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The very first emotion Five felt when he stumbled into the gray landscape of the apocalyptic future was absolute and utter dread. The moment he saw a bleak sky and ash flutter in the air on a breeze that felt far too stale, something was wrong. His stomach turned at the sight of twisted metal and the smell of a burnt landscape.
Something was very, very wrong.
An ache curling deep in his ribs rises up, leaving a burning trail in its wake as it settles in the back of his throat. He knows it’s not from his recent run. He knows it’s not because he’s tired. No, it’s dread. It’s panic, it’s devastation creeping into his very being from a realization he doesn’t yet want to come to terms with. But he knows it’ll come whether he likes it or not.
He had run back down the ruined street towards the Academy which he just left only moments before. And, like a child, cried out for his family. He was a child after all, barely a teenager and stuck with the consequences of an impulsive mistake. A boy with far too much ego for a power that he was only just scratching the surface of.
In front of the twisted metal of the gates he once knew so well, Five felt an ugly hole open in his chest and doom of an inescapable fate loom over him like a heavy curtain on the precipe to fall and swallow him whole. His powers, which he had so much confidence in before, sputtered weekly like a car that refused to start up. He felt like the world slip right through his fingers and left him hollow without another single soul to witness it all.
He was stuck in a newfound hell; punishment for a rash show of childish ego that left him with nothing else to hold on to.
• • • • •
Five,
It’s been weeks since we’ve seen you. I think I’ll be honest to myself, and to you this time in these letters at least, and say that I really miss you. I don’t think I’ve been able to stop crying since it’s become apparent that you weren’t even within the city limits. That’s what the others say at least. Where did you go?
I feel a lot more like a jumbled mess than a real person these days. The therapist Dad’s been making me see says that writing what I’m feeling might help me sort out how I’m feeling. Something about putting it down on paper. I guess I can see some of the logic in that but I think I have far too many emotions to put it down in a cohesive letter. I really miss our talks. It was much easier talking to you in person than having some pen and paper as a companion.
After you went away, Dad’s been harsher on us lately with extra drills and practice, more work to do and less time to even remotely think. He’s been talking to me less and less now and letting Pogo do more of the help with training. He often makes Grace or Pogo talk to me in his stead, it’s lonely but I think I’ll take it over speaking face to face with him most days. The others are always exhausted when I see them and there’s even less talk at mealtimes than before. I didn’t think there could be even less talking at already silent meal times but I guess I was wrong. Dad’s frustrated that you left; I think everyone else is too. Maybe it’s better this way when I can throw myself into homework and practicing than sit and think of you.
Grace and Pogo spend a little more time with me in your absence. I like to think they do it because they want to like you did, instead of some secret command Dad probably gave them. Sometimes when I close my eyes and perform on my violin, I imagine it’s you sitting in your favorite chair next to me. Annoyingly scribbling into your worn notebooks, barely sitting correctly in the chair when I warned you that it would hurt your back but you never listened.
I miss you.
Every day I think of wherever you are. Are you alright? Are you eating well? Don’t eat too much sugar, it’ll make your brain rot. (Though I hope it does, loser) I hope you’re alright and make sure you sleep with at least one light on. I know it scares you when you can’t see where things are, even if you won’t admit it.
That’s why every night I leave the lights on for you. Dad hates it and he’s threatened me so many times but I want to make sure you come home. I always have a sandwich ready for you, just the way you like it. Peanut butter and marshmallows but heavy on the marshmallows. I don’t know why you like it but having it here reminds me of you and keeps me company when I wait in the front foyer waiting for you. Could you come home soon? It’s so lonely without you.
• • • • •
Five’s hand crinkles the near-pristine white of the letter. His eyes trace over the loopy handwriting that’s both so familiar and so very alien to him. It’s been so long since he’s seen an actual handwritten piece, let alone Vanya’s.
He kneels in the rubble of the academy, scavenging through the skeleton of its remains. A hollowed-out structure barely reminiscent of the grandiose architecture it originally had. The fires had long gone out and the only thing left was rocks baking in the heat of the sun. He already buried his siblings, numbers one through four, somewhere with the least amount of rubble months ago. In the back of his mind whispered a voice mixed with both relief and horror: there was no sign of numbers six and seven .
“Rest in fucking pieces I guess,” He mutters to himself bitterly. He squints at the letter, the first one of the stack is pages long he realizes. Broken into stilted paragraphs, but long and inviting to his tired eyes. It’s Vanya. A real written piece from Vanya, addressed to him that he found in a box that miraculously survived whatever caused the apocalypse. Near perfect condition despite a few frayed edges, like a gift sent from some omnipotent being above. Five didn’t believe in miracles, often preferring to make them happen on his own, but this he would take. And he would silently thank whoever led him to it.
He thumbs through the stack of envelopes, skimming over their addresses each painstakingly uniform with his name and the date they were written. Five notes the progress of Vanya’s handwriting starting in the loopy scrawl he knew so well before to something more narrow, thin, and neat, stark against the envelope’s face. There’s so many. Several letters, in fact, bounded by the years they were written by elastics on their last legs of their life. So much history between these letters, waiting to be opened.
Five wants to tear into the rest of them, a selfish desire rising in his chest to find out everything Vanya has written. After all, they were all addressed to him, weren’t they? He has a right to see what she addressed to specifically for him.
But he stops, a finger resting on the elastic of the first stack that’s minutes away from snapping. In her first letter, she mentioned this was more of a coping strategy of his absence than actual letters. In this case, it could be more like a diary for her rather than a letter specifically intended for his eyes.
Five’s throat burned at the thought. What if he was intruding on territory he was never supposed to find in the first place? Anyone else he wouldn’t spare a single thought but it’s Vanya. The one person who respected him of all never encroached on the personal lines he made and was always ready to listen to him whenever he needed.
They trusted each other. With everything. And he never wanted to break that trust, even if they couldn’t be together.
Five sighs and puts them back in the box he found them in. Knowing they were with him close by was good enough. For now.
Dusting off the worn shorts of his academy uniform, Five threw the box into the rest of his stuff, collected into a toy wagon he pilfered from the city’s toy store. Not that anyone else was going to use it anyway. Five was alone in the world, quite literally, with no living soul in sight and a troubling predicament for necessary resources.
Five squinted into the distance of the horizon, barely making out the silhouette of dark clouds just looming from afar. It looks like it’ll be another rough night.
• • • • •
Five,
Usually, I try to keep these happy as much as possible but I feel like if I kept doing that, I’d be lying to myself more than I should. I’m human, right? I think I could have some right to feel a little empty and negative sometimes. Maybe.
Diego still taunts me, I know he doesn’t mean it seriously or anything but it still stings. Sometimes I remember the days where you’d teleport some of the things he was holding out of his hands so unexpectedly. In a blink of an eye, it’d be gone and off in some other mysterious part of the house. Annoying as Diego found it, I thought it was really funny. I wish I could tell you that now.
Ben’s been sweet to me. We’ve been exchanging books over the past few weeks and it’s always nice to have someone to talk about stories with. I think he’s the kindest of all. Sometimes I wish I could be as kind as he is but it’s a special type of kindness only Ben can really have. He misses you too. Maybe if you come back soon we can discuss some of our favorite books together and talk more about some of the classics Ben and I have been reading. It’d be nice to get your input, you always seemed to come up with different points every time. You were like this walking contradiction that somehow made sense jumbled up altogether. I have to admit, most of the time I didn’t know what you were saying but… I miss it. I miss you.
Also. I think I should add that Dad’s sending me away for school. Somewhere abroad and away from the others. I’ll be leaving in a few months and even though I don’t like it in the house...I still don’t want to leave. Is that weird? It’s been 14 years in the house with me being alone for most of it but I’m afraid to leave.
I don’t want to leave Ben. Or you, for that matter.
There’s too much of you here. Part of me says I should let you go but… I’m afraid of forgetting you. Of losing you twice.
But Dad insists. Boarding school would be good for me and I suppose he thinks I’m less of a distraction when I’m well away. He’s already upped my dosage for my meds, I doubt I could count as distraction anyway at this point with how drowsy I feel all the time now. Everything’s hazy. Sometimes I think I forget things but I’m not quite sure, my therapist says nothing about it.
I hope things are better where you are. I hope you’re having fun whatever you’re doing and taking care of yourself. I really do miss our days during free time. It just isn’t the same without you. Come home soon, will you? There’s no one around with quite your sense of humor.
Come home, Five.
• • • • •
The paper feels gritty under his grimy hands. Fingers streaking dusty fingerprints across the page. He can’t help it. The letters blur against the white paper, whether it was from the sour wine that Five managed to pilfer from some underground cellar or from the tears threatening to cloud his eyes... he didn’t know.
He knows the before he promised he wouldn’t look at the letters. Afraid of the trust between him and Vanya that held onto his heart with a vice-like grip. But in a moment of weakness, of wine-addled existential dread, Five took one look at the letters stashed in the dusty plastic container peeking out from the dented toolbox and all previous arguments went out the window. It was time to look at them. He had staved off the temptation for several months now.
Vanya could hate him but he needed to know.
Five missed hearing someone else’s voice. He wanted so badly for another thought that wasn’t his own to crowd his mind. In the quiet of a barren world, even talking out loud gets tiring. The mannequin he found in the rubble of what he assumed was a department store helped ease off the heavy fact of being all alone.
“But where did you go?” Five says more to himself, voice cracking. He winces at the dryness in the back of his throat. Sure, wine was a consumable liquid, but it didn’t make for something sustainably hydrating. He sighs, fingers trailing lightly down the margins of the letters.
Other letters are open, tucked with care back in their open envelopes and thrown back into the dust-covered plastic. The most recent one he read seemed to be just before Vanya leaves for boarding school. Somewhere far away from the Academy. Silently, he’s grateful that there are still more letters to read implying Vanya dutifully wrote letters to a boy that blinked out of her life even after she left their childhood behind.
Almost smugly, Five glows a little bit that even through all this time she thinks of him.
Only ever him.
He’s still smiling when he brings the wine bottle up to his lips and continues on to the next few letters.
• • • • •
Five.
It’s already been so many years since I’ve last seen you.
It’s been a long time since my last letter to you as well. I’m not quite sure why a grown woman as myself is writing letters to a boy she lost so long ago. Maybe it’s poetic this way. Maybe it’s me just trying to be romantic in light of everything that’s been happening.
Did you know Ben died?
I had just finished my graduation ceremony, on my way to grab a few celebratory drinks with classmates that pulled me in. I thought it was going to be a great night after weeks of slaving over my thesis for my professors to review. Little did I know was that I’d be on the first flight home, rushing to see the cold, metal face of Ben’s statue erected in the courtyard.
Did you know there were barely pieces of him to even see? Let alone have a closed casket?
Poor Ben.
The sweetest of all of us, roped into the little games Dad and Luther spun around him.
I feel sick just thinking of it.
I’m exhausted writing this in the cramped room of my motel. Did you know Klaus knocked down the wall between our rooms? I didn’t know it either. You must imagine my surprise when I came home late at night -- or was it in the early hours of the morning? -- fresh from a red-eye, only to find that I didn’t have a bed to collapse into that night. Klaus wasn’t exactly awake to explain himself but I was too tired to actually care about it. Maybe it was for the better.
Tomorrow we’re going to talk as a ‘family’ on how to properly handle the news of Ben’s death to the public. Of course, I think I’ll be sidelined once again while the others could handle the talking. It’s the least I could do...I think.
Losing you...and then Ben? I don’t know, Five.
I’m not sure what to think. I think I should feel more sad for the both of you but also more angry that I’ve been left alone like this but...I just feel numb. Like a gaping hole in my chest opening up wider and wider that threatens to swallow me whole.
Why did you leave me here? Why did you leave me alone? We could have grown up together, run away just like we used to talk about. You would have had no problem getting into some prestigious university and I would’ve visited you every week to make sure you weren’t trying to overwork yourself on your next theorem or thesis. I’d walk in to hand you a sandwich, just the way you like, with a thermos of coffee to keep you company. I’d sit and watch you rattle off equations until we both dozed off and woke up to do it all over again. We would’ve been tired, exhausted, worn down by our past. But we would’ve been together, and happy.
You would’ve been smiling up at me on that graduation stage as the dean handed me my degree.
I feel delusional for even entertaining any of these ideas but I can’t stop it. You’re always there in the back of my mind and I hate you for that. You were so conceited back then. A real asshole too. Always too arrogant for your own good when you could’ve conceded to make things go a lot smoother. But you never backed down and I always used to admire you for that.
I miss late nights with you. I miss that stupid, sly grin of yours across the dining table. We trusted each other with practically everything. I remember sitting on the edges of our beds swapping secrets with each other like it was just us two in the whole world and nothing ever mattered. To me, you were everything.
Was that a precious memory for you too?
I hope so.
I really do.
I’m not quite sure how’d I feel if you didn’t feel the same too.
Maybe this is just the ramblings of an adult woman trying to get a grip on the spinning world around her. Maybe everything I’m writing down at this moment is just something so temporary. I’m not so sure. You probably won’t even see any of these ridiculous letters anyway.
You know...after everything, I think I might be angry with you Five. But most of all, I think I’m just hurt.
• • • • •
Five, older and worn down to the bone, holds the letter in his hand side by side with the curled pages of Vanya’s book. Grimy fingers gingerly smooth over the papers as he gazes long as hard at the date scribbled neatly into the corner of the paper.
Today, he would have been just as old as the Vanya writing this.
It felt...odd reading something so personal. So dated so that he felt like he was growing along with Vanya’s letter but also so distant because he certainly wasn’t there . Certainly not there to see her beaming face as she crossed the stage of her graduation ceremony.
Fuck.
He’d give anything to see Vanya smile down at him in those ridiculous billowy gowns, pride on her face as she finally receives an award for all the hard work Five’s sure she toiled through. He wishes he was there to clap and cheer loudly all for her. No matter how cheesy it’d be.
And Ben’s death.
Goddamnit. He didn’t even want to think about it. Vanya’s description in her book was kind enough to spare the details but Five was sure he couldn’t begin to imagine the true horror behind it.
His eyes trace the stark, printed lines of Vanya’s book as it flickers back to the clean scrawl on his left.
He’s read through Vanya’s book over and over again after fishing it out of the rubble of an abandoned library months before. Cover to cover, he read it again like a lullaby for his mind as he’d fall asleep clutching it in his hand.
Delores would half-heartedly scold him on holding onto something that connected him too much to the Umbrella Academy but Five knew that inside she understood how much it meant to him. After a while, she’d say nothing when Five would pull it out and flip through it at random times of the day. He always flipped to the same page every time now, the one with the fond mention of him by Vanya.
Compared to the vehement emotion that practically pours out of Vanya’s letters, her book feels like a whisper of a flame in comparison. Still very much her, but nauseatingly corporate. Barely any emotion. Sharp knives hidden under a thick facade of passive reminiscence.
Still plenty to get mad about. Five thinks. If he was one of the other siblings. But Vanya keeps mentions of him short and to the point. Bittersweet in her passing descriptions of him since he left so early. Yet every time his eyes and hands always find the same passage she wrote in her book, the words always pulling at his heart whenever he imagines her saying it.
Though more prone to arrogance [...] than the average preteen[,] Five was my sole confidant [...] years before he disappeared [...].
Such a simple line, one that brings a wry smile to his lips.
“ ‘More prone to arrogance,’ she says,” Five huffs out, “And yet in this letter she really has it in for me. Yeah sure, tell me how you really feel, Vanya.” He chuckles a little at the absurdity of it all. Not even years of being in a barren wasteland dulled any thought of Vanya. Even through it all, her personality shines through such a bleak time.
Even as an adult, Five knows he misses Vanya as much -- perhaps twice as much -- as she misses him. Through these letters, he feels as though she’s almost right beside him. Holding him tight in the worst of the nights and the most brutal of days. These letters were his lifeline to a life he wished he knew by her side.
But for now, he’ll spend his days trying to get back. No matter the cost.
• • • • •
Five,
I feel exhausted.
I’ve published the book I wrote, thinking it’d be a good idea after everything that’s happened because of Dad. Part of me did it because...maybe you’d do the same. Expose everything that happened behind the shining facade of the Umbrella Academy without sparing a thought.
Just this once, I wanted to be just as reckless as you.
Did you feel simmering regret after you ran? Or are you happy wherever you are? I thought this book would be something of a good idea to finally come to terms with all of the shit that we went through. I think it felt nice when I finally saw my life wrapped up in a shiny hardcover of a book. But also the dread the crept in dampened everything. When the publisher handed me my book, I wasn’t exactly sure how to feel.
“Fresh off the printer!” She had chirped.
I don’t think you would have liked her very much.
I stared at the volume in my hands. The weight of it was heavy but it felt odd staring at it in this form. Basically, my entire life wrapped up in a couple of hundred pages bound together by industrial glue and printed paper...was that all I was? My life, amounted in a single novel, felt odd to me when I placed it gingerly back in the shipping box and let them distribute it.
Allison called today. It was late and I couldn’t make out her words. Whether it was garbled from the pills I took or the raging static on her end, I’m not sure.
Diego also came by, I think. My apartment door was cracked open when I was sure I had locked it. A slip of paper was pinned to the mottled walls of my apartment by a knife when I switched on the lights. Something threatening, something angry. I’m certain.
I took a few more pills after.
No word from anyone else. Not that it would make much of a difference anyway.
I mean, the label on the bottle does say ‘take as needed’, no? I’m just taking what’s given to me as it comes.
I think that might be a bad attitude to have in the situation.
I’m not entirely sure anymore.
• • • • •
That was the last of the letters Five reads. Everything else he had opened and read through each of the envelopes contents. He hungered for Vanya’s words like some pervasive creep. He couldn’t help it, after all, Five hoarded those letters and never let them out of his sigh. Every line and every word he had practically burned itself into his mind as he tucks the letters into the pages of Vanya's books, never too far from it at any moment of the day.
He had been careless once. He won’t be careless again.
But now he stands up dizzily, squinting as his eyes adjust to the foggy atmosphere of the new environment he was in. His clothes feel so much heavier than before and his limbs a lot lighter than he remembered. For a minute Five thinks he’s lost himself in a dream state after projecting his consciousness across the quantum states. Perhaps he made a mistake in his many calculations and something ended up wrong.
It isn’t until he hears approaching footsteps does his mind clear up a bit more. He squints through his spinning vision, waiting for it to focus until he realizes he’s looking at the slack-jawed faces of the adult version of his siblings. He’s immediately annoyed for some reason, seeing their face dumb with shock until something slides into view in the corner of his eye.
Mousy brown hair tied back clumsily back in a bun. Five’s stare was met with innocent, brown eyes wide with disbelief.
Vanya. He breathes for a moment.
She looked similar to the portrait on the back of his worn copy of her book, but she looked...tired. The bruises under her eyes more prominent and the worry on her face shining through. Oh, Vanya.
It’s only until Klaus’ sly quip does Five actually look down at himself and realize what’s really going on.
“Shit,” He grits out as the others surround him. Now everything makes a little more sense. But it’s way more inconvenient now that he’s an aging man inside a 13-year-old’s gangly body.
The annoyance within him simmers through all the commotion. He makes his way inside the house brushing past his siblings as Five begins to rummage through the kitchen. Jumping that much in such a short instance leaves him feeling weak and most definitely hungry.
The weight of their stares is heavy. Five can even feel Vanya’s own stare trace every instance of his movement. He’s deliberative in the way he presents himself to his siblings, this time they’re alive, unlike the last time he saw them years ago. The feeling of being back in a younger body is so alien and disjointed but Five tries to keep his wits about him as he goes through the motions of making his peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches.
He thinks he might’ve seen the smallest glimmer in Vanya’s gaze and he pauses, catching her eye for the briefest moment. It leaves as soon as it comes and she averts her gaze uncomfortably, shifting in the tiny chair she’s scrunched herself into while her siblings crowd the table above her.
She’s...small. Five realizes. Tinier than he imagined, and the way she shrinks even further into herself makes him almost surprised. The disparity between the Vanya in front of him now and the Vanya he imagined from the tone of the letters throws him for a moment. Just a moment.
Five blinks to clear his head, and continues along with his explanation. His siblings trailing after him to pick up the pieces while he trudges along his decades old plan to stop the world from ending. But his mind is elsewhere, focused more on the woman who watches him with those wide eyes. Staring at him helplessly, worn down by the time he never got to spend by her side.
He wants to reach out to her right when she’s so close...but now’s not the time. Not with so many eyes and ears vying for attention. Not with each one of their siblings far too wired about the wrong things to properly think about the situation at hand. Five will have to wait a little longer for answers even though he’s done enough waiting in the wasteland already.