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1.
Five found Vanya's book in the library, three weeks after the end of the world.
He was crawling through the rubble, a whim taken shape. Soon, he would be leaving town and that meant that he might never get another opportunity.
After the first few days, he was not stupid enough to delude himself into thinking anybody was still out there, that anybody would survive an impact of the magnitude he had calculated would have been the cause of the apocalypse. He wasn't coming out of his base to look for other people anymore.
He was leaving the memories behind. The city was ruined and Five needed to set out and find somewhere new, find more supplies and see what havoc has been wrecked on other parts of the world. Maybe someday he would come back, but it felt a tenuous promise at best. And so this would be his last chance to visit the library his siblings and he had always snuck out to when they wanted to get books. Fun books, and not the tedious classical literature their father made required reading during their tuition.
That's how he found it, the cover faded and dusted but still somehow calling out to him. It was one of not many books at the library that had survived relatively unscathed, and he registered the name on the cover with what felt at first as surprised paralysis. He dug into the debris to uncover it, turned it around.
The face that stared back at him was one he did not recognize.
He had seen the others at the destroyed remains of the academy, and while Five had known he had fucked up bad and send himself hurling forward in time, it had not clicked yet. His siblings had looked different – older – but they had also been dead, with streaks of blood on their faces and gray dust coating their lifeless bodies. It had been impossible for Five to grasp real time passed.
But Vanya had written a book. Had spent probably hours upon hours typing away on some dingy laptop – or maybe she was the kind of person who would use a typewriter? Go to a coffee shop and take notes on scrap paper while drinking hot chocolates in autumn.
Five could imagine that. Less than a month ago he still saw her toil away at the desk of his room with whatever their father made them study. She was so eager to prove herself to him back then. Eager to show she was still valuable in ways Sir Reginald Hargreeves would never be able to appreciate. Vanya was smart, and Five was glad to read that after all their father had done to them, Vanya at least seemed to have refound a part of herself their upbringing had so thoroughly attempted to wipe out.
The violin too was in essence something she had picked up to please him. Five listened to her play often, she would come practice in his room or he would go to hers to do his homework. When their father was away on business, she would play in the living room for all of them to hear. She had done something with that, paid the bills by teaching her gift to others.
And she had written a book that Five found at the end of the world. That he could hold onto to keep his siblings close when the days looked that much darker than they did before.
One day Five would see her again. And then, he could thank Vanya for her book.
2.
Ben was the only other one he had not found in the ruins of what used to be their home.
In the chaos of survival, Five had not spent much time thinking about why that was. Part of him might have just assumed he missed the body, that Ben was buried far beneath pieces of brick and mortar and smashed to a bloody pulp. Part of him might have just assumed he had died elsewhere, that he had not been in the house or even Detroit when the earth collapsed in on itself.
In no way could Five have predicted the real reason, instead stumbled upon on page 73 of a book that had spent its first chapters detailing a broken childhood.
Ben had died, not with the world but before it. So far before it, he had been outlived by all of his siblings and their father. The book spared little details for the exact cause. Five didn't wonder about it either. What did it matter how somebody died, if they were dead and gone all the same.
If Ben was dead either way.
"He's dead." The first words Five had spoken in so long his throat felt raw with them, making them painful to say in multiple ways. Dolores stared back at him, plastic eyes unblinking and unseeing. Five had to get in the habit of talking to her to combat the loss of verbal skills and mental stability caused by prolonged isolation.
He would get back to the present. When he did, he needed to be in perfect shape to prevent this apocalypse from ever happening in the first place.
But by saying it out loud it was the realization that hit him most. He could go back in time, and if he was smart about it – which Five always was – he could prevent even Ben from dying. Ben, who was always so soft around the edges, the first to share his dessert or help you with your chores. There was something fragile about him, which to a thirteen year old was not something they could place but it had been several months now and Five was already starting to feel ancient. So much was becoming clearer to him by the day.
Ben had multitudes inside him. He was flighty and anxious and always fighting the thoughts of a mind that couldn't sit still no matter how hard he tried, a body crawling with horrors.
He remembered how they used to tease him, call him a mother hen for worrying about them more than their actual mother did. Ben had always been the one to make sure they all had their scarfs and gloves in the dead of winter and covered them with blankets when they fell asleep on the couch. Ben was the one who volunteered to bring them soup and crackers when they fell ill and helped their mom prepare it in the kitchen.
He used to come to Five asking for things to read. He didn't like the science nonfiction books Five preferred to occupy himself with. But he loved stories, fantastical ones where the heroes always win at the end or capture the heart of some ethereal princess. Five had scowled at him for having such mundane tastes and Ben had responded by sticking out his tongue.
But maybe Five had just missed the most important part. In Ben's stories, nobody ever died.
He heated up a can of chicken broth on the fire, the metal canister glowing scorching hot. It tasted awful, not gone bad but like cheap manufactured food not meant for consumption. Made to look good in the tin while it sat on your shelf – a pipe dream for doomsday preppers. Now that day of doom had come and gone and none of the preparation in the world had been able to save people.
Five drank it anyway, knowing he would need the nutrients. But in the back of his mind, he was thinking of Ben's chicken soup and sitting on the couch with a blanket, leaning against his brother's shoulder while waiting to get better.
3.
Chicago was a bust. By Five's estimations, one of the larger chunks of meteor had collided with earth here, wiping what was once a city of over two million people completely off the map in a matter of seconds. Collapsed buildings made it hard to travel into, even while sticking to the roads, and vermin crawled through the rubble, feasting on the charred corpses not lucky enough to have been completely obliterated by the cataclysm. Had it not been for his careful consideration of maps and traffic signs, Five wouldn't even have been able to tell which city this was anymore.
He searched through the mess that had once been the beating heart of so many, and while he did that he thought of Klaus.
Klaus never shut up about seeing the world. He ran away from home once when they were nine and still full of bold ideas not snuffed out by repercussion. Klaus hopped a train – probably didn't even buy a ticket – and didn't get much further than the next town over before being delivered back on the doorsteps by two very angry officers who their father had to bribe not to make a scandal out of it. Old Reggie would do anything to keep up the appearance of his perfect crime-fighting family.
And Klaus disappeared into the mausoleum for three days with none of his siblings seeing him.
Five felt guilty, because back then he had kind of thought Klaus deserved it. They all thought that. But he also knew that was the intended effect. Their father had done everything in his power to turn them against each other in a million small ways, inch by inch, trying to make them loathe each other for every little favor and turn childish squabbles into outright wars.
But Klaus had been the one to come up with their Griddy's escapes. He was always the one who went around to knock on everybody's door in the middle of the night to rally them up. He liked going by number, counting up one to seven. Told Five once that it was a sacred tradition that they shouldn't break and Five had rolled his eyes at Klaus, assuming it was yet another one of his stupid things. Though it was impressive how quiet he could be when it benefited him, sneaking around the house.
They'd sit on a warehouse parking lot with the sky a starry canvas above them and three boxes of donuts between them on the pavement. Every single time they would get more than they could reasonably stomach and had to throw the leftovers in the trash. Klaus puked one time, stuffed his face on a dare Diego made with him while the others encouraged them. Ben rubbed Klaus' back while he retched his guts out and Luther had to carry him home.
And all the way, Klaus had been laughing.
He was going to get out of the mansion, he used to say while they sat on concrete curb stops with scrapes on his knees and powdered sugar still on his fingers. Klaus used to say he was going to get out, go to Chicago or New York, maybe even Europe. Find himself a rich husband and never look back. They had shaken their heads even more at such antics. Maybe as kids, they thought he was joking. Five supposed it didn't matter if he was.
If Vanya's book was to be believed, he never got to live any of those dreams either way.
4.
Allison did escape.
Five was happy for her even if it was in a detached manner that he couldn't really put his finger on. Maybe it was because he had no point of reference, no scope through which to look at the revelation. Allison got married, might even have had children some time after the book was published. In another parallel universe, Five could have been an uncle.
It was not something he could grasp, even as his body phased into adulthood. He had recalculated too many times to count now, had scribbled notebook after notebook full of numbers and still he was not any closer to finding a way back. It wore him out, and Dolores had to remind him when to take a break. When to stop searching before he barreled out of control completely – an object put into motion never finding its opposing force for a slowed trajectory.
"I'll rest, I'll rest," he told her over and over while working his mind into mush. "We can go after, if you want."
Dolores loved going to the movie theatre. They discovered the building not long after coming to Manhattan, a red-bricked facade of impossible stature, magically untouched by the destruction laid upon the rest of the world. Most of the letters up front had come loose, spelling out untitled movies with obscure names, but inside it looked like barely any time had passed. Structural collapse had made the left-wing completely inaccessible, but all the movie posters were still up in the rest of the atrium.
Five blinked at the glossy image of Allison, all pearly white teeth and bright red lipstick in staged picture perfection. A stark contrast to what he saw back at the academy, so long ago now that he was starting to forget their faces. Like watching strangers through foggy glass.
Allison had always been the most photogenic out of the bunch, eager to pose for pictures whenever the paparazzi rolled around at one of their rescue scenes. Their father had been sure to push her forward for interviews as well since she knew just how to act. Demure and elegant and extroverted, a child worthy of her fame. Allison had a way with words and for once Five meant it in the figurative sense as well as the literal one.
But that only meant she always gave the best advice. She used to check up on him after he got into arguments with their father, just to let him know how she thought he should have handled it. Five had bristled then, impudent to counsel he hadn't even asked for, but no matter how much he brushed her off she just smiled, dimples in her cheeks. And Five realized now she meant well, even if his prepubescent self did not.
They all knew Allison could listen just as well as she could spin words from thin air. She was the sister they could go to if they were too stubborn to ask help from any of the others.
While gorging himself on stale potato chips raided from the concession stand, Dolores warned him against getting food poisoning again, in that stern way she did when he wasn't listening. Five frowned at her. "I don't remember asking."
Dolores did not have the same dimples in her plastic grin.
5.
They never made it to New York.
Five would have liked to, would have loved to see the result a disaster of this magnitude could have caused on a metropolis of that size. But his body was growing weary, his blood running thin and clean water and good food was harder to come by with each passing day. He knew he didn't sleep enough – Dolores was always glad to scold him for it, as if he deliberately forgot – but his brain was running circles around itself in nervous agitation.
"You're not my mother," Five said, an insult always sure to make Dolores angry. Then she would get cross with him, refuse to respond for days. But right now the pounding in his head was too loud for him to care. Some silence would probably be a respite. "I don't need you. I don't need anybody."
And he hated how he couldn't help but know at that moment exactly what Diego would say to him if he was here.
Five might have had a reputation for being brazen in his younger years, but it was more like he was born a quick-thinker and stubborn enough to always want to get the last word in. It got him in enough trouble with both his father and siblings at times, but at least he was intelligent enough to know when to quit while he was ahead.
Not Diego. There was a fire inside him only fueled brighter by father's cruel words, an endless need to prove every non-challenger wrong. Telling Diego he couldn't do something was akin to holding a red cloth in front of a bull. It was just one of the reasons he put so much importance on their missions. As if his entire self-worth was dependent on its success and their father's approval.
Back then Five had pitied this desperate need to be respected. But even more so he had respected the parts of Diego that hid beneath, even as a kid. He wasn't just playing at being a hero, he really wanted to be one and would stake his life on it.
Diego was gentle. Not in the way Ben was, but in his own unique nature. It was a side he often pushed down in an effort to seem more indestructible than he really was, but Five remembered. He remembered Diego holding a crying Klaus' hand, pressing his forehead to his and reassuring him in hushed whispers.
Five did not get to see that side often, but he got something else entirely. The first time Diego asked his help for pulling a prank they had been seven, and Five had sighed, buried his nose deeper into their father's copy of Greek mythology for Beginners, and ignored his pleas.
After what felt like hours of begging Five had finally relented. Allison probably screamed loud enough for the entire street to hear and their mother rushed out of the kitchen, already in emergency mode. Diego apologized to her but not to Allison. But he had also thrown his arm around Five's shoulder, clasped it so tight that now in the echoes of an apocalypse long since faded like the population it destroyed, Five could still feel it burn into his skin.
He hadn't felt another person in so long.
"I'll make it up to you later." A hushed whisper into the unbearable heat of the Arizona summer. "I promise, Dolores. We can go wherever you want to. I just need to finish this first."
Every cipher was turning into gibberish. Five rubbed his failing eyes, concentrated even harder on the calculations that were in front of him were starting to turn into lines, dots, connected squares. He was so tired he felt like he was already dead, brain stuffed with cotton, but still he couldn't rest.
Diego would never have given up on them. So Five couldn't either.
+1
The moon was a dark patch in the sky, eclipsed by the earth's shadow.
Five watched it as he walked along the road, following the trail of unlit lampposts on the highway, zigzagging around bare husks that once were cars. Dolores didn't need to tell him how stupid it had been to leave behind the only place they had ever managed to settle down in, the only place they were able to make stick. The rational part of Five gladly cussed him out for making all the mistakes he had been making.
He had failed his estimations over and over again. Five just wanted to go home.
How didn't matter. When didn't either – time was not a linear process. It was a tangle of wires, bunched together and shifting through your fingers and if you pulled on one you might reach something completely different at the other side. Somebody completely different.
Five missed Luther.
They had been brothers. All of them were siblings, but they had been brothers. Birthed from the same mother, a young girl in distress bringing not a single child into the world she wasn't expecting, but two. And that might not have meant anything to Reginald Hargreeves. It might not have meant anything to the other kids.
In truth, it hadn't meant anything to Luther either. Definitely hadn't meant anything to Five back then.
Until it mattered. Until time condensed into a single thread that you could follow in endless circles and suddenly Five hated it with a burning passion in his chest that felt misplaced. Luther had been the favorite, had to bear everything that came with that position – good or bad.
The leader of their misfit gang of broken edges, Luther had been put on a pedestal by their father that was a farce at best and a gallows at worst. And he refused to step down again.
Often he had to take the brunt of their animosity, their competitiveness. But even more often he had taken the responsibility. He had picked them up when they fell down or pushed himself in front when danger approached. He had done whatever he could to live up to that framed potential.
Like Atlas, Luther had to carry the weight of all celestial bodies on his shoulders and deny being crushed by its burden.
Five asked Luther to play his records and he always did. He was fond of getting plants, whenever they went to the city center he stopped and looked at the smallest ones to take them home. Pot them and water them when their father wasn't looking. Luther liked taking care of things.
More than anything else, Five had failed his family. They had made a promise, when they were hopeful and fragile and the ink on their wrist had not yet set. They had huddled together on the roof, the seven of them forming a perfect circle. Vanya had drawn the mark on herself with sharpie and for once it felt as if it belonged there.
Whatever they would go through, whatever their father subjected them to, they would look out for each other.
Klaus suggested making it a blood oath and Allison had hit him in the shoulder. Ben had asked in a high pitched voice if that was safe and Diego had refused to even entertain the notion. Luther had said it already was a blood oath because they were family.
And Five had to remind him that most of them weren't even blood-related.
The book was getting patchy, missing pages. It had become unreadable, but after decades Five knew it front to back, which meant he didn't need it anymore. He could burn it, he could use the fuel because kindle was always running low. And he had already failed his family.
The moon reminded Five of Luther, when all he really wanted to do was to forget.