Chapter Text
"Grab onto each other!" Five shouted, his pulse racing as he grips tightly onto Luther and Diego. "I'm gonna fix this, alright? I'm gonna fix this."
" How?" Diego asked, grabbing Klaus. "How exactly are you gonna fix this? You can’t just make the moon one piece again! - or wait shit, can you?"
"No Diego, I can’t fix the fucking moon! I'm going to try and send us back to the beginning of the week. Just - trust me. Trust me ."
"Did you just say try?" Klaus asked, staring at Five. “You’re not certain you can do this?”
"I don't see any of you guys coming up with a better idea."
“I mean, fair enough, but, really, like, you aren’t sure? Didn’t Dad mention something about getting ripped into tiny pieces with time travel? No offense but if I have to choose a death then I’m choosing the quick way.”
“Either we die here for sure or we take the chance to live. To fix this so billions of people don’t die. Grab onto someone Klaus or I swear to god I’ll kill you myself.”
"Can we just get this going?" Luther asked, grimacing as he adjusted Vanya in his arms. "It's the best chance we got, right? So we take it."
“For once in your life Luther, I agree with you,” Five said, taking a deep breath. “Everybody brace yourselves.”
Klaus placed his hand on Allison’s shoulder as Five concentrated. There was a thrumming in his bones as a language Five barely knew tried to take hold. The universe pulled at him and demanded he answer and Five thought “Not today,” and pushed. Because that had to be enough, because this had to work and he didn’t have time to carefully curate his jump like last time and if it took brute force to get there then consequences be damned. He was pushing against the current of time and could feel it working but it was - wrong.
A blue glow filled the room, and a squeezing sensation started taking hold of him. It felt like his organs were on fire, that he was the last tube of toothpaste in some broke college kids room. His atoms were revolting and there were no words to properly describe the pain of it all. Sweat dripped down his forehead like oil.
He gave another push and finally broke through.
When he opened his eyes, he saw they were all back at the courtyard. Rain spit down from above and grey clouds loomed over them, threatening to worsen the weather. His siblings were scattered across and had fallen on their asses but they were there . No missing parts. No deaths. No crashing moon. No apocalypse.
"I did it." Five said breathlessly, crashing to his knees, struggling to breathe because he did it. People were alive and the world was whole and there was no apocalypse because he stopped it all . He stopped the so-called inevitable that fucked his life over. "I fucking did it!"
"Allison?" Luther asked somewhere to his left, carefully placing Vanya on the ground before getting to his feet.
Allison got to her feet shakily, letting Luther help her up. She nodded carefully and shot her hand up to her throat. "Luther?" She asked hesitantly, her face breaking out in hopeful relief at the sound of her own voice.
"I - How?" Luther asked, giving Five a look. “How can she just - talk?”
"This should be the time before Vanya slit your throat, so - no slit throat means vocal cords."
“What?”
“The bodies we’re in are the ones we started the week with; notice the wardrobe change. Transferred our consciousness just to our past selves so any scars, wounds or so forth you got? Gone.”
"Wait." Diego bit his lip, looking directly at Five, "how much back are we? Would anyone who died have come back?'
"Find me a newspaper genius and I can answer your questions. But I would guess-" Five paused, his face blanking as his body throbbed. "Something’s wrong."
"The hell does that mean?" Diego asked.
"I don't know! Something’s just wrong and I-" Five cut himself off with a yell, curling in towards himself. “Fuck. Fuck. I messed something up.” Cringing, Five moved to lean against the wall before stopping. Gagging, he turned his head away and hurled.
He vomited blue.
"What the fuck?"
"Shit, man, do you need a hand-"
"Five, are you alright?"
"I'm fine!" Five snapped, struggling onto his feet before a foreign look crossed his face because there was wrong and then there was wrong . His eyes rolled to the back of his head as nausea swarmed him and he fainted, falling into a hole of blue and disappearing from view. Except for the remnants of his vomit, Number Five was gone.
"Well, fuck," Klaus said.
Marge was happy to consider herself one of the fortunate ones.
She was twelve years old when the war ended and the games were installed. Old enough to have a childhood without fear or worry. She remembers cherry trees and running in rivers and freedom. Her parents were good people and the districts kept the war from the eyes of children and she’ll never stop being thankful for that. When the games were implemented they still kept to try and keep the reality from them - until they couldn’t any longer.
As a child, she was never reaped. Never had any friends or family who were reaped - never had to deal with the coldness in her bones as she watched someone she loved go off to die that so many others dealt with. As an adult she never had to starve, one of the only handful who could. Living in district twelve meant that the fact she always had a warm meal to come back to made her spoiled. She married the love of her life at twenty-two and finally watched a child from her district come back home and felt relief.
(She chooses not to focus on the memories of that year's games too much. The tenth annual Hunger Games showed the beginning of change, the beginning of what it is today. She remembers at twenty-two how dread built in her stomach as she watched, because there was a subconscious understanding that what the tributes would now start to go through was so much crueler. Their lives were no longer enough and that - that she could not focus on. Not when they were all so impossibly small and innocent and undeserving of their fates.)
She inherited a small shop from her mother, ran it with her husband until she was too old and her kids took over. It always provided a stable income that allowed them to afford little treats now and then. Small pastries and honeyed figs. Things that seemed so small, looking back, but brought such joy to her family. Her children never got put into the games either. All three of them got out unscathed, never suffered ill health and were for the most part happy. Those, Marge thinks, were the biggest achievements. At eighty-six, her bones creaked and her joints ached and she knew that one day a bad cold would take her down, but she was happy . Her life had been good and lucky and there was nothing more wonderful than that. Nothing more she could ask for.
Marge just had her grandkids left to worry about. The oldest ones had already escaped reapings, and the youngest two only had a couple of years left. They were so close to making it out that Marge was entertaining the notion of still being around to see them through. Reaping day still brought tremors to her hands and sweat running down her neck, though, the doubt creeping in because there was never a one hundred percent chance that they’d be safe, but the odds were in their favour. She was hoping to die with the knowledge that no one in her family had gotten reaped.
It was still late when she woke up, head aching. Nausea pooled in her stomach and Marge gruffly left her bed, taking a quick moment to put her slippers on. Exiting her room, she went to the kitchen, a hand on the wall for support. Turning on an oil lamp as she crossed the threshold of the room, Marge turned on the stove and put on the kettle. As the water boiled she opened her oak cabinets, grabbing her preferred mug. She needed to get more herbs in the morning but there was still some mint left she saw, in the back corner behind the plates. Not a lot left but enough for one decent cup. Hearing the kettle whistle, Marge walked over and set her mug down, putting the dried mint in before pouring the boiling hot water.
Carefully, she grabbed her cup and went to have a sit down in her living room. Ease her head. Turning on the light she paused, blinking. And blinked again. because there was a young boy passed out on her sofa. Squinting, she vaguely wondered if this was some type of late night hallucination because she did not recognize this child in the slightest. District Twelve wasn't the biggest place, only a couple thousand population wise, according to the last Capitol census, and everyone knew each other in at least some vague sort of sense, but she'd never seen this boy in her entire life.
He looked absolutely exhausted, sleeping so still it was like he was a corpse. Only the small breaths she saw him taking were why she knew he was even alive at all. Marge moved closer, making sure to give him space. She peered closer at him, intently looking at his face.
It didn’t provide any answers.
He was a tiny little thing, she noticed. Small and thin. He didn't look to be malnourished, though. No sunken cheeks or swollen glands. He was pale but had a healthy pallor. He couldn’t be Seam, Marge knew. Primrose Everdeen was the only Seam child to look anything like this, and there were Seam features in her, no matter the blue eyes and blonde hair. This boy had to be a merchant's son, only none of the merchants had a kid like this.
There wasn’t a possibility of him being from here, because no matter how well you hid away the boy she would have still seen him during reaping in the crowd. There was a remote possibility he was a runaway from another district. The woods were rumoured to have those pass through. But then why would he come to District Twelve instead of, say, Eight? Especially when the games were so close? It would be smarter to lay low, actually enter the district a few days from now. You can’t judge a book by it’s cover but Marge reasons he looks intelligent enough. There were stress lines starting to form, and dark circles under his eyes. He was so small, looked so young, but there was something else. Older than his years in some way. He should know basic logic.
His clothes were fine too, she noticed. Just the tiniest bit dirty, only dusty, really. It was clear they were good quality, though. Solid fabric that would last a long time. Decent threading on the buttons. Looked to be a school uniform of some kind, but definitely not from a school in this district. Reminiscence of ones that would be from one of the richer districts or even the Capitol. If he was a runaway from there then why would he run away? Why here of all places? How long would that even take?
He wasn’t getting up anytime soon, Marge noted. He was absolutely knocked out and likely wouldn’t wake up even if the house caught on fire. It was late. Probably a good time for her to go to bed too. Her headache had gone away, initial confusion replacing the pain. She was just tired now. Exhausted because either she was in fact hallucinating, maybe having a very vivid but odd dream or there was a situation on her hands that would become stressful to sort out.
Answers would be needed. Authorities potentially contacted, too. Sighing, Marge exited her living room and went down the hall. Grabbing some spare blankets she made her way back and began piling them on the boy. He’d be safe here for tonight, she decided. If she woke up with him gone and the place robbed then that was that. He was still a child though. There were no visible wounds to treat, no blood soaked clothing and Marge couldn't check if there was anything internal - although at that point Marge knew there was nothing she could do but try and make his last few moments peaceful - so she turned off the light, exited the room and let the boy sleep.
Slipping off her slippers, Marge entered her room and tucked herself back into bed. Closing her eyes, she let her mind wander. There was no proper procedure for things like this, she knew. How do you react to a random child showing up in the middle of the night? Was he in the system? If not District Twelve’s, then some other districts then? She could go over to Sally’s tomorrow morning, return the crockpot she borrowed and figure this out with people who could actually help.
Her son being the mayor meant he had much more resources then she did. Not to mention the whole mess with the games if he was a runaway. There was always a chance he could be eleven, too young to be reaped and able to not worry about the upcoming games. Except would they be able to get his paperwork by then? It was always better safe than sorry here because District Twelve let a lot of things slide but not something like this. The peacekeepers wouldn't let him keep his name out of the bowl unless there was proper paperwork - a birth certificate, school records and such.
That could be dealt with tomorrow.