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Chapter Text

Five frowned down at his hand. The hand should be busy doing calculations and sums and probabilities on the paper underneath. But he felt sluggish, and a haze of tiredness was clouding his brain and making his vision wobble. He felt oddly anxious and could feel that his chest tightening with stress. He hated this. These episodes that would ebb and flow like the tide lapping at the shore of his consciousness. These episodes of breathlessness, exhaustion, and anger. Ever since his return to his younger body, they always seemed to come out of nowhere. Maybe the old man was right, that time travel could mess with the mind.

A clatter of crockery from the adjacent room interrupted his thoughts, and it was only then that he realised he’d spent the past half hour staring at the same page of calculations.

“Hey…uhh…Five?” Came a voice, and Elliot poked his head around the doorframe. He had an apron tied around his waist, a blue and white polka-dot one, and was clutching a large serving spoon in his hand. “Do you want anything to eat? Wait, do you even eat?”

Five blinked a little in confusion, and then remembered that he’d heavily implied to the poor unsuspecting man that he was an alien. He opened his mouth to decline until he felt his stomach twist with hunger in protest, followed by a loud growl. “I could eat”

Elliot grinned and vanished back around the doorframe, reappearing only a second later with a bowl of something and thankfully a fresh pot of coffee. Five had the distinct feeling that the man had already prepared something for him in readiness. “I hope you like it, it’s an old family recipe. Do you have jello on your planet?”

Five accepted the bowl, peering inside at the questionable wobbling concoction. It was vaguely green with lumps of unidentifiable vegetables suspended inside, topped with a swirling garnish of mayonnaise and artfully arranged olives. And Elliot was standing there staring at him with anticipation, shuffling anxiously on his feet.

He spooned some into his mouth and chewed hesitantly, it was a bit too savoury for his tastes, but it tasted marginally better than toasted cockroaches for which he was thankful for. And at least it would be enough to stop his stomach from complaining.

“Is it..er…” Elliot waved his hands around, flustered. “Is it good?”

“Yeah” Five nodded, shoving another spoonful into his mouth.  

Elliot’s whole face lit up, his body positively vibrating at the praise. “G…Great! I’m glad. You, uhh, need anything else? Any more paper for your…” He trailed off and gestured vaguely at the scraps of paper littering the coffee table, paper that was currently covered with Five’s rambling writing.

“I’m good” Five said, and then added as an afterthought. “Thanks, though. I really appreciate it”

Elliot gave him an awkward thumbs up and started retreating back towards the kitchen. “Just yell if you can’t find anything. And help yourself to more jello if you want too. You remember where the bathroom is, right? Oh, and if you need any clothes, my son’s old stuff is still in the wardrobe-”

Five decided to put the poor man out of his misery. “Thanks, Elliot, I know where the bathroom is”

Elliot gave him one last smile before vanishing through the door. He watched the door click shut behind him, and eventually the rhythmic tap of his footsteps on the floor eased until all that could be heard was the distant rustling of something.

Five sighed and pressed his fingers against his temples, staring down at the notepad in front of him as the words and numbers started blurring into a homogenous inky mass. The coffee table was scattered with the dozens of newspaper clippings and photographs that Elliot had collected over the years. It had been a real punch to the gut to find out that not only had he landed his family in Dallas, for reasons completely unknown to him, but that he’d also scattered them across a three-year period.

His eyes landed on the newspaper clipping of Diego. His brother who had spent a total of a day in the new timeline before he was carted off to the nearest psychiatric hospital due to his insatiable hero complex. He paid him a visit earlier, Diego sprouting nonsense about JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and slicing Hitler’s throat; and Five couldn’t do anything but entice the nurses to sedate him. He felt bad about it at the time, but he needed Diego to stay where he was for the time being. And besides, he was planning on blinking in and breaking him out later. It was for his own safety.

Everything he did was for his siblings’ safety.

The ache in his head was now pulsing with his heartbeat, the strain tight behind his eyes and clouding his thoughts. He raked his hands over his face and pressed the heels of his palms hard against his eyes, willing that both the headache and the tightening of his chest would ease so he could focus on tracking down the rest of his family.

Coffee. He needed caffeine. That would sort things out.

He reached out and grabbed at the mug Elliot had topped up earlier, the ceramic warm beneath his hands, when something caught his eye. His nails were rough and bitten down to the skin. It was a terrible anxiety-induced habit, one that he’d thought he’d grown out of as a child. The cuticles were equally as bad, the skin cracked and red like the red of dried blood tainting skin that –

He gulped down a mouthful of coffee, breaking that train of thought. The liquid was verging on a touch of being too hot, but the heat of it was oddly comforting and the sting of the temperature on his tongue gave him something else to focus on.

He's okay. He was just stressed. That’s all it was; stress.

Five knew from the very first time he met her that Lila was trouble

He wanted to scream when he found out that Diego escaped. But thankfully his brother is predictable, and he quickly found him sat in a stolen car outside the house of Lee Harvey Oswald, and he interjected himself in the situation before anything could develop further. But then he finds out that his brother is accompanied by a woman who looks far too modern to exist in the 1960s.

His family had always said he was too mistrusting, too cautious, too guarded; but every part of his body is screaming that the woman his brother is currently infatuated with would only cause problems further down at the line. And his suspicions were heightened when she helped him at the Mexican Consulate over his brother. And then realisation hit him when he followed her to the abandoned warehouse a couple of blocks away from Elliot’s house.

“I thought you said that the next time you’d see me, you’d kill me” Lila remarked cockily, a smile playing at her lips.

“Oh, I remember” He said, and then was promptly thumped by her boot as she struck him with a roundhouse kick.

She plays dirty. She doesn’t hesitate. She knows how to hold her own. And if Five is being truthful, there is something quite exhilarating about fighting someone who is nearly his equal. But ultimately he gained the upper hand when she stumbled, and he used the opportunity to swipe her off her feet. She tumbled back against the concrete floor, the wind knocked from her, and he placed a foot down on her neck as both a way of preventing her from moving, and as a warning that he could easily crush her windpipe if he so desired.

And believe him, the temptation was strong.  

“You can come out now” He called out to the seemingly empty warehouse. Because he can sniff out Lila’s style from a mile away, all Commission agents are taught to the same rigorous routine that he was subjected to.

He listened to The Handler’s deal while trying to ignore the way his body was protesting at the strain of the fight, his body that is still humming from the growing bruises sustained by the Swede’s punches. She touches him. She always touches him. Her cool hand cupping his cheek and sliding down along his jaw, down lower over his neck and toying with the collar of his shirt. His skin prickles at the action, like her touch was poison, but he doesn’t allow her the pleasure of seeing him uncomfortable.

But it’s okay, after all, she had touched him in worse ways when he was in his older body; when he was too frail and too weak to say no. And powering ahead to save his family is much more important than reopening old wounds.

But why does he feel so sick?

Five is reluctant to admit that when his siblings start pouring into the elevator, he feels a wave of relief wash over his tense body. He hadn’t seen his father in forty-five years when he ran out of the academy full of teenage rebellion and a strong resistance to authority.    

But of course, in true Hargreeves fashion, it all goes downhill rather quickly.

Diego punches himself after being rumoured by Allison, Klaus is doing something incredibly baffling opposite him, Vanya blows up the plate of fresh fruit, and Luther rips his shirt open - nearly taking everyone’s eyes out with flying buttons. And at the end of it all, Five feels irritable, thanks to his siblings, and sticky, thanks to the chunks of pineapple stuck to his face and in his hair.

He also feels despondent, because he’s starting to realise that his options for correcting the timeline and getting his family home are incredibly limited. But his father throws him one last lifeline when he requests to talk to him alone. So now he’s sat at the bar with a glass of cognac in his hand, which is thankfully helping to ease the anxiety that’s settled in his mind. Everything is easier with a bit of alcohol in the system, especially when it gets to the point where caffeine does little to take the edge off.

“What do you know about time travel?” He asked. He knows that his father had dabbled in the logistics of it before, he’d seen the paperwork in his office covered with drawings and calculations pertaining to it. As a child, he often wondered how his father had known so much about what was supposed to be his ability – a question he still pondered today.

The other man paused and glanced at him from over the rim of his glass. “In theory?”

“In practice” He corrected.

“I know it’s akin to descending blindly into the depths of freezing waters and reappearing-”

“As an acorn. Yeah” Because he’d heard that line so many times that it was practically etched onto his brain. It was the phrase that haunted him in the apocalypse, when the anger at his father had subsided and left behind a kind of empty sadness at the fact he’d never recognised the significance of that statement.

“So much can change in a matter of seconds. One could overthrow an empire. One could fall in love” He gave him another look, a knowing look. “An acorn doesn’t become an oak overnight, you know”

At the end of the evening, all he feels is confusion and resignation, and the only words that are spiralling around his head are ‘seconds, not decades’. The phrase can’t help but feel mocking; If only he’d attempted to time travel in seconds when he left the dinner table at thirteen. He wondered what sort of man he would have grown up to be if he’d travelled in seconds; if he’d got that craving out of his system before getting stuck.

But then again, he wondered about a lot of things.

The Handler doesn’t look surprised when he turned up at her door. She merely flung the door open with anticipated gravitas, a hint of a smile on her face, and turned to pour two drinks into champagne flutes.

She draped herself across the bed, a cigarette between her ruby lips and a slip of paper dangling from between his fingers. They’d stayed in a room like this before, overly ornate and stuffy – the interior rich with textiles and chintzy patterning, when the woman had whisked him off to 1890’s Paris and rewarded him after his hundredth assassination. Only it hadn’t felt like a reward, and he wasn’t quite sure what it felt like if he was being honest, he only knew that his body felt alien after.

But it’s okay, he knows he still has a grasp on the situation, even if his sanity is quickly slipping from between his fingers. The Handler is hiding something from him, but he knows her well, he knows how she thinks, and he’s certain that she’ll keep her promise on giving him a briefcase.

And really, does he even have a choice at this point?

Her arm was thin and twig-like, and if he detaches himself, he can nearly believe that the crunch of her ulna and radius against the blade of the axe is the snap of a branch. He remembers his training, remembers a stern woman who gave his elderly body a disappointed frown, remembers how she remarked that with a physique like his, he would never make it as a successful agent.

He also remembered the look on her face when she learnt he’d made his first kill.

And while he is loathed to admit it, this new body is quite suited to killing. He doesn’t have to worry about the aches and pains in his joints that come with age, nor the way his eyesight blurred at times; this body is lithe and young and most importantly, flexible. The axe is an extension of himself, of his mind, and it makes easy work of the board who are currently trying to flee from the room. But he’s too quick for them.

He’s always too quick.

The Handler gasped in glee, snatching the plastic bag from his hands and peering down at A.J inside; Five hadn’t realised that it was possible for a fish to look so panicked, but he manages the expression well.

“You know, you’re really starting to fill out those tight little shorts of yours” She quipped, lips quirking up at the corners in amusement. She cocked her head to one side, her gaze sliding smoothly over him, and then plucked a handkerchief from the bust of her dress, wetting the fabric delicately with her mouth. “Why so quiet? I thought you’d be buzzing after this morning’s slaughter”

“All this killing. I’m done with it”

The Handler paused in her ministrations of dabbing his face to give him a knowing smile, her left eyebrow quirked up towards her hairline. He’s convinced that all she’s doing is smearing the blood further across his skin. He shouldn’t be surprised. She’d always commented she liked him in red.

“Am I supposed to take that seriously?” She remarked eventually, lips pursed.

“What I did today, I did for my family” Five hissed, eyes narrowed. “I did it to save the world”

“Spare me your little assassin with the heart of gold routine, will you” She sighed, tapping a finger against his nose. He flinched, and he can tell by the way her smile stretches wider that she noticed. “You know, I rather like you like this”

“Covered in blood?” He rolled his eyes.

“Desperate” She corrected airily, trailing a pointed nail across his cheek and over his lips. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the dried blood flaking off his skin at the action. “It gives me a thrill”

He jerked his head back from her reach and all he can see is red red red

But everything will be okay, because one roomful of people is a mere drop in the ocean of people he’d killed. And what’s one more moment of discomfort from his former employer if it gets him what they need. And if he’s being honest, he’d do it all a thousand times over it if ensured his siblings' safety.  

The Handler throws him one last curveball, but he can work with the 90-minute time limit. He can ignore the fact that caffeine, adrenaline, and Elliot’s questionable jello concoctions are the only things keeping him upright at this point. He can ignore that his body is screaming at him to get some well-needed sleep.  

He can ignore it all for his siblings.

Five all but stumbled through the doorway of Elliot’s house, hoping that his siblings had stayed together in the time since he’d last seen them. Instead, the phrase ‘OGA FOR OGA’ in foot-high lettering smeared across the floor in fresh blood greeted him. And his heart jumped erratically within his ribcage, his brain briefly short-circuiting.

“Guys?”

No answer, but now that he was making his way up the stairs he could hear the muffled sounds of people talking in agitated tones. The panic in his chest is escalating now, it felt like someone had his heart in their fist, squeezing the muscle to the point where his vision is darkening.

“Guys?!” He called again, louder this time, and stumbled slightly over the last couple of steps, the briefcase clutched tightly in his hand thumping hard against his leg.

Luther and Diego were huddled over a phone and muttering into it in a vaguely threatening tone. But that’s the least of his worries, because he can see that there’s something slumped in Elliot’s old dentist chair, covered in a large white sheet that’s speckled with red. But what makes him feel sick is the large puddle of blood underneath it, almost black in the overhead lighting.

Luther and Diego are safe, and the body is too large for Vanya. That leaves Allison or Klaus. He would never forgive himself if anything happened to them.

And really, he hadn’t been expecting it to be Elliot.

Elliot who was slumped back in the chair, one of his lifeless eyes frozen in pain and staring up at the ceiling, the other was punctured by what looked like a dental pick. The worst was his chest and abdomen, a bloody mess of knives and thickly congealed blood. The air is pungent with the smell of iron and death. He feels sick, his stomach twisting. He swallows thickly and tries to stop the churning of his stomach, gently laying the sheet back over him.

An image of him flashed briefly into his mind. Elliot offering him a pair of his shoes, something better than the bowling shoes he first turned up in. Elliot going out of his way to gather up all the documentation he could find relating to his siblings. Elliot who spent hours making all sorts of strange foods so he didn’t go hungry. Elliot, who was possibly the first person in years that he had viewed as an equal, as a friend.

And now he was dead.

He’d been tortured.

Because of him.

The room around him is swimming.

“-you will be dead by nightfall” Diego hissed.

“Hey” He snapped, striding across the room with purpose, his shoe slipping slightly on splatters of blood. “It’s Oga for Oga idiots, Swedish for an Eye for an Eye. It means the Swedes killed Elliot”

Luther and Diego blinked at him owlishly, and then Diego muttered an overly polite, “Wrong number, have a lovely day!” into the phone, placing it back on the wall. And really, he honestly cannot believe that he just interrupted his two idiot brothers terrorising some poor person.

“I’ve found a way back home” He continued, glancing down at his watch. “We have about eighty minutes to gather everyone up”

“What? How?” Luther piped up, a furrow between his eyebrows.

“No time for questions” He stalked into Elliot’s bedroom and went over to the wardrobe, yanking open the drawer at the bottom where the man said his son’s old clothes were. After some rummaging he managed to find a plain white button-up that was similar to his own, and wasted no time in dashing to the bathroom, yanking off his sweater vest and tie on the way over.

“You have a lot of blood on you” Diego commented, and Luther nodded in agreement. “Yeah, a lot of blood”

“Why do you think I’m in the bathroom you morons” He muttered, rubbing the bar soap between his wet hands to create a lather and using that to scrub some of the bloodstains off his face hastily. His clothes were a lost cause, but thankfully he felt a lot cleaner after pulling on the new shirt, even if it smelt like mothballs and was too big across the shoulders.  

“Right. Luther, you get Allison. Diego, you find Klaus. I’ll get Vanya. We’ll meet back in the side alley”

“But-” Diego started, and Five shot him a look to silence him.

“No buts” He shoved a hand in his pockets and retrieved the watches that he’d managed to scrounge together earlier, passing them out between the pair. “Okay, you’ve got to trust me on this. Just get the others and bring them back, no lollygagging”

He barely heard Luther’s mumbled “Lollgagging?” as he blinked out the room and into the car, shoving the key in the ignition.

They don’t make it in time, or rather; Luther and Klaus make it. He wouldn’t ever have admitted it aloud, but they were the two individuals he had the least faith in.

He can’t help but feel a pang of hurt in his chest, like someone had struck a knife in his heart and twisted. He’d tracked down and talked to Vanya earlier; or rather, they’d had a quick impromptu chat in the middle of the road after driving past each other. And although things were tense, he was certain that Vanya would understand the importance of the time limit. She’d always been the one he could depend upon when they were children.

And really, it would have been so easy to travel back without them. But he couldn’t. He can’t leave his siblings stranded across 1963. Thoughts were flying through his head so fast that it left him dizzy. He can’t go back to The Handler. Their father is out of the question. He can’t rely on his powers; not without organising his calculations, and time is too limited for that. He needs a briefcase. But where to get one?

The one in his hands started vibrating in readiness for the jump, and he gave one last longing look at the entrance to the alley – hoping that his siblings would come dashing around the corner, and they’d all join hands and this nightmare would be over. But they don’t. And with a yell, he threw it up into the air. It was swallowed in a familiar flash of blue and the sound of space being torn.

And all that’s left behind are his two siblings in a dingy alley and an emptiness in his heart.

“Are you okay, Five?” Klaus questioned, still sat in that horrendous pile of vomit. Five wrinkled his nose and spun on his heels, storming back to the door of Elliot’s place.

“Of course I’m okay, you asshole!” He yelled over his shoulder.

“Are you really sure this is a good idea?” Luther asked for the hundredth time in the span of thirty minutes. Five shot his brother a look of irritation, hating how he had to crane his neck up so sharply to meet his gaze. “Seriously Luther, just trust me”

“I do” Luther splayed his hands out placatingly, sidestepping off the pavement and onto the road to allow some pedestrians to pass. The couple barely tried to hide the fact they were staring at him, in fact, Five was pretty sure that everyone they walked by did a double-take at the way he was towering over everyone. “Honestly, I do. It’s just – is this really the only option?”

“I’ve thought about every possible option and determined that this is the only one that will have the least amount of impact on the timeline,” He said, “So yes, this is the only option”

“I mean, will he believe you?” Luther questioned. “Will he trust you?”

“Yes and no. He’ll believe me, but he won’t trust me – and rightfully so. But we need to keep an eye on the briefcase, he’ll make sure to keep it by his side at all times”

“Okay,” Luther nodded. “So in exchange for the briefcase, you’ll send him back with the correct calculations?”

Five inhaled, trying to calm his temper. He knew it wasn’t Luther’s fault, he was more of the brawn than the brains, and it was easy to forget that his mind worked so fast that it was difficult for others to follow. Sometimes it was difficult for even himself to follow. “That’s what we’re going to tell him. You see, we need to keep the timeline as intact as possible – and that means he needs to be sent back with the same calculations that I used. So, we tell him that I’ll use the correct calculations, but I’ll open a portal using the old calculations. You get me?”

Luther’s face was pinched in deep thought, and eventually, he managed a rather unconvincing. “I get you”

“Just let me do the talking, and make sure that you don’t reveal any information to him that may impact the timeline. Remember, you’re my spotter – if things get messy I need to know that I can rely on you”

They turned left onto Young Street and Five was immediately hit with a strange sense of deja vu. It was bizarre to think that barely a fortnight ago he was standing in the same location he was now, only hours before he decided to jump back to 2019.

Corktown Irish Pub was a quintessential pub, in that that the building itself was slightly squat and wide, the façade half timber clad and half painted brickwork with windows in a vaguely classical style. Eclecticism, he was pretty sure it was, a mixture of past architectural styles utilised within one building. Bunting was attached haphazardly over the exterior surface in shades of green, orange, and white in celebration of Kennedy. It was heaving, and from their distance away from the building, he could already hear the noise of drunken chatter and light Irish music.

“So” He muttered, shaking his arms out and exhaling to ready himself. “Here we are”

“So your old self is in there?” Luther asked numbly, and Five barely contained the urge to yank his brother down by the jacket and shake some sense into him.

“No, Luther, I thought I’d take us here for a bit of a knees-up while we wait for the end of all life as we know it” He rolled his eyes. “Come on then, let’s get this over with”

There were three things he wasn’t bargaining on with regards to the said plan. The first being the fact that Luther is an absolutely terrible spotter, the second that the symptoms of paradox psychosis might be stronger than he initially realised, and the third and most important one that he is the biggest pain in the ass that he’d ever come across.

And really, he’s not too proud to admit it.

Because while he is many things, stubbornness is definitely his most prominent quality. His father had commented on it. The Handler had commented on it. Everyone he met usually commented on it. And it could either be an advantage or disadvantage depending upon the situation. His unwillingness to give up was what got him through forty-five years of solitude in a barren wasteland, but it was also the reason why his other self was currently hiding in the pub toilet while his brother was attempting to persuade him to agree to their deal.

And honestly, it certainly wasn’t helping that the paradox psychosis was making him particularly pugnacious.

Which lead him to his current situation, standing in a parking lot and staring his younger self down, trying to ignore the way his clothes were sticking to his body with sweat and the way his brain was screaming at him to kill someone. His whole body was thrumming with the overwhelming restlessness and his powers were twitching just at his fingertips.

“Now let’s all take a deep breath” Luther said steadily, doing an exaggerated inhale like some sort of quasi yoga master, and Five does it mostly as a way to humour him. But he can see the hunger for a fight in his doppelganger’s eyes, and really, can he pass up such an opportunity?

The next few minutes passed in a blur of kicking Luther, punching his younger self across the face, and rather oddly, a fire extinguisher. It felt like the start of a bad joke, only it wasn’t a joke, it was his siblings' lives on the line.

The portal closed with a swoop of time and space knitting back together, and behind him, Luther left out a triumphant air punch. Five’s chest heaved as he frantically inhaled oxygen, adrenaline still pumping around his body at a dizzying speed, the slight breeze doing little to ease the stickiness of his body.

“The briefcase you idiot” He ground out when he was finally able to form words, although they still came out slightly breathy.

“What?” Luther squinted, frowning down at the spluttering briefcase, or well, two-thirds of the briefcase. “Oh”

Five dragged a hand through his sweaty hair and glanced up at the sky, wishing that for once he believed in something like divine intervention. Why was his life never simple?

Lila turns out to be the irritating gift that keeps on giving. Not only is she working for The Commission and the adopted daughter of The Handler, but it turned out she was the daughter of the flower merchants he assassinated in the nineties and also one of the 43 superpowered children.

She also throws a cast iron frying pan at him.

And it fucking hurts.

And really, at this point, his whole body is practically screaming at him as a result of the various injuries he’d collected since arriving back home to his siblings. He knew realistically that Luther could have easily survived the wall collapsing on him, but his mind had immediately flashed to Luther under the smouldering rubble, his lifeless face oddly lax and skin waxy, the bloody eyeball clutched in his hand. And he couldn’t, couldn’t, let his brother be trapped under the rubble again. Somehow he manages to survive that with little more than the odd scrape and bruise, but the frying pan really was the cherry on top of the pain cake.

So here he was, wobbling on his feet with his hands clenched into tight fists, ready to throttle Lila if she so much as moved a muscle, and ignoring the ringing in his head and the pain radiating from his temple.

“I know that we can be your family, if you just let us” Diego said earnestly, hands placed on Lila’s shoulders and staring into her eyes with nothing but tenderness. His brother, for all of his brashness and his odd penchant for leather, really had a heart of gold that came from nature rather than nurture. It was nothing short of a miracle given their upbringing.

His head was screaming at him now, and when he idly reached a hand up to touch the swollen area, his fingertips came back slick with blood. Klaus gave him a sideways glance of worry, but Five pointedly ignored him, instead keeping his eyes on the glued scene in front of him. Because he was certain that Lila was going to do something.

Only it wasn’t Lila.

It was The Handler.

And he wants to kick himself because this was the kind of shit she pulled. But he couldn’t do that when he was currently bleeding out on the dusty straw-covered floor of the barn, his abdomen aflame with the intense radiating pain of numerous gunshots. He could taste blood in his mouth, hot and iron-rich. He wanted to vomit.

He tried to lift his head up, but his vision swam and it felt like his skull had been stuffed with cotton wool. But none of that mattered, not when his siblings were currently strewn about the barn like discarded ragdolls, their bodies littered with bullets and speckled with blossoming blooms of blood across their clothes.

He wants to die. He wanted both his physical and mental pain to stop.

He’d thought about it before, back in the apocalypse. He raided the remains of a pharmacy and uncovered three packets of painkillers; it would have been so easy to wash them down with a bottle of wine and slowly let his consciousness fade out into nothing. Another time, when he was thirty-two, he placed the barrel of his gun between his lips, the muzzle pressed hard against the roof of his mouth. Dolores was pleading next to him, crying, and in the end he couldn’t do it.

But now, as he’s staring at The Handler towering over him, he was speculating if dying was such a bad thing. After all, this was the third time he’d seen his siblings die, and he was starting to wonder if the Hargreeves family were destined to be anything other than plant fertiliser.

And then The Handler slumped down beside him in a spectacular spray of blood, and one of the Swedes slunk into the barn, sharp eyes sliding over the bodies on the floor and coming to rest on him.

Seconds, not decades.

He won’t let The Commission win.

Seconds, not decades.

He won’t let his family die.

Seconds, not decades.

He can’t let his family die.

He closed his eyes and forced his mind to calm, forced his brain to focus on the scene only seconds prior. He focused on Diego grasping at Lila’s shoulders, saying that they could be her family. Focuses on his siblings gathered in the centre, their gazes fixated on the scene unfolded. Focuses on the tendrils of time and space around the scene and pulls.

And god, does it hurt.

It felt as if someone had shoved a red-hot poker into his brain, and the sensation of his flesh knitting back together is both bizarre and nauseating, he can feel his stomach churning and he swallows down the bitter taste. Everything is spinning. Everything hurts. And everything is a blur of dizzying technicolour. But none of that matters when he can see his siblings jerking in reverse back to their original positions, their movements slow and deliberate as if they were moving through treacle.  

And then he’s abruptly spat out of the other end of the barn, both his body and mind feeling like a jumbled mess.

“I know that we can be your family, if you just let us”

Diego and Lila were standing face-to-face, the others gathered around them anxiously. And that meant that any second now-

He wrenched the gun from The Handler’s hands, hoisting it up and twisting it to face her in one smooth movement, blowing his fringe out of his eyes. The was a brief expression of surprise on her face, but the woman quickly schooled her features back into faintly amused neutrality, placatingly placing her hands up in front of her.

“It’s true, isn’t it? What Five said” Lila sniffed, her eyes glassy and cheeks wet with tears. Her hands were clenched into tense fists by her side, although Five could see that they were trembling. “Answer me! Is it true?”

“Well-” And then The Handler was slumping forward in a trail of blood, reminiscent of her not-death only seconds prior. And behind her stood one-third of the Ikea Mafia. Five couldn’t remember what his name was, Alex or Attel or something, but the main concern was that he had currently had a gun pointed at them and his finger on the trigger.

He swallowed and met the other mans gaze unblinkingly, his finger hovering over the trigger of the gun he ripped from The Hander’s arms. But he can see something in the man’s eyes, a slight hesitation that reminded him acutely of when he spoke to Hazel back at the Academy, when the man told him that he was stepping back from The Commission.

“Enough” He said simply, and without breaking eye contract, dropped the gun at his feet with a clatter. He could hear murmurings of confusion behind him and the shifting of feet on the barn floor, but he didn’t dare look away.

After sweeping his gaze slowly across the others, the Swede dropped his own gun, giving him one last look before retreating out of the barn.

Five released a breath that he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

“You could come back, you know”

Five startled at the sudden voice and leapt to his feet from where he was bent over a briefcase, wobbling slightly on his jellied limbs.

“Whoa, hey!” Herb shuffled around into his eyeline, giving him a small smile. “Sorry about scaring you there”

“Oh, it’s you” Five hummed, his heartrate finally returning back a semi-normal rate. He raked a hand through his hair and grimaced at the feel of it, he wished he could have some time to freshen up a bit, but he couldn’t rest until his family were safely back in 2019.

“Thanks for the enthusiasm” Herb chuckled in amusement.  

“Sorry about that, I think I’m still in flight or fight mode” Five gave him an apologetic smile over his shoulder. He bent down and inspected the nearest briefcase next to him, frowning when he found yet another one with a broken mechanism.

“I think you’ve always been in fight mode” Herb muttered, joining in and adjusting the dial on the briefcase by his feet, which let out a rather pathetic puff of smoke. 

Five snorted and reached over the body of an agent to grab another briefcase, wincing at the twinge in his body. “I think I’ve been in fight mode since I was born, that’s what tends to happen when you’re raised by a narcissistic man hell bent on raising his own child army”   

“And probably when you grow up in an apocalyptic wasteland” Herb added. Five shrugged, he wouldn’t deny that probably had the most impact on his current personality quirks.  

His eyes settled on yet another briefcase, and he dropped to his knees to inspect the top. The casing was horrendously scratched and covered in clumps of mud and grass, but when he adjusted the dial on top he could hear logistics dial up. He grinned and hoisted the briefcase onto his lap, only for it to promptly spew out a cloud of black smoke. He spluttered and fanned the smoke away from his face, discarding the briefcase back on the ground.  

“Your sister really did a number on the briefcases, huh” Herb remarked casually.

“I’m just hoping that there’s at least one that works” Five frowned, grabbing at a neighbouring one. “I don’t fancy turning my siblings into children. And honestly, with the state I’m in, I think that would see me off”

“Don’t worry, we’ll find one” Herb reassured, he glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “My offer still stands, you know?”

Five sat back against a pile of briefcases with a groan, stretching his legs out in front of him. His whole body was aching with exhaustion, and if he was being honest, he needed a bit of rest. Just a couple of minutes to catch his breath before continuing. “Offer?”

“To come back” Herb replied, and Five watched as the other man continued to lug briefcases towards him and fiddle with the dials. “You were the best agent The Commission had. And now that I’m in charge…” He paused to give a disbelieving chuckle. “You could come back to work for us without The Hander breathing down your neck. We’d give you free rein to visit your family”

Five inhaled deeply, the air around him thick with the smell of the surrounding farmyard. The leftover snow underneath him was melting uncomfortably through his clothes and the chill of the air on his face was biting, but it felt like the first time in weeks that he’d been able to sit down and relax. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I want to stay with my family for a bit”

Herb glanced up from the briefcase he’d just hauled onto his lap, giving him a knowing smile as if he had anticipated that response. “I understand. But the offer is still there – you want a job; you know where to find me”

“Thanks,” He said, and he really did mean it. He reached out to give the other man a pat on the shoulder. “You’ll be a great chairperson Herb, you deserve the position”

Herb beamed as he shifted anxiously on the spot, and then the briefcase on his lap gave out a familiar dial-up tone as logistics reached 100%. “Well, I think this is your ticket home” Herb exhaled, sliding the briefcase towards him. Five tugged it onto his lap, relief settling into his body as he stared down at the full power bar on top.

He glanced back at the barn to see Klaus and Diego pelting each other with snowballs while Luther shuffled anxiously on the sideline. Vanya had her arms wrapped tightly around Sissy, the two of them speaking in hushed tones. While Allison was crouched in front of Harlan, saying something and laughing lightly. “I think I’ll just give them a couple of minutes to unwind”

“I think you’re just using that as an excuse for a bit of a rest” Herb winked, and Five snorted as he adjusted the dial on top to send to back to 2^nd April 2019, a day after the apocalypse.

“Guilty as charged” He mumbled, giving his siblings another sideways glance. Klaus had now managed to persuade Luther in on their snowball fight while Vanya, Sissy, and Allison were laughing amongst themselves, Harlan playing with some sort of toy at their feet. They looked relaxed, and more importantly, relatively unharmed.

“Can I give you some advice?” Herb piped up, and Five glanced back at him, gesturing with a nod of his head to continue.

“You’re very…” Herb trailed off, his face pinched in deep thought.

“Arrogant? Headstrong? Opinionated? Imperious?” Five supplied for him, because he’d heard those so many times that the words just washed over him at this point.

“Sensitive ” Herb settled on. And Five blinked a little in confusion, because he’d never heard that one before. Sensitive was what he would have used to describe Klaus or Vanya, not himself.

“You pretend that you aren’t, but I think that you carry around the baggage of your past decisions and let them guide you. I know that you aren’t particularly happy about your current situation” He gestured vaguely at his torso awkwardly “But you’ve essentially been given a second chance to grow up without your father’s or The Handler’s involvement. Your family love you very much, and it wouldn’t hurt to open up to them a bit more – to let them know more about your past, to help you process things”

Five furrowed his brows in thought. “I’ll consider it. My priorities are my siblings at the moment, they’re good people, they deserve to get settled back into their lives and put this whole ordeal behind them”

“You’re not a bad person” Herb added, his voice uncharacteristically serious as he processed the unsaid words. “Just someone who unfortunately got wound up involved with some unsavoury characters"

Five glanced down at his hands, caked in layers of grime and dried blood.

“Now, I should find Dot and get some arrangements sorted to deal with this” Herb chuckled, glancing around at the agent’s bodies littering the field. “I would say goodbye, but that sounds far too final and I have the distinct feeling that we’ll probably bump into each other again. So, in the meantime, stay well”

“You too,” Five said. And then added a “Good luck, keep in touch”

Herb gave him a smile as he made the journey back towards the barn.

Five isn’t quite sure if he wants to laugh or cry when they safely land back in the 2019 timeline, a day after the apocalypse; instead, he settled for something like an exhale of deep and ingrained exhaustion.

God, he needed a drink. Preferably something incredibly strong. The kind of drink that would give you a terrible hangover, but would be worth it. 

“Why is there a painting of Ben over the fireplace?” Diego questioned, interrupting their cheery chatter, and Five glanced up at the offending wall with a frown. The wall where his painting had sat before. Only the subject of this one was a dark-haired male with tan skin and serious eyes. His brain feels like putty and doesn’t fully register the name coming out of Diego’s mouth nor the aching familiarity of the painting’s subject. 

“I knew you’d show up eventually” Interrupted a voice, and with a startled noise they all turned to see their father rising from the wingback chair by the fire. He looked exactly the same as he did when they met him at the tiki lounge. Dressed crisply in a tweed suit and his fingers laced together in front of him, lips pressed into a thin line.

Luther and Allison say something, but he can’t hear them over the roaring of his ears and the humming in his head. He’d fucked up. Fucked up majorly. He should have known that it was too good to be true.

“This is the Sparrow Academy” Their father hissed, eyes narrow behind his monocle, and then the tense silence of the room was broken by the thumping of numerous footsteps on the balcony behind them.

“Shit” Klaus hissed. He rubbed his eyes in both shock and confusion. “Shit” He repeated, this time with a hint of hysteria. Vanya reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it comfortingly, although Five could see that his sister was equally as rattled. He couldn't blame her, he was sure they were all equally as shocked. 

The figures on the balcony were backlit and he couldn’t quite make out their features, but from their height and the proportions of their bodies they appeared to be the same age as his siblings – presumably a selection of the other 43 children born in 1989. And then another figure came into view, walking in from the side door and coming to stand in front of them.

“Dad, who the hell are these assholes?” He uttered with disgust, eyes narrowing in suspicion. He was of Asian descent, sporting a rather mean-looking scar down the side of his face and the wisps of facial hair on his chin and upper lip; and Five realised that it was the same man that Diego had pointed out in the painting. The uniform he was wearing was similar to his own, only his blazer was burgundy in colour and the crest upon his chest was alarmingly different. But seeing him in person, that feeling unnerving familiarity only heightened.

“Ben?” Klaus whispered, voice watery and hesitant.

Five did a double-take, something cold settling in the pit of his stomach in shock. Ben. Ben. The brother he used to share his physics textbooks with, the brother that used to spend hours cheering him up after a gruelling training session, the brother whose death he learnt of in Vanya’s autobiography.  

The brother he couldn’t save.

“Is it really you, Ben?” Klaus smiled, his eyes were glassy in the dim light of the room, and he reached a hand out towards the man. “I’ve missed you so much”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Not-Ben said simply, eyeing Klaus warily. “My name is Number One”

Allison and Vanya sucked in a sharp breath, and Luther looked winded. Diego physically recoiled, gripping the sideboard so hard his knuckles were white. And Five, he wanted nothing more than for the floor to swallow him whole.

“You’re not welcome here” Their father spat. “Go”

“B-but, we’re your children” Diego replied, his voice wobbly and hurt.

“No, you’re not. Now go, before I give you a reason to”

Five hoisted the briefcase up into his hands, there was no way he was letting it out of his sight, and then turned to face his family; their faces twisted with the harsh realisation that while they’d averted the apocalypse, they’d returned to a world painfully different to the one they’d left.

“Come on,” He said, giving them what he hoped was a reassuring look, although the expression felt strange on his face. “Let’s get out of here”

“Five” Luther pleaded thinly, watching as their other siblings linked hands and gathered around him. “We can’t just go; this is our home”

“I recommend you listen to him” Their father said airily. “He is, after all, the only sensible one of the bunch, and that's saying something”

Five clenched his teeth together, suppressing the flare of anger down; nothing good would come of this situation if he acted on impulse. His gaze slid back over to Luther, who looked like a kicked puppy, his eyes wide and hurt. "Dad," He said, voice thick with sadness. "Come on dad, this is our home. You can't kick us out"

Everything happened in a matter of seconds, their father raised a hand in some sort of signal, and the room erupted into abrupt chaos of movement and footsteps as the Sparrow Academy descended towards them. He saw Allison reach a hand out and grip Luther's arm, and after a quick glance across at the others to determine that they were still holding onto each other, he reached for his powers and pulled - the group vanishing in a vivid burst of blue.

Chapter Text

The jump spat them out in a dingy alley between a derelict shop and a questionable takeaway a couple of blocks away from the academy. Klaus immediately clamped a hand over his mouth and stumbled to a nearby bin, heaving into it. While Vanya swallowed thickly, arms wrapped around her abdomen. The others thankfully didn’t expel the contents of their stomachs, although they did look a little green around the edges. 

“Jesus” Diego sighed, leaning back heavily against the wall behind him with his eyes closed. Five wasn’t quite sure if it was in relation to the fiasco at the academy or the impromptu spatial jump across town, but he was inclined to agree either way.

“What the hell, Five!” Luther hissed, throwing his hands up in the air and turning to give him an exasperated look. “You can’t just blink us out of there without discussing it with the rest of us first”

“Oh yes,” Five exclaimed, placing the briefcase down on the ground before the weight of it would pull the arm out of his socket. “I’m sure dad would have been happy for us to have had a quick family meeting before he unleashed his delightful little Sparrow Academy on us”

“Hey” Klaus interrupted, splaying his hands out towards them. “I think we all need to calm down and take a breather after what just happened”

“I’m inclined to agree with him for once” Diego nodded.

“Ooh, danke!”

“I think that you all need to shut up and listen to me because I seem to be the only one with a functioning brain cell” Allison piped up, hands on her hips and eyebrows raised; looking like the very picture of a disgruntled mother. “Now. I don’t know about you guys but I’m achy and sweaty and I want nothing more than a hot shower and a bed to sleep on”

“Bliss” Klaus agreed, waving his ‘hello’ hand.

“And how do you suggest we do that?” Diego asked.

“I'll rumour us a motel room,” Allison said simply. “I honestly don’t even care about rumouring someone at this point. Unless you all want to camp out under the stars and clean up in public toilets?”

The room was, well, shit, if he was being honest. They’d walked an hour and managed to find a dingy motel where the L was broken and dangling precariously over the entrance, so the sign simply read the word mote in flashing yellow lettering. Five had to admit it was rather fitting, mote; a tiny piece of something, a speck. And at this point, the last of his patience was akin to that of a mere mote.

Which lead them to their current situation, the six of them standing wordlessly in a room with a dusty brown carpet and walls covered in revolting floral wallpaper in shades of violet and puce. There was a small kitchenette in the far corner where most of the cabinet doors were hanging off their hinges. The worlds tiniest sitting room consisting of a two-seater sofa, a couple of chairs, and a squat coffee table. But the pièce de résistance were the two queen-size beds, which meant that there were going to be some heated discussions regarding the sleeping arrangements.  

“Well,” Klaus drawled, crossing the room and throwing himself back onto the sofa, causing a fine cloud of dust to puff up into the air around him. He removed his cowboy hat and placed it down beside him, rubbing a hand through his mop of hair. “I’ve certainly stayed in worse places”

Vanya opened the door to her left, revealing a dingy bathroom with avocado-green tiles, the steady drip of a leaky tap echoing around the room. She frowned, closing it and turning to face them with a grim expression. “They didn’t have any other rooms, you know, one with more beds? Or one with a less questionable bathroom?”

“This was the only room left” Allison shrugged. “I mean it’s not ideal, but the other motel is across the city. And honestly, at this point I don’t care”

“Plus, they all tend to be the same” Five piped up, he ran a fingertip along the surface of the TV stand and grimaced at the dust collected on it, wiping it off on his shorts. “Believe me, I’ve stayed in quite a few during my time”

“And we’re only going to stay here for a bit, just long enough to figure out what to do” Luther said, although he sounded just as unsure as the rest of them. He scrutinised the room with a frown, eyes settling on the boxy TV.

“Do you think it works?” Diego questioned, bending down to scrutinise the ancient looking monitor and pressing a couple of the buttons on the front.  

Five heaved a sigh and left them to it, grabbing a teaspoon from the kitchenette before slinging the briefcase down on the nearest bed. There was a vent down beside the bedside table, and the screws offered little resistance when he jammed the handle of the spoon into the groove and twisted.

“Whatcha doing?” Luther questioned curiously, peering at him.

“Hiding the briefcase. Those masked assassins did the same when I was kidnapped” Klaus answered for him, and the others winced at the reminder that their brother had gone missing and it had taken them a day to notice. Five knew that he didn’t hold it against them, that wasn’t the type of person Klaus was, but the thought of what happened still left him feeling uncomfortably guilty. He really needed to make it up to him once this whole ordeal was sorted.

He needed to make it up to all of them if he was being honest. 

“It’s not ideal but it’ll do” Five remarked. He twisted the last of the screws back into place and heaved himself laboriously back to his feet. His vision blurred briefly, and he grabbed the wall-mounted light to steady himself. “I don’t know what to do with it, but the best thing to do is to keep it close – that way if we need it, we’ve got it. And it keeps it safe"

“Five-” Allison started.

“I’ll sort it out. Honestly, I just need a pen and some paper, and I’ll figure out what happened to change the timeline. It’ll be easy, and then we’ll go from there to-”

“Five” Allison said again, this time more sternly, and Five glanced up at the sudden volume of her voice. She was looking at him strangely, her mouth pressed into a tight line and a crease between her eyebrows, her eyes clouded with an emotion he couldn’t quite decipher. “Are you okay?”

Five blinked, furrowing his brows. And really, he hadn’t been expecting his sister to be worried, because he was okay. He was always okay. “I’m fine”

“You sure?” She questioned, tilting her head to one side; and when Five glanced at the other occupants of the room, he could see that the expression of worry was mirrored on their faces as well. “Because you’re…well…kind of bleeding” She gestured vaguely at her temple region.

He frowned and touched his head, wincing at the dull ache that radiated from the area. To be completely honest, with everything that had been going on he’d forgotten about the fact he’d hit by a kitchen utensil. Thankfully the worst of the swelling was concentrated on his scalp and therefore hidden by his hair, but he could feel that there was a small dribble of blood running down the side of his forehead.

“Here” Vanya said softly, and before he could comprehend what was happening, she gently cupped his cheek in her hand and dabbed a crumpled tissue against his face. His mind immediately went blank, Vanya’s hand moving down and brushing along his jaw and over his lips, down the line of his throat. And when he looked up at her face, her painted lips were twisted in a coquettish smile of amusement at his discomfort.

“That’s a bit better” He blinked, and instead of looking into suffocating sea-blue eyes, he was staring into the timid gaze of his sister who was inspecting the bloody tissue in her hand with a frown. She discarded it in the waste bin by the TV stand. “That looks pretty nasty, where did you get that?”

He swallowed, his head felt fuzzy and there was a tightness in his chest that left him feeling breathless.

“Just a tumble” He managed eventually, and his voice sounded thin even to his own ears. “I’m okay”

Allison pursed her lips, and Klaus was looking at him with an odd intensity from where he was draped across the sofa. And Vanya, Vanya was wearing that sad little smile that seemed to be a permanent expression on her face these days. But the moment was broken when the room was filled with the sudden burst of tinny noise coming from the TV. Diego jumped and shot them an apologetic look over his shoulder. “Sorry ‘bout that! But at least we’ve finally got a bit of entertainment”

“Well, I’m going to have a shower” Luther announced with a sigh, pulling off his jacket and draping it over the back of a chair. He grimaced down at himself. “It kind of feels counterintuitive to wash and then put these clothes back on, they’re filthy”

“How about I go sort us something out?” Klaus piped up, waving a hand towards them nonchalantly. “We passed a thrift shop couple of blocks away, I’m sure I’d be able to find some stuff for us”

“You're going to steal from a thrift shop?” Diego scoffed. "You do realise that the money goes towards charity, right?"

"I have money" Klaus squawked indignantly, throwing his cowboy hat at him. Diego rolled his eyes and redirected the trajectory so it sailed smoothly into the bin. "Yeah, what money?" 

Klaus shot him a cheeky grin as he retrieved his hat and placed it back on his head; followed by plucking a wad of money from his pocket and fanning himself with it.

“Let me guess” Allison rolled her eyes. “Dicks, Drugs-”

“And debutants” Klaus finished. “Hell yeah sis. You guys get freshened up, I’ll nip out and bring us back a few goodies; Let daddy take care of you”

“For the love of God, please do not say that again” Diego stressed, “Please”

Five doesn’t recognise the person looking back at him.

The air in the dingy motel bathroom is sticky and damp from the shower Allison had prior to him, and he had to wipe a hand across the condensation that’s collected on the surface of the mirror to see himself. 

His hair is thick, something he’d always prided himself on – even in his older body, but the right side was currently stuck together awkwardly with dried blood from the head wound. Back at The Commission, bloodstains in his hair had always been a bitch to remove, as the colour clung to the white strands. A big difference to his hair now, the blood hardly noticeable against the dark brown.

His body was the biggest difference.

His older body hadn’t been particularly tall. I mean, when your food consumption was limited to tinned goods and roaches, it was going to stunt your growth. But he’d been thicker set, stockier, stronger. And as he stood shirtless in front of the mirror, he couldn’t help but let his eyes scan across the battered body reflected back.

Narrow shouldered, narrow chested, narrow waisted. Prepubescent. He looked ill. His skin mottled in a spectacular array of blues and greens and yellows, the blurs of darkness under his eyes amplified in the harsh overhead light.

Back in 1923, he’d dealt with a particularly feisty target located in the backstreets of Glasgow, a target that plunged the broken end of a beer bottle into the soft flesh of his side. The incident left a little circle of silvery-white scars that puckered the skin. Now, as he ran his hand over the area slowly, the skin was smooth under his fingertips. He had new scars, of course. He was certain that the shrapnel wound from the first apocalypse was going to leave a nasty one. But it was difficult to explain - he didn’t want those scars, he wanted his old ones.

He swallowed thickly and turned the shower on, tugging off his clothes while he waited for the water to warm and leaving them in a heap in the corner.

And by god. He didn’t know that a shower could feel so good.

The shower gel was the cheap kind that smelt of washing up liquid, but it did a decent job of removing the dirt and grime off his skin. He squeezed a bit more into his hands and lathered it through his hair. It stung horrendously on the wound, but at least it would flush out any nasties and prevent infection.

He was suddenly aware that while he’d sponged the worst of the bloodstains off his clothes, he hadn’t actually washed his hair in two weeks – which was honestly kind of disgusting, even by his own apocalypse hermit standards. The water running around his feet was a translucent crimson from the blood runoff; if there was a colour he had to associate himself with, it would be red.

“You look good in red”

He froze, fingers twisted in his hair and soap suds running into his eyes.

 “I think you just like blood in general” He rolled his eyes. “What do you want anyway?”

“Little birdie told me you successfully dispatched Alessandro Stradella today. How did you do it, gunshot to the head? Poisoning?” She shook her head, pursing her lips as she cast a critical eye over his suit. “No, those deaths are too clean given the state of you. You know, I think most of our dry-cleaning budget is spent on your wardrobe. AJ is starting to get annoyed”

“I stabbed him,” He said; ignoring the latter half of her statement. He shed his soiled jacket and loosened his tie, ignoring the way she followed the movement with her eyes. “Got him at the Piazza Banchi and left his body on the doorstep of the church overlooking the harbour. You would have liked it there, lots of old Baroque architecture. Although I did miss the convenience of a car – carriages are far too tedious”

“I’m more of a Bauhaus kind of woman. Clean. Simple. A backdrop for the possessions within” She drawled as she slunk into the room, pulling the door shut behind her with a click that seemed deafening. “You do realise that a gun is quicker, or do you like the thrill of the chase?”

“I don’t dislike the gun,” He said evenly. “I just like to mix thing’s up a little, you know – stops me getting stagnant”.

“Hey”

“I understand” She smiled, coming to a stop in front of him. She raised a hand and brushed some of the hair back of his forehead slowly, her fingernails snagging in the dried blood. “I’m glad that you have adapted to this environment so well, but it is a shame that you still can’t let go of such whimsical hopes”

He frowned because that was a rather vague statement. But this was The Handler he was talking to – everything that came out of her mouth was akin to that of a riddle. “I don’t think I understand”

“Don’t think I don’t know about that little notebook of yours, the one with those equations” She said, raising a delicate eyebrow. “You still think that you can go back and save that little family of yours. They’re dead, there’s nothing you can do to remedy that. I don’t know why you keep clinging to your little fantasy”

“Five, come on, look at me” A whisper of a voice said.

He swallowed thickly and could feel the hammering of his heart against his ribcage. “How do you know about the notebook?”

She ignored his question in her usual evasive fashion, instead idly fussing with the blood-splattered collar of his shirt. “Do you really think that going back will save them? What’s meant to be is meant to be, their deaths are part of the timeline. A timeline that needs to be carefully maintained”

“They’re six people, only six people” He frowned.

“Do you really think that you’d be able to save them? Really?” She pulled back to give him a look that was bordering on condescending. “Sometimes you have to realise that some things are destined to happen. The Library of Alexandra was destined to be destroyed. London was destined to burn in 1666. And your siblings were destined to die in the apocalypse. Your efforts are, and always will be, futile”

“Hey” Came the voice again, this time with a touch more clarity. And Five realised with a pang of recognition that he knew this voice. “Hey, Five, listen to me. You’re okay, just breathe, breathe nice and slow for me. Shit, I wish Ben were here – he’d know what to do”

He shakily inhaled and tried to calm his hammering heartbeat, and it helped. His old room back at The Commission swirled dizzyingly around him and settled into a murky scene of avocado tiles and black-mould speckled grout. He can hear the rhythmic drip drip drip of a leaky tap, can feel the chill of a draft over his wet skin, and the gentle touch of a hand on his bicep. In his confused state, he initially thinks it’s The Handler, only this hand is larger and tanner, and instead of immaculate red nail polish it’s black and chipped at the nail tips.

“You with me?” Said the voice, and Five raked his eyes up from the hand and along a wiry arm, across a bony shoulder, and up to his brother’s worried face.

“Klaus?” He blinked, trying to chase away the lingering confusion of platinum hair, sinister smirks, and feelings of helplessness.

“Yeah, it’s me” Klaus murmured, his green eyes soft and sympathetic. He slowly reached up a hand and pushed his wet hair out of his eyes, gently touching the side of his head with his fingertips. “You really have got a nasty bump on the head there, baby bro. I think you were downplaying the severity of it earlier”

"I'm older than you. Technically you're the baby brother" Five hummed, leaning into his brother’s warm touch. Why was he so cold?

“Whatever. You ready to get out the bath now old-timer?”

Five glanced down at himself and flushed, realising that he was currently sat stark-naked in the said bath. Thankfully Klaus had turned the shower off and placed an uncomfortably scratchy towel over him to cover him up; although it didn’t make the current circumstances any less humiliating, especially not when his torso currently had a 70/30 bruise to skin ratio.

“Right, hold the towel, let’s get you up” Klaus said with false cheeriness and grabbed him by the armpits, hauling him to his feet. Five swayed on the spot and clutched the towel around him with prune-shrivelled fingers.

“Okay, right, so I got you some clothes, and some comfy stuff to wear at night too” Klaus chattered as he rummaged around in a couple of carrier bags balanced on the toilet seat, while Five busied himself with pulling on his underwear and socks. “I wasn’t quite sure what style you’d like, so I went with something that a grandpa would wear, but you know, a hipster grandpa, the kind that would know what quinoa is. Here you go”

Five frowned at the measly offerings of slim-cut charcoal coloured chinos, and a cable-knit sweater in a shade of forest green with brown leather elbow patches. He’d much prefer the familiar comfort of his uniform, but at this point, it was so caked in blood and guts that it was downright unhygienic.

“It’s weird seeing you in something other than shorts. Not wrong, just weird” Klaus commented thoughtfully from his position kneeling on the floor, folding up the bottoms of his pant legs for him. “You know, like when accidentally make eye contact with your drug dealer when you’re doing your grocery shopping”

Five wasn’t quite sure what to make of that statement, and frankly, he still felt like he was having some sort of out-of-body experience, his mind hazy. Too hazy to deal with anything complex right now. He tugged on the sweater which was about two sizes too big and hung around the midpoint of his thighs, the neckhole wide enough to expose his sharp shoulder blades.

And when he glanced in the mirror, the bruise on his neck from Lila’s boot back at the barn was glaringly obvious. He couldn’t help but think that at this moment, dressed in clothes that hung of this stupid and young body, that he’d never looked quite so small and insignificant.

“Hey, you still with me?” Klaus interrupted, reaching out and grasping his shoulders. They were a comforting and soft presence, a juxtaposition to the talon-like grip of The Handler. “Look, I’m not going to intrude, I know you hate that…but I know what you’re going through. I’ve…I’ve seen it. You know, there used to be guys that would come back to the tents, and they’d have this faraway look on their faces” He paused to give him a serious look; a more personal look. “I know what it feels like”.

Five tore his gaze away from his reflection and met his brother’s eyes. It was easy to forget that Klaus, for all his casual goofiness and carefree attitude to life, had seen what death was like. He’d never shared the gory details of what had happened back in Vietnam, but it was obvious to anyone in the way he clutched at the dogtags around his neck, or the way that he’d recoil at loud noises, that he’d been through things that were both emotionally and mentally scarring.

“I’m sorry I came in here, it was just Diego was grumbling about you using up all the hot water” Klaus rambled. “And we were getting a bit worried, so I thought that I’d just poke my head around the door and check on my dear little bro…”

He trailed off, glancing at the bathroom door and back at him again. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No” Five said simply, he used the towel from earlier to squeeze the leftover water out from his hair and then tried to tame the damp strands into something resembling its usual style.

“Five-”

“I’m okay” He didn’t mean to snap, he really didn’t, but he couldn’t help but feel guilty at the hurt look that crossed Klaus’ face. He sighed and curled his fingers around the fabric of his too-long sleeves, inspecting the floor tiles beneath his socked feet. “Thank you for the clothes. But I’m okay, really, I am. You can leave, tell Diego that I’ll just straighten up in here and then the bathroom’s free”

Klaus heaved a sigh. “Five, look – just talk to us. You were just sat in the bath, under freezing cold water I might add, and completely unresponsive. That’s not what you do when you’re okay. And don’t get me started on the state of you, you currently look like your body is trying to emulate camouflage”

“I’m okay, it’s just a few bruises” Five stressed. “Please, just go. And don’t tell the others, they’ll just worry unnecessarily, and I hate it when they do that”

Klaus chewed his lower lip and gave him one last critical one-over, before slipping out the door and pulling it shut behind him.  

Five sighed, walking over to the mirror and peering at himself. His face was twisted into an expression that both looked and felt alien on his face. He pressed his forehead against the cool surface and closed his eyes, trying to calm the constant ringing in his head.

It was decided that Luther would sleep on the sofa, Vanya and Allison would share one of the beds, while the last bed would be shared between Klaus, Diego, and himself. But there was no way he was going to be sandwiched between his two brothers, so instead, he dragged the spare duvet and pillow to the bath every night, curling up in the tub and trying to sleep while listening to the leaky sink tap. He could have also sworn that he heard the scuttering of insects, quite an easy sound for him to identify as cockroaches were rife in the apocalypse; they liked to feast on the corpses.  

And he would have thought that with the immediate danger of the second apocalypse gone, and the fact that they’d worked their way back to 2019, even if it wasn’t the 2019 they left, that he would have managed to get at least a bit of sleep.

But no, instead he spent the majority of the night tossing and turning while listening to the snoring from the adjoining room; and if he managed to finally nod off, he then soon rudely awoken by a nightmare. So, he’d therefore spend the majority of the night sitting in a bathtub while scrawling down probabilities of where the timeline was altered, then at 5am he would drag the bedding out, freshen up with a quick shower, and then head into the main room to fix himself a much-needed coffee; all before the others awoke.

And of course, because his siblings had as much tact as a speeding train, they mentioned it at every opportunity.

“You look like shit,” Klaus said, voice muffled around a mouthful of chow mein. The others glanced up and scrutinised him intensively, and Five shot them all a glare at the sudden unwanted attention. “Seriously bro, it’s like you’re wearing eyeliner but you’re not. Are you sleeping okay? I mean the bath can’t be comfy, you can sleep with us. I'll have you know that I'm an excellent cuddler" 

“I’d sooner shove this fork in a plug socket” He replied, stabbing a piece of chicken with the utensil and shoving it in his face, chewing slowly and grimacing at the taste of grease. They were currently congregated in the makeshift living room; Allison, Klaus, and Vanya squeezed on the sofa, Diego sat cross-legged on the floor, Luther in one chair and himself in the other.

His stomach churned in protest at the food he’d just swallowed, so he sipped at his coffee to help wash things down.

If the lack of sleep wasn’t bad enough, it seemed like his stomach was also playing up. He’d never been one to stick to a regular food schedule, he simply grabbed various things whenever he felt hungry; doughnuts, granola bars, fluffernutters, the odd piece of fruit whenever he was feeling adventurous. But now that they were essentially living in one room, he was obliged to eat three meals a day with the others; usually constituting of rich foods from the local takeaways and delis. And that coupled with the stress was turning out to be a disastrous combination.

His stomach churned again, and he pushed the plate aside; the smell was nauseating.

“Everything okay?” Allison questioned, looking at him curiously with a fork halfway towards her mouth.

“Peachy” He huffed, closing his eyes and swallowing thickly. God, he wanted nothing more than to be in the privacy of his own room, he hated their invasive questioning. Dolores was never like this; she always respected his boundaries.

“Five” Diego chided at his tone, and he resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“I’d really appreciate it if you just left me alone” He swallowed down the rest of his coffee, and immediately wished he hadn’t, as it seemed to mingle uncomfortably with his dinner.

Luther side-eyed him as he helped himself to another spring roll. “Come on guys, if we’re stuck in this shitty place the least we could do is try to get on with each other”

Five couldn’t help but recoil slightly in his seat. He knew realistically that Luther wasn’t saying it as a jab against him, but whenever discussions of their current circumstances popped up – he felt an awful wave of guilt wash over his body. He hated that he’d failed his family again. He always seemed to fuck up.

“Honestly, Five, are you sure you’re okay?” Vanya piped up in that soft voice of hers. “Because you’re not looking so wel-”

Five stumbled out of his jump in the far corner of the motel car park, immediately doubling over and coughing up the contents of his stomach. Thankfully he was somewhat hidden by a parked car and away from prying eyes. He sighed and grimaced at the taste in his mouth, but at least the cramping of his stomach had finally settled, and the cool dusk air was refreshing on his hot skin. The motel sign shone brightly above him in neon lights, a mockery at his failure.

“Five!”

He sniffed and rubbed his eyes, standing back up to his full height and peering at Allison over the roof of the car next to him. “Yes?”

“What the hell, Five. Why did you suddenly…” She trailed off as she jogged over, and her annoyed gaze turning into one of sympathy when she neared him. Five flushed hotly at the state of both him and the floor. “Oh, why didn’t you say you weren’t feeling too well?”

“Don’t patronise me” He snapped.

Allison exhaled in frustration, but otherwise reached out and grasped him by the elbow, steering him back towards the motel. He wanted to rip his arm out of her grip, but he couldn’t help but admit her touch was quite nice. “Come on, I think Klaus brought back an energy drink from his latest supermarket run. I’m guessing the Chinese was a bit much for you”

Five pursed his lips, letting his sister guide him back up the stairs and towards their room. She paused when they reached their door, her hand halfway out to grasp the handle, and glanced at him with an expression he couldn’t quite decipher. “You doing okay?”

“What?”

“Are you doing okay?” She repeated slowly with a roll of her eyes. “You know, we’ve all been noticing that you…haven't been quite yourself since coming back”

“I’m fine, just leave me alone” He scoffed.

“Five…”

“I’m. Okay” He emphasised with a sense of finality, opening the door and slipping inside to avoid drawing out this tedious conversation any more than it had already. He heard Allison sigh from behind him as she pulled the door closed. 

On the seventh day it all came to a head. And to be honest, Five wasn’t entirely sure how the argument started or what the initial argument was even about. But here he was, standing in the middle of this dingy motel room and staring at his mountain of a brother. Allison was sat on the sofa, eyes closed and her fingers pressed against her temples, Vanya perched beside her and looking like she wanted to be anywhere else at this very minute. While Diego and Klaus were halfway through demolishing a packet of cookies and looking vaguely entertained at the unfolding scene.

And Five. He was exhausted, he was stressed, and he was slowly going mad at having to be cooped up in one place. He wanted to blink off to some other part of the city and scream, but he couldn’t do that, because that meant he would have to leave his siblings alone and goodness knows what mayhem they would get up to in his absence.

“Last time I checked in this family, I was Number One” Luther said, his thick arms crossed in front of him. “Since when did you move up the rankings?”

“Last time I checked in this family, I was the only one with an actual functioning brain” Five bit back, throwing his hands up in exasperation. He was certain that at this point, everyone in this shamble of a motel could hear their argument due to the papery thin walls. But honestly, he really did not care.  

“Says the man who tried to off himself” Luther snapped.

“I was suffering from paradox psychosis you asshole, maybe if you were a decent spotter, things wouldn’t have escalated”

“Okay, okay” Allison stood up and moved between them, glancing at them both in turn. “I think we need to calm down before one of us says something we regret”

“Maybe if you hadn’t stranded us in Dallas in the first place, we wouldn’t have been unadopted by our own father” Luther snapped back, eyes flashing.

Five could barely hear Diego’s muttered “Oh shit” over the roaring in his head. His hands were curled so tightly into fists that his nails were biting into the flesh of his palms, and he was so angry he’s sure he’s vibrating with it. He wished it would just stop. He wished everything would stop. He wished that one time in his pathetic excuse for a life, he could have a break.

“You stranded Klaus there for three years! Diego landed himself in a psychiatric hospital and you left him there. I thought everyone was dead! You tore Allison away from her husband and Vanya, Vanya finally found happiness with Sissy and Harlan and you ripped that all away from her” Luther said, pointing at each of their siblings in turn. “Everything was going okay until you showed up. You always say that you’re doing this all to save us, but frankly speaking, all you bring is trouble”

The only thing that he could hear in his head was The Handler’s mocking “Your siblings were destined to die” and the only thing he could see was red. His eyes were smarting, and he was chewing the inside of his lip so hard he could taste blood. He definitely felt sick now, sick with the hot shame of guilt. He hated that in their eyes he’s seen as the bad guy when everything he’d ever done was for their own wellbeing.

“You. Died” He hissed out, his voice uncomfortably thin and shaky. “You all fucking died. Three times. You died three fucking times and each time I’ve managed to save you”

Diego furrowed his eyebrows and stopped eating. And Luther was now looking slightly alarmed, glancing at Allison as if he were looking for help, and Five could feel something wet running down his cheeks.

“You ungrateful little…” His vision wobbled suddenly and the room around him blurred in a haze of colours. He reached out and grabbed the nearest thing to steady himself. “You-”

The room rapidly tilted on its axis and everything sounded muffled as if it were underwater, and then his consciousness was pulled into empty darkness as his vision tunnelled.

The next time he opened his eyes he was staring up at a horrendous artex ceiling. His head felt like someone had replaced his brain with cotton wool and there was a strange chill over his chest, as well as the occasional pulling sensation on his abdomen. It took a couple of minutes to orientate himself; he knew he was laying on something soft, and the environment around him was filled with the hazy sound of muffled voices. He opened his mouth to speak, but the noise that came out was something more akin to an incoherent moan of confusion than actual words.

The background noise stopped abruptly, and then a blurry face came into view above him. He blinked a couple of times to ease the fuzziness, and eventually, the blur settled into the face of his brother peering down at him.

“Sleeping beauty awakes” He commented, his tense mouth relaxing somewhat into an easy smile, although his eyebrows were still pinched together with worry. “How are you feeling, Fivey?”

It honestly felt like someone had stolen his tongue, but nevertheless, he managed to squeak out a rather pathetic, “Sore”

“I’m not surprised, you somehow managed to conk your head again on your way down, this time on the other side. You really need to stop doing that, it can’t be good for the old noggin” Klaus said with a frown. He glanced down at someone out of his eyeline. “Hey Alli, are we good to get him upright?”

“Just a second” Allison’s voice piped up over the sound of something peeling, and then he felt something being gently pressed on his abdomen. In fact, now that he was thinking about it, there was a dull ache circulating around the area. “Okay, all done”  

“Righty-ho” Klaus hummed, sliding his hands under him and hoisting him slowly upright, someone adjusted the pillow behind him, and then Klaus laid him back down with a surprising amount of tenderness. “There we go, at least now you can gaze at our pretty faces instead”

Five groaned and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, pausing when his fingers felt what seemed to be gauze wrapped around his head. He gingerly touched his temple, finding that the wound had been cushioned with a thick dressing. The headache from earlier was still present, although the ferocity of it had drastically decreased, for which he was thankful for. “How long was I out?”

Diego glanced down at his watch. “About two hours”

“Think of it this way, at least you finally got a nap” Klaus remarked, reaching out and smoothing some his hair down. He shivered and glanced down, finding that his sweater was rucked up under his arms and exposing far too much of his bruise-mottled stomach, which certainly explained why he was feeling a tad chilly.

“You’re welcome” Allison interrupted his thoughts, and it was only then that he noticed the bloody dressing over the shrapnel wound had been changed for a fresh one. He tugged his sweater down and looked in her direction to see her tidying away a first aid kit. “You tore your stitches doing god knows what. I had to stitch it back up again”

“Thanks”

She gave him a look, that same look she gave whenever anyone did something stupid and she wanted them to know it. “Were you planning on saying anything?”

“About what?” He mumbled evasively, glancing to the side and realising that someone had placed a glass of water and a couple of painkillers on the bedside table. He shoved them in his mouth and sipped at the water to wash them down.

“Five” Vanya chastised. She had pulled up a chair by the bed and was sat in it, her hands twisted together on her lap with worry. “If we’re going to work things out as a family, we can’t keep hiding things from each other. Let’s start small, any idea as to why you suddenly fainted like that?”. And while he was glad that his sister had finally grown a backbone, because she’d always been a touch too timid for his liking, now really wasn’t the time.

“Probably the lack of sleep,” He said, and then added as an afterthought. “Or the head wound. Or maybe the stress. Or any combination of those things to be honest”

“And what about that?” Allison sighed and gestured down at his abdomen. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s the same shrapnel wound that you got back in 2019. And talking to the others, it turns out that you’ve been in a fistfight with one of the Swedes and may have ended up under a wall at some point, and then there was something involving the board, and…we’re all just confused. Because it seems to me that you’ve been doing a little one-man mission to stop the apocalypse, and no one is entirely sure as to what you’ve been up to”

“Are we really going to have a family meeting now?” He muttered.

“No time like the present bro” Diego squeezed him on the shoulder. “Plus, you can’t blink your way out of this one, not in your current state. Come on, cough it out”

“So…” He licked his chapped lips. He hated the feeling of having so many eyes on him “So it’s been, what, about a fortnight since I first turned up”

“In Dallas?” Klaus whistled with a grimace. “Jesus, no wonder why you’re so stressed”

“Since the first apocalypse” He corrected. “When I sent us all to Dallas, I arrived in the middle of you all fighting after you'd all met up. So, one second I left the Icarus theatre, and the next I saw you guys fighting in the new timeline. But Hazel took me back ten days when you died in a nuclear explosion, and well, the swedes turned up and killed him.”

There were five sets of eyes staring at him wordlessly, their faces a mixture of shock, sympathy, and worry. God, he hated opening up to people, Dolores had always joked that he was emotionally constipated. “Elliot let me stay at his place, and I was working through the night to find you guys. I was counting on dad to sort things out, and well that didn’t work. So I took up The Handler’s deal to assassinate the board in exchange for a briefcase, but there were some unexpected…issues”

“The time limit” Luther murmured thoughtfully. The poor guy was sat there looking incredibly guilty, and Five had the distinct feeling that his oaf of a brother was blaming himself for his little fainting session earlier. “Wait, was that when you showed up covered in blood?”

“Yeah” Five nodded, and immediately regretting it when his vision swam slightly.

“And no one questioned the fact that he was covered in blood” Allison commented, face pinched with displeasure. Luther shuffled awkward on his seat and glanced down at his lap.

“I’m fairness I didn’t exactly elaborate on the issue” He piped up sheepishly. “And when that didn’t work I then tried to reason with my younger self, but that didn’t work either. So, here we are”

Allison was quiet for a while, watching him thoughtfully. “And the bruises?”

“They’re nothing to worry about – there’s nothing that can be done about them anyway”

“They’re everything to worry about when you’re our brother” She replied softly.

“Hang on, wait” Diego piped up. “Let’s just backtrack a second. You said earlier that we died three times. The first was in the apocalypse, the second was in the nuclear explosion. When was the third?”

Five pursed his lips and picked at a loose thread on the duvet underneath him. Klaus sighed and prodded him gently in the side with a bony finger. “Come on Five-O. Communication is a two-way street you know”

“Back in the barn. The Handler shot us”

“I don’t remember-” Diego paused, eyebrows pulling down in thought. “Wait, you knew that The Handler was going to turn up, and one second you were behind Lila and the next you were by the door. I have a feeling that we’re missing a key bit of information here”

Five shuffled slightly, settling down a bit more comfily on the bed. The pain relief he’d swallowed down earlier was starting to do its magic, and his eyelids were starting to feel heavy with drowsiness.  “She came in and shot us all. I turned back time to, well, un-shoot us”

“I didn’t know you could do that” Vanya murmured thoughtfully, and Five scoffed. “Well, neither did I. Let’s just say that dad said something at the tiki lounge that stuck with me”

“Wait, you said ‘shot us all’, did she get you as well?” Luther frowned.

“Three times on my abdomen” He replied. “It was just taking me longer to die, and well, I thought I’d give it a go, what else could I do? As annoying as you lot are, I couldn’t let you bleed out on a barn floor. That would be a rather anticlimactic death”

The room settled into a quiet silence. The only thing that could be heard was the quiet background noise of the neighbouring rooms TV and the faint buzz of the light overhead. He startled slightly when he felt a hand settle on his leg, and when he looked up, he was staring into Luther’s pained eyes. “Thank you”

His eyes were stinging.

“You know..” Luther swallowed. “For everything. For saving us, three times, and for bringing us all back together. And I’m sorry, for being a terrible spotter and a terrible brother. I should have noticed what you were going through, and I should have noticed what you were doing for us”

His vision blurred and he blinked again in an attempt to focus.

“And, I love you, I guess. We all love you” Luther mumbled awkwardly. “Even if you can be a feral little goblin sometimes. And while we’re at it, I’m sorry for throwing you off the stairs, that was uncalled for”

God, why wouldn’t his vision clear?

“Hey now, none of that” Klaus cooed, reaching up and gently brushing his thumbs under his eyes, and Five realised with a wave of embarrassment that they were wet with tears. “Please don’t cry Fivey. I think you’ve broken him, Luther. It’s all your fault”

“I’m not crying, I’m leaking” Five mumbled, sniffing.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry!” Luther fretted, looking panicked.

He decided to put his poor brother out of his misery. “You’re a terrible spotter but not a terrible brother. I mean, I want to tear my hair out whenever I’m dealing with any of you. But you’re all alright, I guess”

He nibbled at his lower lip, sniffling slightly through his stuffy nose. His lashes were wet and sticking uncomfortably in lumps, and he wanted nothing more than to get away from this awkward and frankly painful conversation. But he knew that this was just as uncomfortable and painful for his siblings. And as much as he hated to admit it, Klaus was right; communication was a two-way street. And Herb’s “It wouldn’t hurt to open up to them a bit more” was circling around his head. “I love you guys. I’m sorry I haven’t been completely honest about everything going on. But…I’ll try. And I’ll sort this mess out with the Sparrow Academy, I’ll fix it and make it better”

Allison reached out and squeezed his hand. “We’ll fix things, together, as a family. You don’t have to do things alone anymore”

Five sniffed, he could feel his eyes leaking again. He hated this whole opening up thing, it sucked.

“Now, it’s getting late and I think we’re all a little emotionally drained after today. So, I think it’s best if we settle down for the night” She continued. “And I’m not letting you sleep in the bath, I’m sure you’ll be able to squeeze between Klaus and Diego – I mean, you’re only a little guy”

Five lightly kicked her with his socked foot and she squealed, swatting at him. And although her eyes were slightly glassy with unshed tears, she was smiling. In fact, when he looked at them all in turn, they were all smiling.

“Oh good, you’re still alive. Lucky you! You got to see how this all played out”

He startled awake with a tightness of panic in his chest, an uncomfortable weight across his legs, and a numb right arm. He slowly and carefully sat up, his eyes adjusting to the darkness around him and his mind still reeling from the sight of his dead siblings across the barn floor, even if it was only a nightmare. He had too many nightmares these days.

He exhaled and glanced over at the digital clock on the bedside table. 3:12am.

It was dark, although the thin motel curtains did little to prevent the amber glow of the streetlights from outside filtering into the room. He could just make out the vague form of Luther on the sofa, wrapped cosily in his duvet and snoring loudly. Allison and Vanya were snuggled together on the other bed, their chests rising and falling steadily with sleep. Diego was curled on his side facing him, his mouth slightly open and face squished against the pillow. His right leg was strewn across his own – which explained the uncomfortable weight. He glanced to his left, expecting to see Klaus in a similar state, only to see the other man watching him intensely from the darkness.

“Jesus Klaus” He hissed quietly, pressing his hand over his heart and willing it to return to a normal rate. “How long have you been watching me you creep?”

“I heard you wake up,” Klaus said, stifling a yawn. “Plus, you moved the sheets and let all the cold air in. You know how much I like the warmth – I’m like a lizard”

“Sorry” He mumbled, shifting slightly and wincing at the flare of pain from his abdomen. 

“Don’t apologise” Klaus whispered. He lifted an arm and gesturing in. “Shuffle in”

Five gave him a sideways look of complete and utter contempt, although he wasn’t sure if Klaus could see it in the dark. “I’d rather not”

Klaus frowned, and Five couldn’t help but feel slightly guilty. “Nothing against you or anything, but I’d rather just lay here”

“I won’t hurt you,” Klaus said eventually, in a voice that was far too soft and far too sympathetic for his liking. It made something in his chest tighten. “Come on, please. Do it for me”

“No”

“Please. Honestly, I don’t bite” Klaus whined, pouting.

Five muttered out a sceptical “I highly doubt that” but laid back down and reluctantly wiggled into his brother’s arms, his muscles tense. Klaus chuckled quietly and readjusted the duvet back over them, letting his arm wrap around him.

“Relax” Klaus said, and Five made a conscious effort to soften into the embrace. This wasn’t The Handler, this was his brother, his brother who didn’t have a bad bone in his body; there was no reason to feel on edge around him.

“Was it a nightmare?” Klaus mumbled against his hair, hand running up and down his back, careful not to press on any of the bruising. Five nodded against his shoulder, letting out a muffled, “Yeah”

Klaus made a soft noise of sympathy. “I know how you feel”

“What is this, a sleepover? Are you guys seriously going to talk all night?” Came Diego’s sleep-thick voice. “Honestly guys, I’m starting to regret sharing the bed with you two. And you’ve stolen all the covers”

“Well snuggle in closer you idiot, or is that too gay for you?” Klaus said, the smile on his voice evident in his voice.

Diego snorted in response and shuffled closer so his chest was pressed against Five’s back, his body radiating heat like a furnace. He slung a heavy arm over his waist and then prodded at his ribs through his thin nightshirt. “Jesus bro you need to put a bit of weight on, you’re feeling a bit scrawny. What’s that instrument called again, saxophone, right? The one with those bars you move the stick down”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Klaus muttered.

“Xylophone you moron. Were you asleep during our music sessions?” Five rolled his eyes, and then paused as Diego's words sunk in. “My ribs aren’t a xylophone”

“Could have fooled me” Diego muttered, prodding at his torso again. Five kicked a foot back and snorted at the startled noise Diego made when it struck his shin.

“Shh guys, we’re actually trying to sleep over here” Allison piped up from the other bed, followed by the noise of bedsheets rustling.

“Wait, what’s happening?” Vanya mumbled sleepily, her voice muffled against her pillow.

“They’re being idiots, just ignore them” Allison whispered irritably.

“Who are you calling an idiot? And shut up, I want to sleep” Diego hissed.

“You’re the one talking” 

“Guys seriously” Vanya whined.

Luther, meanwhile, was still out to the world – his snores practically shaking the walls. Someone could detonate a bomb next to him and he’d still manage to find a way to sleep through the noise.

Five snickered as he closed his eyes, the noise muffled against Klaus’ chest. The three of them sharing the bed was a tight squeeze, Klaus’ steady breaths against his hair were slightly ticklish and Diego’s arm over his waist was a dead weight. But the comfort of knowing that all his siblings were safe and more importantly, together, was enough to settle his mind into slumber.

Five really wasn’t okay, and if he was being perfectly honest, he hadn’t been okay for quite some time. There was still the Sparrow Academy and Not-Ben to deal with, their father had essentially unadopted them out of his life, and their home was currently a shitty motel with a definite cockroach infestation. But he knew that he would be okay as long as his family were with him.