Work Text:
Five was never afraid of falling before his father threw him off the roof.
Special training, Sir Reginald Hargreeves called it, right before he dragged Five to the edge of the building. “Special training”, like that wasn’t code for personalized torture.
They all knew it, too. Whenever their dad pulled one of them aside for special training, they knew. But what could they do? And so, for the most part, they did nothing, and let themselves be swallowed by their own hurt.
For the most part.
Five couldn’t help but try to protect the others. Even at seven and eight and nine, he was the smartest; in a way, he felt like he was the oldest, too. Their dad was terrible to them, especially Vanya, and he understood with crystal clarity that if he didn’t help, no one would.
So he mouthed off and took punishments to distract from other failures. He took the brunt of everything if he could, and looked his father in the eye when the others couldn’t bear to. Every inch of ground that Five gained in his silent war, he paid for. But it didn't bother him as much as the others, and he could grit his teeth and taste the knowledge that it was worth it. Maybe one day, they could all be free.
Five knew his siblings thought him arrogant, prideful, and too smart for his own good. This, of course, was true, but they couldn't know that he was using their perceptions to shield them. If they knew, their father would find out, and then Five would lose his only advantage.
If Klaus wasn’t sent to bed hungry, if Ben kept his favorite book, if Vanya got a name instead of him—well. It was worth it.
A hundred little secret rebellions, and he was making progress.
But Five couldn’t stop the special training. Their father wouldn’t exactly let them die, but he didn’t mind terrorizing them for the sake of their powers.
Five’s training was not the worst. No, he was not the worst off, not compared to Klaus and the mausoleum. Diego, throwing knives closer and closer to his siblings’ heads. Or Ben, and the small animals that Dad made him slaughter with the help of the tentacles under his skin. Allison, who had to rumor people on the street, never knowing if she might have ruined their lives. Or even Luther, who always kept his mouth shut tight about his training.
(Five jumped into the room during Luther’s training on accident, once. He peeked out of the cabinet where he'd landed. Luther was lifting weights to a recorded track of his siblings screaming and crying and begging for help. Eyes shut and face flushed, he was sweating far too much for anyone with super strength. Their dad, pacing behind Luther, had snapped, “Ignore them, Number One. Focus! The mission is always the top priority.”
“The mission is the top priority.” Luther had exhaled a shaky breath, settled into his stance with a tight jaw, and resumed.
How had dad synthetically created their voices? Five never figured it out.)
Five would remind himself that he could be worse off, sometimes, when it was bad. When he was locked in a closet, or tied up and left in the attic, tape over his mouth and a silent scream building up in his throat. When he was forced to jump again and again and again, for hours, without rest until he retched or passed out.
Dad called this “building stamina”.
His head would pound with bouts of dizziness, and he would lose feeling in his fingers and lips. His vision would turn to black spots, but he struggled through it anyway; stubborn to a fault. If their father was there with Five, he wasn’t with Five’s brothers and sisters.
Dad called this “building character”.
Five called it building resentment.
So he carried on. He didn’t enjoy it, but that didn’t matter, in the end. That wouldn’t matter, when he unlocked the full scope of his powers. He was always eager to improve: ambitious, hungry to learn more, to understand.
Not to mention that short of running away, nothing would stop his father. Nothing ever had. Not begging, not reason. Five watched the others struggle in daily training. He watched them plead, sometimes, or, less often, cry, and he knew that they would never win.
Even when he wanted to, he never begged. It was faster to endure and progress than to ask for mercy.
And even when it was bad, Five was sure that their father would never put them in real, mortal danger. He wouldn’t let them die. They were, at the very least, investments.
He wouldn’t let them die.
(Five hated relying on his father to teach him, but there was no better option, and there never would be. Again and again, he settled for bone-shaking, and bile in his mouth, and a fruitless wish for something better. If not for him, then for his family.)
The easiest way to shift through the fabric of space was to grasp onto it, and pull himself from one place to another. When he first started navigating his powers as a toddler, the improvements he made were based on instinct. After he started jumping, Five's lessons started to focus on math. The equations he learned calculated trajectory and three-dimensional space, among other variables. But the math was secondary, serving only to augment his understanding of his powers.
He started using the equations for real only as he grew older. There was no room for little mistakes anymore. Ending up a couple of feet to the left or a few inches above the ground was the difference between success and failure. The split-second calculations became second nature when he jumped. They were beaten into his head until he could do them in his sleep—and sometimes did, to his family’s annoyance. No one liked finding Five lying on top of the refrigerator or slumped across the staircase at six in the morning.
But all his constant improvement, his driving ambition to understand everything he could do...it wasn't good enough for Dad. Five hypothesized that possibly nothing ever would be.
One spring morning, Five followed his father up the stairs into the attic of the main wing. Dad led him up a wooden ladder, through a trapdoor, and they emerged into the roof, blinking in the sudden sunlight.
“Why are we here?” Five asked for the second time. His inquiry on the way to the roof had been immediately shot down with a response of—
“For special training,” Dad replied, which explained nothing at all.
“You already said that,” Five pointed out. “What kind of training?”
But his father was busy gazing out over the edge of the roof. It was a sheer drop down to the square courtyard in the middle of the Academy. It wasn't that high. Not really. But it was high enough that if someone fell off the roof, they might die.
Five followed his gaze.
“Teleport into the courtyard,” Dad demanded.
“Easy.” Five huffed. He curled his fingers through the fabric of space, and tugged himself through it with very little effort. Standing in the courtyard, he waved up at the roof.
The dark figure beckoned, and Five obligingly teleported back.
“Now stand on the edge,” the curt command came.
Five rolled his eyes, but moved closer to the edge.
“On the edge, Number Five.” A flash of sunlight glinted off Dad’s monocle.
Five inched his way even closer to the edge of the roof, eyeing the steep drop. He stopped just shy of the gutter, not even a foot away.
“Toes on the edge. I won’t tell you again.”
Five reluctantly squeaked his shoes forward. What was the point of this?
“Now teleport,” his father ordered.
Five let out a breath to settle his nerves, and jumped through space. He was immediately beckoned back to the roof, and he carefully landed himself a good distance from the edge.
“Come here, Number Five.” Dad’s voice came from a different place. Five turned to find him standing dangerously close to the gutter.
He approached slowly, wondering what might come next. Dad reached out, impatient. He pulled Five forward by the elbow.
“This time,” he intoned, “you will teleport mid-air.”
“What?” Five’s stomach turned. “You...you want me to jump off the roof?”
“You are not stupid, Number Five,” he was chastised. “Come here.”
Dad gripped the front of his shirt, the material bunched up in his fist. He firmly maneuvered Five toward the drop.
Five yelped, overbalancing backward and almost losing his footing. He clutched his father’s extended arm, digging his fingers into the fabric of his suit.
He struggled to keep his feet on the roof’s edge, his heels landing on nothing but air. Dad extended his arm further, forcing Five to lean back over the thin air below him.
“If you will not jump, you will fall,” Dad said calmly.
“Please,” Five gasped, the bite of fear rising in his gut, despite the confidence he’d always had in his abilities. He’d never said please before, so maybe, just maybe—
“Teleport,” Sir Reginald Hargreeves commanded, and let go.
Five fell for only a moment before snapping out of his shock and yanking himself through space, back to the relative safety of the roof.
He landed, white-faced, and learned that it didn’t matter if he lived or died. Investments be damned.
It didn’t matter.
“Again.”
That was the first of many times, but Five improved quickly, as he did whenever he was met with a challenge. That didn’t matter either. Reginald made Five jump off the roof again and again, and threw him off if he hesitated. It was like he knew about the terror that would flare up every time, hidden behind Five’s clenched jaw.
Five never stopped feeling that terror. He was afraid, like he had not been afraid before. Of falling, not really. Of his powers failing? No. It was the fear of dying broken on the ground at the hands of a father who never cared that haunted him. Long after he could teleport in mid-air without fear of the act itself, it haunted him.
When would one of them die for Reginald’s research, for his plans? When would the problem become unfixable?
Five wouldn’t be able to fix it. Everything that he’d ever done for his siblings, to help them, so that they could be free someday—it all seemed small. Meaningless. It would be meaningless, if he couldn’t save them.
If something went wrong, there would be no chance to fix it.
No way to go back and save them.
Unless—
Five started in on a new set of equations. Equations that Reginald wouldn't teach him.
Their tenth birthday passed, and then their eleventh, and Five was not afraid to jump out a window, or off a roof. It looked effortless, and the easy competence he exuded was real. But still, he feared dying under Reginald’s cold gaze, of his brothers and sisters dying. He was reminded of his fear every time he had to fall.
When had he stopped thinking of Reginald as Dad, anyway?
His equations became his obsession.
And sometimes, he fell in his dreams. The cool control he exerted in his waking hours did not extend to his subconscious. But if he woke up with panic in his veins and the breath stolen from his lungs, it didn’t bother him much. He didn’t have time for that.
The others had it worse, anyway. A little bit of falling, when he never even hit the ground? That, Number Five could withstand.
He wasn’t afraid of falling, not in the real world. There were better things to fear.
He turned twelve.
He finished the first set of his equations. One step closer to freedom.
And then: the apocalypse.