Chapter Text
The first face he sees in the morning is usually Diego. Number Two is annoying like that—all up in everybody’s business, searching for somebody, anybody, to boss around.
Or, worse, somebody to make a stupid connection with.
It usually makes him nauseous, because he hasn’t had his morning coffee yet (or alcohol, which he’s learned also does the trick). He usually snaps—ideally not so much that Diego goes away, but enough to make his general displeasure very clear. He’s been fine-tuning the effects of his sarcasm for a while now. Sometimes, when he can’t quite understand why a response causes others to react the way they do, Dolores even helps him out—so at this point he’s pretty much got his prickly-but-not-completely-aloof persona down pat.
He is businesslike—an asshole, even—but not outright cruel. He makes it no secret that he considers his siblings to be idiots, but never suggests that they’re entirely a waste of space. And as a result, he can maximize his efficiency without being completely cut off from the most important variable. He does what he needs to do, but he keeps the why firmly in his mind.
In this way, he shapes his character into exactly what he needs it to be. On the rare instances he lets himself reflect, he thinks, somewhat proudly: maybe that’s what it means to grow up.
Today, though, he can’t quite bring himself to react harshly to Diego’s presence when he blinks himself awake at first light. The weather got just a little colder last night—there’s no frost or anything, but it was enough to make little goosebumps rise up on his arms and legs. It somehow managed to bring him right back to the way things used to be, before. So sue him for being a little nostalgic—just once isn’t going to kill him.
Probably.
“What’s the plan for today, brother?” Diego asks, like he does most mornings, completely oblivious to the emotions racing through Five’s head. Diego always wants to know the plan, just so he can fuck with it. Sometimes he wants to suggest something other than what Five has scheduled—he’s organized a supply run and they need to leave before Luther hijacks it, or has Five considered that higher ground is better for both concentrating and spotting enemies in time? Diego loves to be in charge—craves it, even, after years of being put second. There are days when Five immediately tells him to piss off, just to bypass that whole arena of conversation.
“Same old,” he offers today instead. To his surprise, his voice is almost soft. “Math and math, and then more math.”
Sometimes—or maybe more times than he can count—he wishes he had a different answer to give his brother. He wishes he could trust someone else with the agenda, just for a day. So he can rest a little. So his relationships could start to feel a little more balanced, instead of this collection of shadow puppets set in the background to his main act.
And yet—he can’t. Not yet, anyway.
“That’s a shame,” Diego says. “We think the leaves might be turning. We were going to go for a walk later—see the colors.” He smiles, gentle. “Remember colors, Five?”
Five wants to scoff—doesn’t Diego know that reflecting on the seasons is a colossal waste of time when the fate of the world hangs in the balance? Or maybe he wants to scream instead—it’s not his fault that the weight of this was left squarely on his shoulders. (Or was it? Maybe it’s all his fault—)
But he looks right at Diego’s face—and it’s blurred, almost, between the child Five knew at the Academy and the man Diego becomes (became). Sometimes it’s so hard to amalgamate the two. He remembers his shock at seeing that adult face slack and ashen, buried under concrete and staring blankly ahead—
He doesn’t scoff. He doesn’t scream. He swallows thickly instead.
“I can’t,” he says quietly. “I think you know that.”
Diego just nods.
He watches as Five inhales vodka, straight from the dusty bottle, probably much more than is good for him. He stands silently as Five inspects his options for breakfast, then decides better of it and resolves to wait until lunch. Then Five starts on the equations, and Diego doesn’t like math, so he must just wander away.
When Five glances up to give his eyes a rest, his brother is gone.
Klaus doesn’t exactly like math either—he actually hated the structure and expectations of schooling in general—so it surprised Five at first when he started showing up just as the numbers got complicated. It was weird, how he always seemed to know that Five was struggling.
It was also weird how his energy—chaotic, irreverent, even a little inappropriate at times—seemed to focus Five rather than distracting him. Klaus had a habit of saying completely crazy things that made absolutely no sense on the surface—things that had absolutely no business making any sense at all, in fact—but once Five thought about it for a few minutes, it actually led him to just the breakthrough he needed.
A coincidence, he figured. Just a coincidence. But sometimes he wondered if there wasn’t something else going on.
Today, Klaus just blinks down over Five’s shoulder—Five starts when he sees him in the periphery, he hadn’t heard him approach. They stand like that for a few minutes, almost close enough to touch, and Five imagines he might have felt some body heat from the arrangement if the whole idea wasn’t so completely foreign to him.
Then the corners of Klaus’s mouth curl up suddenly, and he taps an equation with a ragged fingernail.
“I don’t like the looks of those eights,” he says, ambling out of the shadow of Five’s Equation Wall to sit in the light filtering in through the window. “It’s like an army of evil snowmen, coming to freeze the breath in your lungs.” He pauses, reflects on that for a minute. “Hmm, that’s strange. Did I hear that in a fairytale somewhere, or—?”
“No offense, Klaus, but it sounds like a shitty fairytale.” Five cuts him off immediately, fearing a rambling explanation that will only become less coherent as it goes on. He may also roll his eyes. “And snowmen, of all things, have absolutely nothing to do with my math.”
“And yet?” Klaus looks at him expectantly. He leans back in the sun, palms outstretched, and Five can just make out the “HI” and “BYE” tattooed there—something he’d never really expected, to be honest, but that truly makes a lot of sense if you understand Klaus’s sense of humor. He doesn’t know a whole lot about Klaus’s powers—he’d always had to prioritize maximizing his own, before. But he thinks that maybe such a sense of humor about death is a much-needed element at the end of the day.
Five doesn’t know if Literal Human Ouija Board is how he’d personally choose to describe Klaus’s abilities, and he’s sure he’d never get another tattoo after what they went through as kids. But if the shoe fits …
He’s getting distracted.
Five heaves a sigh, then swallows his protests and runs a few numbers again. Sure enough, one of the eights is a little suspect—though obviously not for any reason Klaus had suggested.
“Actually, you’re sort of right—that’s meant to be an ’s’ in the second line. Space is a factor of time.”
“I know,” Klaus says, smugly.
Five thinks about tearing out a bit of his hair, or maybe sticking out his tongue, but he settles for rolling his eyes again. “Then why didn’t you just say that?” he demands.
Klaus shrugs. “I don’t actually understand math.”
Of course. He’s useless.
Five gets back to work.
Things look a little clearer with that fixed, but something still isn’t working. And Klaus, whose eyes are closed now (but they’ll open again if only Five calls his name, they will) doesn’t seem to have any more wisdom to offer. So Five sighs and puts down his marker.
“I think I’m going to run to the store,” he says. He keeps his face blank even as relief fills him when Klaus’s eyelids flutter. “We’re almost out of supplies.” Every time he goes out, Five drags back as much as he can possibly carry—it’s just his style, and the food is going to keep the same whether it’s safely in his possession or stacked on distant shelves. But he goes through it quicker than he’d like, and he’s always afraid to let his stockpile get too low just in case the unexpected happens. It’s always best to prepare for the worst. He’s learned that the hard way, several times over.
Klaus flaps his hands in distress, the “HEY” and “SEE YA” inked there blurring before Five’s eyes.
“You know I can’t follow you in there,” he says. “I’m working on my tan. I can’t waste these precious daylight hours, man!”
Five does know—and he also knows that isn’t the real reason. Klaus is deathly afraid of small spaces, and the dark. They’d all teased him about it as little kids, mercilessly, and Five had never really understood what it was all about until the sight of shadowy holes opening up in the ground started filling his own stomach with dread as well.
He gets it now, and he only has a few ghosts to worry about most of the time.
“Don’t waste the sun,” he says, almost fondly—though he’d deny it, of course, if anyone noticed. “I’ll be back soon.”
And then he blinks out into the street, leaving his brother behind.