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There are a few things in this life that Five is what you might call… averse to.
Take Klaus, for example. Klaus is a lot of things, but tolerable? Not among them. For instance, Five would rather dig a rusty nail out of his own foot using a pair of needle-nose pliers (not a fun experience, trust him) than admit to anyone, in any time continuum, that Klaus could ever, in any way, be anywhere in the realm of right.
…And yet. Unfortunately for them all, Klaus might actually be right.
Not about most things. Not about his insistence that Five needs a new wardrobe, or that ginger belongs on breakfast burritos. Those things are still flagrantly untrue. But when he said that Five was addicted to the apocalypse… well. He may have had a teeny bit of a point.
See, the thing is that Five is goal oriented. He’s never just… not had a goal. As a toddler, he wanted to figure out what his powers were. Before his jump, he wanted to time travel. After his jump, he wanted to avert the apocalypse. And now… on the other side of April 1st 2019 and with the world still all in one piece… he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s aimless, drifting through his second chance at life with a body too young and a mind too old, unsure of his next step in a way he’s never ever before been. He’s… uncertain.
It’s disgusting, frankly speaking.
At least, he reasons, he’s got time to figure things out, now. He’s youthful once again, and though being thirteen for the second time around is anything but practical, he can make it work. He just has to sit back and observe until he figures out what his next step should be. His family is a dysfunctional mess—how hard can it be to come up with something?
It’s with this in mind that he sits at the dinner table two weeks after the not-apocalypse, hugging a cup of coffee to his chest as he observes his family. Allison and Vanya are to his left, while his three (four) brothers are across from him on the other side of the table. Grace is at the head, and Pogo at the foot. It’s a… cozy… arrangement. And a mandatory one. They’ve been having dinner together as a family as often as they can, trying to work through years of dysfunction so as to prevent any future apocalyptic meltdowns. Just because they’re past the original date of Armageddon doesn’t mean they’re safe. This family is, all things considered, a mess.
Unfortunately for Five, the vast majority of that mess is interpersonal conflict. Fights that happened in the sixteen years that he was missing, resentments that have curdled into something sour and unpalatable while he wasn’t around to observe them. He doesn’t have the first insight in how to fix most of these issues—he was always better with things that were tangible, rather than this tangled knot of emotions. Or, if not tangible, then involving complex quantum theory, at the very least. He’s just… well… bad with feelings. Saving his family from an outside threat, sure, that’s easy enough. But saving them from each other? From themselves? Christ. Who has the time?
Still, he thinks with a sigh, there must be something. Something small that he can do, some action that will make a difference. He’ll take anything, at this point. He lets his eyes roam across his siblings, catching on the small quirks each of them show. How Luther hunches his shoulders to take up less space. How Diego is hyper-attuned to the sound of the door and glances at it every time it rattles with the wind. How Allison always has a full face of make-up, no matter the hour. How Vanya gets quiet when no one addresses her directly for a while. How Klaus sometimes flinches at things that no one else can see.
Five frowns, leaning forward just a little and taking a sip of his coffee. Klaus… now there’s an interesting one. His brother has always been twitchy—even more-so since Five came back from the future, really. It was the ghosts, and then it was the drugs he used to drown the ghosts, and then it was the withdrawal from the drugs that he used to drown the ghosts. He’s still clean—there are subtle differences between high Klaus and sober Klaus, but they’re easy enough to figure out if you’re as smart as Five is—so that’s not the problem. At least, not entirely. The problem is that nine times out of ten, substance abuse is a form of self-medication—it’s a reactionary response to something else. And without treating the core issue, treating the addiction is next to impossible.
Five purses his lips. Klaus started using because of the ghosts, and judging by the way that the guy refuses to turn toward Diego’s side of the table even when Diego speaks directly to him, said ghosts are just as much an issue as ever. Add to that the fact that Klaus is up at night almost as often as Five himself, how his face goes blank and white sometimes when they’re out in public, how his eyes track things that aren’t there… well. It would seem that Klaus is in need of some help.
Five watches just a moment longer before he nods to himself, sets down his coffee cup, and jumps from the room, ignoring his siblings raising their voices to call him back. He’s up in his room a moment later, unearthing the briefcase that lives under his bed. He never intended to use it again—it was just a safety net in case something else went wrong—but right now he’s never been more thankful that he stowed it away like he did.
He sets the briefcase to 1956 and is off in a flash of blue light.
***
The Temps Commission building is the same as ever when he finds his way to its doors mere moments later. A lot has changed since he killed the Handler, but you wouldn’t think it to see this place from the outside. Still, taking her out was the first domino leading toward meaningful change in the Commission, and now… well. Let’s just say that Five is on much better speaking terms with the Commission’s new management.
Which is why he’s here today. There’s something he wants, and if anyone can get it for him—if anyone can make it for him—it’s the Engineer.
He steadies his breath, straightens his tie, and strides toward the front doors.
It doesn’t take long to find her. He gets directions and a visitor’s pass from the secretary at the front desk, and then he’s jumping down into the Metaphysics department, both feet planted as he looks around, hands in his pockets as he goes. It’s located in the basement, a warehouse of a room with a built-in manufacturing section. Two knocks at the Engineering Room door and he’s welcomed inside. He purses his lips, glancing around as the Engineer’s eyes go wide.
“Oh!” she says, straightening up from the work table she’s leaning over. “Oh, Mr. Five, sir!”
“Hello, Engineer,” Five says, eyeing the production line of new briefcases rolling across a conveyor belt against the far wall. “My apologies for bombing the briefcase room. It was a necessary sacrifice, I hope you understand.”
The Engineer laughs, high and nervous. “It’s no skin off my back, dear. Gives me something to do. Goodness, it’s probably me who should be apologizing to you!”
“There’s no need for that,” Five says, and it’s a bit of a struggle to keep the impatience out of his voice. Corporate politeness… not his favorite. He’s good at it, because he’s good at everything, but that doesn’t mean it comes naturally to him. He watches as she deflates slightly in her pencil skirt.
“Oh. Well, if you say so. I’m such a big fan of the Hargreeves—if there’s anything I can do for you just say the word!”
Five tilts his head, his back to her to hide the small smile that curls across his face. He schools his expression into neutrality before he turns on his heel to face her. “…There is one thing,” he says.
***
It takes a while for the two of them to come to an agreement. The Engineer is nervous at first about granting him his request—the commission has never done it like this before, are you sure it’s okay?—but she eventually agrees, getting to work on a prototype as she ducks her head down over sheets of graph paper, scribbling out sketches of the containment mechanism. Five watches her for a while before leaving her to it, trusting that she’ll get in touch in due time.
It takes about a week, give or take a few decades. Five hums, reading through the specs sheet that the Engineer sent along. It’s not perfect—there’s a catch, because of course there is—but all things considered this is more than Five had dared hope for, and he didn’t even have to kill anyone for it. Incredible.
He approves the specs, and in another week he gets a package in the mail, addressed to ‘The Boy’ and delivered by a bewildered postman who claims it ‘just appeared in my truck, okay, this is some freaky ass shit’. Five doesn’t bother telling him that it was space-time manipulation—such discussions are often wasted on the mundane. He just nods, grabs the package, and closes the door on the poor guy’s face before the guy can ask for his parents or something equally stupid.
Five wastes no time jumping to his room, where he rips open the cardboard to unearth an unassuming velvet jewelry box. He cracks it open just to make sure everything is in one piece and that The Engineer stuck to all his specifications—she has—before he jumps to Klaus’s door, rapping on it impatiently.
“Who is it?” Klaus calls in a sing-song voice, opening the door wide despite the fact that he’s wearing nothing but a pair of briefs. Five’s face twists in disgust—he spent forty-five years in a post-apocalyptic world and even he has a sense of decency better than Klaus—before he barks at his brother to get some damn clothes on. Klaus snickers but complies, throwing on a bathrobe that must belong to Allison and a pair of orange socks that go up to his thighs. Tying the belt of the robe he saunters back to the doorway, draping himself dramatically across it. “What can I do for you, brother mine?” he asks, eyes sparkling with curiosity.
Instead of responding, Five thrusts the box out.
Klaus takes it, the only sign of shock that Five is giving him something a half-beat of hesitation. He pries the box open and stares down, tilting his head to the side for a long moment.
Too long. Something is wrong. Five frowns, tapping the toe of his shoe on the hardwood floor. “The instructions are under the locket,” he says, waiting for Klaus to catch on. When he doesn’t, Five crosses his arms. “What’s the matter?” he demands.
Klaus clears his throat. “You know, Fivey, I’m very flattered that you’d think of me like this, but…”
“But what?”
“It’s just that I don’t feel the same way.”
Five frowns, frustration surging in his chest. He doesn’t like feeling out of the loop, something that happens a lot with Klaus despite Five’s clearly superior intellect. “I’m not following,” he says.
Klaus winces. “…Luther got Allison a locket, if you get my drift.”
It takes a moment to work out what Klaus is getting at, but when he does, Five flinches back, baring his teeth. “Christ, Klaus! What the hell is wrong with you?!”
“Hey, buddy, don’t take this out on me. You’re the one handing out tokens of your undying love—”
“It’s not—just—for the love of god. It’s a container for your power, you moron!”
“Oh,” Klaus says, and then blinks. “…A what, now?”
Lord help them all. “Let me explain it in small words. You put the locket on, your power goes into the locket, and then boom—whoever is wearing the locket has your power. Easy enough to follow?”
“Uh…”
Five drags a hand through his hair, fighting the urge to just teleport away. “What is so hard to grasp, Klaus?”
Klaus fumbles, looking past Five at a spot of air that must hold Ben. “I just—I don’t understand why I need to put my power into a locket? Like what’s it going to do? What difference does it make?”
Rolling his eyes back in his head, Five sighs. Why does doing something thoughtful have to be so damn difficult in this family? “It’s so you can pass it off to someone else, idiot. So you can—get a break without getting high or whatever.”
“…Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. There’s just one catch—someone needs to be wearing it at all times, otherwise the spiritual energy of your power will accumulate inside of it and it might blow a hole between the realms. Not exactly what I was hoping for when I pitched the idea to the Engineer, but it will work for our purposes. Now are you going to put it on or what?”
“I…” Klaus swallows, looking up past Five again. “Is this… I mean, what do you think?”
Five frowns harder than ever, resisting the urge to turn and look over his shoulder even though he knows he won’t be able to see the ghost standing there. Klaus hums as if in thought, eyes flicking down to the locket—black lacquer with a little pearl inlay of the planchette of an ouiji board on it—and then back up again.
“As if,” he says.
A beat.
“You’ll miss me,” he says.
A beat.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
A beat.
And then, just when Five is about to demand that he make Ben corporeal so that Five doesn’t have to watch half of a conversation, he swallows hard and slips the locket out of its box. He hands the box over to Five and works at the clasp, raising it to the back of his neck and clasping it expertly without looking. The instructions say to open the locket once on, so Klaus does, looking odd and wary and completely at odds with his lacy bathrobe.
Five holds his breath, watching closely. It takes a moment, but then Klaus shudders, and his hands light up with an ethereal blue glow. He gasps aloud and clutches at the locket, and both—all three of them?—watch as the blue glow is siphoned off into the open locket, all of his power draining out of him and into the cool metal until suddenly it snaps closed with a decisive click.
Klaus, breathing heavy, raises his head to focus over Five’s shoulder. “That was… interesting,” he says, a laugh playing on his lips.
Five purses his lips. “That was only half of it. The real test is whether or not you can pass it off to someone else.”
“Okay. But… who?” Klaus asks.
With a sigh, Five thrusts out a hand, wriggling his fingers impatiently. When Klaus hesitates, he contemplates teleporting into his space and stealing it. But then again, the whole point of this exercise was to help Klaus, not to take his autonomy away from him, right? Klaus has to choose to let go of his power, to hand it over of his own free will.
“I… you’ll give it back when I ask, right?” Klaus asks, his voice oddly pitched. Five resists the urge to roll his eyes and instead nods, watching his brother closely.
It takes Klaus a long moment and several deep breaths before he moves. Then, his jaw gritted, he pushes the locket into Five’s waiting palm.
Five tilts his head, allowing the chill of it to wash over him. It feels like… well… what he’d imagine feeling a ghost would be like. As if the air around him has dropped several degrees all at once, charged with something not quite normal, not quite tangible. A noiseless noise rises to his ears, quiet sussurations dragging chilled fingers down his spine as one by one ghosts flicker into existence all around him. He turns, coming face to face with the one Klaus has been looking at all this time.
“Hi, Five. Long time no see,” Ben says.
Five allows a rare grin to spread across his face. “Excellent. Time to go math this bitch.”
***
Five has always wanted to take a crack at his siblings powers, though he’ll never admit it. He’s always secretly thought that if his siblings could just understand their powers better, if they knew the math and the equations behind their abilities, then they would be able to utilize them so much more. There was no way to prove that he was right, but math has never failed Five, and if only his siblings had been a little more like him maybe they wouldn’t have struggled so much growing up.
Of course, he’s old enough now to have realized that math can’t solve every problem. There aren’t equations for emotions. Well, there are—Five has long since memorized the chemical compositions of every hormone in the human body—but there are too many variables at play to figure out what action a person will take next from a mathematical perspective alone. At least, not in a timely manner.
Ghosts, on the other hand… they’re fragmented by death. Ghosts don’t change or grow—they’re stuck in the patterns they established in life, and often very specific patterns, at that. They are ruled by certain emotions, vengeance or anger or sadness, and thus can be more easily broken down into a mathematical equation. Now that Five can see them in their true form, hear their words for himself, he knows he can figure this out.
“So, what, you’re going to gene sequence the human soul?” Ben asks, lounging on Five’s desk chair as Five scribbles on the chalkboard wall.
Five hums. “To the best of my ability, yes.”
Ben crosses his arms, tilting back with his hood pulled up over his face as if he’s about to take a nap. “Is that even possible?”
“These powers are very different from my own, I will grant you that…” Five trails off for a moment, shakes his head, and scrubs out a whole section of the equation to rewrite it. “…and Klaus and I have always had very different approaches to our powers… but when you think about it, they’re actually pretty similar in at least one very important way.”
“…Okay, I’ll bite. What way is that?”
Five hops down from the desk, examining the white chalk. He’s going to need at least seven more colors if he’s going to do this right.
“Five?”
He blinks. “What?”
“Are you going to answer the question?”
“Right. Think of it this way—there are two things that make human beings human. The tangible, aka their bodies, and the intangible, aka the spiritual, aka their minds. Or their souls, if you want to get religious about it. My powers effect space-time, meaning that I have some measure of control over the tangible. Ghosts, on the other hand, are entirely intangible—that’s what Klaus’s powers deal with. The two of us are two sides of the same coin, and together we complement each other. Together, we can understand what makes a human human.”
Ben nods along, though Five isn’t paying quite enough attention to him to tell if he actually understands or if he’s just going along with what Five is saying. It doesn’t really matter much either way. Ben doesn’t need to understand. He just needs to be there for Five to bounce ideas off of, like a rubber duck.
Five goes to write another leg of the equation, pauses at the white chalk in his hand, and then rolls his eyes. “Who do I have to kill to get some colored chalk around here?” he mutters. To his surprise, Ben stands, beckoning him toward the door.
“Come on,” he says, eyes twinkling with mischief. “I can help with that.”
***
Klaus, Five finds, has been holding out on them all. Never again will Five underestimate the usefulness of being able to talk to ghosts. It’s no wonder that Klaus can get around unseen when he wants to—he has a built in radar system that can tell him when someone is approaching, and that isn’t even all of it. Not only can Ben warn him of obstacles and people in his way, but he’s also spied on all of them enough to know that Luther has a box of colored sidewalk chalk hidden away under his bed, and he manages to get Five there and back without having to waste energy on a jump and with no one the wiser. They even sneak a peek in on Klaus on the way back from their errand—he’s curled up in his bed snoring with his headphones askew, looking more at peace than Five has ever seen him.
Five hums, impressed, as they slip back into his room a moment later. He could do without the creeps hanging around in the periphery with their fatal wounds out on full display, and someone is screaming bloody murder off in another wing of the house somewhere, and the constant murmur in the back of his mind is starting to get a little old, but—
“Five!”
Five jumps. “What!” he snaps, turning to find Diego leaning through his door with a pinched expression on his face.
“Dude. I’ve been trying to get your attention for like five minutes,” Diego says.
“Sorry, it’s… loud,” Five says, and resists the urge to giggle. How many times has he heard Klaus say that? He never understood what the hell he meant until now. Ah, irony.
“Loud?” Diego asks, frowning.
With a huff, Five turns to Diego, jumping down from the windowsill. “Doesn’t matter. You’ve got my attention—what do you need, hmmm?” he asks.
“Just wanted to know if you slept last night,” Diego says.
Ah, how time flies. Five waves him away, examining the progress he’s made on his walls. “I had more important things to do,” he says, and then jumps down to the kitchen before his brother can reply or, more likely, notice the locket around his neck.
The kitchen is empty for one blissful moment before the ghosts begin appearing, drifting downstairs after him, some down the stairwell and some through the ceiling. Ben appears a moment later, rolling his eyes.
Interesting. The ghosts don’t seem to be able to cling during a jump. Or, at least, don’t seem to care to try. Five hums, cramming a few peanut-butter crackers in his mouth as he begins a pot of coffee. He’s going to have to do some more research on this, test out a few theories. He’s already started writing down his observations in a journal for Klaus to peruse at his leisure—no doubt Klaus will find it hard to follow, but it’s the least Five can do. Besides, it’s absolutely fascinating to see how the ghosts interact—or don’t interact, as the case may be—with the world around them. The questions and the implications are endless. Five could spend the next three weeks working on this project and he probably wouldn’t even slow down.
Which is why it’s a surprise when he jumps back up to his room with a cup of coffee in his hand to find Klaus waiting for him, tapping his fingers on his leather-clad thighs.
Five frowns. “…Can I help you?” he asks. Klaus looks well-rested for once in his life, which is a striking comparison only because Five is just now realizing that he’s never seen Klaus after a good night’s rest.
Klaus glances around, looking oddly… vulnerable. “I, uh… I was wondering if I could get it back?”
Five blinks. He can’t mean the locket, can he? But what else would he mean? Five and Ben share a glance, before Five huffs. “I don’t mind having it, if that’s what you’re caught up on. The conditions aren’t exactly ideal but I’m close to a breakthrough—”
Klaus and Ben both roll their eyes at that, eerily in sync for two people who can’t interact with each other. “You promised him you’d give it back,” Ben says, a soft reminder.
Five huffs again. He’s grown accustomed to Ben being there. At some point in the last fifteen hours the faces his ghost brother keeps making at his equations have become tolerable. Ben is a tolerable freaking bastard. But, unfortunately, he’s also right—Five isn’t taking Klaus’s power hostage. That isn’t the point of this whole exercise.
He sighs. “That I did, Ben. That I did… but are you sure you want it back so soon?”
Klaus laughs, a somewhat self-conscious sound. “I actually kind of miss the noise, weirdly. There’s this one guy who never shuts up and it’s strangely comforting.”
Ben snorts, but Five can see the smile that’s spreading across his face. For the first time Five thinks about what death must have been like for Ben. Alone with Klaus for years upon years… it couldn’t have been easy. But, then again, death seems pretty boring. Klaus, on the other hand… nothing with Klaus is ever boring. Ben and Five had a good time together, yeah, but Five is no Klaus—and if there’s anyone Ben has to be stuck with for all eternity, Five is actually pretty glad it’s his former-junkie brother. They balance each other out.
“…Fine,” Five says. He then turns to his dresser, snapping up the journal he began scribbling in last night. It’s still got a few empty pages at the end, but Klaus can fill them in with his own notes, Five figures. “Here,” he says, and hands it over, along with the locket.
The last ghost he sees is Ben, who is laughing at the face Klaus is making at the journal.
***
They come to an arrangement after that. Whenever Klaus needs some sleep, or some quiet, or some warmth, Five takes the locket. Not too often, and never for too long—ten hours at most, generally. It’s enough to satisfy all three of them. Klaus gets some relief, Five gets to scratch his puzzle itch, and Ben gets to talk to someone other than Klaus without using Klaus’s powers to become corporeal and wearing Klaus out.
As such, it isn’t long before the others start to pick up on the fact that something is different.
Five isn’t sure exactly what it is that tips them off. The fact that Klaus’s hands aren’t always icy cold when he touches them? How Five sometimes starts mumbling to thin air? The locket itself? Who knows! All he knows is that one moment he’s ducking around a decapitated spirit in the living room and the next Diego has him by the shoulder.
Diego, for the record, is lucky that Five only throws him over his shoulder and doesn’t just stab him.
“Fuck,” Diego wheezes, rolling off the remains of the coffee table, looking for all the world like a wounded puppy. “What was that for?!”
“You touched me,” Five says, impatient. He has ghosts to observe, equations to get to. Chop chop, Diego.
Diego sits up, brushing splinters off his sweater. “You have a strange way of showing sibling affection,” he grunts.
“I’m teleporting away in three—two—”
“Wait!” Diego says.
Five gestures for him to hurry up.
Instead of doing that, Diego huffs, staring off into the distance for a long moment before he bites his lip. “Is… is Ben here?” he asks, voice softer than Five has heard in a long, long time.
Five tilts his head, keeping his gaze from flicking to Ben, who is standing just beside Diego. “Why would I know?” he asks, dismissive.
“I—it was a hunch, I guess, but maybe I was wrong. I just thought that… well, you and Klaus have been acting different and…”
Five watches as he struggles, mind calculating. After a long moment of tangential muttering, he cuts Diego off to say, “You want to talk to Ben?”
Diego nearly bites his tongue, swallowing hard. “I… yeah. Yeah, I really do. I mean, tell me if I’m super off-base here, but—”
“No, no. You’re right. I’m the current possessor of the Seance’s powers.”
“—I just figured… wait, really? You have his powers?”
Five rolls his eyes over to Ben, who is looking highly amused at the entire conversation. “Yes, idiot. I don’t talk to thin air for my health, you know.”
That gets a laugh out of Diego, though Five didn’t mean for it to be funny. Five glares as Diego back-tracks. “Sorry, it’s just… Luther thought it was drugs. I told him to have more faith in you guys, but you know how he is.”
“Yes,” Five sighs. “I do. Now, if you want to negotiate time with the Seance Locket you’ll have to go through Klaus, because I’m only a temporary holder and he gets final say. I’d suggest talking to him later, though, because I think he’s asleep right now.”
“Right,” Diego says, scrubbing at his hair. “I’ll just… go check on him, yeah?”
“Fantastic,” Five says, and teleports away.
When Diego approaches him a few hours later with permission to wear the locket, Five catalogs the look of wonder on his face as Ben becomes visible to him. He wonders, not for the first time, if maybe this little idea of his is going to do more good in the long run than even he had calculated.