginald said beside him, “This was why we had to kill them. These waves will grow and grow, and so will the Cleanse, until everything has been devoured. Even if removing the particles was an option before, it’s too late now.”

Klaus was still trembling. Viktor tried to put himself between his brother and the desiccated corpse. Trying to protect him from it, just this once.

“But we have to try,” he insisted, because hope was the only thing left. “We can’t just- can’t just let it end here. Were they even really here or do you think this could be some freak accident?”

“I will check his bodycam,” Reginald decided, plucking the tiny piece of technology out from the mess. “But it would be better if someone could convene with the ghost of the poor man.” He looked pointedly at Klaus.

“Oh, fuck off,” Viktor snapped, because Klaus wasn’t in any condition to say so. He shouldn’t even be here at all.

A wave of invisible force rocked all around them. A few trees toppled, and dirt went flying. They all turned to look at the direction it had come from.

“The epicenter was from the city,” Reginald finally said. “Seems they’re making their way home.”

“Wow, that’s kind of poetic,” Gwen noted, sitting on the bonnet of the car.

Even Reginald flinched when he saw her, “Where did you come from?!”

She shrugged. “Oh, you know, I was in the area. Minding my business. Minding their business too, a little bit. Didn’t expect them to become a nuclear bomb when put together, whoops, but I feel like that’s the sort of thing the plot wanted to happen anyway? So I don’t want to go back and undo it.”

“Do you know her?” Reginald turned on them.

“Yes, but I wish I didn’t. A very bad influence trying to pull me into a whole sea of bad,” Klaus shuddered. “But, if you were there, watching them bone and stuff, you know where they were headed, right?”

Gwen nodded, swinging her legs, “Like the old man said: home.”

Viktor squeezed his eyes shut. “I need to call Allison.”

And Diego, and Lila, and Luther, and anyone who was in the area, whether they wanted to be involved or not.

None of the othe r Fives talked to him as he walked past. Conversation died in favor of watching him with guarded eyes. Or maybe it was the floating guy dressed like the American flag that was catching their attention.

T he Entity kept its head back and stride steady as it went to stand by the table at the very back, where a light was flickering, and only one person sat. Possibly the only person in this entire place who wasn’t Five.

This new person was young. Late thirties maybe. Plenty young compared to Five. His hair was silver, almost white under the fluorescent lights. He wore a fancy green shirt, with black pants, and a darker vest with silver brocade. The Entity hovered by his shoulder, and the man turned to smile at it, grief radiating from the expression. “Thanks, Davey.”

“Talk?” the entity replied.

“Yeah. Just- you got it,” he agreed, tearing his eyes away to look at Five instead. “Please, take a seat.”

He had a way of talking that radiated power. Not like how the Handler radiated power, and demanded respect. This was something innate. Like they were standing in a magnetic field, and his voice was shifting its currents.

“Who are you?” Five asked.

“What you can’t outrun,” the Entity answered for him, “Time.”

“Pretty much,” the man agreed, putting his hand behind the entity, and suddenly it was melting away, leaving only a crystal behind, which he carefully tucked away. “And I wanted to leave it at that, but Billy already gave up his name, so I might as well. The name’s Tommy Shepherd.”

“And you’re time,” Five repeated, just to be clear.

“Yeah! Well, in here, anyways. Outside my powers are drastically limited, compared to what I can do in here.”

“Where’s here?”

“Your world. All the timelines, everything. Me and my brother made it,” Tommy explained casually. “Though it was only one in the beginning. Imbuing the Marigold into humans made it all shatter, so I had to rearrange some stuff – Billy put it all on me, the nerve of that guy, just because it was a time issue. But it was better in the end, as he’s already explained.”

“No one’s explained anything to me,” Five said, gritting his teeth. “I don’t even know who Billy is.”

Tommy frowned. “Has that not happened yet- oh, wait, I forgot other siblings aren’t a hive mind. My mistake. I’ll lay it down for you, because you seem like the most reasonable of the Marigold lot in the dimension the Durango is currently in: you need to kill the hosts of the Cleanse . Keep the timelines from being merged.”

“No. No way,” Five insisted, “If I can find my original timeline, to before Ben died, then I can-”

“Nah, that won’t work,” Tommy made an error noise. “Your original timeline has been completely rewritten. By you guys. When you went back to the sixties, remember? You could probably access it with some of Nate’s tech, but with what you have in here, it’s completely off the table.”

“But if I do this, it won’t fix anything, will it?” Five turned to look at the walls, covered in artwork of truly horrific scenes of the world falling apart, in a million different ways.

Tommy followed his gaze and cringed. “Oh, yeah. The world is destined to go kablooey, and with you guys at the epicenter at all times. Some sort of side effect of the Marigold, I think. Maybe the universe has made you the main characters of this story. Better you than her, I say.”

Great. The Apocalypse would come back.

“Can’t you stop this?” he asked plaintively, “You’re time.”

“I am,” Tommy agreed, flicking at a spot on the table. “And I’m sorry, but I can’t. The chaos, the apocalypses, all that stuff is a damn good distraction for her.”

“A distraction,” Five repeated. “For who?”

He realized a moment later. The loose cannon that had been hounding them this entire adventure. Tommy didn’t need to spell it out for him.

“Gwen fucking Poole.”

“Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner,” Tommy wasn’t smiling. “That girl, she’s dangerous. She’s done unspeakable things. She’s turned David into that thing you saw shambling around. He used to be a person! She’s killed a lot of people, and tortured thousands more. Trust me when I say, you can’t let her out of this place.”

“Didn’t look like much to me,” Five muttered, not seeing the threat when this guy could apparently control time. Wasn’t going to fix the apocalypses because it kept her busy from trying to bust out of this- what? Simulation?

“Think like a pocket dimension. Or parallel reality,” Tommy said, when asked. “And, yeah, that’s because we put restrictions on her and her brother, to stop her from being able to modify the world.”

“He’s in on this too?”

“Helping us keep her contained. Just focus on the real issue right now: we can’t let the Cleanse happen. You have to kill them and stop it.”

Just so that they could die in another Apocalypse, which wouldn’t threaten the massive web of other timelines built up here. He saw what was happening.

But Five was also a big fan of ‘not dying’, so he nodded. “Okay, then. Send me home, and I’ll kill the Durango for you.”

Tommy grinned, and then there was an exceptionally loud shriek from the train station down the corridor.

“Express,” Tommy explained. “It’ll get you right back where you entered from. Multiple dimensions are counting on this, okay? Don’t screw up.”

For the first time since they started having to thwart the Apocalypse on increasingly drastic magnitudes, Five was the one embarrassingly late to the party.

“Got held up on the interstate or something?” Lila asked when he walked up to where they were camped outside of the Academy building. All around them, lampposts were bent out of shape and scorch marks were worn into the buildings. There were even new craters on the road.

“I investigated your boss like you told me to, and he was definitely working for the Keepers,” Luther added.

“Not important right now, Luther,” Five gritted out. “Why aren’t we going in?”

He tried to reach for the door, but Diego blocked him. “Uh. You absolutely don’t want to do that,” Five glared at him, but he bravely held his ground. “Ben and Jennifer have kind of morphed into this flesh thing, and it’s trying to absorb all of us Marigold carriers with it.”

“Have you tried extracting it?” Five turned on Viktor.

“Yes, I’ve tried. It’s too late,” Viktor replied, looking at Five desperately, “But you’ve got something, right? You were gone to look for answers.”

Five inhaled. And they all realized it wasn’t going to be good news.

“We give up,” he announced. “All of us. The Marigold container is still in Diego’s car, right? I see it parked in the corner over there. If we throw it all into the Durango monster now, this ends. All of it ends.”

For a second, nobody moved.

“You’re joking, right?” Allison said.

“That’s such a bummer,” Gwen Poole seconded.

Five rounded on her, “You, just shut it,” then he turned to the rest. “I met Time. And he said we were destined to keep causing Apocalypses, no matter what, and this is all her damn fault. We have the opportunity to end it now. I say we take it.”

They all looked scared. Gwen was confused, hovering at the sidelines while the vote was cast. Luther agreed first, and then Allison with trembling shoulders. Diego and Lila looked at each other with regret before agreeing too.

Viktor bit his lip, and then nodded. “Fine, then.”

Fine. The destruction of an infinite timelines was decided by those words. They stepped inside the building to certain death, hand in hand, and Marigold tucked in Diego’s arm, Klaus and Gwen dawdling on the steps inside, and spying through the windows, as the monster writhed.

Something twinged around her, and Gwen looked up at Klaus, “Oh, shit, you think that’s it?”

Then she blinked, and broke into a grin. “Damn, someone finally handed me that POV.”

“What?” Klaus looked at her, just as a window fixed into the door exploded, raining glass down on them.

Everything stopped. Rewound.

Everything except Gwen. Couldn’t rewind her, she was outside of their control again. Just hanging around because- well, because she wanted to see where this went.

While the door was swinging to a close in reverse, and newly formed cracks fixed themselves, she charged inside the building, slipping down a paragraph.

The upper balcony was empty, but it gave a brilliant view of the devastation happening inside. It was- eldritch, for lack of a better term. A large fleshy mass, reaching up to each of them, and consuming them. Pulsing with a glow coming from deep inside it, the energy growing and growing until the next wave hit, bursting out to attack the world.

The Umbrella Academy was still holding hands. Some were crying. Others had their faces screwed up like they were trying not to scream. They all looked like they were in pain.

Gwen hated this. She hated that they were giving up. This whole thing was such a bummer, and it didn’t need to end like this. With a whimper. A facsimile of a struggle.

She understood what had happened now, once she had flipped back to look at the flashbacks. This place was constructed to keep her occupied. To make her forget that she had ever gotten into the Marvel Universe. But she had . She had, and they could never make her forget. Whoever ‘they’ was. She had conflicting images in her head, some parts insisting it was Terrible Eye and Miles and Vincent Doonan. Others saying that it had been Billy and Tommy.

Canons were at war in her head, and she would be the deciding factor to decide which reality would hold true.

She must have made the choice subconsciously – or maybe consciously in a future already overwritten by the new reality, time was so fucked – because then everything was becoming desaturated and slowing to a standstill.

A solid ring of displaced air around the Cleanse monster remained stuck there, even as the six lucid Marigold holders blinked and looked around, struggling to move in the wall of flesh halfway up their knees.

Across the room from Gwen, on the other side of the upper floor overlooking the main room, there stood Speed, in all his green and silver glory.

He blurred for a second before he was standing in front of Five, apoplectic with rage. “One job,” he ground out. “I gave you one job. Don’t let the Cleanse happen.”

“Just so that another Apocalypse would destroy us later, over and over again in every conceivable reality?” Five glared him down. “I don’t think so.”

Gwen craned her head forward, trying to understand as best as she could. The POV was in her hands now, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t lose it if she got too invested in these guys. This was a slippery thing, compared to the perspectives in other stories she’d been a part of. Must be part of the twins’ interference.

It’d be a more productive use of her time to slip away now, take the advantage of being able to shape reality in her image before they figured out how to plug the gap. But she wanted to see how this would end.

She had followed the story of the Umbrella Academy for a long time. At least since she had first put together the connection they had with the timeline bleedings. Maybe even further than that. She had gotten flashes, for a long time, about this same group, sometimes with a few differing members, and varying names. Always heroes. Always trying to stop the Apocalypse.

It was a real Sisyphean tragedy of a story, and she wanted to see it through to the end.

So she didn’t leave. She just watched as Speed shrugged, “Yeah, well, you guys will live. And she won’t be loose, which was why this place was made in the first place.”

“What’re you talking about?” Allison asked, looking around for explanation. “Who is this?”

“I know him,” Diego stammered. “I met him. When I fell through that hole in the Poole house, you remember, Lila?”

“That was my twin,” Speed explained patiently. “I’m the one responsible for managing the time here, which means right now I have to make sure you don’t break the only thing standing between her and the rest of the real world.”

Gwen remembered. She remembered cutting that hole out into what she assumed was the real world. Not intentionally, of course. She had been trying to prove to Teddy that the parents here weren’t real. And then with the tear, she had gotten distracted by the layer of flashbacks sandwiched between it and the outside, proper, world, that the chapter had switched before she got to it.

She had been trapped here. Teddy wasn’t allowed a POV either, so she was forced to leave him alone, and target the clear actual main characters for it.

The flashbacks were also weird. Always shuffling to keep the important stuff out of her sight. All she got was a refresher about her time in the Marvel Universe. She had been there. She was still in there. She had been right .

After a teamup with the cooler versions of both Hawkeye and Ghost Rider, she had put together the fact that her family might still be alive. Approaching their real world address had proven just that, and Teddy had opened the door for her. Recognized her. Led her inside.

And then she woke up here.

In a world with no internet. Old comics, only. Where time worked linearly, or so she thought. Where she had a job and a support system and a proper life that she just couldn’t live with anymore, because she had gotten a taste of the spandex-and-gunfire life and she wanted more.

Who was Tommy goddamn Shepherd to deny her that?

“What’s your issue?” she demanded, marching down the stairs, “We don’t even know each other, dude!”

Tommy startled for a second, and when he registered what was happening, his fear increased. “You got the perspective back.”

“Which means that I’m in control,” she reminded him, from the rules she had picked up recently. “So why the hell. Are you keeping me here?”

The fear had melted off Tommy by now, and he glared her down, electricity sparking around him. “Because you’re dangerous. Because you hurt people.”

“They’re just redshirts,” Gwen defended. “I don’t see you caring much when Magneto does it.”

“Magneto doesn’t do that anymore!” he yelled. “And people you don’t know are people too, you psycho.”

Of course he’d think that. He didn’t know what Gwen did. But strong morals was a good thing for a hero to have, which was why he was a Young Avenger. She couldn’t fault him for it, just because he didn’t understand.

“You’ve grown up a bit since your first appearance,” she decided to say instead. “Come a long way from ‘one last test, doctor, how long it takes you to explode’,” she quoted him perfectly, his voice layering over hers. He did look older, though. Like, a lot older than the last time she saw him.

Speed’s face was screwed up, like he was smelling something rank, “I’m sure you’ve noticed that my powers have changed,” he said finally. “That’s because I’m from the future. And you hurt people there. A lot of people. I can’t let you do that again. I had to come back and stop you. Viv was your friend, right? You were friends and yet you- yet you- ”

Gwen was starting to get the picture. The grief. But she also just… didn’t see the issue. Sure, it upset her that Viv was gone. Poor girl. But also…

“She’s already died before, though. Just make another version. Viv 3.0?”

“But you can’t fix David, can you? Not after you broke him in the first place. Turned him into that creepy time-traveling, dimension-hopping husk of himself.”

It took a second for her to understand the context of it.

Then she squealed. “Oh, fuck, the Patri-Not thing finally happened? Dude, I’d been waiting for years for that storyline to progress!”

Silence rang between them.

“You don’t even feel sorry?” Viktor asked, looking at her in horror. All of the Umbrella Academy had similar expressions of disgust and rage on their faces.

“Going evil in the far off future is one thing,” Lila shook her head, “That kind of reaction? Nah, you gotta keep her locked up.”

Gwen struggled to figure out what to say. “Hey, come on, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just been like eleven years already, and something has to happen on that front, yeah?”

“I can reverse this timeline by a week or so. Shift stuff around and wipe minds and do whatever to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Speed said, not taking his eyes off Gwen for even a second.

“It won’t work!” Gwen warned him, the memory of the two twin realities coming back to her. “People have tried this before. Wiping my mind. Using my brother against me. I realize eventually in almost every timeline of this shattered pocket dimension. I realized before with Sorcerer Supreme Terrible Eye. You can’t stop this from happening. I will break out.”

“And unlike these guys, I don’t make it a habit to give up,” Speed replied. All the Academy members glared at him.

This was so stupid. And frustrating.

“Except you guys can’t possibly be trying the same ‘attack the vulnerable younger version’ plan over and over again out of your own volition,” she reasoned, talking fast, “This is smelling like writers revising storylines they think are cool. After this, I’ll say something about not wanting to hurt other people – which is a little true, but also ultimately redundant, because it’s going to keep happening over and over again, like- like- Spider-Man going to high school!”

She had talked herself into a block now. And she sank to the floor.

“Holy shit. Me going evil is like Spider-Man going to high school. People like it. They find it interesting. But it’s a plotline they’ve moved past and can no longer get to stick.”

Diego was rubbing his head. “What the fuck is she talking about?”

“I think this makes sense in how she rationalizes the world through her powers,” Five explained in a low voice, “Her brother said she views the world like a comic book?”

“Switched to full narrative now,” she interrupted. “And I’m not rationalizing, that’s how the world is. Now, hush, I’m thinking of how to break this loop.”

For what it was worth, this place wasn’t all bad. She had memories of some of the other timelines – when a piece of her in a branch timeline died, it merged with the others, including the facade here – and they were… pleasant. Exciting here and there. Lots of adventures to be had, messing with the Temps Commission and running merc jobs.

She didn’t hate it. This just wasn’t what her life was meant to be, she was sure of it.

She also got what Speed’s issue was. Because Gwen was never going to fully set aside the fact that these people were – well, characters. Do drive forward a plot, and represent themes and ideas.

“Fuuuuuck,” she announced finally. “What’s it gonna take to convince you guys? I’m good! I want to be good! I don’t want to hurt you, because you’re all awesome!!!”

“And apparently figments of a pair of lunatic twins’ imagination,” Allison said, looking at her hands, as if expecting them to turn into the words they were made up of.

“Reality is a myth,” Gwen tried to assure her. “If there was an hierarchy, I’m the most real, but that doesn’t mean anything in the long run, does it? We’re all still here.”

“What happens to us, if she leaves?” Luther asked worriedly. “Oh, god, are you going to erase us?”

Speed flinched. “I- uh- I didn’t think that all the way through, did I? I’m not going to hurt you guys, it’s just-”

The decision came to her, as if she knew it was coming all this time.

“Hey, no need to jump to such ultimatums! I’ll just… stay here?”

Speed looked at her, shocked. She shrugged. “You know me, getting invested in stories is kind of my bread and butter. And this world is pretty cool.”

“Because it’s constantly stuck a few weeks from the Apocalypse,” Five pointed out doubtfully, “And these dicks won’t fix it because of you.”

“It’s interesting without that, too!” Gwen argued. “I mean, remember the time with the Eiffel Tower?”

They all looked at each other, nonplussed. Five grimaced. “I do.”

“See? Fun! It’s an awesome world, no need to destroy it. I’m sure we can work out some sort of agreement,” she tried to bargain. “Let’s say… I stay here most of the time. Like eighty percent of the time. And you let me wander 616 for the rest. Just to get all the comic book geeking out of my system. And I promise that I won’t try to become the Puppet Queen. Of either reality.”

“How do I know you’ll keep your word?” Speed asked suspiciously. “It’d be easier to wipe your mind. Redirect you elsewhere.”

“Uh,” Luther interrupted, gesturing towards Speed’s suit, “You should take a look at yourself, buddy.”

He looked down in surprise, to find that his costume was shifting, out of the dull, rugged war outfit to something more reminiscent of the classic costume he had in the Young Avengers era.

“Huh,” he twirled around, before his eyes lit up solid white for a few seconds, fading out just as quickly. “My world’s timeline is being rewritten again. You’re planning to keep your word.”

Gwen nodded, shrugging slightly, “What can I say? I get attached easily.”

Speed still looked like he refused to believe it. But he nodded. “Then I’ll put things back to the way they were just a week ago.”

“Uh, but maybe don’t take the Marigold out of everyone?” Diego asked hesitantly. “I kinda like having it back.”

All the other Academy members booed him, but Speed shrugged. “Yeah, sure thing. Back to the way it was a week ago, but with a few tweaks.”

He winked at them, and Gwen’s world dissipated into a shower of green and silver.

Viktor’s bar had pretty regular decorations for one of the only bars in this small town in Nova Scotia.

All except for the weirdly crafted jar sitting above the fireplace, looking like it was made out of some kind of frosted glass, and filled with weird silvery liquid.

“That mercury, or something?” People had asked him on occasion.

He always made a joke about it being an heirloom of some kind. Sometimes about it being his mother’s remains, if he was feeling particularly morbid.

No one needed to know that this jar had a material that could destroy countless iterations of their universe. It was a secret that he and his siblings would take to the grave.

Diego, Lila, and Five had all kept their powers. Ben had looked almost relieved to find that he hadn’t, though Viktor wasn’t sure if he regretted it now. It had been years since they had spoken. Both of them had gotten used to the small town life, after all. It was just unfortunate that the small towns were thousands of miles away.

He was just wrapping up the night now, as the sun began to stretch its first rays over the horizon. The bar was almost empty, save for one person in the corner, crouched over a sketchbook muttering to herself. He tapped her on the shoulder, and she batted him away, “Don’t sneak up on a professional killer.”

“Gwen, it’s too early for this. And don’t confess to these things in my bar,” he said, already used to her dramatics, “I’m closing up, so I need you to leave.”

“Fine, fine,” she stood up, and her back popped as she did. She kept the conversation going as she put her stuff away. “Has Teddy been coming to you for violin lessons?”

“He doesn’t want to see you yet,” Viktor refused to say either way. Refused to even think of the right answer, because he knew now that Gwen had that weird mind-reading-with-an-asterisk thing.

She sighed, and lifted up her bags; a shark-themed backpack speckled with blood and a black briefcase with a very familiar logo stamped onto the side .

“Is that…” Viktor couldn’t help but lower his voice.

Gwen smirked. “Temps Aeternalis is back up and running; now with the mission statement to erase all timeline bleeding. Coincidentally, I’m no longer freelancing my merc business. That’s Ms Shill For The Establishment to you.”

He could totally see that for her. If she didn’t have an entire other career laid ahead of her before this.

“Thought you wanted to do comics,” he pointed out, feeling a little lost.

“Literally a dream come true,” Gwen agreed, then gagged. “But I can’t work on another real-world comic without the paradox breaking me. And DC comics are a no-go on principle, because of the copyright thing. I’m pushing it just referencing this.”

She perked up a little then, “But! I’ve got something going on the side!!”

She flipped her sketchbook around to show him, and he had to squint at the clearly development sketches covering the page, slowly forming several different characters, ludicrous in design and yet somehow familiar.

In the center of the page, there was an umbrella, with presumably the title inside.

The Umbrella Academy.

He looked at it. And smiled.

Yeah, this seemed like a good legacy for that dumpster fire of a childhood.