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FUTURE
The future is hell.
Oh, it was great for all of 30 seconds, finally being able to time travel like he’s always dreamed and run like he’s always needed to. But that was before he landed in the smoke and ash and saw his siblings dead, and it made him wish that he’d never wanted to run in his life.
He wished almost just as much, at first, that he never saw them like that. He buried them the best as he could, dragging their bodies out from underneath the rubble and digging shallow graves for each of them. He never realized before how much work it is to dig a hole large enough to bury a person, especially while dehydrated and starving and without a real shovel to use.
He buried them underneath the shit-hole the world had become, then moved on. He’d already wasted too much valuable energy messing around.
After a while, he’s so glad he got to see them at all.
He forgets how they looked as children, first. They’re replaced with their corpses, with pale skin and rot and cockroaches and horrible, horrible words that blame him for everything. Only Vanya and Ben are protected from this fate, though their words accordingly become far more horrid and painful. Those two have always been the ones that would never hurt anyone, so to hear them say things like that made it far worse.
Then he forgets how their corpses look like. He’d tried to think how his siblings, and no image would appear – no face, no body, no nothing. He begins to look forward to his nightmares, because at least then he can see them again. Not Vanya and Ben though – he just hears their words now. In his darkest moments, he wishes Ben died in the apocalypse too, because at least then he’d be able to see him again. He always wishes he could’ve found Vanya and give her at least some kind of funeral, as crappy as it would be, coming from him.
Delores always tells him to stop dreaming and get back to his equations. That way he can actually see them again, she says. He always rolls his eyes at her but gets back to them nonetheless.
It’s the only thing that’s worth doing in this world, trying to go back to them, his family. It’s silly and stupid and clearly a dream only a child could hope for, but it’s the only thing he can hope for in a world like this.
It started out as a daydream. He’d come back, just a few weeks after he left, and his siblings would hug him and cry and he’d pretend he wasn’t crying too, seeing Vanya and Ben and everyone again. After they (he) had all exhausted their emotions, he’d rally them together and stop the apocalypse, leading them to a future that is better, and leading them away from harm, from the apocalypse, from their father and his countless experiments and casual cruelty that ruined his family in so many different ways –
Luther would be outraged, of course, that his position as leader, as Number One, had been taken, but he’d concede to Five sooner rather than later. He’d never be willing to admit that Five is the better leader, but it’d be clear to everyone that he thinks so, too.
It changes, over the years, how he’d imagine going back to his family. He’d go back to them later, maybe only a few weeks before the apocalypse. He doesn’t need all that time to stop it, anymore and it’d be detrimental. So, he’d go back to them and see them, and he’d still be older, of course, but closer in age, at least. They’d have more experience, and their powers would be developed enough to be able to stop the apocalypse. They’d be more reasonable, too.
He can’t imagine himself interacting with them though. He wouldn’t be able to bring himself to openly care for them – it’d feel too fake and too stiff. It’s too much emotion to come from him now. He’s not the same person who left – no longer a 13 year old boy who just needed to run, run, run away as fast as he could. No, the only thing he can seem him showing them is the reality of his cold, dead heart, destroyed by the fire and the ash and the goddamn awful nothingness that’s been all he’s known for far too long.
Yet that too doesn’t seem to fit either.
He’s been working to save his family for so long that to pretend that he doesn’t care would be to deny his very existence.
He’s got to react in one way or another though, and he knows that when (not if, never if -) the time comes, he’ll most likely react like that.
After all, it’s easier to pretend he doesn’t have feelings then to pretend that he does.
When the Handler comes to him, later, and offers him a job as a hit-man he almost laughs. What a perfect job for him – after all, it takes a cold, dead heart to be able to do something so horrible, and it takes a sad, desperate man who only wants to see his family again to be desperate enough to do it.
PAST
All of his assignments are in the past, of course. There’s no future to speak of, and the Handler knows him too well to assign him to any time that his family could possibly exist in. She knows him well enough to not give him a suitcase either, at first assigning a partner that he doesn’t need to hold onto it for him, then later sending someone to retrieve him after his job’s been done.
He got too good at what he does for them to be safe, after all.
One of his few partners, one before the commission knew just how talented he was, and how scary and dangerous and good he was, asked him once if he ever wanted another name”.
“Five isn’t, like, a real name,” they said. “Don’t you want something real?”
He simply stared at them while sharpening his knife till they looked away with a huff.
It was a stupid question. The name Five has always suited him just fine.
All his siblings wanted real names, something to remind them that they’re people and not just experiments and numbers. Five scoffed at them. They were just experiments, and it was useless to pretend otherwise. He’d never understood why they never could accept that, and never understood their anger at him trying to make them understand.
He was the only one who participated in Dad’s experiments for himself. Luther participated to make Dad happy, always a perfect little soldier. Diego was always at heads with Luther, so all Dad had to do was encourage that to get him to do exactly what he wanted. In the rare cases that didn’t work, Mom always had a word to put in and say, with a kind hug to Diego and a glare to Dad. She was always more human than him, despite being a robot. Allison just wanted to get what she wanted, and her powers were the best way to get it, so she went along with it. Klaus didn’t want anything to do with his powers, and so Dad had to force him into it. Same with Ben as well. The methods Dad used to do so made Five’s blood boil. He may not have understood why they didn’t just go along with it, but he did understand that didn’t mean they deserved to be treated so horribly.
Vanya didn’t have any powers, but she willingly did whatever Dad wanted and more just to feel part of the family. There was no need for her to time their daily runs up the stairs and come along to all their missions, after all, but she did so anyway.
But Five, he wanted to experiment to see the results, see how far he could go. His name was a promise, a reminder, of his ambitions and desires. Yes, he was an experiment, and he’d make sure that he’d be the goddamn best experiment and get the goddamn best results he could so he could through space and time and never come back, to run as much as he can and then run more, more, more.
Well, he did that alright.
It’s a desire he’s paid dearly for, and yet, despite his shame, it remains, a scratch that can never be itched.
In the apocalypse, his name turned into something more. He was Number Five out of Seven, part of a unit, never alone. The other’s may not have been around, but he was still part of a family, still belonged somewhere.
His name was a constant reminder of them, his home and his family, despite how shit it could get. He supposes that’s another reason the others all hated being numbers as well.
He doesn’t care. After all this time, they’re still the only thing he cares about, besides Delores. And, not that he’d ever her tell her, but more than Delores too.
They’re his family after all, and he’d do anything for them, anything to get back to them, no matter how repulsive.
PRESENT
He figured out the calculations, finally. There’s a lot he’s learnt about time travel at the Commission, just from using the suitcases to get to his different jobs. It's one of the only meaningful things he’s gotten out of working there.
So he pushes through the blue vortex, and it doesn't feel quite right but it's too late and he just wants to go home so -
He keeps going.
He makes it through, and lands face first in dirt – real dirt, not ashes or smoke or leftover junk – and he knows that he’s done it. His body feels weird, though – not proportioned quite right, and his body doesn’t ache like it usually does.
He gets up, and he sees his family – his family – for the first time since he saw their corpses, all those years ago. Luther’s in the front, of course, big old Number One can’t resist being a leader even in the most mundane of situations, and there’s Diego and Allison beside him, Vanya and Klaus in the back. Ben isn’t there.
They look the same, yet not.
He feels everything. He feels nothing.
It’s all the same to him.