Chapter Text
Silently, Delores turns around, climbs the countertop, and rummages through the cabinet above the fridge until she finds her mother’s secret stash of rum.
She pours a generous amount into her coffee before offering it to Number Five. He adds an equally as generous serving to his own.
“Why did you come here?” she asks. “Not back in time. I understand you mean to save the world. It’s very heroic. I mean, here. To my clinic.”
“Because I need your help.”
She’s flattered, really. But it’s difficult to enjoy such flattery when you’re overwhelmed by the heavy weight of sudden and unexpected responsibility. If Atlas were two people, it would be them, Delores and Five, holding not just the physical weight of the literal planet, but the life of every living thing on it.
This is not how she expected this night would go. That idea involved fun experiments and fraternising with the fungal cultures behind bacterial culture’s back, followed by a jam session to Britney Spears with a bottle of orange juice at three in the morning.
Instead, she gets this. Delores squints down at the bottle of rum. “I need another drink.”
“Is that a yes?”
She refrains from pouting. She’s twenty-nine, not fifteen.
“It’s not a no.”
Tentative but grateful confusion defines the furrow between his brows. It’s too sweet and childlike for the old soul before her. “Just like that, huh?”
She shrugs. “I help people. I can’t help anyone if there isn’t anyone to help.”
And that’s all there is to it.
She wonders how different of a person she must be in that terrible future of his, if her present response surprises him so.
Five looks like he doesn’t know what to think. “I thought this would take longer.” He pulls something from his pocket and rolls it across the granite counter. “I found that in my brother’s hand. I think – no, I know it has something to do with the end of the world. I just don’t know what.”
It’s an eyeball. A prosthetic eyeball, but an eyeball nonetheless. Well, alrighty then.
“More coffee.”
With the rum stowed away, another pot brewing and some cookies on a plate for comfort, Delores turns her attention to the eye.
It’s generic. There’s nothing unique or special about the tones of the dark, hazy brown iris, and the pupil holds enough depth to look real. The sclera appears realistic enough, a sort of off-white colour with sparse, red veins. But beyond that, nothing. It’s a bit unimpressive, honestly…
She passes it over and between her knuckles with the flexible deftness that only a teenage aspiring magician can develop.
“For having kept this on you for forty-five years, it still looks new,” she says off-hand, tossing it up and catching it. Before her, Five drinks his second cup of straight black.
She can’t tell if it’s an aesthetical choice, if he actually likes it black, or if his taste buds have just completely wasted away, courtesy of eating whatever he’d been able the scrounge up in a post-apocalyptic world.
It’s probably all three.
“Thanks to you,” Five says, plucking it from her fingers and holding it up to the ceiling light. He levels it with a hard-eyed glare, as if the weight of his suspicion will miraculously make the eyeball gain sentience and confess its deepest and most darkest secrets. “You managed to restore it, for the most part. It looked like shit by the time we met.”
Delores doesn’t want to know how they met, so she doesn’t ask, even though he’s brought up their first meeting from his perspective several times in the past hour. To her, this is their first time meeting. Whomever the Delores that he’d known was – she’s gone now. Who she is now will, with any luck, never have to endure a lonely post-apocalyptic future.
She also doesn’t need a degree in psychology to know that this thinking is incredibly unhealthy for him. It’s an issue that she regrettably can’t help with. It’s also an issue that’ll stop being an issue if they don’t save the world first.
She reorganises her priorities; Five can get the help he needs for his mental health after the world is no longer preparing itself for a collision with an undetected meteor until it’s too late, or a repeat of 2012.
The clinic will have to be put on hold. Taking a week off means she won’t get her portrait on the Employee of the Month Wall for the seventy-fifth time, but it’s a sacrifice worth making. No one can take her portrait if there’s no one alive to take it.
“Meritech is on the other side of the city, I think, but I’ll check the maps.” She retrieves her laptop from her office and brings it into the kitchen, setting it up in front of Five so she can take the seat next to him. “It’s too late to visit now but we can head over in the morning.”
Fives watches blankly as she turns it on and types expertly across the keyboard.
It hits Delores very suddenly how Five, whom disappeared in 2002 and spent the next forty-five years of his life in a desolate world, would have no idea of the technological advancements made in the past seventeen years.
She points to the laptop. “This is a laptop.”
He sends her an irritated glare. “I know what it is, it just looks different.” Hesitantly, like a curious but very uncertain cat, he pokes the screen. She’s half convinced he’ll startle himself and flinch away.
Conveniently, he picks google chrome. It opens up to the last page she was on: YouTube.
The kitchen is assaulted with Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda.
Five forcefully slams the screen shut.
“Oh,” says Delores. “I forgot about that.”
“I need more coffee.” Five downs the remainder of his drink like it’s a shot of vodka and not hot, scalding coffee, before pouring another one right to the brim. He must be three parts caffeine at this point.
She sends him a look of mild disgust.
And then her mind briefly wanders off-track to ponder the sort of music that was allowed in the Hargreeves home. Classical? Hargreeves seemed like the – no. Stop it.
When this is all over, maybe she’ll make him a mixtape of the seventeen years’ worth of music he missed, just to see his ears go red. Delores didn’t think it possible for someone like Five, who’s she known for all of a half hour but is pretty sure she’s gotten his surface level personality down to a T, to even be capable of such visible embarrassment.
She savours the moment whilst feeling only mildly guilty. Nothing wrong with a little karma for her initial bout of wariness earlier tonight. She doesn’t trust him entirely but is willing to put that on the backburner for more pressing matters.
Scrolling through the internet under Five’s wary eye, Delores brings up the map and points out, “Great, so there’s a few routes. This one is the shortest, we’ll have to take it from the station tomorrow morning and go from there.”
Delores plucks the eyeball from his fingers, observing the black printed ink on the back: Meritech Prosthetics. She’s never had to suggest prosthetics to a patient before because she has a predisposition to make sure they never have need of one when she’s done with them. Given the right amount of time and dedication – which Delores always puts into to the full extent – she’s healed everything she’s ever come across.
“Sounds like a solid plan,” Five murmurs. “It’s almost too easy.” His knuckles are white again as he clasps his hands tightly. It’s the stress, Delores thinks. He won’t be able to rest until the eight days are over and the world’s still standing.
“You can crack them if you want,” she points out.
He turns to her, eyes unfocused. “What?”
“Your knuckles. Crack ‘em. I do it all the time when I’m feeling pressed.”
She knows how picky some people (cough, Aunt Cecilia, cough) get when they hear the tell-tale sound of popping. Delores used to run around cracking them in her aunt’s ears until years later the habit bit her in the ass and it became something she needed to do constantly. It’s not for everyone but Five looks like the type of person to make it a habit too. Maybe he’s withholding simply to be polite, or because of manners. But she doesn’t mind, honestly.
Five shakes his head. “No, I’m just thinking.” He hides his pursed lips behind his fingers. “I want to visit my sister. She’ll help us.”
“Oh, Allison?”
“Vanya. In fact, let’s go right now.” He hopes off his stool, downs the rest of his drink, and slams the lid of her laptop shut like it’s a second-hand hard cover book from the library and not a thousand-dollar piece of technology. It’s delicate, not some toy you can just slam and throw around to be dramatic.
Her mouth drops open.
Delores doesn’t know what to say. The part of her that acts like a teen and has been keeping up with recent teenager vocab would very much like to throw hands right now. But this isn’t Delores’ natural nature, so she goes with, “Someone is certainly enthusiastic. What did my laptop ever do to you?”
It’s not broken, so there’s that. She doesn’t think she can heal non-living things.
“It’s the end of the world, ‘Lores.” Five waves a hand dismissively, speaking with more familiarly than suits their current level of acquaintanceship. “I think it warrants a little enthusiasm.”
“But did you really have to slam it like that? It’s not a door you can shut just to make a point. What is this, a novel? A soap opera?”
“You’re a healer running an underground clinic and I’m a time-travelling assassin,” Five points out. “That’s pretty much grounds for a novel already.”
Of course he is. She doesn’t question it. She feels like if she asks, they’ll be sitting for a lot longer than they have to get to details of how that even works.
She sucks in a breath and pulls from years of experience. “Okay. Not the first time someone else’s morals have conflicted with mine.”
“I have morals,” he says, indignantly. “Good ones, even.”
“I believe you.” He came all the way to 2019 to save humanity. He has to have some, just not the same as hers, and as many as. And he wouldn’t just come all the way back to tell her this and then kill her. “I’m glad that we’ve gotten that out of the way so early on. It’s nice knowing what others do for a living, and I would appreciate it even more, you know, if you’d tell me if there’s anything else I should know? For future reference and safety’s sake?”
He rolls his shoulders, head falling back in order to give the kitchen light above a considerate stare. “No.”
She squints. “You’re certain? I won’t be mad if there is.”
The look he sends her is filled with dry humour. “Are you a teacher now?”
“People do embarrassing things. They usually lead to uncomfortable check-ups,” she says, soothingly.
“Tell me,” he says, leaning forward. “how many sticks have you removed from assholes? Literally and figuratively.”
“I’ve lost count. Are you jealous?”
“I am, actually. I’ve always wondered how they get it so far up. Things are a bit, uh, twisty inside.”
Ahh, the old straight face – reliable, trusty, and always on time; a very well-known and intimate friend of Delores’. “The next time a patient comes in with a foreign object in their rectum you’ll be first on my speed-dial. I could really use the assistance.”
He contemplates this. “Nah, though I am grateful for the offer. Don’t think I’d make a very good doctor.”
“No,” it’s her turn to speak dryly. “I don’t think an assassin would. Your bedside manner would be atrocious. I rue the day I should find myself subject to such.”
Five opens his mouth, offense written in his face, before he pauses. He closes his mouth. “I was going to argue, protect my dignity and all – but honestly, you’re probably right.”
“It’s a well-established trait of mine.”
They settle into silence, surveying one another.
Five breaks it first.
“Are we going to stand here in silence and gaze deep into each other’s eyes or can we leave?” He taps his wrist but there’s no watch to be found. “Time’s a ticking.”
Delores sighs. “Wait a moment.” And then disappears off into the house. When she comes back, she holds out a phone to Five who takes it curiously.
“Why are you giving this to me?” He turns it around to look at it from all angles, slapping it against his palm. You’d think he’s never held any piece of technology in his entire life before this moment.
Delores smacks his hands away, rolling her eyes when he starts looking like he wants throw it at the nearest wall to see what’ll happen.
“It’s a burner phone. I don’t have a proper and decent one casually lying around so this’ll have to do.”
“Oh,” Five frowns. “I don’t need it.”
“That’s what you think,” she mutters, finding his aversion to technology ridiculous, and reaches over to shove it into his blazer pocket anyway. “When you accidentally jump and find yourself in the ass-end of the city and you can’t jump yourself back, or get yourself into a sticky situation that involves blood and thousands of tiny projectiles, you can pull this out and say, ‘Gosh darn it, Delores was right again. I should listen to her more often.’ And I’ll come save you, because I have a permit. I can drive. And because I don’t think you even know how to take the bus, you archaic old man.”
Five sniffs. “Why would I need to take public transport when I can just steal a car? I know how to drive too.”
Delores stares at him. “Because it’s illegal, that’s why.”
“I’m a fifty-eight-year-old assassin in a thirteen-year-old’s body,” he says flatly. “I don’t care.”
“Do you threaten your food before you eat it?” she asks genuinely. Shaking her head to hide her amusement because this man, really? Pulling out her phone Delores calls her mother. “I’ll ask mom if she can drop us off. She’s got the car right now. I fear for the emotional and physical wellbeing of any bus driver we encounter.”
Five abruptly snatches the smartphone and ends the call with a harsh tap. “We’ll take bus. I promise not to insult the driver too hard when he starts driving like my dead grandmother.” He gives her that dimpled, faux innocent grin.
“Do you even know your grandmother?” Delores grumbles and gives him a dirty look when he hands it back.
Five waves a hand. “Irrelevant.”
After changing into appropriate wear – sneakers, some currently in-trend jeans for teenagers, and a coat, because it’s a chilly night tonight – and turning the lights off throughout the house and locking the doors, Delores and Five leave for the nearest bus station. She sends a short text to her mother that she’ll be going out tonight and may not be coming home until some time later. Or tomorrow, it may seem.
The entire wait for the bus and the following ride is filled with silence.
It’s somehow not as uncomfortable or awkward as she’d previously predicted. It’s actually rather – comforting, to be honest. The gentle weight of Five’s arm pressed against hers as they sit side by side, Delores watching the city go by from the window seat. Five looks lost in thought.
Maybe it’s because Delores isn’t used to travelling around the city, let alone at eleven at night. Five is like her own personal bodyguard, except without all the muscle and tattoos and several feet of height. Or a balding head. And giant pectoral muscles under a tight fitting polo. If anything, Five is an aggressive toy dog sitting in her expensive purse just waiting for someone to regretfully make casual, accidental eye contact. He is frothing at the mouth and ready to go.
Or maybe it’s because Five knows Delores, knows her well enough in fact that out of all the people he decided to turn to for help, he chose her first. Delores of 2019 who’d never met him before, hadn’t ever really thought of him before – but he had enough trust and faith that she’d help him save the world.
It makes her wonder about the kind of relationship they had in the future.
Delores shoes that thought away as quick as it comes. It’s not something she wants to contemplate. Five is still a stranger to her, in spite of the easy companionship they’ve fallen naturally in to.
He makes her feels two parts itchy, like she’s wearing the wrong skin; one part slightly flattered, because she doesn’t have many friends (or any at all); and one part undecided. It’s an odd position to be in, like she’s living out a soap opera rather than real life. She should be watching this on TV instead of experiencing it herself.
It’s also not a priority right now.
Maybe Delores is just reading into this too much.
Five’s sister must be asleep by the time they get to her apartment.
It looks like a decent neighbourhood, not shabby but not high-end either. Old brickwork and dark wood shutters, nondescript curtains behind slightly muggy glass; a peaceful sense of humility is etched into the dirtied cement binding the building together, and a quiet surrealness can be found in the scuff marks and stained patches that reveal themselves under the warm, yellow street light.
There’s just something about the obvious passage of time and visible age of this side of the city that Delores admires. It has the perfect aesthetic that’d go well with her clinic. Maybe one day she’ll move across the water and settle somewhere nearby; rarely does she have patients that originate from here.
“You think she’s awake?” Five asks over his shoulder.
Delores shrugs. “It is nearly eleven. Is she an early sleeper?”
Five hums. “I wonder…”
“Wonder wha–Five,” she hisses, watching wide-eyed as he abruptly starts scaling the flats. Not even up the fire-escape, no, he’s climbing upwards like he’s a mountain goat with no sense of self-preservation and the front of the building is a near ninety-degree granite wall. “What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like?” he calls over his shoulder, before making a risky leap for the protruding row of bricks above him, denoting the first and second floors. It wouldn’t be so terrifying if the foundation wasn’t already so high from the ground, barred windows signalling a basement of sorts. This puts Five several yards up in the air, the same as Delores heart.
“You’re drunk! Get down from there!”
“Hey–hey–keep it down–“ he has the audacity to look over his shoulder, releasing one hand from the wall to press his forefinger to his lips. “–tell the whole neighbourhood why don’t you. Besides,” he adds, waving that same hand. Delores is caught between being impressed and highly concerned for his safety. How he managed to survive in a post-apocalyptic future for an apparent fifteen years on his own without any measure of adult supervision escapes her. “I kill people for a living. This is all routine. Except we’re not here to kill my sister.”
“Oh my god,” she says, quietly to herself, and then, “I’m taking the stairs.”
“Suit yourself! Oh, she left the window unlocked. Idiot.”
When Delores finds Vanya Hargreeves door (good thing she gave the burner phone to Five, because she completely forgot to ask which door his sister’s was. She left him on read when he additionally texted how he very much did not like texting – what did he want, to send messages via carrier pigeon?) Five swings it open before she can even think of knocking.
“You took your time,” he says, waving her in.
“Just because I can heal doesn’t mean I fancy breaking a bone or three. Or my spine for that matter.” Peering uncertainly inside, she meets the confused and equally uncertain eyes of a short woman, about the same height as Five. “I’m very, very sorry. We’re not intruding, are we?”
“No, no, I–” Vanya starts, a little bit groggily. He must’ve woken her up, because she’s definitely not in outerwear; fuzzy socks, dark sweatpants and a grainy white t-shirt. “Do you know Five?”
“Well, I’m not going to invite a random stranger inside, am I?” Five rolls his eyes, firmly shutting the door. He brushes by, thumping Delores twice on the back on his way to the single cushioned seat near the lamp, throwing himself onto it with the grace of a dignified and distinguished feline with nothing but time on their paws. “Vanya, meet Delores – I met her in the future. Delores, meet Vanya – also known as Number Seven, as well as my second and only ordinary sister.”
Delores frowns. “Don’t be like that.”
“Be like what?”
She looks at him. He looks at her back.
Vanya interrupts their battle of wills. “I’m sorry, for him. He, uh, he’s a–“
“Menace.”
“A fucking gift.”
The staring contest commences. It could become the staring contest to end all staring contests – Delores can use her healing to keep her eyes from drying out, and she’s wholly convinced Five can keep his open through sheer power of will.
Five is the first to break it. She exhales quietly in victory, blinking slowly.
“Vanya, the world is ending in eight days and we need your help,” Five says with no tact, a solemn brevity in his voice and the crinkles in his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment ago. The sudden change is jarring and stunningly abrupt.
Vanya’s eyebrows raise in bewilderment. “Excuse me?”
Five sighs, leaning back. He touches the pads of all his fingers together, elbows digging primly into the arm rest as he bends one leg above the other. It’s such an old man pose. “What did dad say when I said I wanted to time travel?”
“That spatial jumps were trivial when compared to the unknowns of time travel,” Vanya, mumbles, before clearing her throat. Her eyes fall down, lost in her thoughts. “one is like sliding along the ice, the other is akin to descending blindly into the depths of the freezing water and reappearing as an acorn.”
“Word for word.” Five smiles grimly, catching his sister’s gaze as they recalled the same memory. “He was right. I jumped too far and found the end of the world. Everyone was gone.”
Vanya swallows. “Do you need a drink?”
Five looks down and chuckles, a small, breathy snort. “This one wouldn’t be happy if I had another.” He wiggles a finger at Delores, but she doesn’t deign to respond with anything but a frown.
Delores wouldn’t care if he had another drink. It’s the middle of the night so he can easily sleep it off. Any damage to his liver she can heal, although she’ll reprimand him if he takes that as an opportunity to become an alcoholic. Delores frowns because of the bitter miasma that radiates from his figure.
It’s not just in the strong furrow between his brows, the hard clench in his jaw, the subtle tremble in his hand as it points at her – it’s everything, every little cell broken down to the bonds and stability of their atoms.
Back in her kitchen, Five had been a mild brewed coffee. He held firmly onto his cards, hiding them up his bloody sleeves and below his stained collar. When it had just been her, Five had been careful – considerate. As considerate as someone as with devastating news could be.
Here, he’s as bitter as the drink he favours so much. He’s not hiding anything. He wants Vanya to see it. To believe it, the truth that he’s saying.
Or maybe it’s just the rum.
“What was it like?” Vanya whispers.
“Chaos,” Five replies. “complete and utter chaos.”
“How did you survive?”
Yes. Delores would like to know just as much as would very not like to know. There’s a lot of answers to that question, more than merely food, shelter and clothing.
“Scraps, canned food, cockroaches, anything I could find. You know that rumour that Twinkies have an endless shelf life? Well, it’s total bullshit.” Five shrugs, reminiscing. “It’s a miracle that they didn’t burn up like everything else did.”
“I hate twinkies,” Vanya murmurs, very seriously.
“Well, you do whatever it takes to survive, or you die.” He considers his hands, before slowly matching Delores’ eyes. “So, we adapted. Whatever the world threw at us, we found a way to overcome it.”
There it is again – that painful longing she’d seen in her kitchen. She has the impulsive urge to pat his hands and cover his eyes. Looking at them is like looking into a running river and seeing the pebbles bed at the bottom – there’s an end in sight, but everything in between is expertly hidden; he’s transparent, and with that, hiding secrets and things that are as equally or more transparent that they might as well not be there. She knows he’s hurt, but she doesn’t know what exactly deals the damage.
“We?” Vanya, oblivious to the quick, silent exchange follows his line of sight.
“Sort of. I said I met her in the future, right? Well, the future her. She was there when the world ended, but she couldn’t tell me how. That’s what we need you for – you’re going to help us stop it.”
“I don’t understand.”
Vanya is clearly moved by Five’s experience, the tale of unimaginable world dripping from his lips brewing interest. But she can’t hide disbelief still present in her eyes.
It sets Five off. “You think I’m crazy.”
His words don’t have the effect he’d been aiming for, due to the slight, gradual slur to them, but Delores sends him a warning glance anyways.
“You’re from the future?” Vanya ignores her brother in turn for Delores.
“Actually, I’m just across the bridge.” She shrugs, gesturing out the window and encompassing everything beyond the dusty material. A small breeze drifts through the open crack. “He met the future me. Like he said before, I just met him tonight.”
“And you believe him?”
“I’m right here, thanks.”
Delores considers it. Was she too hasty? Maybe a little. But just as she had no reason to believe his words, she doesn’t have a reason to not believe it.
She tells as much to Vanya. “If it happens to not be the truth, then I’ve only lost eight days. Eight days is nothing in comparison to the livelihood of the entire world.”
Vanya mulls over her words, head falling as she stares pensively at her knees, fists clenched together.
Delores shifts, pointing at Five who’s starting look agitated as the silence continues to persist. “You know him better than I do. Would he come back after seventeen years missing just to tell you that he’s come from the future and that everything as you know it is going to die in a few days? That’s a lot of effort and time just for an April Fools prank.”
“Honestly? Yes,” Vanya mumbles, shifting sheepishly when Five gives her a dirty glare. Or the wall, really, as his eyes glaze over slightly and appear to have a hard time focusing. “He once stole a camera and spent months taking pictures of us from creepy angles and behind things pretending to be our stalker before revealing it was all just a prank.”
“What is wrong with you?” Delores asks Five.
“In my defence, I was thirteen.”
Delores is unimpressed. “When I was thirteen I heated up cola and gave it to my aunts with milk saying it was coffee.”
“You’re disgusting.”
Vanya sighs. “This is a lot to take in. What I don’t understand is why you’re telling me. I’m not special. I can’t help you.”
“’Course you can!” Five flings the eyeball at her like it’s a tennis ball and not a delicate object, letting his sister fumble awkwardly as she tries to catch it before it hits the floor. She saves it after it bounces off her wrist and against her chin. “You can drive us and help us find the owner of that.” He smiles smugly at Delores, who simply raises her brow. “Looks like we won’t be taking bus anymore.”
Vanya shakes her head, face bemused but rubbing her finger curiously against the serial code. “I don’t have a car.”
Delores is the one smiling now as Five’s twists into a scowl. With a face like his, it could even be an angry pout. It’s kind of adorable, to be honest. “Looks like we will.”
“Whose eye is this?”
Five shrugs, flapping his hand casually and slouching into the cushion, head falling back lazily. “We don’t know. But I’m pretty sure that whoever owns it destroyed the world.”
A heavy sigh leaves Vanya, and she rubs her eyes. Unsurprisingly, she looks exhausted. She must’ve been a few hours into sleep before Five unexpectedly woke her up. But the eyebags under her eyes look like they’ve come equally from bad sleeping habits as much as they do from genetics and age. It makes Delores feel guilty for bothering the woman, whilst Five seems not to care at all.
“We’ll go first thing in the morning,” Vanya finally says, giving the eyeball back to Five. “I still don’t know if I believe it–but I’ll help. Or, try to help, I guess. You can, uh, stay here for the night.” She shuffles around, grabbing two throwovers folded neatly from a nearby end table. “I don’t have another couch, but you can–“
She stops, pausing at the sight of a clearly sleeping Five, passed out in a way that Delores knows his neck is going to hurt terribly tomorrow. Whether he’ll complain about it is yet to be determined, but the probability that he won’t seems high. She figures that to him, sore muscles are a rather minor issue in comparison to the past forty-five years he’s lied.
“Is he okay? I saw blood.” Vanya looks worriedly at Delores.
She sighs. “No, he’s fine. I healed his wound.” She gestures towards his relaxed frame, jabbing empathetically. “That’d be the rum.”
“Oh,” says Vanya. “Should we move him?”
“Legs or head?”
“I’ll take his legs.”
Together they pick up Five, who doesn’t make a sound other than the initial satanic-gargling that claws it’s way out of his larynx when they first lift him up, and carry him the short journey it takes to lie him down somewhat comfortably along the couch. Delores shoves a cushion under his head while Vanya takes his shoes off and tucks him in.
“Do you think he’ll be grumpy if we put a stuffed toy in his arms?” Delores asks, watching amusedly as he tosses in his sleep, curling up into fetal position. When he’s asleep, she could really believe he’s the thirteen-year-old boy that he actually looks like.
Vanya huffs a tiny laugh and walks through a nearby doorway–her room, presumably–before coming back, a small toy sheep in her hands. Gently, she positions it between his hands.
Near instantly Five squeezes it to his chest, unconsciously sniffing it.
Delores takes a picture.
Although standing with the posture of someone who would very much like to sleep now, Vanya rubs her arm, moving around like she wants to say something, confliction marring her pretty face. In the end, she doesn’t say a thing other than a soft “Good night” before taking her leave.
Curling up under the brown overthrow on the single, cushioned seat, Delores takes a moment to listen to the steady breaths coming from Five and faint creaking in the room next door.
Eight days. In eight days everyone will die – or they won’t. And it’s up to them three.
Lids falling shut, Delores turns the lamplight off and let’s sleep take hold of her.
…
…
In the morning, Delores and Vanya sit at the small table with bowls of cereal. Five, having drank a fair bit the night before, is still out cold on the couch.
“It’s weird, you know?” Vanya says, watching her brother. Not in a creepy or stalkerish way, but even if she did Delores wouldn’t judge her if she took a picture from behind the couch as a joke because what the hell Five? What an asshole prank. Instead it’s a look of concern, familial longing and nostalgia. He’s been missing seventeen years – the toll that his siblings paid to drive this highway is sure to be expensive. “Yesterday he just–jumped out of this glowing vortex thing, treated it almost like it was nothing. He just walked to the kitchen and made a sandwich. I hadn’t seen him in over a decade and he looks like he hasn’t changed a bit.”
“I get what you mean, sort of.” Delores shrugs when Vanya looks interested and takes another bite of her cereal. “He showed up at my clinic. I didn’t know who he was until I saw the Academy patch. I uh, used to collect the magazines and figurines so when I saw his face, well.”
“Oh,” Vanya half-smiles. “I never had one.”
Yeah. Awkward.
“You said you have a clinic?” She moves on, head tilting. “You don’t–uh, look that much older than him.” She waves her spoon over at the couch.
Delores had been wondering when this would come up. How do you tell someone that you have powers, when that someone was treated terribly and labelled an outcast for being ordinary in a school of superpowered children? Easy. You don’t tell them. Someone else does it for you.
“She shares our birthday,” Five mumbles, startling them. “s’got powers and all that jazz.” He waves a sloppy hand, fingers half-heatedly wiggling before it flops back down onto the couch.
“Five?” Vanya half stands out of her seat, looking like she might suddenly make a dash for the half-asleep boy. “Are you okay?”
“Peachy.” His voice cracks in a way that has Delores choking on her next bite of cereal, amusement striking through her. “Wha’ time is it?”
“Seven in the morning.”
He snorts sleepily. “Too early. Going back to sleep.” And then he digs his face down into the pillow in such a way that has Delores concerned he’ll suffocate himself. Vanya has the same frame of mind because she actually gets up, gently turns his head, hovering to make sure he doesn’t redo it before padding quietly against the floor on her way back to the table.
“He’s never been a morning person,” Vanya comments, smiling at a far away memory. “He was always the last to wake up. Mom used to flick water on his face until he gave in and set up the alarm clocks.”
“They wake him up?”
“No,” Vanya laughs. “But they woke everyone else up.” And then she looks down, a frown marring itself onto her face, like she’s just remembering something; too blindsided by Five and his Five-ness to pay attention to his words.
Delores knows what she’s thinking.
Pulling a needle out of her pocket – which she has for future convenience, as well as an assortment of other items – Delores runs a thin line down her arm under Vanya’s startled eye. The cut bleeds lightly, but the edges of broken tissue are clearly visible. Without pause, she lightly drags her forefinger from one end to the other, sending a tingling wash of power through her finger in the same likeness that one breathes in; instinctual and requires little to no thought.
When she wipes away the blood, the skin is clear. Like it had never been broken in the first place.
Vanya leans forward, mouth dropped open as she impulsively thumbs over Delores unblemished bronze skin. “What the hell?” she exclaims quietly, falling back into her seat, totally stunned.
Delores nods vigorously in agreement. “Mom and my aunts nearly had a seizure when I fractured my arm. Two hours and it fixed itself right up.”
Vanya swallows. She looks like a random bystander just knocked on her door and regretfully informed her that her dog is dead because her dad accidentally ran it over, who’d also unexpectedly had a heart attack and died whilst driving which is what lead him to losing control of the car in the first place and thus hitting the dog. So the TD;LR is: her dog is dead, her dad is dead and the ice cream in the back of the truck has melted out of the carton and into the carpeted trunk.
“I need a drink,” Vanya says, plainly, and gets up to pour herself half a glass of a shining amber liquid into a clean glass. Standing by the counter, she stares deeply into the alcohol as if contemplating the mysteries of life and the potential winning numbers of the next lottery, before downing the entire drink in one fell swoop, eerily similar to her brother.
Delores briefly wonders if this a genetic thing before the woman turns to her. “So–you, uh–powers?”
“Yes–me, uh–powers.”
Vanya nods, “Right.” And then, “I think I need another.”
…
…
“I can’t believe you broke my sister,” Five says, munching on some dry cereal.
Delores looks upwards. She will not roll her eyes. “It wasn’t my intention. Showing is easier than telling.”
“Oh, I know.” He considers the handful in his hand. They find a home in his blazer pocket, and the next grab is shoved haphazardly into his mouth. Delores watches him in the same way you’d watch a David Attenborough document in tenth grade science – with bizarre fascination and a small dose of horror. “When we met, you crushed your hand with random debris and spent the next six minutes looking sad while it healed.”
If that’s the case, Five is a godsend for coming back and trying to prevent the situation that puts Delores in an environment where she resorts to dramatics such as that. What the hell?
“Did I cry?”
Five snorts. “Didn’t even flinch.”
What a badass. A total badass; time to ring up Mojo.Com, they need to put her on a Top 10 list or something.
Sighing loudly, Five tilts his head towards the morning sky. He crams in another handful of Frosted Flakes, the loud crunch breaking the peaceful quiet hovering this conveniently empty street. “I’m so hungry.”
“You’re a growing boy.” Delores squints down the street, shading her eyes with a hand in search of Vanya. “It’s natural.”
After getting over her initial shock, the woman had prodded Delores with an endless array of questions, being very careful to keep to an expression of neutrality, in both face, body and tone of voice. It worked, for the most part, but Delores still saw through her façade. Vanya was distraught, jealous, but most of all – resigned.
She’d still mustered the kindness to lend Delores a fresh set of clothes, however, which Delores thankfully accepted, not wanting to cause any further tension between them. Just a plain shirt, short-sleeved and baggier than Delores’ normal fashion, as well as, for some reason, a skirt that had clearly been sitting in the back of Vanya’s closet for probably a decade and bore a pattern eerily similar to the carpet of a doctor’s waiting room or someplace other.
Vanya Hargreeves is of the passive aggressive sort. Noted.
Later, when this is over, Delores is determined to look further into it the issue. The issue being the whole power-smower thing. She doesn’t need to understand the science behind it to understand that Vanya’s absence of an ability to do the unnatural and freaky like the other seven of them is rather suspect. How is it that just one (1) kid is unable to conjure something unique and beyond logical reasoning?
“How much longer?” Five demands, breaking his gaze away from the Meritech Prosthetics building to cast a sidelong glance at Delores.
She checks her watch. “Nineteen minutes. But if you stare hard enough, I’ve no doubt the building will gain sentience and fess up it’s sins itself.”
He frowns, chewing pensively on some more flakes.
“You think Vanya can do that?”
“What?”
He makes a gesture. It’s not has comprehensible as he would believe. “What would we call it? Forceful sentience? Life creation? Sentient generation?”
She considers it. “I don’t think that’s it. Maybe she can read minds?”
They quietly mull this over.
“Plant manipulation.”
“Water manipulation?”
“Astral projection!”
“Cloning.”
“Laser vision.”
“Thermo vision.”
“What are you two doing?” Vanya interrupts some time later, carrying a bag of groceries. She’d decided to fill up her fridge when they found themselves having to settle into an inevitable wait. Something along the lines of, if she had to cancel her classes last minute, she might as well be productive and get other things done while they ran around the city.
Unfortunately, like with most things, they couldn’t just force the prosthetics company to open up on their own account. It had certainly grated on Five’s patience which started incredibly thin to begin with.
“Trying to figure out what your power might be.”
Vanya purses her lips. “Give it up, please. We know I don’t have one.”
“You do,” Delores counters. “You have to. It would make sense. Maybe it’s dormant?”
Not genetically, as it seems that they had all been made aware of their powers at a very young age – Delores was five when she discovered hers, and Five gave her the rundown of his siblings, Luther being the first at age two – but possibly influenced by her environment, or her relationships. Or, perhaps, both. The Umbrella Academy did have a shitty childhood, after all; Vanya’s the worst, arguably, if she felt driven enough to right her own biography about it.
If there’s one category they can cross, it’d be anything that’s defensive at its core. Forcefields, invisibility, etc, Delores assumes they would have shown up early on in response towards the negativity brewed in the Umbrella Academy.
But this is all hypothetical for now. They’ll conduct proper research when they can afford the time.
“I really appreciate it, but let’s just focus and get this over with.” Vanya nods to the building across the street and checks her watch. “It’s been open for at least ten minutes now. You haven’t gone in yet?”
Five gives her a look like he thinks she’s being daft. “We’ve been waiting for you, obviously.”
Vanya blinks. “Oh.” Her mouth opens, closes. “Why?”
“We asked for your help, didn’t we?” he says, and then like an afterthought, “Besides, I look like I’m ditching class and ‘Lores is a runaway hippie. I doubt we’d make it two steps in before they kick us out.” Five grins, devious and a little bit evil. He pats Vanya on the shoulder, takes the bag of groceries, gives her the prosthetic, and hands off the box of cereal to Delores. “C’mon, mom, we have an eyeball to return.”
And then he walks off, ignoring the honk of a car as he crosses the street.
Delores turns to the baffled Vanya. “Am I supposed to be his sister, then?”
“I don’t think so?”
Bonus scene that I wrote in writers block:
“Nice skirt, by the way. But I’ve worn better,” Klaus comments, using his foot to prod at the flowy material.
“Thanks,” Delores says. “It’s your sisters.”
“It’s missing something–hmm.” He clasps his chin, elbow propped against his folded arm, leaning back to get a good look at her.
“Sequins.” She smoothes the skirt down, and then flutters it about. “It would look better with sequins.”
“You know what? It really would.” Klaus nods agreeingly. “Ben says black ones. Gives just the right amount of pizahh.” He wiggles his fingers wildly.
Delores smiles, looking around. “Thanks, Ben,” she says, hoping at said it in the right direction.