Chapter Text
Chapter 3
Ben jumped into the ambulance, sitting beside Klaus as the doors shut behind him. Diego, Allison, Luther and Vanya all decided to go in Allison's car because there was no chance of all of them fitting in the ambulance.
Klaus was currently holding an ice pack to his head and had several bruises and cuts as far as his bare skin would show, despite looking like shit he looked amazing compared to the brother that was laying unconscious on the stretcher.
Five's expression seemed overly relaxed and slack for a boy with a bullet in his shoulder and a bone sticking half out of his leg. A thin sheen of sweat graced his forehead and the pale tinge to his skin was a vast contrast to both the dried and the fresh blood that littered his clothes.
He looked dead, and that was coming from the person who had been dead for years.
Ben, despite knowing it was the paramedic's job and not his, reached his hand up and placed the back of it to Five's forehead "He's burning up." He stated to the paramedic, wanting to contribute in some way to his brother's recovery.
Klaus visibly opened his mouth to repeat Ben's words, years of having to convey the previously dead brother's concerns and thoughts to those who couldn't see him were rubbing off on him. He closed his mouth when the paramedic nodded at Ben and gently pushed a thermometer into Five's ear.
Ben turned to the brother beside him and leaned towards his ear, as if frightened that Five would hear him despite being undeniably unconscious. "You know, before he passed out.." He took a few seconds to figure out how to word what he was about to say "He told me not to leave him, not again."
Klaus looked at him strangely "Well yeah, kid's been through a lot." He outwardly ignored Ben's cringe at calling Five a kid.
"That's not what I meant," Ben leaned closer and lowered his voice so the paramedic wouldn't be able to hear "He didn't find my body in the apocalypse, he found out from Vanya's book. I wouldn't have expected him to say that to anyone, but me?"
The look that took over Klaus was almost foreign. His lips that usually bore a childish grin were pulled into a straight line, his eyes were glassy and the way he looked at Ben was almost guilty. "I know. Look, we haven't the slightest idea of what fucked up shit he went through, but we do know that he found everyone but you and Vanya."
He paused for a second, considering the conversation "But not finding your.." He eyed the paramedic that was currently dabbing at a cut on Five's forehead "Bodies," he continued in a quieter voice "Must have been some sort of hope to him, but then finding about your death through a mere book must have crushed him."
Ben swallowed nervously, he had never thought of it like that. Everyone had learned to live with his death over the past years, but Five? It was just struck upon him, through careless writing in a book by a sister he barely knew because of skipping seventeen years of her life.
The rest of the journey up to the hospital was spent in silence.
His ears were filled with headache inducing ringing, god it was so loud, any louder and he could swear his head would split open from the mere sound itself. Other noises were fading in as the ringing slowly began to die down: Was that.. Beeping?, voices?, shuffling? Every possibility that popped up caused his head to swim.
He tried to pry his eyes open but found that they seemed glued shut, he wanted to reach up and paw at the growing throbbing in his forehead but his arms just felt so heavy and he was so goddamn tired.
What had happened? Why was he so exhausted? What was that beeping? Where was he? Who were those voices? So many questions clouded his already fuzzy brain, threatening to agonize him further, as if he needed that.
He was forgetting something, he had been worried about someone.. Who was he worried for and why was he worried for them? Before he could even get his gripping on the steadily growing list of questions, the memories came flooding back dangerously fast.
Five's eyes flew open and instantly he threw himself to sit up, instantly regretting it as his shoulder and leg flared up in white hot pain. He could feel hands, too many hands, touching him and pushing him down. Why were they pushing him down? He needed to find out if his family were okay.
Finally, after realising he was too emotionally and physically exhausted to fight the strong hands, he leaned back against the head board of the.. Bed? When did he get into a bed? Last thing he remembered he was laying on his back on the cold hard ground.
That was when he took in his surroundings. The all too white walls that just gave anyone a migraine if they stared at them long enough; the bright light above him, making his eyes throb; the people beside him wearing worried frowns and gazing at him, why were they worried? They were talking, he could see their lips moving, but he could only hear faint voices as if he were under water.
Water, in a hospital?
He strained his ears to hear them and at last figured out what they were saying.
"Is he okay?"
"He just got in a car crash, I doubt it."
"I know, but he's scaring me."
"He scared all of us, he was so close to dying."
Dying? How on earth had he been close to dying?
"Can you not talk about me as if I'm not here." He found himself slurring out, cringing at how broken and gravelly his voice sounded. He took a second to gain proper control over his voice before attempting to speak again "Where's Klaus and Diego, are they okay? Where's Ben, I saw him before I passed out." Finally voicing some of his questions made him feel slightly better than before.
Five took a proper look at the two girls and could finally assign names to appearances, so obviously Vanya and Allison that he was surprised that he hadn't realised sooner. This was what he got for letting himself pass out.
It was Vanya who spoke up, despite Allison opening her mouth to do so "Diego and Klaus are okay, they're a little injured but they should be out in no time.." She paused, considering how to answer the second question. Ben had been alive since they had averted the apocalypse but talking about him was still hard, they had all taken his death pretty badly.
Allison decided to take over for her, placing her hand on the smaller sister's arm with a comforting smile before she turned her attention back onto Five "Ben is with Klaus at the moment, talking about the crash and what he remembers from it."
Five nodded, satisfied enough with the answers "I want to go see them, I haven't seen Diego since before the crash and last time I saw Klaus he looked bad." He was already throwing off the blankets and letting them pool at his ankles.
Both of the sisters suddenly looked frantic and instantaneously began trying to keep him in the bed even though he hadn't even sat up, just merely took the blankets off "Five I really don't think that's a good idea." Came Allison's voice, wavering as if she didn't know how to convey some piece of information to him.
He watched her patiently for an explanation as to why exactly he couldn't go see his brothers and make sure they were okay, his lips formed a line and he crossed his arms in an attempt to make him look as aggravated as physically possible at that moment in time; ignoring the burning pain in his shoulder.
Allison clasped her hands together calmly as it seemed the boy wasn't going to make another attempt to get out bed "It's well.. It's because of your leg." At the deadpan look he gave her she sighed in exasperation and rubbed her hand over her face "Your leg is broken, your tibia was fractured and had torn the skin because of the angle it was at."
Five swallowed thickly and dragged his gaze away from his sister's concerned eyes, instead turning his attention to the cast on his leg. He groaned in annoyance and threw himself back down on the bed, letting out an accidental cry of pain when his shoulder screamed at him from the sudden impact. Had no one had the miraculous idea to give him anaesthetic? "Can you get me some pain killers.. Please." The pause before the please made it very obvious that it had been forced.
Vanya clenched her jaw "I don't think that's a very good idea, the doctor-" she was cut off by the focused death glare from the youngest (oldest?) Sibling. "Fine, if something goes haywire in your body don't come crawling back to me." She bit back harshly before digging around in her bag, she so often needed pain killers herself that she usually had a supply somewhere.
Finally her fingers grazed a metal packet and pulled them out, she handed them to Allison and carefully picked up the cup of water from the side of Five's bed. She passed it to him and could have sworn she heard a quiet thank you.
Five quickly took two ibuprofen pills with a gulp of water, finding that the cold liquid felt like absolute bliss to his sore and dry throat. He began to gulp down more and more before someone in the room told him to slow down or he "Would get hiccups." That phrase sounded so much like Grace that it had to be...
Of course he was right, Diego stood in the doorway and had a light smile playing at his lips. He was clearly favouring his left leg and had quite a few plasters here and there, but otherwise he seemed okay. Well as okay as a man could be after getting in a car crash.
"Diego!" Five spluttered, dropping water down his front. For a second he looked mildly confused as to why he had shouted out the man's name so... Desperately.. He paid Allison no mind as she pried the glass from his hand and set it on the bed-side table. "What happened to- Where did you- How did-" he groaned in exasperation and rubbed his hands over his face "What happened to you? Klaus and I woke up still in the car but you were nowhere to be seen, the windshield looked like someone had been thrown through it but I couldn't see you." His voice cracked and broke pathetically, but quite frankly he couldn't care anymore.
Diego moved forwards and sat at the end of his bed, to the side of Five's okay leg. "I woke up outside of the car and couldn't get you two to wake back up, so I went to find help. Had to run to road side services and use their phone to call Luther, who told everyone else what happened. Then I called the police and told them where you were." He explained slowly, as if Five was a child being taught their ABC's for the first time.
He would never let Diego (or anyone for that matter) know that he was actually grateful that he was speaking slowly.
Five listened silently, only glancing up when he caught sight of Luther and Ben outside of the room. A doctor was talking to them and their faces seemed unreadable. Was Klaus okay? Why hadn't he come out yet? Were they not telling him something? He really needed to stop letting his mind conjure up more and more questions every time something seemed even slightly wrong. But he couldn't shake the feeling that something could be wrong with Klaus, if only he didn't have this goddamn broken leg then he could get out and go see for himself.
"-Five?"
He hadn't realised that he had zoned out until there was a hand in front of his eyes, clicking it's fingers to grasp his attention. He blinked a few times before following the arm and finding Diego staring at him with a half glare, half worried expression. Had he still been talking? "Sorry, yeah. What were you saying?" Five tried to respond as normally as possible.
"I just asked if you were alright." Diego said, a tinge of concern in his voice. He was squinting his eyes as if he was trying to assess Five's entire being for anything wrong.
Five curled one hand into a fist "Stop looking at me like that." He snapped out, a lot more harshly than he had originally intended.
Diego's eyebrows knitted together "Like what?" He asked, genuine confusion lacing his voice.
"Like I'm some fragile child that's going to break if anything mildly bad happens, I'm fine okay? I've suffered much worse than this before." Five gritted his teeth, he didn't mean to start an argument but he was sick of everyone treating him like a kid.
"Thought I heard an angsty teenager yelling."
Five's head snapped up so fast he could have sworn he heard it crack but quite frankly he couldn't care less. Klaus was standing in the doorway, half leaning on Ben, he had that stupid childish grin on his face and looked like he had just woken up after falling off a building but it was Klaus.
"Kla- You- Wha- Are- Fuck!" He let the curse fall out with ease as he struggled to find words, with a grumble and an angry twitch from his nose (that Klaus would never risk mentioning was absolutely adorable) he patted beside him on the bed wordlessly.
When Klaus didn't move, Five looked up and levelled him with a particular 'Make this harder than it is and I'll stab you with a pen' look that had the man nudging Ben to help him to the bed.
Five shuffled over slightly as Klaus sat down quite unceremoniously. The bed was fairly small, seeing as it was made for one person. Which meant to save either of them from falling out of it they had to sit moderately close together.
He could see Diego poorly covering up his smile and glared at him severely "Say a word and I'll shoot you." He spat at him with in no way enough venom to be even slightly threatening, but Diego knew Five meant it. The former held his hands up in surrender.
Luther walked into the room and lingered at Allison's side awkwardly. Great, the entire family (excluding Grace and Pogo) was collected in the room and was making him feel claustrophobic.
Diego fiddled with the blanket and continued to talk to anyone available. Maybe to Vanya about her violin lessons, to Ben about the knew book he was reading (quickly being brushed off as well because the boy got annoyed), to Allison about getting Claire to come around.
When Vanya nor Allison were talking to Diego, they were talking amongst themselves about random things. "I think I like this girl." "Tell me, tell me, tell me."
Luther and Diego had settled to talk to each other, a surprising thing to be honest seeing as it seemed the two never stopped arguing and fighting.
Ben had given up reading, passing the book on to Five instead, and was now conversing with Klaus. About something Five couldn't be bothered to listen to.
He was getting tired, the book that Ben had let him borrow was getting fuzzy and all the words has started to blur together. For a second he thought he was passing out again but there was no black spots at the sides of his vision and he wasn't dizzy.
Not noticing that his head had began to lean on Klaus's shoulder, he finally let his eyes close and his brain to shut off.
Klaus had to refrain from squealing when he realised his brother had fallen asleep on him.