Chapter Text
“Hold on! It’s gonna get messy!” shouted Five. He needed to concentrate on the math for this jump. One teensy miscalculation and it was over. Five steeled his resolve and did his calculations as quickly as he could while multiplying all the variables by seven to make up for the extra consciousnesses. He couldn’t remember if a specific variable was for the universe, or the universal truth of time travel overriding previous memories in a consciousness. He decided better safe than sorry, and multiplied that by seven too. He didn’t want to accidentally leave behind memories for a few of his siblings or himself!
The fire was getting closer and closer, but in a tension filled turn, Five ex machina, they managed to escape in a swirling pit of blue and white lights. The universe folded around them like the way a baker folds in chocolate chips. Right about then everyone felt like the eggs being beaten into the butter and sugar. The universe was the hand mixer and they were being pulled apart and combined to make something else.
Then they separated. They weren’t the binding agent anymore. Now they were like everyone else. They were separate entities surrounded by the fabric of the universe, or dough, in this analogy. Five immediately decided that all sweets were the root of evil and threw up where they landed.
Where are we anyway? Five wondered. When are we? Was also a very pressing question, but that was not the case for everyone else.
“Five! Are you ok- is that blood‽” Diego moved to help Five get up from the crushed puddle of time traveler that he had become. Oh, fun, he was throwing up stomach acid. And blood, too.
Five pushed Diego away and forced himself to his feet. This was a mistake. The cool grass was looking more enticing every second he stood upon it. “We need the exact date. We need- shit.” Five’s head was spinning. It felt worse than the hangover he got sometime around his 37th birthday and the hangover he got after the library during apocalypse week, combined .
Someone saying, “Guys, we’re like seventeen or eighteen again,” interrupted the stomping elephants. Five was pretty sure it was Klaus. It was Diego. He interrupted again:
“You’re not thirteen anymore, Five”
“Great,” Five said through clenched teeth.
“Ben,” Allison gasped.
Five guessed that part of his massive headache must have been the strain of somehow bringing Ben back to the land of the living. Too bad he missed the reunion. He saw Ben and then he saw the still-passed-out Vanya, and decided to follow her lead. He went down, and mercifully, it was away from the puddle of vomit.
&
When Five woke up again, he was in his bed with Vanya sitting up on the far edge. It was still dark outside. Ben was reading a book to her in his desk chair. She had also overloaded on her powers. They probably wanted to keep watch over both of them together and decided that Ben was the least likely to piss Vanya off or something.
“Good morning, Five,” Ben said while marking his page.
“Ben, you and Vanya-? What happened?” Five managed to rasp out. Vanya handed him a glass of water and he gulped it greedily.
“Once you passed out, we figured out we were in the park about four blocks from home, and then Vanya woke up and started screaming, it was-”
“About what?” Five was growing more concerned as he kept talking. In the 13 years and about a week he knew Vanya, he couldn’t remember her raising her voice once. The only other time he had ever seen her vaguely angry, she blew up the moon. This must have been huge.
“Before I destroyed the house, Luther locked me in a cage Dad built to contain me when my powers got out of hand.” Vanya looked angry just talking about it.
“Why the hell would he do that? Jesus, that’s- that’s…” Five was in complete disbelief at Luther’s stupidity.
“I know. I thought Vanya was going to kill him. He did that because Vanya used her powers to cut Allison’s throat and vocal chords. He was probably scared for the safety of others. That doesn't necessarily justify it, but...” Ben trailed off.
Five blinked. What do you say to that anyway? If a mind reader were to look into Five’s head they would see: “My sister seriously injured my other sister, and my brother locked up the sister that did the injuring about it. What ?”
“So, we found a newspaper in the park,” Vanya said while she handed it to him.
“August twenty-ninth, Nineteen ninety-four. That’s… weird.” Five was referring to their appearances. They should be about five years old, but they looked like they were in their late teens.
“On page six, there’s a small article that mentions the miracle birth of 43 children that were all promptly adopted after October 1, Nineteen seventy-five. We’re sixteen,” Vanya said. “You were only out for a few hours so in about ten minutes it will be the thirtieth”
Five flipped to page six.
Tension In the Scientific Community
By Gerald Driver
|
There has been tension between scientists ever since the spontaneous births of 43 children on October 1, 1975. Some scientists are arguing that they should have gotten a chance to study the mothers and children before Sir Reginald Hargreeves adopted them. One scientist, Dr. Michael Harding argues, “We should have been able to see what happened. If this happens to other women this could be very bad. We were lucky that these women were all able to give birth and all parties survived. How can we prevent this in the future?” It has been almost 17 years since the miracle birth. If it were going to happen again, it would have. Another scientist, Dr. Olivia Spencers, has stated, “I don’t see the need to experiment on children.” She seems to have the right idea. Children are precious regardless of how they were born or who their fathers, or lack thereof, are. No child should have to grow up experimented on. We attempted to reach Sir Reginald Hargreeves, but he was unavailable for comment. |
Gerald Driver must be very young or very new. It was one of the worst articles Five had ever read, but it was informative for their purposes.
Five looked up from the article to see Vanya and Ben who were waiting for him to finish reading it. Five always thought Vanya and Ben were the two most tolerable out of the whole house. God, he missed them. He must have had a strange look on his face because Ben put his book down on the bedside table and tentatively took his hand in a gentle way that didn’t feel as overwhelming as other touches have felt since the apocalypse. Vanya gave him a small smile, but she did not move to touch him.
“We should sleep. Tomorrow we can see what changed and talk to the others. For tonight, we should just get to bed.” Ben slowly moved to get up. Five was beginning to feel tired again anyway. He said goodnight to Ben and Vanya and then walked over to his light-switch to shut it off. Then he heard Allison speak through the door.
“Vanya, I wanted to talk to you.” Her voice was soft and delicate in a way Five had never heard in his life, but he recognized as nearly maternal.
“Allison- Allison I am so, so sorry.” It hurt to hear Vanya pleading like that. Her voice sounded a bit strained. She was probably about to cry from guilt. Five felt uncomfortable, but he continued to listen even after he turned his light off.
“No, Vanya, I was wrong, I shouldn’t have tried to-”
“Allison I was irrational, you were probably going to calm me down, right? I am so sorry-”
“Want to call it even? I tried to rumor you, you temporarily took my powers. We both did shitty things to each other.” Allison sounded strange. Her voice was a bit hoarse and her tone was a bit off from the sister he remembered. She must be near tears too, Five thought.
“I’ll take it. We both need to work on the whole sisters thing, huh,” Vanya was still strained, but she could pass for normal if Five wasn’t paying as much attention.
Five felt like he had walked in on a very private moment. He heard two pairs of feet walking down the hall, and then decided to close his door, and finally go to sleep. “After the hell week I’ve had, I deserve it,” was Five’s last thought before his head hit the pillow and he drifted off to sleep without extreme exhaustion or alcohol. It was the best sleep he had gotten in nearly 46 years.