Chapter Text
When Vanya walks in, he’s standing in front of the window to hide the sadness that came over him at his previous thoughts.
His arm itches, the coloured spots begging to be shown, to be near their counterparts. Five ignores it and pushes himself to face her.
“I’m sorry.” She says, all sweetness and heartbreak – just like he remembered her.
“For what?” he laughs a little, “That was your home, Seven. You’re allowed to want solitude. Especially after what happened.”
He’s not angry – he could never be, not with her.
“Still. You wanted to tell me something and I didn’t listen. So... do it now?”
She’s uncertain and afraid and a million other things. She’d always felt the most out if everyone, their little Vanya.
“You don’t want to talk about the colours? You hyped yourself up for quite some time before coming in.”
“You saw that?” Vanya closes her eyes and shakes her head, there’s a faint smile on her lips. She’s amused and it’s delightful to see, “Of course you did. You’ve always been like this.”
She tenses, straining under the weight of what she wants to say and Five’s curiosity it piqued, just like that.
“I wanted us to try. Not like... romantically or even strictly platonically I just. I’m making a mess of this, aren’t I?”
He doesn’t answer, frozen.
“I want us to be soulmates. Real ones. Start with knowing each other again and grow into our bond. That’s... that’s all I wanted.”
It’s all he’d ever wanted too. He has to close his eyes and breathe deeply to steel himself.
Not the time.
There’s no time for Vanya.
Not yet.
It’s both too late and too soon.
“Vanya...” the words burn in his throat, struggling to get out, “I can’t. If it had happened before, I would’ve. I swear I would’ve. But now is not the time. I have so much to do and I can’t promise I’ll come out of it-“
“What? What do you have to do?” she’s hurting, he knows.
“I...” he considers telling her, considers falling into her arms and letting the weariness and pain fall off of him.
It’s not really an option, though. It’d be cruel to get her hopes up.
“That doesn’t concern you.”
“It did last night.”
He stares at her, schools his face into a mask of indifference and tries not to show his own heartbreak.
He’s never been more painfully aware of his true age.
God, he is so very tired.
Vanya swallows and he can barely make out some tears in her eyes before she turns and walks out of the room.
The silence she leaves behind is suffocating.
Then Klaus steps out of the closet like the idiot he is and reminds Five that their little discussion hadn’t been private at all and the noisier of their siblings is aware of their connection.
For fuck’s sake.
He can’t believe he let himself be so swept up in Vanya’s presence that he forgot about the junkie in the closet.
“Weeeell...” starts Klaus, a mischievous grin on his lips, “holy shit, bro. Just. Holy shit. I always knew you and pretty little Seven had something goin’ on but this is... this is juicy stuff. The real deal.”
He’s one second away from doing a favour to humanity as a whole and murdering the imbecile.
“Klaus. I don’t need to tell you that whatever you heard will not leave this room, do I?” he smiles, all teeth and rage, and his brother stumbles away from him awkwardly.
“Sure thing, kiddo!” Four smiles happily, “How much are you going to pay me?”
Vanya isn’t sure what to feel.
There’s pain, there. Pain and helplessness but, as usual, it’s covered by something else. Something that makes her feel almost numb.
Of course, the tears on her cheeks tell another story entirely.
Silly, lonely Number Seven with a soulmate that doesn’t want anything to do from her.
She walks downstairs and hears a snippet of Allison’s frustrated voice.
Patrick, Vanya thinks, she’s talking with Patrick.
She stands there until Allison’s done, back turned to her. She wouldn’t be able to face any questions about the redness of her eyes or the tear marks on her cheeks. Not right now.
“You know. Maybe you’re better off here anyway.”
“What?” Allison sounds tired and angry and a million other things Vanya can’t understand - she’s not a mother, after all.
“No, Vanya,” Ah. There’s the rage, “Maybe I’m better off with my daughter.”
“Patrick... I meant... better off without Patrick.” She tries to backtrack.
Good god, is she going to get anything right today?
“Yeah, right. If I wanted advice I wouldn’t come to you. No offense,” full offense “It isn’t like you know anything about loving someone.”
“That’s not true.”
She knows plenty about loving people that don’t want to be loved from her, after all.
“So you know what it's like to love someone like this? Like when you're apart from her, you can't breathe? Like you would... you would die, and I... I mean actually... die... to know that she's okay and happy.”
“I... I can’t do this today. Sorry, I have to go.”
“You always do this, Vanya. Always running from people.”
She doesn’t bother responding and walks out of the door, more hopeless than she’d been before. She really didn’t think it was possible.
She took a walk into the park, after she got out of that godforsaken house, anger and despair battling inside of her.
She walked until her feet hurt and threw her gloves away to admire the colours under the light and marvel at how vivid, how alive they were.
She returns to her apartment late, to find a man knocking on the door and checking his phone and immediately feels stupid for forgetting whatever appointment she had that day.
“Hi, sorry, can I help you?”
The man turns, surprised, and smiles widely.
“I was supposed to have a violin lesson here about ten minutes ago?”
“Oh! Oh, yeah, I’m so sorry I’m late.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m Leonard.”
“Vanya.”
As they shake hands and Leonard jokes about being just a bit older than her normal students, Vanya feels herself smile genuinely at the man in front of her.