Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

PART I
THE APOCALYPSE SUITE

“I want to help you bury them, Five,” Klaus said quietly when he finished. “I… I’m not weak . I can handle things. Especially if they’re things as important as this. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

Klaus wrapped his arm around Five’s middle to help him up.

Five didn’t push his arm away.

As they dug and buried, snow began to fall.

Even the ghosts were shocked into silence.

Klaus decided he quite liked winter.

Chapter Text

Klaus nearly gagged up his eggs and bacon as he saw Luther and Allison blushing at each other. He simply didn’t understand how they saw all of the other Academy kids as siblings but didn’t view each other as brother and sister. Granted, Klaus always went around with an arm thrown around Ben and kissing Allison’s cheeks, but he only did the latter to watch Luther punch a wall or something out of anger.

As for Ben, well, he was basically Klaus’s favorite. And though he might act like he hated Klaus’s hugs, he secretly enjoyed them.

However, one of the siblings Klaus could never get through to was Five. That didn’t really come as a surprise, though, since Five never let anyone close to him. Both physically and emotionally. The only one who ever really made a dent in that wall was Vanya, who Five seemed to tolerate.

Unfortunately, there was no talking at mealtimes, so Klaus couldn’t make a joke about the incestous lovebirds sitting next to him or tell them to knock it off. So, he resorted to glaring at Luther, who sat diagonal from him. Not that Luther ever looked at Klaus to see the glares.

It seemed as though Klaus didn’t have to worry about himself breaking the rules during that particular morning. Everyone at the table looked up in surprise when Number Five slammed his knife down into the table and sneered at Dad.

Klaus didn’t blame him. If he had the ability to sneer , he’d sneer at Dad, too.

“Number Five?” Dad’s infuriating voice asked.

“I have a question.”

“Knowledge is an admirable goal, but you know the rules. No talking during mealtimes. You are interrupting Herr Carlson.”

Grinning, Klaus leaned close to Ben, who was absorbed in a book, per usual. “More like Herr Bore -son, am I right?”

Ben blinked and slowly looked up from his book, glancing sideways at Klaus. “I think that was probably the worst joke you have ever made.”

“Ouchsies,” Klaus leaned back.

His attention was brought to Five again as his daring brother shoved his plate away. “I want to time travel.”

“No,” Dad sighed, as though he had had this conversation many times before. It wouldn’t surprise Klaus; Five was always trying to push the limits and do more with his powers than he should.

If it were up to Klaus, he’d get rid of his powers altogether.

“But I’m ready. I’ve been practicing my spatial jumps, just like you said,” Five argued as he stood out of his chair and blinked over next to Dad’s chair. “See?”

Klaus looked away from his brother and back down to his food, not letting Five interrupt his breakfast Mom had oh-so generously made for them.

“A spatial jump is trivial when compared with the unknowns of time travel. One is like sliding along the ice, the other is akin to descending blindly into the depths of the freezing water and reappearing as an acorn,” Dad droned, making Klaus look to Ben again.

“Did you understand what the hell he just said?” He muttered.

Without taking his eyes off the page, Ben answered, “I really wasn’t listening.”

“Well, I don’t get it,” Five muttered.

Klaus grinned and elbowed Ben. “Don’t worry, mein bruder , even Five doesn’t understand it and that dude’s a tiny genius.”

“Hence the reason you’re not ready.” Klaus glanced past Ben at Vanya who sat at the other head of the table, and who shook her head at Five slightly. Klaus frowned. A fight at breakfast would actually be pretty entertaining.

“I’m not afraid,” Five continued.

“Fear isn’t the issue. The effects it might have on your body, even on your mind, are far too unpredictable. Now, I forbid you to talk about this anymore.” Dad exclaimed. Klaus looked to Five, who scowled and turned, exiting the room and heading for the door. “Number Five!”

“Wait, is ditching a thing now? ‘Cause I’m in!” Klaus grinned, dropping his fork onto his plate. Dad turned to glare at him. “What? There’s no way Five gets to leave before I ever get the chance to hug that bastard!”

And with that, he gave his Dad two middle fingers, and ran out after Five, ignoring Reginald Hargreeves’ orders.

Five had left the doors to the Academy open, so Klaus ran through and stopped at the sidewalk, looking to see which way his brother had gone. He saw a familiar uniform to the right, and ran after it.

“Hey, Five, wait up!” Klaus called, running after him.

Upon hearing Klaus’s voice, Five turned around in confusion. “Klaus? What the hell are you doing, go back to the Academy!”

Klaus’s eyes widened when he saw blue energy forming around Five, and realized he was preparing to jump. And not spatial jump - time jump. “No way. I’m going with you.”

He lunged forward at the last second and grabbed onto Five’s arm tightly as the boy left the sidewalk of 2002 far behind.

When they reappear, Klaus stumbled, but didn't let go of his death grip on Five. “ Man , that was awful! How do you do that all the time? I feel like I’m gonna throw up!”

“Get off of me, Klaus, you’re not letting me focus, I’m gonna mess-”

His next words were cut off as they fell into another pit of blue energy and black nothingness. Klaus groaned when they fell back out, but his discomfort didn’t last very long when he saw what surrounded Five and him.

“-Up,” Five said in the smallest voice Klaus had ever heard. “You didn’t let me focus and I mes-” He stopped, clearly unable to admit he messed up.

Unfortunately, Klaus couldn’t find it in his heart to make a joke. Not when his heart felt like it was getting burned by the flames surrounding them and crushed by the piles of rubble towering around.

The two brothers shared a look before running back up the sidewalk, or, where the sidewalk used to be, to the Academy. It was completely destroyed. All that was left were a few columns and the outline of the metal doors.

“Vanya!” Five called helplessly.

“Ben?” Klaus exclaimed, though it came out as a question.

“Dad!” They both yelled, to no avail.

Klaus turned in a circle, taking in the ruined surroundings, before looking back at Five.

Then, he promptly blacked out.

• • •

The first thing Five realized: he was scared. And not the kind of scared you get when you’re afraid of the dark as a child, he was outright terrified .

And that was the scariest thing about all of this. Because Five doesn’t get terrified . He always had logical answers for everything and can figure out a way to escape when no one else can because they’re all too busy being scared.

But that wasn’t the case right now. Right now he was staring at the ruins of his home with his passed-out, good-for-nothing brother by his side. Five took a deep breath and turned around, only to have his breath hitch once more when he saw a hand sticking up from a pile of rubble.

With shaking legs, Five walked over and saw that the hand was clutching an eye. A fake prosthetic one, but it was bloody as though it had recently been ripped out of someone’s head. Five clenched his teeth as he crouched and took the eye from the hand, standing back up.

“No,” he whispered upon seeing the face of the body the hand was attached to. “Luther…” he trailed off.

His brother was much older, most likely late twenties or early thirties, but there was no mistaking the fact that it was his brother. He was bigger, more muscular than Five ever predicted him to be. But it was Luther. Dead and gone Luther.

Five felt something in his heart shatter even more when he looked up to see all-too familiar curly brown hair. “Allison-” he choked out, before rushing forwards to look at his sister. If it wasn’t for the dust and blood, she looked as though she could be sleeping.

“Diego, no…” Five whispered as he noticed his other brother a few feet in front of Allison. Again- older, but still clearly his siblings.

The worst was yet to come. Five noticed one more body around the corner, and walked over only to have his breath taken completely.

It was Klaus. Five couldn’t understand how, since Klaus was with him now, but it was Klaus. And Five didn’t question if his dead brother’s body was real. Not when Klaus’s eyes were still open. But it wasn’t the usual bright green that filled them. His eyes were cold and dark.

And Five’s eyes were blurry with tears. His breath was quickening and he had to take a few, deep ones in order to calm himself down.

Yes, there had to be a logical explanation for all of this. There’s logistics for everything. But Five couldn’t think. He couldn’t do math. All he could do was stare at his sibling’s corpses, and firmly ignore the cold stream of tears falling down his face.

He can’t remember when he fell asleep. He can’t remember if he was even tired. He can remember, however, the screams that woke him up.

Five bolted upright and immediately clamped his hands over his ears. He looked around wildly, only to see Klaus sitting up on the Academy stairs (or what was left of them), a horrified expression on his face and awful screams coming out of him.

“Klaus!” Five yelled, standing and rushing over to him. “Klaus, stop screaming, you’re going to wake-”

But, no. He wasn’t going to wake Dad. Because Dad was dead. As were the rest of their siblings. Klaus could scream as loud as he wanted to and the only person alive to hear it was Five. Five grabbed onto Klaus’s shoulders.

“Look at me, Klaus! What- What’s wrong? Why are you-” Five stopped when he realized Klaus’s eyes were locked on something over Five’s shoulder. He turned, but saw nothing there except Luther’s body.

And then it hit Five like a truck. Dad took Klaus to the mausoleum to punish him because there were so many ghosts there. Now, if they really were in this apocalyptic world, Klaus was most likely seeing ten times what he saw in the mausoleum.

“Sorry about this,” Five winced, pulling his arm back only to punch Klaus in the face.

“ Ow !” Klaus exclaimed. Five breathed a sigh of relief. At least he had stopped screaming. Klaus’s anger at Five dissipated instantly when he realized what had been going on. “L-Luther…” he trailed off, and Five grimaced.

“Yeah… you might not want to look to the left,” Five told him, and when Klaus’s head began to turn, he stepped in front of him. “No, I actually mean it, Klaus. Not yet- not right now.” Klaus glared into Five’s eyes, searching for something. He seemed to have found it, because he gave a reluctant nod, and ceased trying to look. Five fell back, sitting next to his only breathing brother left.

Then the anger hit him. If Klaus hadn’t run out after him and distracted him, maybe they wouldn’t have ended up in the middle of the end of the world. Five wouldn’t have jumped too far. And now, whenever he tried to jump back (as he did right now), nothing happened. The blue energy swirled and faded. He couldn’t even spatial jump one inch to the left.

“This,” he seethed, “is all your fault.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, mein bruder .”

And it did. With the thought of placing the blame on Klaus, Five fell into an only a semi -fitful sleep.

Klaus couldn’t sleep. Not because he wasn’t tired or didn’t want to. He’d give anything to black out like he had earlier. But sadly he only passed out earlier because all the noise had hit him at once and had been too much too fast.

Because there were ghosts everywhere .

He could only imagine Dad’s hard and cruel laugh if he saw Klaus now. The mausoleum was nothing compared to this. Klaus couldn’t find a single area without a ghost. Of course not. This was the apocalypse and everyone died somewhere.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up !” Klaus yelled, his hands coming up to cover his ears, not that that really did anything to help anyways.

But it was so loud . And the bodies . Their faces contorted into horrified expressions, limbs bent the wrong way from collapsed buildings or burned off from scorching fires. And the screaming. They would not. Stop. Screaming.

“No, not you, not you, go away, go away !” Klaus shook his head, knowing that when he started to say the same things multiple times in a sentence it was getting bad.

But his dead brother’s ghost was walking towards him. Luther was walking towards him, covered head to toe in dust and his chest caved in from the part of the building that had crushed his middle and there was nothing Klaus could do about it.

“What do you want from me?” Klaus asked in a broken whisper he couldn’t hear over the cries of the ghosts. He could feel tears pouring down his face but he ignored them because all he could think about was the last thing he’d done to Luther before he left.

The last thing he has done to Luther before he left

was glare at him.

Chapter Text

A week. It’s been a week since Five last said something out loud to Klaus. Deep down Five knows he shouldn’t pin the blame on his brother because it really all is his own fault, but he’s too stressed to admit to that yet.

Klaus pretends he doesn’t mind. He talks to Five without worrying about getting any answers and just says whatever he wants. In reality, he really just wants Five to talk. To hear any other sound than his own voice or the screaming and wailing of the ghosts.

Five is walking to the destroyed grocery store again and Klaus is following. He knows Klaus is following because Klaus doesn’t stay anywhere alone for over a minute. Five assumes it’s the ghosts but he doesn’t actually know how bad they really are.

“ Five ,” Klaus whines, “We just checked yesterday. You already figured out that Twinkies don’t have an endless shelf life so please don’t eat another one.”

Neither of the two were surprised when Five ignored him.

“Although I can’t complain too much seeing as I quite like the grocery store. Always have. It’s got food, it’s got-” Klaus cut himself off with a gasp. “Five! It’s got booze !”

Five started pulling off any cans he could reach off of the shelves and into the bag he’s been lugging around. What he didn’t know is that Klaus actually liked the grocery store because no one died in it. There were no ghosts.

As Five read the labels on the cans, he tried not to wince. Lentil soup ? Why would they even make that? Who eats that? He would kill for some of Mom’s pancakes or peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches.

He froze. Mom. 

Suddenly Five regretted never telling her how much she meant to him.

Suddenly the only memories filling Five’s head were the ones of him bashing Luther’s leading skills.

Or reminding Diego he wasn’t Number One.

Or telling Allison she was only talented because of her power.

Or making comments about Ben reading the same damn book over and over.

Or reminding Vanya that she wasn’t special when he got annoyed with her.

Or ignoring Klaus and blaming him for getting them stuck in the apocalypse. 

Five turned away from the shelf to look at Klaus leaning against the wall behind him.

“Klaus,” Five said, his voice raspy from not being used for a week. Klaus jumped and stopped looking out of the window, turning to Five. “I…” he trailed off, unable to form the words I’m sorry . So, he decided to say facts, because that’s what he knew best.

“It’s not your fault we’re stuck here. And I shouldn’t ignore you just because I wanted to blame you.”

Klaus grinned and leaned forward. “Is that an apology?”

Five glared daggers at him.

“Apology accepted,” Klaus leaned back, raising his arms in defeat. “But you know what will really make it up to me? Booze !”

“No, Klaus, we’re not getting wasted at thirteen in the middle of the apocalypse. What would really be great is if Griddy’s was still standing or something-”

Five cut off, and the two brothers shared a wide eyed look.

Neither of them had actually been to Griddy’s to check if it was still standing.

They quickly left the store and hurried across their broken town to the donut shop they had just visited ten days and seventeen years ago with their family. It was there. Ruined, of course, everything was ruined, but it was there.

Klaus stepped forward first, throwing nervous and agitated glances over his shoulders to what Five assumed was a ghost before pushing open the doors, or what was left of them.

Wordlessly, the pair stepped over burnt booths and broken tables to get to the back rooms where people used to make donuts before the world was destroyed. Five tried not to think about all the times he got amazing coffee when he came here. He figured it’ll probably be a while until he has coffee again.

“Bingo!” He heard Klaus call from the other side of the room. Five walked over to see one of the display casings lodged under a slab of cement that most likely fell from the ceiling. Somehow the display case was still intact, and Five could see a few donuts inside of it.

“Brilliant,” Five rolled his eyes and nudged the cement with his foot. “Now how do you plan on lifting this up?”

Five wasn’t weak, exactly, but he was no Luther when it came to muscles. He looked to Klaus, who had a few inches on Five, but who was also all skin and bones. Why did they both have to be scrawny?

“You blink into the case and grab them and then come back out,” Klaus grinned.

“That box is the size of a drawer, Klaus. I can’t fit in there and even if I could, I haven’t blinked since-” Five stopped quickly, ending with a simple glare at Klaus.

Klaus shrugged and grabbed the underside of the cement. “Okay. Then we pull.”

And Five couldn’t really argue with that. He stepped up next to Klaus and grabbed underneath the concrete. He counted to three and both boys started to lift. 

They didn’t get very far. All it did was budge.

Dropping their arms and taking deep breaths, Five looked to Klaus and shook his head. “That’s not going to work. I could try to reach down to open it, but…”

Klaus let out a sharp laugh. Five frowned a confused frown at him. “It’s just,” Klaus began, “we’re going through all of this struggling for donuts ! I can’t help but laugh.”

“Well what else is there to do?” Five exclaimed. “We’re in an apocalypse, Klaus, we’ve got all the time in the world!”

“ God , Five, would you just stop yelling at me for one damn second?”

Five glared at him but gave a curt nod. “What else is there to do?” He whispered, then turned on his heel and walked out of the rubble that used to be Griddy’s. Klaus ran after him, looking around wildly.

“On second thought,” he said in a small voice, “keep yelling.”

Five scanned the area that used to be the street.

He wondered how many people died there.

Klaus squeezed his eyes shut.

Five started yelling.

What else is there to do?

• • • 

“We have to settle somewhere.”

Klaus looks up at Five who’s standing on the ledge above him, arms crossed and foot tapping impatiently. Klaus rolls his eyes and looks away. “You’re acting like Dad!” He called up.

Five decided to ignore that as he jumped off the ledge, landing next to Klaus. “We have been sleeping in the grocery store for two and a half weeks, Klaus. We can’t stay in the store forever. We need to find a place we can stay. A base.”

And, yes, Klaus knows that. He knows he won’t be able to stay in the grocery store with it’s broken windows and smashed shelves and booze bottles forever. Winter is coming and they need a proper shelter.

But there are ghosts everywhere . And they are so loud . And the grocery store is the only place without any and where the screams are slightly muffled and Five doesn’t know that because how could he-

Klaus doesn’t want to leave.

Klaus doesn’t want to sleep.

When he sleeps he dreams and when he dreams they turn to nightmares.

But now Five is grabbing Klaus’s arm and pulling him out into the streets and the streets are the worst because it seems like everyone had run out of their homes and onto the streets to see what was going on before they died and-

“ Help me! ”

“ It burns, it burns ! ”

“ Where’s my daughter? Have you seen my daughter? ”

“ The ceiling just collapsed , it fell on my leg- ”

“ Shut up! ” Klaus yelled, closing his eyes and covering his ears.

Five stopped and turned to catch Klaus just as he fell. Klaus didn’t dare open his eyes, for he was terrified he might see that poor woman with the half-burnt face begging if Klaus had seen her daughter.

He assumed Five had brought him back into the grocery store because the voices had dimmed, but not enough because it was still too loud and then-

And then it wasn’t.

Klaus opened his eyes. There was nothing. Well, there had been nothing in the city, but here there was nothing . He assumed it used to be a farm or a field but all the grass had burnt and it hadn’t rained yet to let it regrow.

He turned in a circle and in the distance saw some charred wood that probably used to be a barn, and an old man in bloody overalls but he wasn’t coming any closer and he wasn’t screaming and-

And it was quiet.

Klaus looked at Five, who was pale from the effort of blinking but still studying his brother intently.

“You knew,” Klaus whispered. “You knew it’d be quiet here.

Five bit his lower lip and nodded.

“Thank you.”

If Five accepted hugs, Klaus would have thrown his arms around him.

Five was able to spatial jump again. He’d left five minutes ago.

He came back with three week old donuts.

Klaus had never tasted anything as good as them.

• • •

Five tried not to cry. He never cried as a child, even when he got the worst injuries imaginable. So why should he cry when dragging the rubble off of his dead siblings’ bodies? He wiped his nose as he pulled the last of the rocks off of Luther and pulled him into the clearing.

He opens his mouth to speak, to say anything. But he can’t. Not yet. He hasn’t found the right words. Instead he sits down on a large block of concrete and stares at the city around him.

He never cried as a child until now. Because he is still a child. He is thirteen, stranded in the apocalypse, forced to bury his siblings’ bodies.

At least he’s not alone.

Though it feels like it, at times. During the times when Klaus can’t come to the city with Five because of the ghosts. During the times when Five is raiding the stores around town for anything that they can live off of. During the times when he has to bury his siblings without Klaus because he doesn’t want his brother to see their other brothers’ and sister’s ghosts.

But Klaus was back at the field, working on their base, which he finally agreed to help with, as long as Five agreed to make it in the field.

“Shovel,” he said aloud, standing up and scanning the area. There used to be a hardware store… he had no confirmation if it was still intact, but Five set off to find it, shivering as he walked.

Winter had arrived, seeing as if Five’s approximation guess of them being in the apocalypse for three weeks was correct. It was now the beginning of December. Their shelter was in the burnt barn that was at the field, and according to Klaus, the dead ghost farmer had allowed them to use it.

They needed to stock up. They needed enough food and water and supplies to get them through the cold months and right now that’s what Klaus thought Five was getting every time he took a trip to the city.

But winter had arrived and Five couldn’t leave his family’s bodies out to rot.

He blinked to the store only to find it had totally collapsed down on itself. Fortunately, there seemed to be some openings in the rubble he could crawl through to search for a shovel. So that’s exactly what he did.

The second he shifted through the gap, the concrete on top of him fell.

“Shit.”

He used all of his willpower to blink before any more came down.

“Five?”

Klaus hurried over to see Five groaning on the ground, his ankle bent very clearly in the wrong direction. “Holy shit , Five, what happened?”

Hearing Klaus’s voice made Five sit upright, his eyes widening. If he blinked a second later, the whole building could have fallen on top of him. But he had to go back. He placed a hand on the side of the barn to help stand up.

“I’ve got- to go back-”

“Woah, woah, woah, easy there, cowboy,” Klaus said, reaching out his hands to steady Five, but stopping a few inches away when he remembered how little Five likes to be touched. “Your ankle’s clearly busted, buddy, you’re not going anywhere.”

“No!” Five exclaimed. “No, I’m not done , I have to finish , I need to go back!”

“Wha- Five!” Klaus grabbed Five’s arm at the last second before he blinked away, landing both of them in front of the Academy. Klaus didn’t hesitate to grab Five and steady him as he landed roughly on his bad ankle. “See? Why did you come back here, what was so impor-”

He stopped abruptly, and Five winced when he watched Klaus’s eyes land on Luther’s body Five and dragged out from beneath the rubble.

“You… moved him?”

“Yeah, I, uh… I wanted to bury him.”

“Without telling me.”

Five did a double take. “Well, yeah, I know you don’t like the city, and I didn’t want to guilt you into coming here.”

“I would have ignored my own problems to bury our brother, Five.” Klaus frowned.

Five winced. “Yeah, about that… try brother s . And sister.”

Klaus shot him a confused glance before looking to where Five was pointing. A second later Five was dropped to the ground, since Klaus’s arm around his waist had been the only thing keeping him upright. “Thank God that’s off,” Five muttered to himself.

“Diego…? Allison?” Klaus whispered, walking over to where Diego and Allison’s bodies were. Except, he went slightly to the side which is where Five assumed their ghosts were standing. “Is- is that me ?”

“Yeah,” Five said carefully. “I’ve, um, been trying to figure out how, but… I’ve got nothing.”

Klaus rounded on Five. “You knew?”

“What?” Five asked, bewildered.

“You knew the rest of our family’s bodies were here and you didn’t say anything to me? What the hell is wrong with you?”

That only angered Five seeing as he kept quiet for Klaus’s protection. “Hey, you’re the one that freaked out when you saw Luther’s ghost! I wasn’t about to show you the rest of them while you were having a panic attack. You’re welcome!”

A few minutes passed where Five watched (stuck on the ground) as Klaus walked around, pulling rocks and concrete off of his own, Diego, and Allison’s bodies. Five offered to help, but every time all he got was a glare at his ankle from Klaus, so eventually he gave up.

“I want to help you bury them, Five,” Klaus said quietly when he finished. “I… I’m not weak . I can handle things. Especially if they’re things as important as this. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

Klaus wrapped his arm around Five’s middle to help him up.

Five didn’t push his arm away.

As they dug and buried, snow began to fall.

Even the ghosts were shocked into silence.

Klaus decided he quite liked winter.

Chapter Text

Five is running out of ink.

It’s the end of January and he’s on his last marker. He’s been working nonstop since the start of winter on equations to get him and Klaus back to where they’re supposed to be. It’s tedious and for Klaus it’s rather terrifying because he always has to be ready to duck when Five gets angry and throws whatever he’s writing with.

Five is running out of supplies.

It’s the end of January and he and Klaus are on their last cans of soup and bottles of water. All that’s left are a few Twinkies that definitely have a shelf life and two bottles of booze Klaus made Five take back in December. They’ve got enough for about a week.

Five is running out of patience.

It’s the end of January and his ankle still gets sore. Back in December Klaus and Five had used their little medical knowledge, plus the few non-burnt books about doctoring they could find in the library to make a splint and try to properly heal it. Five has a limp and sometimes has to rest if he lands too hard on his ankle after blinking. He tries not to pin his anger on Klaus.

“Oi, bruder ! Hey- do you have hair down there too-”

“Shut up, Klaus,” Five growled through gritted teeth.

“I guess we are thirteen and going through puberty, it was only a matter of time.”

Five whirled around and chucked his marker at his brother, who grinned and ducked.

“Now that wasn’t very smart. It’s broken, and wasn’t that your last one?”

“Irrelevant,” Five stepped off of the stool that boosted him up so he could reach and write higher on the walls. “We have to go back to the city soon, anyways. We’re running low on everything.”

Klaus’s grin fell and his face paled. He hadn’t been back to the city since they buried their family’s bodies. Five had never asked, but based on the look on his face, it took a lot out of Klaus to be so close to their deaths.

“You don’t have to come,” Five shrugged, lowering himself onto one of the dirty but stable couches they’d found. Klaus didn’t say anything, only looked down. “Klaus. I think we should work on your powers.”

That got him to look up. “But- but your math-y stuff-”

“Can wait,” Five cut him off. “What good is going back home if you won’t be able to show off?” Five smirked, and Klaus slowly began to grin again.

He nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. Okay, yeah. But, Five you don’t understand- there are so many ghosts in the city. I get so overwhelmed every time I’m within a few feet of the perimeter.”

Five frowned and started thinking. They needed to start small, because, as they clearly saw, too many ghosts at once is way too much for Klaus to handle. Right now at least. Five studied his brother. His scrawny brother that nobody took seriously and that joked too much.

Yes, Five had a lot of faith in him.

He’d researched all his siblings’ powers before, because why wouldn’t he? Once Klaus was able to control the ghosts, he’d be unstoppable. He’d be able to banish them so they weren’t talking in his head, he’d be able to make them corporeal if needed, and he’d be able to select which ones needed to show up at what times.

“Start small,” Five stood, shoving Klaus’s helping hand away. He still hated when Klaus touched him. Physical contact seemed like the line of something Five wasn’t ready to cross. “How about that ghost that let us use this barn. Is he still around?”

Klaus’s eyes wandered to the window, staring out at the field to where Five assumed the old farmer’s ghost was. His assumption was confirmed when Klaus nodded slowly. Five made his way over to the barn door.

“Come on. Let’s go talk to him.”

With another nod, Klaus followed Five out of the barn and led the way to where the ghost was standing. “Um… hello…” Klaus trailed off, glancing over at Five, who nodded encouragingly. “I’m Klaus.” He held out his hand, but it passed right through whatever hand Klaus was seeing.

“Talk to him. Ask him questions.” Five told him.

“How, uh, how did you die?” Klaus asked, rocking back and forth on his feet. A moment later he winced, sucking air in through his teeth. “Yeah… yeah I don’t know why I asked that…”

Five glared at him.

“Sorry. Um, I actually do know why I asked that,” Klaus backtracked. “I thought that maybe if I knew how you died, I could figure out why you’re linked to the barn.”

There were a few minutes in which Five guessed the ghost was explaining his story.

“He says he was going to the barn to clean up, and the crazy winds knocked over a fence post which, um…” Klaus gestured to his own gut area, and Five remembered Klaus telling him the ghost had a bloody middle. He nodded. “And then the actual apocalypse hit, and, well, ya know.”

Five nodded. “Good job. What do you want to do now?”

Klaus turned back to the ghost. “Mr. Farmer, sir, do you want to stay attached to the barn? Because… because if not, I can send you on.” He said firmly. Five grinned. “You don’t? Oh… oh… because your family went on… right, of course. I can do that for you.”

He turned to Five.

“I can’t do this!” He hissed. “Five, if I mess up and don’t send this dude onto the afterlife then he’s gone! Forever! His ghost just disappears and he never sees his family again!”

Five reached out and grabbed Klaus’s shoulders, making eye contact with him. “Klaus, you can do this. Just focus. It’s logically not impossible.”

“You and your logic,” Klaus grumbled, but stepped out of Five’s grip to look at the ghost. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and Five watched as a blue energy not very different than his own formed around Klaus’s hands.

Klaus shoved his hands out and Five shielded his eyes as his hands pushed the bright blue energy light outward. He opened his eyes and took a few deep breaths. Five watched him silently, not wanting to disrupt anything.

Eventually, Klaus turned to Five. His face was expressionless, then slowly broke into a wide smile. “I did it,” he said quietly, then yelled, “I DID IT!”

Covering his ears jokingly, Five let out a little laugh. “Yeah?” He asked. “He’s gone?”

“He’s gone. I sent him on to join his family. Five, I did it!” Klaus jumped up and let out a loud “ Whoop !”

“Good job, Klaus.”

For the rest of the night, they didn’t really worry about anything else.

• • •

“Absolutely not.”

Klaus was really grateful that Five couldn’t glare actual daggers, because if he could, Klaus would be stabbed two times through right now. Five rolled his shoulders back, and though he wouldn’t admit it, Klaus knew he was uncomfortable in that white collared button up and sweater vest from their uniform.

Because it was hot. According to Five it was probably around mid-May, and it was hot . And there weren’t many May flowers because there hadn’t been many April showers. It snowed once in winter, when they had buried the bodies, and then rained once towards the end of March. Klaus guessed that’s what you could expect when you lived in a world that ended due to fire.

Needless to say, both boys were sweating all the time. The world was just hot all the time. So, Klaus had ditched his shirt a while ago. He mainly walked around in just his pants, but Five would not give up the uniform.

But that wasn’t the issue right now. Five’s idea was.

“Klaus, we’ve been over this,” Five scowled, “we’ve raided the stores and stocked up on all the food there. We have to check the houses now.”

“No, Five!” Klaus argued. “You- you don’t know what that’s like! To walk into what used to be someone’s house only to see the ghosts of the family that lived there sulking and thinking that they’re still alive.”

Five’s eyes widened. 

“Yeah, Five. Some of them think that they’re still alive and are panicking because they can’t touch anything. And guess who has to tell them they’re dead? Me ,” Klaus crossed his arms. “So I’m sorry if I really don’t like going into people’s houses.”

“That’s your power, Klaus! You have the ability to send them on and banish them, so the second you go inside, just do that. I don’t see the problem-”

Klaus rounded on him, pointing a finger at Five’s chest. “You don’t understand the problem because you don’t have feelings, Five! If you walked into a ghost family with tears on their faces and blood on their hands you’d just think Oh, that sucks. Now, get out of my way !”

Before Klaus had time to do anything, Five was standing and shoving Klaus backwards by his shoulders. He stumbled but managed to stay upright, refusing to wither under Five’s very deadly death glare.

“W-Where are you going?” Klaus asked as Five stormed over to the barn doors.

“Away from you.”

There was a blue light.

Klaus closed his eyes.

When he opened them, Five was gone.

It took four days for Klaus to find his brother.

On the first day Klaus didn’t think much of it. Five had been gone for twenty-four hours before, so Klaus just figured he was out scouring the city and would be back by nightfall.

He wasn’t back by nightfall.

But Klaus couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when he was still mad at Five for wanting to go to the city, and still mad at Five for being mad at him . So he went to sleep peacefully that night, no Five scribbling away on the walls to bother him.

On the second day, Klaus starts to worry. He isn’t like Five. He doesn’t hold grudges to the point where they get in the way of something serious. Because it’s been thirty-three hours and Five isn’t back yet and Klaus is starting to panic because what if he left left-

It’s so quiet.

Klaus used to love the quiet.

On the third day, Klaus starts to cry. He doesn’t break into huge sobs because he refuses to fully think that Five really did leave him. But as he’s eating stale cereal from a busted cardboard box, he feels some tears make their way down his face. He walks over to the walls Five was writing on and stares at the questions until his vision clears. Then, he tries to distract himself by attempting to make sense of anything Five had written down.

It doesn’t work.

Klaus would really like to hear Five’s voice right now.

He sets out on the fourth day, unable to stay trapped inside the barn any longer. He shoves some cans of food and bottles of water into a bag, slung the strap over his shoulder, and left the base.

The sun beat down on the back of Klaus’s neck as he walked, no doubt giving him sunburn to deal with later. Unfortunately neither him nor Five had managed to find sunscreen anywhere, so this was something they were forced to deal with. 

A few ghosts walked around the streets as Klaus made his way through town and back to the city. They didn’t bother him and they didn’t scream. Ever since banishing the farmer back in January, Five had worked with Klaus on his powers, helping him get rid of ghosts or summon them when he needed to.

Now that he thought about, Klaus had never thanked Five for believing in him.

He still wasn’t able to make ghosts corporeal. He still wasn’t able to get rid of the screaming in his head altogether. But they didn’t scare him anymore, and that was a step in the right direction.

But Klaus was scared now. This would be his first time in the city since burying everyone’s bodies, and all he could think about was how loud everything and everyone had been.

It was funny, when you thought about it.

The end of the world was quite loud.

Klaus knew the city was getting closer when more ghosts appeared.

He stopped on the outskirts and took a deep breath, trying to control his hammering heart before walking forward. The dull noise of the yells that had been in his head in the town began to grow louder the closer he got to the ghosts.

“I can do this,” Klaus muttered to himself, “Just… just ignore them…”

He wished he could banish them all.

He’s not that talented yet.

As soon as he crossed the outskirts and entered the city, he looked down at his feet, away from the ghosts to focus. All he had to do now was figure out where Five was. If he was looking for supplies, well, that could be any store. 

“Lucky little bastard can teleport, I wish I-” Klaus cut himself off, eyes widening.

Maybe he couldn’t teleport.

But he still had a power that could be of some use.

Klaus carefully raised his head and took another deep breath as he looked around him at all of the ghosts. Specifically, he looked around for the least intimidating one, or the one that had the least amount of blood splattered over them.

He settled on a girl that looked a few years older than him, and aside for the broken arm, she seemed to be pretty much intact. Klaus walked over to her, and she looked surprised that he could actually see her.

“Hey,” he started. “I was wondering. Have you seen a boy pass through here?”

“Yeah,” the teenager rolled her eyes. “I see tons of boys pass through here. And if you’re looking for cute, they used to be. But if you see Jacob, please tell him that he is no longer the dreamboat he thinks he is because half of his face melted- ”

“No, no, no, no,” Klaus shook his head, cutting her off. “I mean a real boy. Like, alive. Breathing. Not half melted. Like me.”

The girl let out a bitter sounding laugh. “Oh, you’re one of them .”

Klaus frowned. “Uh, one of who?”

She pointed a finger on her good arm across the street to a group of ghosts trying to open the door to the library. Klaus looked back at her. “They all think they’re still alive. Always trying to grab things. So, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you’re dead .”

Now it was Klaus’s turn to laugh. “Oh, I’m not dead.” And to prove it he crossed the street, grabbed the door handle of the library, and swung it open to let all the ghosts inside. He gave the girl a triumphant smirk when he saw her shocked expression.

“H-how are you seeing me then?” She asked, dumbfounded.

Klaus waved his fingers in front of his face. “I have powers. So. Have you seen another breathing little lost boy wandering around recently?”

She looked at Klaus with newfound respect that he could get used to. “Yeah. Yeah, though he doesn’t seem like he’s as cool as you. He went to where that weird Umbrella Academy used to- wait .”

Nope. No, Klaus was not going to deal with publicity right now. “Right, thank you! I’ll see you around, yeah?” He winked and hurried off in the direction she had mentioned before she could ask any questions he didn’t want to answer.

For the rest of the walk, Klaus was pleasantly surprised that the ghosts didn’t bother him. Well, not totally. His head was still filled with screams, but at least they weren’t walking up to him and screaming directly in his face. That had to count for something, right?

When he arrived at the Academy, he spotted Five right away. He was sitting in the middle of the ruins, his chin in his hand, head facing down.

“ Five !” Klaus exclaimed, and all of his anger disappeared.

He ran forward and dropped down next to his brother, throwing his arms around him. He pulled away a second later, frozen in fear that Five was going to get mad at him for the hug. But he watched in awe as Five’s shocked face slowly transformed into a smile. The smallest smile Klaus had ever seen, but a smile.  

And no matter how small that smile was, Klaus found himself grinning right back because it was so damn contagious.

“H-how did you find me?” Five finally asked, breaking the silence.

“Well, figuring out you’d be in the city was easy enough. Then I talked to a ghost who said she saw you come here. Five, I’m so sorry-”

“No,” Five cut Klaus off, firmly shaking his head. “Don’t- don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong. You had a good reason for not wanting to come to the city and I didn’t understand it so I thought it was wrong. I’m… I’m sorry , Klaus.”

Klaus’s eyebrows shot up behind his hair that hung over his forehead. “I think that was the first time I’ve ever heard you apologize for anything.”

Five smirked. “Yeah, and it’ll be the last. Don’t get used to it.”

• • •

On what Five says is July seventh, the two brothers find their mom.

They’re back at the Academy, having just raided the house next door for food rations. Klaus decided he was okay with it because the more he comes to the city, the more he gets to see the ghost girl he met a few months prior. Her name is Maddison and she’s become quite a good friend to Klaus.

“What’s she look like?” Five asked, shoving boxes of definitely stale animal crackers into his bag. By his tone, Klaus knew he wasn’t asking because he was horny teenage boy. Five didn’t seem interested in that kind of stuff at all.

“Uh, she’s got black hair. Probably east Asian,” Klaus told him as he grabbed a dented can of still sealed soda and tossed it into his own bag. “She’s pretty cool. Said she was fifteen when she died, so, that’s a bit sad.”

Five nodded, but didn’t ask any more questions seeing as he really didn’t care. “Sounds nice. Alright, come on.” He led the way out of the house and stopped when he turned towards the Academy.

“What is it this time?” Klaus rolled his eyes. “I already told you that your book on physics is busted, I saw it last time-”

“Klaus,” Five cut him off, his voice very quiet. Klaus heard his tone and followed Five’s eyes to where he was looking.

In the middle of all of the rubble, a hand was sticking out. Klaus felt like he was going to be sick. He looked to Five who was staring at it with wide eyes, his mouth slightly open in shock.

“Well,” Klaus said, feeling as though it were harder to talk now than it was when his jaw got wired shut for eight weeks. “We never did find Vanya or Ben’s bodies…”

Looking straight forward, Five moved almost mechanically to where the hand was. Klaus followed closely behind, wishing he could grab Five’s arm for support but knowing that that one-sided hug he got two months ago was enough physical contact for Five for a lifetime.

When they got to the hand, Five paused for a moment before starting to pull the rubble off of the rest of the body. Klaus helped him until they both stopped at what they saw underneath.

It was their mother.

She was missing a few panels and her dress was torn and her hair was dirty and her eyes were dull and oil was leaking from her ear a little but-

But it was their mother.

Together, wordlessly, Klaus and Five began to drag her out of the rubble. Klaus realized his vision had grown blurry from the tears forming in his eyes. He lost what little focus and control he had that had been keeping the ghosts away, and they all began to walk over to him.

“F-Five,” Klaus stammered, blinking the tears down his cheeks and looking around at the ghosts, growing panicked. “We- we have to go now. Right now.”

Five didn’t question, probably already knowing that it was the ghosts. He didn’t say anything, just nodded, and Klaus noticed that his eyes seemed glassy, too. Unlike Klaus, Five didn’t let any tears fall, but they were still there.

The sun set as two thirteen year old boys carried their mother home.

On what Five says is August tenth, the two brothers go to the library.

Five is once again writing furiously in the walls. Only now, he pauses. “Klaus,” he said, and his brother, who’d been trying to mend Mom’s wires, looked up. “I think I might’ve found us a way back.”

Klaus jumped up and ran over to where Five was writing.

“It- it won’t happen anytime soon. But I think if I keep working it could probably happen in… two years? That’s if I work really fast and focus, which I can do because there’s not really anything else to do,” Five rambled, tapping his marker on his chin.

“That’s mein bruder !” Klaus exclaimed. “This is great, Five! I knew your tiny genius brain would come in handy one day.”

Five rolled his eyes but smirked. “I should probably go to the library to do some more research and-” he cuts off, his eyes flicking to their mother’s body.

He had tried. Really, he had. He had tried everything he could and used all the knowledge he had to try to reprogram and put Grace Hargreeves back together, but to no avail. It had almost maddened him, too.

Klaus watched sadly as Five chucked the screwdriver at the wall, his head dropping into his hands. He inched forward, tentatively reaching a hand out onto Five’s shoulder. Unsurprisingly, Five just jerked away.

“It’s not your fault Five,” Klaus said softly.

“It is,” he whispered. “It is, it is.”

Five shook his head to clear it, eyes focusing back on Klaus who was standing in front of him. “Want to come?” Klaus nodded, and so the two of them set off to the city.

When they entered, Five saw Klaus’s eyes stray to the side, his lips quirking up in a small smile. “Just go talk to her,” Five rolled his eyes. “I’ll be in the library.” Klaus thanked him and walked over to what seemed like nothing, but what Five knew was Maddison.

During his walk to the library, Five thought about how much of his life would be wasted here. He was almost fourteen and would probably be sixteen once he got back. Still plenty of years to live life left, but still way too many to spend in an apocalypse. 

It’s not like he cares. Five knew long ago that he would be devoting his life to studies and work and facts because he didn’t need relationships or connections. Of course, he loved his family deeply, but anything other than that didn’t interest him very much.

When he got to the library, he walked to one section he hadn’t really been in before. It was all about robotics and engineering, whereas Five had read the books in the sciences sections. But if he planned on trying to see if he could fix Mom, robotics was the way to go. He grabbed a few books on the basics and tossed them into his bag, grateful he didn’t have to worry about checking them out.

He knew Klaus had entered the store when he heard him yelling his name. Five rolled his eyes at how obnoxious his brother was and walked back to the door where he found said brother waiting with a book in his hand.

“Oh, planning on learning how to read, are you?” Five asked sarcastically, but stopped when he saw the way Klaus was looking at the book. “What? What is it?”

Five felt his breath catch in his throat when he took the book and looked at the cover. Because it was Vanya .

Vanya, who had always been Five’s favorite sibling. Vanya, who always listened to Five ramble for hours about things she didn’t understand. Vanya, who would tend to Five’s wounds after a mission when Mom and Pogo were busy with the other kids.

Vanya, who Five missed very much, and didn’t notice until now.

“She- she wrote a book?” Five wanted it to be a statement, but it came out as a question.

“I guess so…” Klaus trailed off, eyeing the book. 

Five headed outside and sat on the curb of the sidewalk outside the library, opening up to the first page. “Wait- you’re reading it now?” Klaus asked, following Five outside and sitting next to him.

“No time like the present…” Five said, only half his attention on Klaus.

He looked down, and began to read.

Klaus read over his shoulder.

I was always left out as a child. I was always the “ordinary”one. Never actually a part of the Umbrella Academy, but forced to live in it. I’ll introduce my siblings, who you’re no doubt reading this book for in hopes you’ll learn more about them.

SPACEBOY - 00.01

Arrogant and self-centered, Luther cares more about being a hero than anything else. It’s certainly more important to him than his family.

THE KRAKEN - 00.02

Diego’s independence has always put him at odds with Father and the other siblings. I admire it, though. I can’t say I admire anything else, especially when all he did was ignore me.

THE RUMOR - 00.03

My sister is beautiful, and she knows it. Allison loves attention, even while complaining about it, feigning modesty. What else would you expect - her superpower is dishonesty. Father trained her so well.

THE SEANCE - 00.04

Klaus was so sweet and vulnerable as a boy, but Father experimented on him the most. The stories he told me almost drove me mad, so I can’t even imagine what he was going through. I can’t say I’m surprised he disappeared.

00.05

Five never wanted a name, which I thought fitted him well. He ran away when we were thirteen, taking Klaus right with him. I still miss him to this day, though I envy him, having checked out of this family so long ago.

THE HORROR - 00.06

The kindest of siblings, but he was so eager to please Father. Ben was easily manipulated, dragged into Father and Luther’s little games - and those two simply let him die.

VANYA HARGREEVES - 00.07

I was never made to feel a part of the team, much less the family, and was just happy to be sent off to school.

Five looked up, unable to read anymore due to the tears that blurred his vision. He turned to Klaus, who was staring at the page, so still and quiet Five couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

But Five knew why. He didn’t ask Klaus to say anything.

He didn’t say anything himself.

Ben was dead.

And they hadn’t been around to save him.

Klaus isn’t strong enough to stop Five when he goes through what’s left of the Academy.

He doesn’t find Reginald Hargreeves’ notes.

But, he does find Pogo’s journal.

Spaceboy [00.01] no longer seems to need me as a copilot, but I still think of him as my best friend. His obsession with flight has turned into a pursuit of isolation. As it grows more and more apparent that the children cannot function as a team, he becomes increasingly focused on doomsday predictions, looking to prove himself there…

The Kraken [00.02] is barely seen in the house anymore. He revels in his rogue image. He abhors heroism, rebelling against both Hargreeves and Spaceboy. Hopefully it won’t get the poor boy killed…

The Rumor [00.03] is discovering herself as a young woman. Her beauty would make it easy for her to lose herself in the skin-tight uniform and heroine image, but I can see her growing away from that. To the degree that she still plays that part, it’s only to please Hargreeves. And perhaps Spaceboy…

The Seance [00.04] worries me the most. Before he left, Hargreeves was only breaking the boy. He meant well, meant to make him strong, but each experiment tapped away at Seance’s youth. And to run away with 00.05, well, let’s just say Number Five isn’t a fit caretaker…

We never talk about the boy [00.05] who disappeared, but I think of him often. Hargreeves never spent any time looking for him, claiming that he must have died ‘out there with the Seance’. But these children are special in more than obvious ways. I can’t imagine #5 would have run off and brought #4 with him simply to get them killed…

None of the children want to be heroes, and none less that The Horror [00.06]. He’s only trying to please Hargreeves and Spaceboy. I suppose this is normal enough for a teenage human, but he’s not learning how to be an individual in his own right…

Vanya [00.07] visited the house today. I hadn’t seen her in months, her away at school. I asked her about her music, but she didn’t want to talk about music at all. I don’t know if she really cares about the violin, or if it’s always just been a way to isolate herself from her family.

- DR. POGO

Klaus closes the book for Five, tossing it back into the rubble.

Five shuts his eyes and tilts his head up, taking deep breaths.

Klaus knows he’s trying not to cry.

He doesn’t comment on it.

Chapter Text

“Happy birthday!” Five wakes up to Klaus jumping on top of him. Five groaned and pushed Klaus off of him. “Oh, come on , Fivey! If that little calendar you made is right, then it’s October first! Happy birthday!”

“Great, happy birthday to you too, now go away,” Five mumbled into his pillow

Klaus stood, but didn’t leave him alone. “Nope! I don’t know what time it is because we don’t have a working clock, but the sun is up in the sky. Let’s do something fun today. It’s not everyday two apocalypse stranded boys turn fourteen!”

Glaring at Klaus, Five reluctantly sat up and rubbed his tired eyes. He had stayed up until the inky night sky had begun to lighten, working on his equations and making probability maps. Now that he actually listened to Klaus, the sun was directly ahead, signaling that it was noon.

“You stayed up late didn’t you?” Klaus raised his eyebrows. “Usually you’re up with the sun, but I let you sleep in today, because it’s your birthday. Either that or you were dead, but I think I would’ve been able to tell.”

Five shoved his blanket off and walked right back to the part of his writing he had stopped at last night. “Birthdays are irrelevant in a world like this, Klaus. Unimportant.”

“Nope. Wrong. We’re doing something special today,” Klaus grinned. Five simply raised an eyebrow in question. “We’re going to Gimbel’s to get you some new clothes. And me, of course, but it’s time to get out of that stupid uniform. You’re a growing boy!”

Scowling, Five shook his head. “I’m not wasting a whole day just to go shopping .”

“ Technically we don’t have to pay, but,” Klaus bit his lip. “ Please , Five? Listen, it’s my birthday too and I would really like to take you to Gimbel’s today.”

Five studied his brother’s stupid and most definitely uneffective puppy-dog eyes before sighing. “Fine.” Klaus grinned and clapped his hands. “Oh, and I really don’t want to walk so can we blink there?”

“You are not going to take advantage of my abilities, Klaus,” Five glared. “If anything I’ll blink and make you walk.”

That didn’t happen.

Five put on his shoes and Klaus grabbed his arm.

He blinked them to Gimbel’s.

Never in a million years would Five ever have thought he’d enjoy looking for clothes. But that’s because Dad only made them wear the stupid uniform and the boring pajamas at night. Five can’t recall ever wearing anything else, aside from the t-shirt and shorts for training.

“Oh, this is going to be so much fun,” Klaus smirked, eyeing Five. “We’re gonna start with you because you need more help than I do.”

Five didn’t even bother arguing, he just huffed and crossed his arms. Klaus left him to wander around the store alone as he went to find clothes for Five. First, Five went to the counter where he found some supplies.

He didn’t know why Gimbel’s would be selling knives, but they had a wide selection of machetes. Five grabbed two and tossed them into his bag, just in case. So far he hadn’t seen any other living things besides he and Klaus, but he never knew.

For obvious reasons he also grabbed basically all of the snacks and unopened food he could find. They weren’t exactly running low, but they could use more.

Then he wandered through the aisles of clothes to the center of the store, silently thankful that Klaus was the one picking out clothes and not him. Five wouldn’t even know where to start.

Five reached the center display that had crashed down, but was still slightly intact. The mannequins had separated top from bottom, but from the waist up were still intact. Five tilted his head as he looked at the middle one.

“Ready, bruder ?” Klaus called, walking over to stand next to Five. “Whatcha lookin’ at?”

Five pointed to the middle mannequin. “She’s pretty.”

Klaus tilted his head as well, considering how pretty a mannequin could be. And as far as mannequins went, she was, and Klaus said so to Five. “Let’s take her with us.”

His head whipped to Klaus. “What?”

Shrugging, Klaus said, “Why not? It’s not like she’s having a blast in a ruined store.”

Looking back at the mannequin, Five nodded and reached down, picking the top half of the mannequin up. He studied her a bit before nodding. “Delores. Her name is Delores.” Klaus grinned and nodded.

“Well, Delores, welcome to the club! Everyone, move along now, Five here has some outfits he has to try on!”

Five felt like he should have groaned and argued.

But with Delores in one arm, and Klaus gripping the other as he blinked them back to the barn, all he did was smile slightly, and tried on whatever Klaus gave him.

• • •

For the next few months, Klaus focuses on his powers. He’s got nothing else to do, since Five is working feverishly on his math all day, everyday. He’s actually starting to worry Klaus, because most of the time he forgets to take care of himself.

Klaus walked over to Five, who was sitting in a chair, marker pointed at the notebook in his lap, but his head was dropping down due to lack of sleep.

“Five?” Klaus asked quietly. Five’s head snapped up.

“Huh?” he grunted, eyelids slipping closed again.

“Yeah, let’s put that marker down, okay?” Klaus smiled a little, shaking his head at his brother. He tossed Five’s notebook and marker onto the table and lifted him off his seat, one arm wrapping around his waist.

“One day I’m going to be bigger and stronger than you,” Klaus said as he walked Five over to his bed. “One day I’m going to be able to pick you up and carry you everywhere.”

“Not likely…” Five muttered, rubbing his eyes.

Klaus just smiled and leaned down, lowering Five onto his bed. “You gotta start taking care of yourself, bruder ,” Klaus scolded Five while taking his shoes off for him. “We don’t want you getting sick, now do we?”

“That’s what I have you for,” Five whispered, and a second later, he was out like a light.

Klaus was still for a moment. Five was basically asleep and would never admit to saying that, let alone say it when he was conscious. But there was no doubt in Klaus’s mind that he really meant it.

Pulling the blanket over Five, he walked over to where Delores was sitting. “Did you hear that, Delores? I think our little Five finally admitted to needing me.”

Yes, I heard that , she said. I’m glad he has you, Klaus. I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like if he was alone.

Shaking his head, Klaus agreed. “I know. He wouldn’t eat. He wouldn’t sleep. He’d drive himself mad looking at all of those numbers and letters. But, luckily, I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

And he didn’t.

But he really wanted to practice his powers.

“Delores, if he wakes up, tell him I’m in the city.”

“Well, well, well, long time no see!” A familiar voice exclaimed as Klaus entered the city. He grinned as Maddison walked up to him. “Where’ve you been?”

“You can’t really tell but it’s winter and it’s cold out here, so I’ve been staying inside,” Klaus told her, pulling his jacket tighter around him. “But I’m here to work on my powers, so sadly I can’t stay for a discussion.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved her hand. “You do you.”

He bid her goodbye and headed towards the grocery store. Not for food- he and Five had gone through it and cleaned it out. But because there weren’t many ghosts, and Klaus wanted to start small.

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and tried to focus on the ghosts he could sense around him. There weren’t many, maybe five or six. He felt energy surging inside his chest and slowly opened his eyes to see six blue ghosts walking over to him.

“Blue…?” He trailed off. Usually all the ghosts he saw were solid and colorful, they even looked alive , he could say. But blue was new.

A familiar sound made Klaus look to the side, and he saw that Five had blinked into the city. The walk here was around twenty minutes, and he’d spent another ten coming to the grocery store. Leave it to Five to not allow himself to sleep longer than half an hour.

“Klaus?” Five asked, but he wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at the ghosts like he-

Almost as if he-

“Can you see them?” Klaus whispered.

Slowly, eyes wide, Five nodded.

Klaus looked back at the ghosts. Grabbing onto that feeling of energy in his chest again, he focused his gaze on one of the ghosts. A second later it went from blue to normal, like how they always appear. The rest of them stayed blue.

Turning to Five expectantly, Klaus raised his eyebrows.

“It- it went away,” Five answered. “The rest are still there.”

Klaus slowly walked forward to one of the ghosts and held out his hand. The ghost reached out his own hand. It passed right through Klaus’s, and the five remaining ghosts faded from blue to colorful.

He didn’t have to look at Five to know what that meant.

“Klaus,” Five whispered, “I think you just figured out how to make ghosts visible.”

Allowing himself a small grin, he couldn’t help but feel proud.

• • •

Five has maps. Five has lots of maps. He’s made them in his spare time when he wasn’t working on his math, and at least he knows he didn’t mess those up.

His maps are simple. Things given to him that he writes down and he just knows are facts. Math isn’t that. Math isn’t given to him and math has room for error. It’s not like he can mark the cities with food, the ones with water, and the ones with supplies like he does for his maps.

Math has room for error.

He has the wrong answer, he knows he does. The answer to his most recent equation just does not make sense . And he couldn’t figure out an answer that did make sense. Six months after his fourteenth birthday, and he should be on the final stages of the work now.

But. No.

Five took a step back from the table he was working on, his breathing growing rapidly more restricted by the second. He shook his head, unwilling to believe what this meant.

If his calculations for this were correct, he just earned himself and Klaus another ten years minimum in the apocalypse.

He opened his mouth to say something to Delores or to call for Klaus, but nothing came out. He gasped, trying to breathe in oxygen but barely getting any. He was still in denial, still shaking his head, still ignoring the tears pouring down his face.

“ Five !” Klaus’s familiar voice yelled in worry as he came in from outside, but his voice sounded faraway… underwater, even. 

The next thing he knew, he was on the ground, and with each blink, more black spots danced across his vision. He vaguely felt Klaus grab onto him and pull him close, vaguely heard Klaus’s voice.

He just didn’t care. He didn’t care to keep his eyes open or to keep air flowing through his lungs. He didn’t see the point. Not when everything he’d been working on for over a year just crashed and burned right in front of him.

And then Klaus was there. But not in the same way he’d been moments before. He was there, as clear as a camera, voice as crisp as the autumn weather. But there were tears in his eyes and he was shaking.

“Hey, Five, listen to me, alright? You- you can’t go. Not now, not ever , actually,” Klaus rambled, blinking and causing tears to fall down his cheeks. “I- I won’t be able to do this alone, buddy, you’ve gotta come back.”

His voice was echoing and there was a faint white, glowing outline around him.

And then Clear Klaus was drawing his hand back, and winced as he slapped Five across the face.

Gasping, Five blinked and the room returned around him. Normal Klaus was in front of him, hands on Five’s shoulders, his chest heaving with shaky breaths. Five met Klaus’s eyes and stilled for a moment, realizing what had happened.

He died. Or- almost died. Clear Klaus had been Klaus reaching Five through death and telling him to go back.

Five couldn’t even begin to imagine how scared Klaus must’ve been to have been able to reach his brother through the afterlife but not the real world. He probably thought he was going to be stuck alone.

“I’m sorry,” Five whispered. He’d meant to be louder, but his voice broke. He looked down and blinked more tears from his eyes. “I- I-”

“Five,” Klaus said just as quietly, but there was so much emotion behind it that Five was stunned. Klaus let out a small laugh that only made more tears fall, then Five was tackled into Klaus’s grip.

He didn’t hug back. Not exactly. But he wasn’t stone-cold rigid as he’d been the last time. He tensed, then relaxed into the hug, allowing his head to drop onto Klaus’s shoulder, but not raising his arms to hug Klaus back.

He wasn’t there yet.

And he didn’t have to be, because a second later Klaus was shoving Five away, glaring at him. “What the hell ? You- you just died ! Or, almost died. But I walk in on you having a panic attack ? What’s going on, Five?”

Five slowly got to his feet, Klaus following suit. He pointed to his recent equation and explained to Klaus how it was wrong.

“Okay…” Klaus looked up from the paper to Five. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Five took a deep breath, willing his voice not to give out again. “It means we won’t be going back as soon as we thought.’

But Klaus knew Five very well by now. He narrowed his eyes at his brother, who was looking anywhere but Klaus. “How long?” Klaus asked quietly.

Five finally met Klaus’s eyes, but wished he didn’t.

How was he supposed to tell his hopeful, jovial brother that he wouldn’t be seeing his family for a while?

How was he supposed to tell his brother that he was being forced to stay with the ghosts for another ten or more years?

But. But, but, but. How was he supposed to lie? He couldn’t. He couldn’t do that to Klaus.

“Ten years. Minimum,” Five whispered, looking down in shame.

Five expected Klaus to yell. To maybe throw a tantrum or something. To at least glare at Five. Or be mad at him at all . But he did none of those things. When Five looked back at Klaus, he wore a sad and small, but still there, smile.

“Okay,” Klaus nodded.

“O-Okay?” Five asked incredulously. “That’s all? Okay ?”

Klaus just nodded again. “Yeah. I know it wasn’t your fault, Five. You’re working as hard as you can and I’ll start helping you in any way from now on. We’re in this together. You and me against the literal world.”

“I-”

“Not done. Five, I signed up for this. I followed you out of the Academy. I grabbed your arm when you time traveled away. This is as much as my burden as it is yours. Klaus and Five, Five and Klaus. You and me. From now on, if you need help, tell me. Because I’m here for you. And I’ll be here for the next ten or more years.”

“But-”

“And then I’ll even be there after that! You really think I’d go this long with you and not stay your best friend when we go back home? Hilarious! And to think we weren’t close at all before this-”

“You’re not my best friend,” Five finally cut in.

Klaus smirked and raised an eyebrow, then looked around. “Oh, really? Then who is?”

Five groaned and let his shoulders drop in defeat. Klaus laughed and threw an arm around Five’s sulking shoulders. “Like I said, it’s you and me. Right?”

Five looked at his brother’s face. He didn’t hate Klaus. He liked Klaus. He wished he’d gotten to know him more back in their normal lives. But Klaus is talented and he’s caring and he brings back Five from the dead.

Five lo-

No. No, he can’t say that yet. That word isn’t ready for use yet.

So, Five slowly grinned back at his only sibling left.

“Right.”

• • •

When the next October first hits, Five and Klaus decided it was time to visit their siblings. Five brought it up first, closely watching Klaus’s face to see how he reacted. He’d frowned for a second before nodding.

They were quite close, now.

“Hey, Delores,” Five says to her as he and Klaus pull on their jackets. Fall was coming in cold this year. “I think this trip is just going to be me and Klaus.”

That’s fine, she told them. Happy birthday, boys. You don’t turn fifteen everyday.

“Too true, mein madchen ,” Klaus grinned at her, then turned to Five. “Ready?”

Five smiled sadly and nodded, holding his arm out. The second Klaus grabbed on, he blinked them straight to the graveyard they’d made two years ago for their siblings. Five gently tugged his arm out of Klaus’s grip as they both stared at the ground.

Over the months they’d worked on burial shrouds for each of their siblings.

Luther’s was red. It had been Klaus’s idea. Red was hard and stubborn and not easily looked over. Klaus also realized that their siblings fit the colors of the rainbow. And red was first; number one, just like Luther.

That made Diego’s orange. Five vaguely remembered that in the very few times he’d seen Diego in anything other than the uniform or pajamas, he once had an orange button up. He overheard Diego telling Ben that he liked orange. It was second to red, but just as strong.

Next was Allison’s, which was yellow. Klaus had been closer to Allison before…

Well,

Before.

Five had always been fed up with her thinking she was the biggest beauty queen and fed up with the heart eyes between her and Luther. So he hadn’t bothered to get close to her, or any of them, for that matter.

But, Klaus had been closer. He knew that Allisons loved yellow clothes because they made her feel like the sun. Like she was the brightest person in the room without having to use her powers to be so.

As creepy as it was, they’d buried Klaus’s older body and made a green shroud for him. Actually, Five had made it. Klaus didn’t- couldn’t- make that for himself. It was too weird, too much . But Five made it behind his back.

Green. 

Five had no clue if Klaus liked green or not.

But he made it last week, after over two years of being with Klaus and only Klaus, he felt he was qualified enough to make this for him. Maybe even more qualified than Ben, who Klaus had been closest to before.

Because Ben didn’t know that Klaus wanted to be a psychologist.

Ben didn’t know Klaus was exceptionally good at math when he wanted to be.

Ben didn’t know how capable and how powerful Klaus was.

Even though they didn’t have Ben’s body and never found Vanya’s, they made shrouds for them, too. Ben’s was blue, like the ocean. Calm, cool, and collected. But strong and dangerous if he really wanted to be.

Vanya’s was purple. The combination of the stability of blue and the fierceness of red. Although she was ordinary power-wise, she wasn’t people-wise. Five remembered. He remembered how she listened to him when no one else would and how she stood up for any of her siblings.

Yes, Vanya was purple.

“Five,” Klaus choked out, staring straight at his grave.

“Happy birthday,” Five whispered, looking at the green shroud along with Klaus.

They were quite close, now.

The shroud had faint sketches of people on it. Not specific people, but just people. And Klaus was in the center. Controlling them, because Five knew he could. With more practice Five knew he wouldn’t have to watch his brother flinch every few seconds due to the ghosts in his head or watch his brother’s eyes flick around the area.

“I… I love it,” Klaus smiled a little, nodding his thanks to Five, who nodded back.

A few more seconds of silence passed before Five took a deep breath and began to speak.

“Hey, guys,” He started, looking at each of the graves in turn. “I… I’m sorry it took so long to talk to you. But, I just wasn’t ready. I couldn’t do it. But it’s been two years and I’ve got-” he looked at Klaus. “I’ve got Klaus. After two years I’ve finally learned to take him seriously. Crazy, I know.

I just want you all to know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving, and I’m sorry for letting this happen to you. I’m sorry for not believing in any of you when we were younger and not getting to know you. Not getting to know my family- ” Five stopped, his voice starting to waver.

Klaus reached a hand up and put it on Five’s shoulder, who didn’t bother to shake it away. “Five’s actually a big sap, guys. Who woulda thought it, huh?” He let out a dry laugh.

“I miss you all. Every day. I think I’d even offer to deal with the weird love thing between Luther and Allison at the breakfast table if it meant getting to spend even one birthday with you guys again,” Klaus spoke.

“Five and I celebrate birthdays pretty awesome-ly here in the apocalypse. Last year I took him shopping. The stubborn junge finally agreed to wear something other than that uniform. In fact, he hasn’t put it back on since! And this year…” Klaus trailed off.

Five picked it back up. “This year we’re here, spending it with all of you. I want you to know that we’re coming. We’re working on finding a way back but- but we will find one, we won’t be gone forever.”

Klaus grabbed Five’s hand as Five stopped, letting a few tears fall. He gave Klaus’s hand a quick squeeze before letting go.

They sat in silence for as long as they wanted to, just thinking about their siblings turning fifteen back in 2004 without Five and Klaus.

Did Mom still add their names in when singing Happy Birthday?

Did they still cut seven pieces of cake instead of five?

Did they miss their lost siblings?

Every once in a while Klaus would tap Five’s elbow. It was something he’d been doing for a few months now. It meant nothing and everything all at once. It was Klaus asking if Five was okay, it was Klaus wondering what they were going to do next, it was Klaus letting Five know that he was there for him.

If Five was okay, if he was about to show what came next, if he knew that Klaus was there for him and wanted to remind his brother he was right there back, he’d squeeze Klaus’s elbow in response.

And it worked for them.

Eventually, Five squeezed Klaus’s elbow and stood up, Klaus following in suit instantly. Five took a deep breath and faced the graves again. “It’s getting late now, everyone. And, I don’t want Klaus-”

He stopped, glancing at his brother.

“I don’t want either of us here in the city at dark. So, we’re going to go home now-”

“Home,” Klaus cut him off. “I never thought of it with that word.”

Five knew what he meant right away.

They were quite close, now.

Klaus spoke to his siblings again. “Our home is a run down barn in the middle of the field where Five took us for my sake and in the two years I’ve spent there it’s become more of my home than the Academy ever was. I wish you guys were here to see how great it is.”

Smiling sadly, Five held out his arm. Klaus took it.

Five brought them to the barn.

He brought them home.

They were quite close, now.

Chapter Text

Klaus has a garden. And Five has a death wish.

When spring hit, it hit heavy. They got more rain than they had for the past two and a half years. And they hadn’t taken that for granted, either.

Klaus had woken up first. He wasn’t a light sleeper, exactly, but definitely lighter than Five, who stays up until he literally can’t anymore and then passes out. Klaus frowned and wondered why it was so gloomy if it was morning.

And then he heard it. He heard the rain.

It was pouring .

Jumping to his feet, Klaus ran outside and let out a delighted laugh as he instantly was drenched from the heavy sheets of rain. He spun around a few times before running back inside to wake up Five.

“Five! Five! Five!” He called as he jumped onto his brother’s bed.

Groaning, Five shoved Klaus off. “ What , Klaus? You’re acting like you did on Christmas morning.” Klaus laughed when he remembered how he would jump on all of his siblings’ beds to wake them up on Christmas.

“You gotta see this,” Klaus grabbed Five’s arm and tugged him out of his bed, pulling him outside only to get him soaking wet.

“ Klaus !” Five yelled angrily, wiping the rain from his eyes. “What-” he stopped, then, and realized why exactly Klaus was so giddy. “It’s never rained this much before.”

Nodding and grinning, Klaus exclaimed, “I know! What if plants start to grow again? This is a field, right? There’s probably seeds and shit in it- Five what if we could eat like, fruit and vegetables again?”

“No more cans…” Five sais quietly. “No more cans.”

Needless to say, that day was spent outside. In the rain.

And because of that day, Klaus had a garden.

A few days after it rained, he had walked around the field and saw a few spots where plants had begun to grow again. There were flowers, and the beginnings of a few different vegetables and fruits.

Five had a death wish.

One day he’d walked out to where Klaus was in the field and immediately hadn’t looked where he was going and stepped right on the new baby tomato.

“ Fi -ve,” Klaus whined, “you killed it!”

That wasn’t the last time that happened. It happened over, and over, and over, until Klaus literally punched Five in the face for it. “What the hell?” Five yelled.

“You’re not allowed in here anymore,” Klaus pointed a finger in Five’s face. “You want the vegetables? Stay away so they can actually grow without you stomping all over them! You’re hereby banned from Klaus’s Garden.”

He listened, for a little while. Long enough to let the first batch of plants grow so they could eat fresh tomatoes and strawberries and others for the first time in a long time. But then Five got mischievous.

Instead of walking to the garden and crushing everything in his path, he blinked to Klaus one day, who was taking care of the new carrot plant he had found. “Five, I told you-”

“Yeah, but I blinked!” Five protested. “I didn’t walk and kill anything!”

Klaus looked down at Five’s feet, Five’s eyes following.

He had blinked right on top of a blueberry bush, staining his shoes.

Five looked back up at Klaus, and for once in his life, was terrified of his brother. Klaus calmly turned around and grabbed a gardening shovel, then wacked Five with it. “ Ow !” Five yelled, but laughed a little.

“Yeah, there’s a lot more where that came from!” Klaus exclaimed, and Five turned and bolted away, Klaus following, hot on his heels.

They both destroyed a lot of plants that day.

But the laughing made up for it.

And they had time. And rain. The plants would grow back.

• • •

Five inhales.

The air is cold. The kind of cold that burns your lungs when you breathe in and stings your ears when you stay out in it for too long. It seeps into the ground he’s standing on, the light flakes of snow cascading down and getting caught in his fringe that hangs low beneath his eyes.

He flips his head up, flicking his hair out of the way.

Five exhales.

He runs.

The cold air is now welcoming as sweat drips down his forehead and his chest heaves from the deep breaths he’s taking. His feet pound on the ground, his shoes ruining the freshly fallen snow. But he keeps going.

Until he stops. 

And teleports.

Five squeezed his eyes shut hopefully as the blue energy surrounds him, and when he opened them, a wide grin spread across his face. He let out a loud “ Whoop !”,  jumping and pumping up his fist.

Snow catches in his eyelashes and he blinks them out as he looks around. He now stood on the top of a cliffside overlooking the ocean. The rough winter waves hit the side of the rocks, spraying Five with salty, below-zero temperature drops.

Barely over the sounds of the roaring waves, he can hear clapping in the distance. Squinting, looks down below the cliff at the beach, where he can see Klaus clapping and walking over to the cliffside. Five looks down at where the beach meets the bottom of the cliff and sees the two ghosts flipping him thumbs ups.

“Catch me!” He yelled down, knowing that after hours of training and practicing he’d run out of energy to blink back to Klaus.

Praying the ghosts heard him, Five turned and fell backwards off of the cliff. He shut his eyes again during the terrifying fall, then opened them quickly when the ghosts roughly caught him. He winced and climbed out of their arms. “Thanks, guys,” he told them.

“You did it!” Klaus exclaimed as he arrived, holding up two hands. Five grinned and high-fived both of Klaus’s hands with his own.

Five just nodded, still way too out of breath to reply.

When they turned sixteen, Five decided it was time to really get a grasp on their powers. They’d worked on Klaus’s first and more, hence why Klaus was able to make these two ghosts appear corporeal and leave the rest alone. 

But then Klaus had suggested working on Five’s powers. At first Five didn’t understand. His only power was teleporting- which he’d long since mastered. And time travel, but he wasn’t going to try that until he was absolutely ready. Which, according to his calculations, was still a long time from now.

Then he thought about his limits. He’d never jumped spatially too far. It’s not like he’d go to Paris for a day from the Academy and then back. Who knew how far he was able to go? So, he agreed. And they went to work.

For a while now he’d been working on blinking somewhere vertically far away, such as going from the beach to the top of the cliff. The first tries he’d binked only halfway up the cliff in midair and fell right back down, hence why the ghosts were always under him, ready to catch him.

Today he’d done it, finally. Five never would have thought there was more to learn about his powers, but here he was, accomplishing something.

And Klaus was a much better companion than Dad had been.

“Great job, Fivey!” Klaus smiled, high-fiving him one more time. “I would say Dad would be so proud, but screw him, right? So in that case, I’m so proud!”

Five grinned and nodded to the two ghosts behind him. “Couldn’t have done it without you, Klaus. Literally. Without those ghosts I would have fallen to my death ten times. So thank you for that.”

“Anytime, mi hermano .”

“Spanish? What happened to German?” 

“Oh, it’s still here, mein bruder. ”

“Oh joy.”

“Yes,” Klaus clapped his hands together. “So… you wanna take me up there now?”

Five blinked in surprise. “What? You want to go up there? It’s not that great, I came right back down after I got there.”

But Klaus was looking longingly at the top. “I want to see the view. We never went to the ocean as kids. I just think it’d look nice from up there…”

Sighing, Five decided he could use a bit more energy to bring his wistfully dramatic brother to the cliff. He held out his arm and Klaus’s expression of longing instantly twisted into a smirk as he took Five’s arm.

When they got to the top, Five blinked, dazed, and fell to the ground. Klaus looked at him with concern. “M’fine,” Five waved his hand. “Just drained. Go look at the ocean.”

Klaus nodded and walked to the edge of the cliff, staring out at the sea. It wasn’t exactly a perfect beach day. It was cold and it was wet and it was snowing and it was cloudy. But that made it even better, if you thought about it.

The beach they were at was in a valley. It was almost as if the flames of the apocalypse just skipped right over this area and continued to let it grow.

Five thought it was quite like Klaus and himself.

The apocalypse skipped right over them.

They continued to grow.

“Hey, Klaus, be careful…” Five muttered, his voice not strong enough to yell. “Slippery.”

But Klaus hadn’t heard him. That became very clear when he took another step towards the edge and his foot slid.

“No,” Five said louder, watching, horror-struck as Klaus toppled forward, right off the cliff. “ No !” Five screamed, throwing himself forward, but Klaus had already fallen. “Ghosts,” he whispered to himself, and peered over the ledge to see if the ghosts caught Klaus.

They weren’t there. Klaus had lost focus of them when coming up here and had caused them to become non-corporeal. Five looked away as Klaus fell, unable to breath, his hands shaking.

His brother. His only one left.

His brother was gone.

• • •

Klaus’s eyes flew open, and he sat up straight. He coughed a few times and shivered. “Ow,” he mumbled, massaging his temples to try to relieve the headache behind them.

He slowly got to his feet and looked around. Everything was either a dull shade of gray, white, or black. Looking down, he realized the only colorful thing was the turquoise sweatshirt he wore, which for some reason still held its color.

“ You ?” A voice asked, and Klaus turned to see a girl a few years younger than him walking up with her bicycle. “What are you doing here? And why do you look like that?”

“W-What?” Klaus stuttered. “Who are you? And where am I?”

The girl fixed him with a skeptical glare for a few moments before nodding slightly. “You did something, then. Down there. Well, I told your future- er, past? I don’t know. I told the other you that I didn’t want him back here. Not until it’s your time, but preferably not at all.”

Klaus looked around again. He felt like he should be panicking or something but he strangely felt… at ease. “I’m dead, aren’t I?’

The girl rolled her eyes. “You’re supposed to be. But I don’t want to deal with you, so no. Not yet. Ready to be sent back?”

“Would you take no for an answer?”

“No.”

“Figures,” Klaus sighed. “And the other me you’re talking about… was he the one that died in the apocalypse?” She nodded. “If you hate me so much how come you didn’t send me back then?”

She scowled as if she were teaching a Death 101 course and Klaus was failing. “Because you didn’t do something stupid to make you die. You died due to the same thing everyone else died of. An uncontrolled variable.”

And before Klaus could ask any more questions, the girl and the world of the dead faded.

Pain was not something Klaus enjoyed very much. And when he slowly blinked his eyes, there was pain everywhere . His headache was raging a lot more than it had while talking to the girl, and his limbs hurt like they’d never before.

Klaus groaned and tried to sit up, but his ribs wouldn’t let him.

“Kl-Klaus?” He heard a faint whisper, and turned his head to see Five kneeling next to him, tears pouring from his eyes, teeth chattering and hands shaking and Klaus didn’t believe that it was due to the snow covering him.

Klaus tried to open his mouth but everything was numb and blurry and he just couldn’t .

“Oh God, you’re alive you’re-” he heard Five’s muffled voice and vaguely felt hands on him and figured they were Five’s but he couldn't really feel them-

“Stay with me. Stay with me, Klaus, I’m so sorry ,” Five was saying.

‘Of course I’m staying, ’ Klaus wanted to say. ‘ I said it before. It’s you and me. Right? ’

This time he didn’t get a ‘Right ,’ in response before he blacked out.

• • •

Five had never been so terrified in his entire life. He’d been scared. Scared of Dad, when he was younger, scared of his injuries while training, scared of some of the people he fought in the Academy.

Scared of the apocalypse.

But never had he felt the terror he felt when blinking down to the beach to his brother’s body. Klaus had been dead, Five was sure of it. His chest hadn’t been moving up and down, his right leg was twisted the wrong way, his left arm had the bloodiest gash that Five had ever seen. The cut that ran from the top of his head down to his temple was bleeding, too.

He was dead. Five was sure of it.

Until he wasn’t. Until he was blinking and looking around and Five knew he was alive. And he didn’t know how and he didn’t care how because his brother was alive -

And then he remembered the injuries. The pain, the blood loss, the broken bones, it was all enough to make Klaus pass out. Five didn’t dare move him to try to bring him home, worried he’d just make things worse.

So now he was panicking. He realized that this is probably when his siblings felt like when trying to save Ben from however he died.

But they’d had each other to rely on.

The only person Five’s ever relied on his life was bleeding out in front of him.

Inhaling and exhaling deeply, Five set to work.

“Medics 101,” Five said aloud, making it easier for him to think. “First and foremost- stop the bleeding.” He reached under his own jacket and ripped off the bottom of his t-shirt. He sent a silent thanks to Dad for building up their strength and making him capable of doing so.

Eventually Five tossed his jacket aside and pulled off his shirt, ignoring the way his chest instantly reddened at the freezing temperature and freezing water that was spraying him from the ocean. He ripped up his shirt and pressed it over Klaus’s openly bleeding wounds.

He was able to do the head and arm gashes easily, but when he pressed the cotton to Klaus’s bleeding chest, he groaned.

Five froze.

Klaus remained unconscious.

He lifted up Klaus’s shirt and saw dark shades of purple and blue blossoming over Klaus’s ribcage. He had for sure broken something in there. Five winced but continued to press down to stop the bleeding.

“Okay, okay,” Five said, his voice and hands shaking. “Um, step two. Remove anything hazardous in the environment.” He stood and moved all of the rocks and shells near them out of the way, trying to ignore the drying blood on his hands.

After that, there wasn’t much Five could do. He needed medical supplies, but everything they had was back at the barn.

And Five couldn’t really bring himself to leave Klaus’s side or let go of his hand.

He shivered and realized that he was going to catch hypothermia and what good would that do to help Klaus? Five shrugged his jacket back on, but it was thin and he had nothing on underneath. Klaus only wore a sweatshirt, and Five didn’t want him to get sick, either.

Five couldn’t leave. But he couldn’t stay, either.

With earth-shattering truth, Five realized that he’d done this.

He’d brought Klaus up to the cliff.

He’d been too weak to stop him from falling.

He’s the reason they’re even here in the first place.

Letting the tears fall, Five began to sob.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry , Klaus. Please don’t leave me. You- you said it’s you and me, right? And I’m saying it, I’m saying it right now Klaus. I need you… Klaus, I love you,” Five sobbed, holding his brother’s hand tightly.

Yes. Yes, he used that word. It’s the first time he’d ever said that word out loud.

And it felt right.

Because Five had realized that a while ago. He didn’t talk to Klaus and work with him simply because he was the only other person left, but because he wanted to. Before… before Five didn’t want to. He didn’t care to get to know his siblings.

Klaus is the exception. Five likes Klaus. He likes hearing what he has to say about the equations, likes how much Klaus cares about his garden, likes watching Klaus get excited when he masters something else with his power.

But those are just things he likes. There’s a lot more that he loves .

Five loves the way Klaus believes in the two of them so fiercely. That together they can take on anything- even an apocalypse. He loves the way Klaus looks after him when Five can’t and won’t look after himself.

He loves Klaus.

And he never told him when he was awake.

“I love you,” Five said.

He’s going to say it so much Klaus would never remember the times that he didn’t.

When Klaus woke up, he wasn’t afraid for himself. He was afraid for Five. Five, who had blue lips and tears in his eyes and bags under his eyes and ice-cold hands. Five shouldn’t have worn that light jacket, Klaus told him to put on something heavier.

“F’ve-” Klaus muttered, his lips numb from either pain or the cold, but making him unable to fully pronounce words. Five’s head shot up instantly.

“Klaus!” He exclaimed. “Klaus, I was so scared, I thought you were gone, but you can’t leave! We’re in this together, it’s you and me, just like you said. I can’t do this without you, I love you-”

“You l’ve me?” Klaus whispered. Five froze, his eyes wide. Then, his gaze hardened, and he nodded. “I l’ve you too.”

Five should be happy. Why was there so much fear in his eyes? It’s not like Klaus was dead. He probably had a few cuts and a twisted ankle. But Klaus watched Five’s eyes travel across his injuries, and the fear only increased.

“Wha’ hap’n’d?” Klaus asked, trying to sit up again.

“No, no, don’t move,” Five gently pushed him back to a lying position. “You- uh. You fell. Off the cliff. And you’ve got some nasty injuries, Klaus, and I’ve done all I can. I stopped the bleeding, I’ve been putting pressure, but if we don’t get you back soon…”

He didn’t have to finish his sentence. They both knew.

If they didn’t get back soon Klaus would die of his wounds and Five of hypothermia.

“B’ink,” Klaus told him. “C-an you?”

Five bit his paling lip and frowned. “I haven’t really gone anywhere for… awhile… I probably have enough energy.”

“F’ve, ‘ow long ‘ave we been ‘ere?” Klaus tried his best to glare.

Five shook his head. “I don’t know exactly. But it’s been a long time. I can blink us, but I don’t want to move you and make anything worse.”

“If you don’, we both die.”

Nervously, Five nodded and leaned over Klaus, holding him as securely as he could. Then, there was a swirl of blue energy, and a second later, Klaus was laying in his bed at the barn. He winced as he landed, and felt the stinging of blood pouring from him as Five released the pressure on his wounds.

“ Shit !” Five cursed, looking around wildly. He grabbed his old uniform shirt from years ago and ripped it up, adding it to the wounds along with the shirt he was wearing earlier. Klaus watched as he left Klaus’s side to start the fire in the fireplace.

“Cha’ge your shir’,” Klaus told him. “G’na get c’ld.”

Five gave him a tiny nod before pulling his jacket off and throwing on a warmer long-sleeved shirt. He then went back to Klaus’s side and glared at his wounds. He tapped Klaus’s elbow twice. Klaus squeezed his elbow back. He took a deep breath and nodded.

“We’re going to have to cauterize them,” Five decided. “It’s the only way to close them up right now because we don’t have the materials for stitches and even if we did I have no clue how to do that.

Klaus’s eyes dropped shut, only hearing parts of what Five said. He heard “ cauterize ” and faintly thought that he should protest or be worried about the pain, but he was so tired…

“ Hey !” Five was snapping in front of his face. “Honestly, it’d be better for you if you passed out so you wouldn’t feel anything, but I need you awake for this. I gotta know to stop if…”

If the pain or heat kills Klaus. Yeah.

Five walked over to the fireplace and grabbed the iron poker. He held the point over the flames, and sent a sorry glance back at Klaus.

He walked over and lifted Klaus’s shirt up to reveal the cut by his ribs. “Sorry about this. I do love you, though.” Five winced.

And with that, he pressed the poker onto the wound.

Klaus used the rest of his energy to yell out.

He’d never been so happy to pass out in his whole life.

The sight of melting flesh was almost enough for Five to throw up everything he’s ever eaten in his entire life right then and there. The way the iron poker made the blood sizzle before the wound began to seal made Five gag.

He was worried at first when Klaus lost consciousness, but Five knew it was because of the pain. He quickly pressed the poker to the cut on Klaus’s arm, but hesitated at the one on his forehead. Cauterizing that wound would leave a nasty and probably ugly scar on his forehead.

“Sorry, Klaus,” Five hissed through his teeth and pressed the poker down onto Klaus’s head. He didn't hold it as much as the others, hoping to ease some of the scarring. “If I didn’t do it your head would bleed out.”

Klaus whimpered in his sleep and Five let out a long sigh before walking outside to toss the poker into the snow to cool it off. He walked back inside and went to their makeshift kitchen, grabbing a pot.

Knowing he wasn’t able to waste any of their drinking water, he went outside and scooped some snow into the pot, then held it over the fire to melt it into water. He didn’t let it heat up, though, and walked back over to Klaus.

He sat down on Klaus’s bed next to him and pressed the cold rag to Klaus’s still-hot wounds. He wiped them lightly just to get rid of any excess dirt that could infect the wounds. They didn’t need to worry about infections, too.

“You know, you’re usually the one taking care of me,” Five laughed nervously, tears stinging his eyes again. “I don’t think I’d ever eat or sleep if you weren’t here. I guess it was only a matter of time before the tables turned, huh? But… but you have to wake up soon. I- I’m not good at this caretaker shit, Klaus. Tell me how to do this.”

Silence was the only response.

Five reached out and took his brother’s wrist to check his pulse, and ended up just holding his hand anyways.

“That’s okay. I can wait.”

• • •

Klaus has felt pain, and he’s felt helplessness. But the second he woke up, the pain was unbearable and he’d never felt less helpful. The aches from his broken bones and the burning from where Five closed his wounds was too much.

He tried to sit up but realized he couldn’t for two reasons. One, at least one of his ribs was definitely broken and hurt very badly. And two, Five had laid his head on Klaus’s chest and was sleeping.

Klaus didn’t mind. He knew Five had probably been up for hours looking after Klaus, so Klaus let him sleep. He sighed and looked over to the chair Delores was in.

She was glaring at him, and he winced. Klaus! I leave you two alone for a few hours and Five blinks you back half dead! What happened?

“Sorry for the scare,” Klaus whispered. “Did Five tell you anything?”

No , she said sadly. I tried asking him but he was too busy focusing on you and your injuries. Then he fell asleep.

Klaus nodded. “Well, he did it. He blinked to the top of the cliff we were practicing on. And then I asked him to take me up there, and I got too close to the edge. I fell off and busted basically all of my bones. I also had some pretty bad gashes which Five had to cauterize.”

Yeah, I can see that. It messed up your pretty little face.

“Delores! You’re too kind- wait,” Klaus stopped and turned to look in the mirror hanging on the wall across from his bed. Even though the sun hadn’t risen yet, Klaus could still see it.

At the base of his hairline running from the center of his forehead down to one temple was a long, red, and slightly blackened scar. Klaus knew Five had had no choice. If he didn’t close it, Klaus would have bled out.

“Well,” Klaus said very quietly. “I guess I’ll just have to stop pushing my hair back now.”

He laid back down on his pillow and closed his eyes, preparing to get a few more hours of sleep before Five woke up.

A tear slid down his face.

He ignored it.

The next time he woke up, it was because Five was shaking him. “Five, Five, stop, I’m up!” Klaus exclaimed, squinting up at his brother.

“Sorry- I, I just thought…” Five trailed off, looking strikingly pale.

“I’m okay,” Klaus said softly, squeezing Five’s elbow gently. Five nodded quickly, and stood up.

He began pacing as he spoke. “So I was looking at the damage and the worst of it is probably your broken rib. The leg we can make a splint for it and align it, and then your arm isn’t broken, and I cauterized all the open wounds.”

Klaus winced as he remembered the ugly scar on his face.

“Wait- did you say align ?” Klaus cut off his rambling. “Five- you don’t know how to align broken bones.”

Five fixed Klaus with a hard glare. “I didn’t really know how to cauterize three open wounds, including one on your head , but I didn’t really have a choice,” he spat. “Listen, if you ever want to walk normally again, I’ve got to align it. If not… you probably won’t be able to put pressure on it ever again.”

“I know. I’m sorry. You’re right,” Klaus sighed. “Just.. just do it now. So we can get it over with. And then what about my rib?”

Five shook his head. “There’s no way for me to align that. We’ll just have to let it mend itself by you not doing anything to make it worse. No using your power, no blinking with me, and best to keep off your feet so your leg and heal too.”

“For how long?”

“Ribs usually take six weeks to heal. Legs are six to eight. So let’s go with seven, okay?”

“Seven weeks?” Klaus exclaimed. “I can’t just leave you to deal with everything while I sit on my ass for seven weeks .”

Five rolled his eyes and sat down on the bottom end of Klaus’s bed. “Well, if you don’t, you’ll be on your ass for a lot longer.”

“But- my garden! I’m sure as hell not letting you take care of it- HOLY SHIT !”

While Klaus had been ranting, Five had snapped his leg back into place without Klaus realizing. The pain was so intense that his vision went black before slowly clearing as he took deep breaths.

“Sorry,” Five said, but the amused look on his face didn’t seem very sorry. “I knew if I did it while you were aware I was doing it, you’d try to stop me.”

“Holy shit ,” was all Klaus found he could say. Five handed him a bottle of water, which Klaus accepted and gulped down. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Seven weeks but no longer. And for the first few days you’re not going anywhere.”

Drinking from his own bottle, Five glared at Klaus. “And why’s that?”

“Because you were sitting out in the snow for hours with no shirt on and the thinnest jacket in the world. Your lips were blue. I don’t want you going back out into the cold for a few days. We have enough food and supplies, you don’t need to go anywhere.”

“Delores!” Five whined, turning to their mannequin friend. “Are you hearing this?”

Yes, Five, I am. And I agree with Klaus. He needs you to take care of him for the next one and a half months. Stay inside so you don’t get sick.

Five groaned. “I hate when you two tagteam me.”

“It’s only because we love you, mein bruder ,” Klaus grinned and reached up, ruffling Five’s hair. He saw Five’s eyes widen slightly and realized that this was the first time Five was hearing that word while not in hysterics. “Five, I do love you. I wasn’t just saying it because you were freaking out.”

For a while, Five was lost in thought. “Klaus… you died. And I know you know more about that but I won’t ask right now. But you were dead for what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes. But I had thought I lost you forever and I never even got the chance to let you know how much I love you.

You know I don’t do emotions. Or people, even. It’s too much. I like facts because they’re simple and uncomplicated. But that’s not any way to live. I love you, Klaus. You’re my brother and without you… well I can barely remember how I survived without being as close to you as I am now in the Academy.”

“Aww, I love you too, Fivey! Come here, ya big sap,” Klaus opened his arms and Five hesitated before leaning down- lightly, of course, as to not hurt his ribs- to hug Klaus back. “You did it! You hugged back!”

“Yeah, well,” Five smiled slightly as he pulled away. “Life’s too short not to.” 

Chapter Text

Winter is pretty bad, but usually they can make up for it by playing in the snow or taking quick trips to the city. But now Klaus was on bedrest and it was unbearable. He couldn’t do anything and since Five wasn’t about to go play in the snow alone, all he did was work and read.

In fact, the only way he’d ever play in the snow was when Klaus dragged him outside.

“I have an idea,” Klaus spoke up one dull morning into the fourth week of his bedrest. “Let’s give each other tattoos.”

Five looked up from his book on Fermat’s Last Theorem and narrowed his eyes at Klaus. “We’re sixteen. And neither one of us knows how to work a tattoo pen.”

Klaus waved his hand. “Pshh. Please, Five, if you can figure out how to cauterize three open wounds, build a splint for my broken leg, and do a bunch of math that allows you to time travel , I have no doubt you can work a tattoo pen.”

Nodding, but still skeptical, Five closed his book and faced Klaus. “Uh huh. And then what about me. You expect me to trust your shaky hand with my tattoo? It’d go to shit and I’d be stuck with it forever.”

“It can’t be any worse than this,” Klaus pushed the hair that had grown down over his forehead up to reveal his burn scar. Five winced. “Mhmm. So, I think you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.”

“What do you even want a tattoo of?” Five rolled his eyes.

Klaus grinned and held up his palms. “Hello and GoodBye on my palms. Like a ouija board!”

“That’s the corniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Okay, well what do you want?”

Five frowned, not really having thought about it before.

What would he get a tattoo of? Nothing sappy like a name or a favorite animal or lyrics from a song or anything like that that Five found incredibly stupid. And as corny as Klaus’s idea was, it worked. He really was a human ouija board. But what would Five tattoo to symbolize his power? The work blink ? Yeah, he didn’t really like that.

And then it came to him.

Just as math always does.

He could relate math symbols to his life.

Turning back to his desk, he grabbed a paper and marker and began drawing the math symbols. When he finished, he turned to face a very confused Klaus and began explaining what each symbol meant.

“The plus or minus symbol. Minus as in I lost my siblings but plus as in I gained a closer relationship with you.

The much greater than symbol. That’s for the both of us because we’re much greater than people probably think of us.

The perpendicular symbol because that’s basically us. Opposite directions but still somehow work together.

And finally, the lemniscate symbol. Stands for a figure eight, or an infinity sign. Because I swear to God this hell is never-ending.”

When put in a line, they looked like this: ± ≫ ⊥ ∞

“Touching… in your own way, I suppose…” Klaus trailed off, only to get a death glare from Five. “Kidding, hermano ! But you should get, like, a donut. For me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I’ll get a donut too. Remember when we tried to get the donuts from Griddy’s? It’ll be our own little memory.”

Five scowled, but sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, we can do that.”

“Great! Wanna do it tomorrow?”

“Whatever you want, Klaus.”

Five greatly regretted agreeing to letting Klaus tattoo him. His teeth were clenched so hard together he was surprised that they hadn’t broken by now. He was taking deep breaths, trying to ignore the pain of Klaus’s unsteady hand drilling the inked needle of the tattoo pen he’d got from the city into the skin behind his ear.

He’d decided to get his line of math symbols in a vertical line on the side of his neck, starting right below where his ear ended and down to his collarbone.

“Wait, so even though you went with a vertical line, do you want the figure eight horizontal still? Or vertical, too, like an actual eight-”

“ Yes , I want the figure eight horizontal, Klaus. It’s an infinity sign for shit’s sake,” Five hissed back through his clenched teeth.

Klaus nodded and finished inking on the last symbol. He pulled the pen away and looked at Five with sorry eyes. “Sorry for hurting you,” Klaus said quietly.

Five knew he didn’t do it on purpose. He reached over and tapped Klaus’s elbow.

It’s okay.

“Where are we putting our matching donut? Which, I still can’t believe I agreed to getting,” Five shook his head incredulously.

“On our chests, right over our hearts. Sound good? Great! Shirt off,” Klaus said without waiting for Five’s answer.

But since Five didn’t have a better idea as to where to put it, he sighed and agreed. He pulled off his shirt, careful not to smudge the ink on his neck, and turned to Klaus. “Don’t, like, accidentally poke a hole into my heart and get ink in there and kill me, okay?”

Furrowing his brows, Klaus stared at his brother for a second. “Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know. Just don’t do it.”

And with those wise words of encouragement, Klaus set to work on the tattoo. It was a simple design, they’d sketched it out last night. Just the outline circle of the donut, a squiggly line for the icing, and then small lines as sprinkles.

“Done! Hey, that looks pretty good!” Klaus grinned down at the tiny donut over Five’s heart. Five walked over to the mirror and studied the donut, then turned his head to see the math symbols on his neck.

Klaus did good. But he wouldn’t say that. Instead, he turned to face Klaus, smirked, and replied, “Adequate.”

All Klaus did was roll his eyes from his bed, his splinted leg propped up on a pillow. “Yeah, okay. My turn! Don’t screw up.”

“Have I ever screwed up anything?” Five rolled his eyes and grabbed the tattoo pen, pouring more ink into it.

“Uh, yeah. You’re kinda the one that got us stuck here,” Klaus said, but playfully grinned so Five knew he wasn’t being serious. Five just scowled at him and sat down on Klaus’s bed next to him. “Remember, make the words big on my palms. Take up the whole thing.”

Five tilted his head and exhaled as if to say I’ll try . Klaus held up his first hand and Five grabbed it, bringing the tattoo pen to it. He started writing the HELLO , when Klaus hissed.

“Ow!”

“Don’t wince,” Five warned, “else the pen will move and you’ll have a screwed up tattoo on your hand for the rest of your shitty life.”

Five managed to get the HELLO done nicely, although he brought up the fact that they were in his own handwriting. Klaus shrugged and said he didn’t mind. And so Five grabbed the other hand and worked on the GOODBYE .

When he finished, Klaus turned and looked at his palms. Five watched his face closely as it went from wide eyes to a huge grin.

“Five! I love them!” Klaus exclaimed. “I would high-five you, but I don’t want to mess them up.”

“No worries,” Five smirked, “ I’ll high-five you .” He smacked his palm on Klaus’s forehead. “Glad you like them. Now, off with the shirt so I can do the donut.”

“Wow, Five, take me out to dinner first-”

“Oh God Klaus, shut up,” Five groaned, shaking his head to erase that image from his mind. “That’s disgusting.” Klaus just snickered and let Five pull off his shirt, since he didn’t want to mess up the ink on his hands by doing it himself.

Five brought the tattoo pen to Klaus’s chest, but glanced at him. “I’m good with writing words, not drawing. I can’t promise this won’t turn out shitty.”

Klaus just lifted one of his shoulders in a shrug. “Eh.”

“Alright, then,” Five muttered, and began drawing on the donut as best as he could. He glanced at Klaus's sketch from last night, and when he finished, he was pretty proud of himself. “Hey, not too bad!”

Glancing down at his chest, Klaus looked back up at Five. “Adequate.”

Five rolled his eyes and shoved Klaus’s shoulder, who began laughing. “Yeah, yeah,” Five mumbled. “I deserved that.” He then turned to face Delores. “You like them, Delores?” Klaus turned to her too, both boys showing her their bare chests.

She laughed and smiled. Yes, they look great. And as much as I enjoy the view of your torsos, boys, please put your shirts back on.

• • •

“Hey,” Klaus walked outside to find Five laying in the grass and staring up at the sky. “You alright there, bruder ?”

They were eighteen now, and it was August, so almost nineteen. Klaus was fully healed and only sometimes walked around with a limp. Five was the same, though, due to all those years ago when he’d twisted his ankle.

“Yeah,” Five sighed dramatically. “Had a rough day with equations, that’s all. Needed a break.”

Klaus nodded and waited for Five to ask him what’s up. Five noticed this, rolled his eyes, and asked. “What is it?” 

First, Klaus plopped down on the ground next to Five and looked up at the sky before speaking. “I was just thinking… wouldn’t it be really wickedly awesome if we made up our own language?”

“Dad taught us Greek, Russian, German, and more only to communicate with each other without being understood by others. Who around here is going to hear our English conversation?” Five turned his head on the grass, looking around.

It was Klaus’s turn to roll his eyes. “I’m talking about when we get back, idiot. Imagine us walking into the kitchen after years of being gone just having a conversation in a foreign language that none of our siblings understand.”

Five was quiet for a moment before a smirk grew on his face. “I do like the sound of that. But it has to have some kind of dialect as the base. We can’t just make random sounds and call that a language.”

“Okay,” Klaus nodded. “Well, let’s go to the library and find a book on a language the rest of our siblings don’t know. Then we can combine it with the dialect of a language we do know so it isn’t too challenging. But the others still won’t understand it because the root dialect will be one they don’t know. Boom, our own language.”

Instantly, Five was up on his feet and holding a hand down to Klaus. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?”

Klaus grabbed Five’s hand and stood up. He simply grinned and nodded. Keeping his hold on Five’s hand, Five blinked them to the city library.

A few days later, they had the basics of their language down. They chose Dutch as the base language, since none of their siblings spoke that, and then combined it with German since Dutch was already a Germanic language.

“Alright, ready? I’ll say something in the language and see if you can understand and reply in the language,” Five told Klaus. “ I miss drinking good coffee .”

Klaus frowned, thinking, then replied slowly, “ I miss drinking good chocolate milk .”

Five laughed and high-fived Klaus. “Good job! Or should I say, good job !”

“ Danke- er,” Klaus shook his head, “Thank you. Delores, tell us, did it work? Could you understand us?”

Not in the slightest , she answered, but you two seemed to have gotten it.

“Now we can talk about you whenever we want without you knowing,” Five smirked.

No you can’t. I’ll know.

Five looked to Klaus with wide eyes.

The three of them all laughed together.

• • •

When Klaus and Five turned twenty-one, Five discovered alcohol.

Not that he hadn’t known what it was before, exactly.

But he had never drank it before, and had never allowed Klaus to drink it either. He didn’t want to worry about hangovers or addiction or anything of the sorts while trying to worry about getting them out of the apocalypse.

Then he turned twenty-one. Without Klaus.

Klaus hadn’t wanted to be separated for their birthday. They’d never been apart for one before. But he had business to take care of with ghosts somewhere on the west coast and since he couldn’t blink there, he had to drive.

Oh, right. Five and Klaus taught themselves to drive a few years back.

There were no working phones or any forms of communication, so Klaus had left with a bunch of ghosts and Five had no means of knowing when he’d be back.

So, yeah, he was drinking right now.

He hated it. He knew he hated it. It didn’t taste very good and every sip that went down his throat burned. His stomach felt like a bowl of acid. But those were the physical effects. The way it made him feel mentally…

At first he enjoyed it. All his worries went away. He wasn’t fighting against the clock to get back home, he wasn’t worrying if Klaus could defend himself against the ghosts. But then everything started to crash back down onto him.

He was angry. Angry at Klaus for leaving him on their birthday, angry at himself for getting them stuck here and not being smart enough to find the right equations to get them back. And he was sad. Sad because he missed his siblings, but he missed Klaus. Even though he’s only been gone a few days. He felt sorry for himself, sorry for the world.

Klaus. He needed Klaus. He needed to get to Klaus.

Five could spatial jump. That was his ability. He could jump to and from places. But he’s never tried jumping to people before. He grabbed another bottle of beer and closed his eyes. He let his mind focus on Klaus. He pictured his brother in his head, and let the blue energy around his hands form.

He jumped.

When he opened his eyes, he was greeted with a very surprised Klaus.

“ Klausy !” Five exclaimed, throwing his arms up, then taking a sip of his beer. “I did it!”

“Five, what…” Klaus trailed off, noticing the bottle. “Are you- have you been drinking ?”

Five burped. “Yuuup.”

“I thought we said no drinking.”

If Five were sober, he would see the amount of disappointment in Klaus’s eyes. 

“Yeah, well, you were gone, and all my mistakes and sorrows fell down upon me-” Five cut off abruptly, and tears began to well in his eyes. “I’m a failure !”

And maybe Klaus would have found it funny if he didn’t know that Five never cries unless there’s a reason. Exhibit A, burying your dead siblings. Exhibit B, thinking your only living sibling also died.

Other than that, Five has never cried.

So when Five began sobbing, Klaus turned to the ghost council he’d been talking to. “Can we finish this tomorrow, gentlemen? My brother here is, well.”

Klaus reached out and caught Five just as he fell, and dragged him to the couch of the room they were in. He laid his brother down and pushed his hair back on his forehead. “Five, why ? Why did you drink?”

“Because of you ,” Five scowled. “You left me. You said it was me and you forever! You said you wouldn’t leave! And then you did, you- you piece of shit !”

Klaus knew Five was under influence and saying these things to get under Klaus’s skin, but it hurt all the same. He glared at Five and grabbed the bottle, then flung it across the room where it hit the wall and shattered.

“Asshole!” Five yelled, moving to sit up, tears still running down his face. Klaus shoved him back down.

“We’re done with that, you hear me?” Klaus seethed, pointing to the bottle. “You’re not drinking that ever again, got it? And I don’t care how good it made you feel because that feeling goes away, Five! And then you’re left with this shitty persona that makes me want to leave you here and drive back home without you!”

Five crossed his arms and glared.

“We don’t need it,” Klaus said, a bit more gentle. “People use drugs and alcohol when they’re alone and they’ve got no one to confide in and trust and love. But we do have that, Five. We have each other. We don’t need it.”

“We don’t need it,” Five repeated quietly. Klaus nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Klaus leaned over Five and hugged him tightly as he let out more tears. “It’s alright, Fivey. It’s okay. I love you.”

“I love you too. Happy birthday, Klaus.”

“Happy birthday, Five.”

When Five wakes up, he has a splitting headache, and Klaus is wearing a dress.

Okay, it’s a skirt , but Five just classifies it as a dress.

He groaned and sat up, rubbing his fingers against his pounding temples. Klaus just smirks in a way that clearly says ‘ that’s what you get ’, and tosses Five a bottle of water. Five keeps his eyes closed for a few minutes as he sips the water.

When he finally opens his eyes, Klaus is leaning against the wall across the room, watching Five with his arms crossed and his eyebrows raised.

“Nice dress,” Five comments on the skirt.

“ Danke ,” Klaus says, but doesn’t drop his reproving stare. “How are you feeling?”

Five drops his head back onto his pillow. “Like pure shit. When can we go home?”

“Well, I’ve still got my meeting-”

“For what? I mean, I know it’s with the ghosts, but about what ?”

Klaus’s expression grew pained. “They… they want to have some order. They want this to be a convention of sorts. Where the ghosts that want to, you know… go on come to me, and I send them on.”

Five nodded, not really knowing what to say. He couldn’t see or hear the ghosts. He didn’t know what it was like for Klaus to constantly have to confront them and send some of them to the afterlife. It was probably draining.

“I already put it on a hold last night when you appeared, drunk as a skunk,” Klaus glared. “By the way, how did you know where I was?”

His eyes widened when Five remembered how he’d managed to blink to a person instead of a location. “I- I didn’t. I just thought about you . And then I blinked. I blinked to you. I didn’t know I could do that.”

“Lovely,” Klaus said. “But ghosts aren’t very patient and if you don’t get your ass up and moving, you can tell them that their ticket to heaven can’t operate until his brother’s hangover wears off.”

Five winced and slowly got up from the couch. Klaus nodded to the closet in the corner of the room and Five went to go find some clothes. “Um, Klaus, where are we?” He asked as he began to change.

“Somewhere in California. Around Santa Barbera. This place is pretty cool, I wish we could see it when it was, well, alive .”

Five finished by pulling on a long-sleeved shirt and turned back to Klaus. “Well, we’ll just come here when we save the world. We can take everyone else. Family trip.” They both were quiet before laughing at the idea.

Klaus stopped abruptly and turned to the door. Five could assume that a ghost had just come in. And by come in he meant floated through the door. Klaus quickly nodded then looked at Five.

“ He’s their leader. Pretty hostile, ” He spoke in their created language.

“ Too bad we can’t kill him ,” Five smirked back.

Klaus laughed and then beckoned Five to follow as he walked out of the room, probably following the ghost to wherever they needed to go.

The ghost that Klaus was following had been a literal gang leader before he died, and Klaus could tell. The man wore studded leather and a bandana and most likely owned a motorcycle that currently lay, crushed, under the ruined buildings.

“Remember, boy ,” the ghost snarled. “You’re doing this for us. And your friend over there better not get in the way.”

“H-How would Five get in the way…?” Klaus shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. He caught Five’s confused face from the corner of his eye, but didn’t comment. The ghost led them into a large dining room that held what seemed like the ghosts of the whole town.

Klaus was overwhelmed almost instantly.

He was twenty-one now, and not an amateur at his powers by any means. But on the farm there weren’t any ghosts bothering him, and over the past eight years he’d grown rather acquainted with the ones in the city.

But here? Here it was completely different. These ghosts hadn’t realized that Klaus was alive and could help them by giving them the option to go on. They were thirsty for blood they couldn’t spill.

And Klaus knew they could hurt him. Maybe not physically, but they could get inside his head, and as cliche as it sounds, quite literally haunt him.

Haunt they did. The rest of the gang members scowled at Klaus as he walked in and began advancing. Klaus walked backwards until he hit the wall, shaking his head fervently. 

“We want your life, kid,” one of them growled.

“Either that, or we want you to die-” Another one smirked.

The third one cracked his knuckles. “Just. Like. Us.”

Klaus slid to the ground against the wall, his hands clutching his head. “No, no, please no,” he whispered, but it couldn’t be heard over the room full of ghosts coming towards him. “Go away, go away !”

He felt thirteen all over again.

He felt four, tugging on Dad’s jacket as they visited the cemetery and asking why the boy a few feet away didn’t have his parents with him.

He felt four, Dad sternly telling him the boy was dead and Klaus should have realized that and honestly, you’re so disappointing Number Four .

 He felt ten, getting tossed into the mausoleum, screaming and crying.

He felt ten, his own screams getting mixed with the ghosts’, ripping his throat raw.

And then Five was there, his hand holding Klaus’s face. Klaus could see his lips moving, but couldn’t hear the words coming from his mouth.

And then Five was hugging him. And all Klaus could focus on was the warmth of Five’s arms around him and the sound of Five’s voice breaking through the ghosts’ whispering, “Shh, it’s okay. I’m here, Klaus, I’ve got you.”

Klaus took a deep breath and pulled away, looking around. The ghosts were gone. He turned to Five, who was watching him closely.

“You…” Klaus trailed off. “You hugged me first.”

Five was silent, before slowly nodding. “Yeah… first time for everything.”

“Only took you twenty-one years.”

But Klaus didn’t argue as Five held him tightly once more.

• • •

“You mean you expect me to believe that you never had even one sip?” Five laughed as he and Klaus walked through the city ruins. “You weren’t even a little curious after my first and only hangover?”

Klaus shrugged, his hands in his pockets. “Nope. Not after I saw that headache.”

“Maybe I could handle it better now. I was twenty-one, you know? Maybe thirty-three is a better age to handle some liquor.”

“Yeah, no,” Klaus shook his head. “Just because you’re old and thirty-three now does not mean I’m allowing you to drink alcohol. We already said no more after that night.”

Five rolled his eyes but sighed in defeat. “Fine. But don’t call me old, asshole, you’re the same age as me. And if anything, I look younger than you.”

Klaus scoffed, really wishing he hadn’t banished most of the ghosts in the city so he could make them corporeal and have them back him up. “As if! You’re the one with that stupid scruffy stubble! That makes you look forty! Clean-shaven face is the way to go.”

Just as Five opened his mouth to reply, he stopped when Klaus froze, staring at something behind Five. Five turned, but saw nothing. “Is it a ghost? I thought you got rid of all of them?”

Klaus only opened and closed his mouth. The man that had appeared had a million gunshot wounds in him.

He turned away only to be greeted by hundreds of new ghosts he’d never seen before. Some had more bullet holes, others had stab wounds, some had tire markings. But they were mutilated and there were so many and-

And Klaus screamed.

Five instantly grabbed his shoulders and looked at him. “Just look at me, you’re okay. Nothing’s going to happen to you, I won’t let it.” Klaus nodded, trying to steady his breathing. And then he saw her.

A woman.

He was pretty positive that she wasn’t a ghost.

Five turned around and grabbed the gun that had been strapped over her shoulder.

“Who the hell are you?” He yelled, aiming the gun at her.

“Hello, boys,” She smiled. “I’m the Handler. And I have a proposition for you two.”

The brothers shared a look.

They spoke in their language,

“ Shit .”

Chapter Text

PART II
THE COMMISSION SUITE

“This is your room, Five, and Klaus’s will be down the hall-”

“No,” Five instantly cut the Handler off.

She raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“No. Klaus and I have been together for the past twenty years. You’re not separating us now,” Five glared at her, and glanced at Klaus to see him staring at the Handler with the same cold look that Five had.

Her gaze shifted between the two brothers before she sighed and gave in. “Alright, alright. You can share a double room. Second door to your left, straight ahead. I’ll let you guys get settled in and I’ll be back in an hour or so to explain your jobs.”

And with that, Five and Klaus headed into their new home.

Chapter Text

Everyone is peeking out of windows, or leaning through doorways to catch a glimpse of the new arrivals. Because word got around the Commission that the two new recruits are them. The boys turned men in the apocalypse.

Dot stood at the top of the stairs, anxiously peering down at the doorway every few seconds. She smiled brightly at Herb, who came up to join her.

“So, these are your guys, huh?” He asked, gesturing down to the doors.

She nodded enthusiastically. “Yep! I’ve been monitoring them for a while now. Got to watch them grow up. It’s like they’re my children ! Although, I suppose they don’t know that so I can’t really go up to them and say how proud I am.”

Her rambling was cut off, as was the rest of the crowd’s conversations, when the doors to the atrium opened. Everyone watched, holding their breath, as the Handler walked in, a wide smirk on her face. 

“May I present- and I expect everyone to give them a very warm welcome- Number Five and Number Four Hargreeves!” She exclaimed, and stepped aside, letting in two men.

They were both still as scrawny as they had been as teenagers. The first one wore a hard scowl on his face, glaring at anyone who came close to him. He was a bit shorter than the other one, and slightly more muscular. His hair was still cut in the school-boy style he’d had as a kid, but it was a bit longer and fell over his eyebrows.

That was Five. Dot could hardly believe she was seeing him in person right now. Five looked at his brother, who was looking around with wide eyes, though Dot noticed he wasn’t looking at the people of the Commission. More like empty corners or gaps in the crowd.

Number Four. Klaus Hargreeves. Dot shivered when she remembered he could see the dead. He was taller than Five, but didn’t have as much muscle. He had ditched the school-boy hair and had let it grow longer on the top, holding a fringe style.

Five watched Klaus wring his hands together nervously before reaching over and grabbing Klaus’s hand tightly. Klaus looked at Five, and with his other hand, tapped Five’s elbow. Five looked relieved.

“They’ve got quite a way of communicating, don’t they?” Herb asked.

“Oh, yes,” Dot nodded. “They’ve got certain body language, like the elbow thing. I have no idea what it means, though. And they made up their own language!”

Herb looked impressed. “An entire language.”

“Yep! I wish I understood it.”

The whole Commission was there. They all wanted to get a look at the apocalypse survivors. Dot had been bombarded with questions about the two men from the Umbrella Academy and how they did it.

One man from the engineering department reached forward and put a hand on Klaus’s shoulder. Klaus jumped and looked at him, looking as though he’d seen a ghost. Dot betted that he probably had.

“Hey!” Five yelled, instinctively shoving Klaus behind him and punching the man from engineering in the face. Everyone watched in awe as Klaus grabbed Five and stopped him. 

Klaus yelled at Five in their language that no one, not even the Handler, could translate. Five stared at Klaus before untensing and taking a step back. Klaus tapped Five’s elbow again, and Five squeezed Klaus’s.

“Well, what an entrance!” The Handler clapped her hands together. “Everyone, make way so these two gentlemen can get through. I don’t think any of you want to feel Number Five’s punch.”

And with that, the two mysterious apocalyptic men were escorted away.

• • •

“This is your room, Five, and Klaus’s will be down the hall-”

“No,” Five instantly cut the Handler off.

She raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“No. Klaus and I have been together for the past twenty years. You’re not separating us now,” Five glared at her, and glanced at Klaus to see him staring at the Handler with the same cold look that Five had.

Her gaze shifted between the two brothers before she sighed and gave in. “Alright, alright. You can share a double room. Second door to your left, straight ahead. I’ll let you guys get settled in and I’ll be back in an hour or so to explain your jobs.”

And with that, Five and Klaus headed into their new home.

The room was nice. Well, not that Five had much to compare it to. The best memory of a nice building he had was from twenty years ago, and it was the Academy.

So, yeah, the room was nice.

It had blue walls and two beds across the room from each other. A door connected to the bathroom which looked nice as well. The window looked out into a field and that was when it occurred to Five that he had no clue where exactly they were.

He sighed and turned to Klaus, who was sitting on what Five assumed would be his bed, his head in his hands. Five went over and sat next to him. 

“Hey,” he said, squeezing Klaus’s elbow. “You okay?”

“Yeah…” Klaus said quietly, taking his head out of his hands. “There’s just… a lot. More than I saw in the apocalypse. And they’re not… aggressive, exactly, but it’s to the point where I can’t tell who’s alive and who’s not. That’s how many are around.”

Before replying, Five glared up at the corners of the ceiling where, sure enough, there were cameras. He could assume there would be mics around, too.

“ There’s cameras and probably mics ,” Five began in their language. “ So we’ll talk in Klive when we have something important to say. Good thing you thought of making a language all those years ago .”

“ Klive ,” Klaus laughed, and shook his head. “ But, anyways. Most ghosts were killed. Gunshots, stranglings, stabs, they were all murdered. That lady wasn’t lying when she said they take out anyone who messes with the timeline. ”

Five nodded slowly, a frown on his face as he thought deeply. “How about we just get some rest, yeah? Probably will have a busy day tomorrow.” Klaus nodded and they took turns in the bathroom, getting ready for bed.

When they were finally ready, and the lights were off, Klaus spoke up quietly.

“I never thought I’d say this… but I think I miss the apocalypse.”

Five closed his eyes, feeling his heart tug.

“Yeah, Klaus,” he whispered. “Me too.”

The two brothers were awoken by a loud knock on the door. Klaus groaned into his pillow and waved his hand at Five, who flipped off Klaus before getting up to open the door. Even though he’d only known her for one day, Klaus could recognize the Handler’s voice.

“Good morning, boys!” She exclaimed cheerily. “Are you ready to start your first day?”

Klaus wanted to roll over and give her some witty remark, but he wasn’t ready to open his eyes and face the hundreds of ghosts that surrounded just her, let alone the rest of the Commission itself.

“Yeah, I think we’re going to need a few minutes,” Five smiled innocently at her. She nodded and left the room so they could get changed.

Five ripped the curtain back from the window, letting in the sunlight. Klaus shoved his face further into his pillow and pulled his blanket over his head, but a second later it was removed by Five.

“Come on, Klaus. Let’s not be late on the first day, okay?” Five raised his eyebrows as Klaus sat and squinted at the sun.

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Klaus sighed. “Can we be late every other day then?”

Five laughed. “Sure.”

With that promise in mind, Klaus walked over to the dresser of clothes the Commission had supplied for them. All that it consisted of was short and long sleeved button ups in different colors, suit jackets, suit pants, khakis, dress shoes, and ties.

Slowly, Klaus turned to look at Five, who now stood next to him. In the apocalypse they’d walk around shirtless when it was hot and throw on t-shirts and sweatshirts and shorts and sweatpants whenever they wanted.

“No one mentioned a dress code,” Five scowled, but grabbed a white button up with navy pants and a matching jacket.

“You missed this, Five-sy!” Klaus mocked, grabbing a navy tie and waving it in front of Five’s face. Five rolled his eyes and grabbed it, tying it around his neck. Klaus turned back to the dresser and frowned. “Yeah I kind of hate all of these options.”

That earned him a glare. “Just pick something, Klaus. You can wear whatever you want when we get back home. ” Five finished in their language.

“ Home ?” Klaus asked, confused, before he realized Five wasn’t talking about the apocalypse. “ Oh, the Academy! Yeah… home… ”

Five just looked at him before shaking his head and walking into the bathroom. Klaus turned back to the dresser and glared at the clothes. Eventually he decided on black pants with a blue button up that he would probably have most buttons unbuttoned on and he definitely would not be tucking it in.

The Handler came back into their room ten minutes later and led them to the dining hall where breakfast was being served. Klaus kept his head down the whole walk, not wanting to see the ghosts, but it snapped up when they entered the hall.

He had forgotten what real, good breakfast smelled like.

There were eggs and pancakes and waffles and syrup and toast and bacon and fruit and everything Klaus had abandoned. He looked down to Five, who was taking in the hall, his eyes wide. Klaus suppressed a grin.

“This is a dining hall where breakfast and dinner happens,” the Handler explained. “We usually do lunch in smaller groups or in our own rooms. The information departments and everyone that works here at the Commission all day, everyday, eat here. However, our field agents usually are gone for a few days at a time.”

“Field agents?” Five asked.

“Yes, that's one of our work opportunities here at the Commission. Why don’t I tell you about both of your assigned jobs while we eat, hmm?” She smiled. Klaus nodded eagerly, already staring at the buffett. Five gave a one shouldered shrug and the three set off to get food.

Klaus literally took one of everything. The fruit made him a little homesick for his garden back at their barn, but those thoughts left his mind quickly once he tasted the food. It had been way too long since he’d had a good waffle.

“Coffee-” Five whispered, his eyes widened like saucers when he spotted the coffee bar. Klaus smirked as he watched his brother drop his plate on the table before practically running over to it. Klaus settled for apple juice because he was still a child at heart.

Pushing Five’s plate to the next seat, Klaus sat down and shook his head at his brother’s plate. He had gotten a waffle with peanut butter and applesauce, as he always had when they were kids, sneaking out to Griddy’s late at night with the rest of the Academy. Klaus had never understood it, but Five had always been a peanut butter guy, as proven with his peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches.

The Handler sat across from Klaus. “So, Klaus- may I call you Klaus?” She didn’t wait for him to answer before continuing. “Since your abilities are different to Number Five’s, we decided that each of you would be fit for a separate job-”

“Wait, separate?” Klaus’s eyes narrowed at her as Five slid into the seat next to him with a steaming cup of coffee.

“Separate?” Five asked sharply, looking at the Handler.

She smiled uneasily. “Yes, boys. You see, we think that Klaus here is more fit for the Temps Commission Department, and Five as one of our field agents! Unfortunately we can’t go into detail about the jobs right here, we’d have to speak to each of you privately. The different jobs aren’t supposed to speak about their occupations with others.”

Five and Klaus looked at each other before back at her.

The Handler clapped her hands together. “So! Who’s first?”

• • •

The first thing Five did when he entered the Handler’s office was take inventory of everything in the room. To the right, the wall was covered in a huge bookshelf. Five wondered how many of the greats were on it. In front of the bookshelf was a desk that clearly belonged to the Handler. On the other side of the room, there was a display of different weapons. Five decided not to bring that up right now.

“Sit, sit!” She exclaimed as she sat at her desk chair, gesturing to the chair across the desk. Five wearily sat down, feeling uneasy without Klaus. He’d gone back to the room to wait for his meeting.

“So,” the Handler clasped her gloved hands together. Her outfits were very… intricate. “We want you , Five, on the field. Now, you might be wondering what that means, exactly. I’ll start by explaining what the Commission is. We are an organization overlooking and managing the space and time continuum. Our main job is to make sure all events that are supposed to happen, happen. In order to do this, we have agents, like yourself, who are ready to travel through time to eliminate anyone who poses a threat to messing up the timeline.”

“Eliminate? As in-?” Five raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, but don’t think of it as murder, Five,” the Handler said carefully. “Think of it as… a math problem! You cancel out the right numbers in an equation, you get the correct solution. If you cancel out the right people in the timeline, you get the correct events.”

Five nodded slowly. Killing people wasn’t really something he was hoping for, but if it meant giving him a way back to his family, he’d be ready to accept.

“And how long, exactly, are we talking about?” Five frowned. “I don’t want to be a killer for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, no, no, no! All we’re asking for is five years of service. After that… you’re free to go.” She spread her hands. Five gazed out the large windows, thinking about the offer. It really was one extreme or the other.

The first extreme would be to decline and most likely get sent back to the apocalypse, which was counterproductive. Who knows how long he’d have to keep working on the math… but here? Here they had ways of time travel available at his fingertips if he became an agent.

And the books ! If he could get his hands on some of the mathematical books on the shelf behind the Handler, he might be able to research enough to bring him and Klaus home. The second extreme would be to say yes and become a full-time murder for five years. He didn’t have to think twice about how Klaus would feel about that.

But it was a way . A way to bring them home .

And not “home” as in that apocalypse barn. “Home” as in their siblings.

And he could possibly save the world in the process.

“Okay,” Five nodded firmly. “I’ll do it.”

The Handler clapped excitedly. “Oh, wonderful! You’re going to make a great assassin, Number Five. We’ll start you tomorrow, since the agents for today already headed out. And when you go back to your room, could you send Klaus here?”

Five stood up, already feeling awful about his decision. “Yeah. Can’t wait.”

When Five came back into the room, he didn’t quite meet Klaus’s eye when he gave directions to the Handler’s office. Klaus frowned and tapped Five’s elbow. He waited, but Five just stared distractedly out of the window, and didn’t squeeze Klaus’s elbow back.

Klaus felt his frown deepen as he turned to the door and muttered, “I’ll be back,” but he was pretty certain Five didn’t even hear him.

Taking a deep breath, Klaus lifted his head as he stepped in the hall. There were a few Commission workers walking by, and only a few ghosts in the halls. Klaus made eye contact with a man his age that had a gunshot wound in his chest and nodded at him.

The ghost nodded back before his eyes widened. “Wait- you can see me?” He asked.

A smile slowly found its way onto Klaus’s face. “Yep,” he nodded, and continued walking on. And then he realized that the ghosts may not be as frightening as he thought.

Klaus raised his fist to knock on the door but it swung over to reveal a smiling Handler before he got the chance. He awkwardly smiled back, not really sure as to how she knew that he was outside the room.

“Klaus! Come in, come in,” she stepped aside to reveal the biggest office Klaus had ever seen. Bigger than Dad’s, even. He glanced around the room, but mainly noticed the gigantic windows lining the wall across from the door, letting in lots of sunlight. He let the Handler lead him over to her desk, where he took the seat across from her.

“Nice place,” he said, looking around once more.

“Thank you, I designed it myself, you know. But we’re here to talk about you . We want you on our management team, Klaus.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Which is…?”

“Our management team isn’t like the correction division, Klaus. It’s the home office. It offers the best health and pension, no traveling involved, and control over your own section of the timeline. That’s essentially what the Commission is. Our management workers oversee the whole timeline and ensure that nothing is out of place,” she explained.

Klaus nodded slowly. “Okay… I think I can do that. But what about Five?”

“Five will have his own job to worry about. You’ll be able to keep the shared room you two have, and you’ll see each other, but this is your chance to grow individually and create your own lives for yourself!”
Klaus frowned and leaned back. “I don’t want to grow individually. I want to be with Five.”

There was silence for a minute and Klaus glanced behind him to see the rest of the office filled with ghosts. They were all glaring at the Handler. One woman with a stab wound stepped up next to Klaus’s chair.

“My name is Jane Hofmann. She killed me in Colorado in 1936. A stab right to the chest,” she looked down at Klaus in the chair. “You can’t trust her.”

Nodding slightly, Klaus looked back at the Handler, who was eyeing him. “Colorado, 1936. Jane Hofmann, a stab right to the chest. She says not to trust you.”

Klaus watched with a smirk as the Handler’s eyes widened slightly and her fake smile fell. He crossed his arms over his chest and channeled some energy into Jane Hofmann so she became corporeal enough for him to high-five her without making her visible.

“Fine,” the Handler threw up her hands. “Just… work in management for a little, maybe a week. Just to see if you like it or not. If you don’t, we can pair you with Five in the field. Do we have a deal?” She raised her eyebrows.

Turning to Jane, she glared at the Handler before nodding to Klaus.

“Yes,” he looked at the red-lipped lady. “Jane suggested I agree to this deal.”

The look of fear on the Handler’s face was one Klaus would remember forever.

Chapter Text

Over the course of the next week, Five barely saw Klaus. And after twenty years of being with Klaus and only Klaus, people assumed a break was healthy and needed. But that would only be if Klaus annoyed Five.

Klaus didn’t annoy Five.

Five missed him more and more with every passing day of the week. He loved his brother more than anything and anyone in the entire world and didn’t want to be away from him. So that’s why his mission on March 28th of 1973 went a little shakily.

He didn’t travel with a partner. Most commission agents had one, but Five didn’t want to work with anyone if it wasn’t Klaus. So he went on missions alone. He only had one this week, and was forced to do training workouts in the commission away from Klaus for the days he wasn’t on this mission.

This was his first mission ever, and he supposed, afterwards, that he should have brought a partner. But that’s not how Five Hargreeves works.

He walked through the neighborhood he was stationed at, a time-traveling briefcase in one hand, a sniper gun briefcase in the other. His job was to take out Tyler Dale, who somehow was going to affect David Bowie. Five hadn’t bothered to get the full story.

There was nothing to be known about this man. From the quick glance-over he did of the file, this man was a simple business owner who was about to have a talk with one of David Bowie’s managers and try to buy the song Heroes so it wouldn’t be Bowie’s anymore.

Five found it slightly funny that one agent could be sent to Five’s time to work on an apocalypse matter, and one agent like himself can be sent to deal with a stolen song. Five also found it slightly infuriating.

The security guard at the gates to the house with the party that Tyler Dale would be at stepped in front of Five as he approached. Five grabbed the card the commission had provided him with and handed it to the guard. After examining it for a moment, the guard nodded and gave it back to Five. He stepped aside and let him into the property.

People milled all around, women in dresses clinking their champagne glasses together, and men in suits talking in hushed conversations about their rich businesses. A few of the women eyed Five, but Five had no desire to even talk to any of them.

He headed into the house, which was open, and where people were talking or eating in the kitchen. Five snuck into one of the spare bedrooms and set down his briefcases, careful not to let either out of sight. The commission had been very strict about that. He pulled the file out from his bag and looked at the picture of Tyler Dale. Once he’d committed it to memory, he slid the file away, grabbed his briefcases, and left the room.

Five went around and asked if anyone had seen the manager of David Bowie, and was instructed to head to the backyard. Sure enough, he caught sight of Tyler Dale talking very animatedly to the manager.

They were standing right under the window of one of the rooms on the second floor of the house. If Five could hurry, he could make it into that room, aim the sniper out of the window, take the shot, and then travel out of there in Five minutes.

When he was sure no one was looking at him, he blinked up into the room and looked out the window. The two men were still talking below him. He locked the door to the room he was in and then opened the briefcase that held his gun.

“Damn…” he whistled slowly. He’d had a gun in the apocalypse, but nothing like this. The closest thing he’d ever seen to this was Dad’s old hunting gun he never let Five touch.

He unlocked the window and lifted up the bottom part a few inches, wide enough to poke the end of the gun through. He loaded the bullets in and closed one eye, the other looking through the sniper part of the gun.

His trigger finger was ready, but then he stopped when Klaus came to mind.

What would Klaus say?

What would Klaus say when he found out his brother was a killer?

Would he see the ghost of Tyler Dale following Five around?

Five took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

He took the shot.

• • •

When the door opened to their room, Klaus practically jumped to his feet, a wide grin covering his face. “Five! You’re back!” He exclaimed, as Five walked in, but instantly realized something was wrong.

Five’s face was stark white and he didn’t meet Klaus’s eye. He went over and sat on his bed, letting his head fall into his hands.

“Five? What’s wr-”

Then Klaus saw him.

The ghost.

It was a man. Probably in his late twenties. He was wearing a suit and his hair was gelled.

And he had a gunshot wound right on the side of his head.

Klaus slowly turned back to Five, who was looking at Klaus, his eyes glassy with unshed tears. Klaus shook his head and took a step back as Five stood. “No. No. Five, you didn’t…” Five’s tears fell.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Klaus, I had to-”

“ No you didn’t !” Klaus yelled, switching over to Klive language because he didn’t want to be overheard for this conversation. “ Why- why did you have to kill this man? ”

“ It’s my job !” Five exclaimed. “ And I’m going to do what I have to if it means bringing us home, Klaus. ”

Klaus just looked at him, tears blurring his vision. He looked at the ghost, who was staring at Five with complete malice and punching him, though his hand just passed right through Five.

The ghost hated Five. And Klaus had never seen anyone hate Five like that.

“I… I need some air,” Klaus whispered, and left the room.

For once, the ghosts in the hallways didn’t bother him. Klaus didn’t- couldn’t- focus on them when his heart was pounding and his mind was running and he just didn’t want it to be true. Because how could it?

But it was.

His brother, his best friend, his favorite person -

Was a murderer.

Klaus stopped, and pressed a hand to his mouth to try and muffle the dry sob that fell past his lips. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths before deciding he would try to go to his office and get some work done to distract himself.

Luckily, it was dinner time and no one else was in the offices. He walked over to the desk the Handler had given him a few days and pulled open the drawer to work on the file about agent Hawkins in the 1940’s who was trying to make sure Hitler killed himself.

However, he was stopped by the desk diagonal from his, which he remembered to be Dot’s. Because he caught sight of a familiar name on a paper sticking out from the folder.

He’d catch that name anywhere.

After double checking no one was coming, he grabbed the paper from Dot’s desk and leant against his own desk, reading it. 

NUMBER FIVE HARGREEVES

(Extracted from Apocalypse™ With Number Four,

Moved to Field Department)

Number Five declined when offered a partner for his work, claiming that he would only work with his brother or nobody. Since Number Four is in the Corrections Division, Number Five was sent out on the field without a partner. He managed to get the job done quickly and efficiently, better than any agent we’ve ever had before. Very promising talent from him.

He is a potential candidate for the DNA Submission. He shows promising abilities and talents, especially with his already enhanced powers from years at the Umbrella Academy. Already possessing the necessary traits, he’d be qualified for the DNA enhancement.

Will notify Handler shortly.

Klaus quickly brought the paper over to the copier with shaking hands, and let it run to make a copy. While it went, he let his thoughts take over. Because DNA enhancement didn’t really strike Klaus as a good thing.

And Klaus wasn’t mad at his brother. He was doing what he needed to to bring them home, and now he was in danger of some weird commission experiments.

So, that’s how he decided he would get over his own ghost problems and train for the department Five was in. 

Because if Five can’t work with Klaus, he won’t work with anyone.

And Klaus needed to work with Five to protect him.

It was dark and Five was in bed by the time Klaus re-entered the room. Five’s breath stopped when the door opened. He wanted to sit up, to apologize again, to do something to forget that look of horror on Klaus’s face when he saw the ghost.

But he didn’t.

He lay there, listening, as Klaus got ready for bed, and when he came out of the bathroom and settled into his own bed, Five spoke up.

“Klaus?” Five asked quietly, earning a hum in response. “I never want to feel hiraeth.”

“What the hell is that?”

Five smiled softly to himself. “The feeling I’d get if I ever left you.”

“Then I’ll make sure to leave you first.”

And even though Five couldn’t see in the dark, he could feel Klaus grinning.

• • •

“You want to switch now? Klaus, it hasn’t even been a week!” The Handler exclaimed with raised eyebrows. Klaus stood next to Five in front of her desk, glad Five had already agreed that Klaus should transfer to his unit.

“Yes, but I’m really quite certain Informations isn’t for me. I… I want to work on the field with Five. I know you know he has powers, but you forget I have powers too.”

The Handler took a deep breath. “We didn’t forget that, Number Four. We just thought we were doing you a favor. We know about your ability to commune with the dead, and we thought that if you had to kill and be around killers all the time, it wouldn’t be very… beneficial.”

Klaus didn’t miss the way Five flinched at the word killers .

But he didn’t bother answering the Handler, nor did Five. They both glared at her until she sighed and threw her hands up, exclaiming, “Fine, fine!”

And just like that, they had gotten what they wanted. But Klaus still couldn’t return Five’s victory high five when over his brother’s shoulder he could clearly see the ghost of the man Five killed glowering at him.

So they walked down to the training rooms together in silence, until Klaus mustered up the courage to say something.

“Hiraeth,” he said quietly, “a homesickness for a home you can’t return to, or never was.”

Five’s head snapped to look at Klaus, his eyes wide and a knowing smirk on his lips. “You looked it up.” It wasn’t a question.

“Well, obviously ,” Klaus grinned a little. “You really expect me to know your weird Latin words like-” he snapped his fingers “-that?”

“It’s got a Welsh origin, Klaus. Not Latin. And… are we… are we good?” Five asked cautiously, still weary about the ghost he knew was following him.

Klaus was quiet for a few moments before answering as the two brothers continued down the halls together. “We’re not- we aren’t, well… we’re… okay. We’re not good, but we’re okay for right now.” 

“Okay,” Five repeated nodding a little. “I can work with ‘okay’.”

Chapter Text

Nothing Reginald Hargreeves put them through as kids could compare to the training Klaus had to do now. It was intense. And, of course, Five was handling it perfectly.

Well, not perfectly. It was still hard on him, but over the years he’d gained more stamina and muscle since his power included moving around more. All Klaus had to do was talk to some dead people. Right.

Instantly, he felt guilty and mentally scolded himself. If Five ever found out he was thinking lowly about himself and his powers like this, he’d never hear the end of it. Time to suck it up and deal with it, just like Five would.

“Klaus!” Five snapped his fingers in front of Klaus’s face. “Break’s over. Come on.”

Klaus let out a groan, but stopped at Five’s glare, and followed his brother back into the training room. The instructor, some dude in his twenties named Adam, was explaining that they were going to work on spinning hook kicks. Klaus watched with wide eyes as Adam pointed to Five to come volunteer.

“Someone has a crush on you,” Klaus whispered, smirking.

“You’re a disgusting human being,” Five scowled at him before standing up and joining Adam at the front of the room. Together, they showed Klaus and the other trainees how to do a proper spin hook kick, and they made it look so easy.

Everyone clapped, and Klaus joined in sarcastically with slow claps as Five made his way back over to him. Five rolled his eyes. “It’s actually not too hard, you’ll be fine.”

Adam instructed everyone to pair up, and Five immediately latched onto Klaus’s arm. Not that he needed to, everyone knew the two guys from the apocalypse never separated.

Well, everyone but Adam, apparently.

“Hey, Five,” the young man said, approaching the Hargreeves brothers. “Want to pair with me?”

“No,” Five said, his face rid of any emotion. “I only work with Klaus.”

“Well, yeah, I’ve noticed,” Adam said awkwardly. “I didn’t know if you wanted to switch it up for once, or-”

“No thanks,” Five cut him off, a frown appearing on his face. He stayed quiet until Adam nodded and turned away, going to find someone to critique.

Five turned to Klaus, who was wearing a shit-faced grin. “Right. But he doesn’t have a crush on you.” Klaus let out a laugh as Five swung a punch at him, and Klaus ducked swiftly. He brought up his hand and shoved Five’s chest, making him step back.

“Klaus, he’s like ten years younger than us,” Five rolled his eyes and stepped back up, continuing to spar with Klaus.

“Love comes in many ages, mein bruder ,” Klaus grinned, distracted, and took a punch to the shoulder. “Ow! Arschloch !” 

Five just smirked and blocked Klaus’s next blow. “Plus, I don’t want love. Like, at all. And I researched it. I think I might be aromantic and asexual.” Five said swiftly, and Klaus froze, wondering how Five was real, just… coming out of the closet like that.

“Oh. O-Okay. I mean, yeah, that suits you,” Klaus nodded, sending a kick at his side. The two were quiet for a little, save for the sounds of their fighting and breathing. “I’m proud of you, you know. For- for telling me. I love you.”

Instead of scowling, like Klaus expected, Five broke into a small but genuine smile. “Thanks, Klaus,” he said softly. “I love you too.” Before Klaus could do anything, a foot was flying at his face. “Now watch out!” Five laughed as his foot connected with Klaus’s face, sending him back.

“God, I hate you!” Klaus hissed, rubbing blood from his nose. “Shithead.” 

This just made Five laugh some more, and flick his fingers back towards his own body. “Come on, then. Get me back.”

And that’s when he found out that Klaus had some very fast reflexes, including the ability to spin hook kick Five right back in the face in a matter of seconds. Five stumbled back, a bright light in his eyes as he ignored the blood on his face and raised his hands.

“Great job, Klaus!”

Klaus just laughed and high-fived his brother.

Later that night, Klaus was staring intently at the computer screen on the desk he shared with Five in their room. He heard the shower turn off, and a few minutes later, Five emerged from the bathroom in flannel pants and a t-shirt, ready for bed.

“Hey, you know how you just like… came out during training?” Klaus asked nervously.

Five frowned, then nodded. Klaus pointed to the computer screen and Five walked over, leaning over his brother’s shoulder to see what it said.

Pansexual ; not limited in sexual choice with regard to biological sex, gender, or gender identity.

“That’s- you’re… pansexual?” Five asked, reading over it again.

Klaus bit his lip and nodded. “I- yeah. I think so.”

Five broke into a wide grin as he leaned down to wrap his arms around his brother’s shoulders tightly. “I’m so proud of you, Klaus. I love you, yeah?”

Klaus let out a sigh of relief and relaxed into Five’s hug. “Yeah. I love you, too.”

• • •

Five told Klaus everything. He told him when he was tired, when he was hungry, when he figured out the answer to a math problem. He told him everything, save for that mission he went on two months ago.

So when Five realized what their first mission together consisted of, he felt it was only right to tell Klaus. He found his brother in the dining hall talking to what looked like nothing, but what Five knew to be a ghost or two. He walked over and cleared his throat, causing Klaus to turn to him.

“Fivey! Hello, dear bruder , to what do I owe the pleasure?” Klaus grinned.

He was in a good mood.

He was never in a good mood anymore.

Five wondered who he was talking to.

“We, uh, we got our first mission,” Five said, holding up a manilla folder and wincing at the way Klaus’ smile fell. Klaus looked down for a minute, before nodding silently and standing up. Five led him back to their room.

“What is it?” Klaus asked, tone emotionless as he sank onto his bed.

The folder fell open as Five dropped it down on the desk, sighing before he read the synopsis out loud. “Assassination of Dan Phillips, who apparently is going to make the first successful American rocket launch fail. There’s going to be an event party that he’s attending. That’s where we’re going.”

Both brothers were quiet for a long time. Both were lost in their own thoughts, unsure of what they could say that would validate the fact that they were becoming trained assassins with every day that passed.

Two months ago, their training had begun. They’d enjoyed it- they still enjoy training. It’s helpful and interactive. But it doesn’t prepare you for the feeling of killing someone.

Five walked over from the desk and sat next to Klaus. He tapped his elbow, and a few seconds later, Klaus squeezed Five’s elbow in return.

“ You don’t have to do the killing, you know ,” Five told him in their language.

“ What, and let your conscience carry all the hardships? We’re in this together, Five, ” Klaus glared right back.

But Five was already shaking his head. “ The ghosts that follow me yell at me and hate me, you said. And you can deal with that. You just banish them and move on. But if they’re yelling at you and hate you , that’s going to be a lot harder and you know it. So, no, you’re not doing the killing .”

And that was that.

“Alright boys, you have everything?” The Handler asked as she stood in front of them at the briefcase room.

Five nodded, holding his hands up, where one held the briefcase that time travelled and the other held their sniper rifle. Klaus flipped a thumbs up with one hand and held up the bag with their supplies such as files, ID cards, and more with the other.

The Handler happily clapped her hands together. “Wonderful! Remember, you have to keep both briefcases at all times, especially the time one. You have four days to get this job done. Good luck!”

She was out of the door before Five could open his mouth to reply. He looked to Klaus, who just shrugged. Five sighed and turned the dials on the briefcase. It began to whirr and click, and Klaus quickly grabbed onto Five’s arm.

There was a flash of blue light much similar to the one Five produces, and the two were transported to Cape Canaveral, July of 1950. Five squinted at the bright sunlight in comparison to the dark rooms at the Commission.

Klaus breathed in deeply, eyes traveling over the area around them. They were at a water’s edge hotel entrance. As kids at the Academy, they’d lived in the city and were never taken to the beach.

And then, in the apocalypse, the one time they went to the beach resulted in Klaus almost dying. So, yeah. These two Hargreeves brothers didn’t really like the beach.

But, here, in Florida, it was kind of… pretty. The water was a dark blue color, almost matching the Academy uniforms they’d worn all the time. The sky was cloudless and clear, making the sun beat down on them, already starting to redden their skin. 

“Well,” Klaus spoke first, turning away from the ocean to stare up at the hotel they were staying in. “This is nice.”

Five’s eyes widened when he saw the hotel towering up behind them. “I spoke to other field agents before, and they all said they had to stay in dingy motels,” he told Klaus, confused.

“This most certainly is not a dingy motel…” Klaus breathed, eyes lowering to the glass doors. The pair made their way inside, and walked to the front desk where Five checked them in. They had a room on the third floor.

Klaus commented on the interior a few times as he and Five made their way up to their room, and got a few nods from Five in response, but Klaus knew he wasn’t actually listening. His jaw was clenched and his eyes darted around and Klaus knew that he was on edge for this mission.

The tense mood was only amplified as a message in a tube from the Commission appeared in the icebox. Five walked over and popped the top off, reaching in to pull out the paper. He frowned as he read it aloud.

“Event is scheduled for tonight, 2537 Springs Ave. at 6pm.”

Klaus, who had been sitting on his bed (the one closer to the window, of course) sighed and glanced at the clock. They had about an hour before they had to be at the event. Five’s frown deepened as he stuck the tube back in the icebox and crumpled up the paper, throwing it in the trash.

“I can handle this. Don’t look so stressed,” Klaus smirked.

Five rubbed at his temples. “No… I know. I just don’t know why they gave us such an important mission as your first one.”

Well, Klaus could think of a reason why. His mind traveled back to the paper he had seen in the offices of the Corrections Division. The one that mentioned Five being a potential candidate for some DNA testing.

He’d been meaning to tell Five about that. He decided it could wait until after, so as not to add any more pressure to Five right now.

So forty-five minutes later, the pair were dressed in suits and carried their briefcases in their hands. Klaus had questioned this- “Is it common to bring briefcases to parties?”

Five had smirked and shook his head at his brother’s ridiculous question, but answered all the same. “ Event , not party. And yes, actually.” They’re silent for the rest of the time they spend walking out of their hotel, each caught up in their own thoughts.

Five’s consist of the file they’d been given and the wording on it. Terminate is what the Commission had used. Terminate that person. Execute this one. Five couldn’t help but wonder what their dear old father would have to say about what they’re doing now.

It’s for a cause. That was Five’s personal mantra. You’re just doing this to get back to your family. And to save the world. The ends do justify the means. Five wasn’t too sure he believed it, but it helped him get through each day, so he stuck with it.

Once they were outside, they headed towards the side of the building and made sure no one was around before Five jumped them to the address of the event. Luckily, no one seemed to notice the blue surge of energy, and they were able to walk up to the front gates of the house without any issues.

“Let me do the talking,” Five said lowly, but by the intimidated look on Klaus’s face, he didn’t think there would’ve been an argument over that anyways.

“Invitation and identification,” the guard at the gate said, a permanent scowl on his face. Five reached into his coat pocket, telling Klaus to do the same by giving him a pointed look. Five pulled out the card that had been waiting in the pocket, and gave it to the guard, Klaus doing the same. He then pulled the fake invitation from his briefcase and showed it.

The guard deemed them true, and opened up the gate for the pair. Five led the way inside and Klaus let out a sigh of relief.

“That was so stressful, and for what? Should’ve known the damn Commission had things like that all planned out,” Klaus exclaimed.

“Shh,” Five shushed him. “You never know who’s around. I talked to some other agents who said they ran into other people from the Commission while on missions. They’d been sent to spy on the agent and make sure they did their job correctly.”

Klaus narrowed his eyes and started scanning the faces of the guests around them. “But… they trust us.”

Five noticed how Klaus wasn’t asking that. He was stating it. He frowned, confused with his brother’s tone, but kept his questions to himself as they entered the house.

Chapter Text

They’d been at the event for an hour, and Klaus was getting bored.

Five had been right when he said this was no party.

The crowd mainly consisted of older men in fancy and expensive suits, their much younger wives trailing behind them in their rich dresses and miserable expressions. 

Since neither Five nor Klaus had a woman on their arm, they got quite a few dirty looks from people who thought they were a couple, seeing as they were in the 50’s. Or something. Klaus didn’t really know and with the faces he was getting, he didn’t really care.

“Have you seen him yet?” Klaus asked, leaning back against the counter next to Five, who was opposite as Klaus; facing the counter with his elbows resting on it.

“No,” Five huffed, brows furrowed in concentration as he scanned the faces of the guests.

“What if it already happened?”

That got Klaus an eyeroll. “You think we wouldn’t hear a gunshot?”

Klaus scoffed. “Not with all these annoying voices.”

Five smirked but the conversation ended there, as he went back to looking for the man they were supposed to kill- sorry- terminate . Klaus knew their dear Reginald would be rolling in his grave if he knew what he and Five were up to.

Before he could pour himself another drink, Klaus stiffened, to which Five noticed. He frowned and asked, “What’s wrong?”

A feeling had washed over Klaus. Since he was in tune with the dead, he’d always been able to tell when there was a ghost nearby. He slowly turned to face the same way as Five, eyes trailing across the room until they landed on someone in the corner.

He looked at the picture of the man they were supposed to find in Five’s hand, and then back at the person in the corner. It was him.

“There,” Klaus jutted his chin in the direction, and he saw Five’s eyes widen.

“How did you find him? I checked there three times!”

Klaus just shook his head. “He’s a ghost. Well- no, he’s not. But I got the same feeling from him that I get when ghosts are around. I don’t know why.”

A line appeared between Five’s brows as he frowned in thought, and then his eyebrows shot up with realization. “Probably because he is a ghost! Well, he will be in the future, which is where we came from. You picked up on that, that’s really great, Klaus! Seems like you’re getting better with your powers. Not that you weren’t great with them already, though.”

“Well, I sure hope so. I’m only thirty-three,” Klaus winked, and then stepped back from the counter. “So. How are we doing this?”

Five stepped back, too, and looked at Klaus. “Well, last time I was able to snipe the target from higher up. So I guess we could go to a balcony, wait for him to head outside, and go from there?”

“By go from there , you mean kill him,” Klaus said, and when Five didn’t respond, he just sighed and headed towards the staircase. “Come on, then.”

The two made their way upstairs unnoticed and found a balcony off of the main hallway where they hopefully wouldn’t get caught. Five opened his briefcase and assembled the sniper rifle, and Klaus studied the backyard below them, waiting for their target to make an appearance.

Luckily, they didn’t have to wait long, because around ten minutes later, Dan Phillips, the lucky guy of the night, had walked outside and struck up a conversation with another man.

“See him?” Klaus asked as Five raised the gun up, one eye closed, the other looking through the optic.

Five loaded the gun and placed his finger on the trigger. “Yeah… I’ve got him.”

Klaus held his breath, and a moment later, Five pressed down and a bullet went flying from the gun, down at the man below them.

Only, it didn’t hit him.

At that exact moment, a server had walked by, and the bullet had hit his metal tray, and rebounded.

“ Shit !” Five hissed, and pushed Klaus down. As it was, they had no reason to duck seeing as the person dropped their tray of food. No one had seen the bullet, only heard the clattering of the tray hitting the floor.

“Well… I sure hope no one from the Commission is spying on us and saw that,” Klaus said humorlessly, and Five’s mouth just opened and closed like a fish out of water. “Just reload it and try again.”

But Five was shaking his head. “I didn’t load it before we left. I figured we would only need one bullet…”

Klaus blinked at him. “So we’re out of ammo?”

“So we’re out of ammo.”

Five jumped to his feet and pulled apart the gun, stuffing it back into his briefcase. “This is fine. We’ll just need to be more… hands on with this one. Nobody from the Commission needs to know how he dies, only that he does.”

Klaus quickly followed Five as he left the balcony and went back into the house. “Wait- are you saying you want to- what? Snap his neck or something crazy like that?”

“We don’t have another choice. So yes.”

As much as it pained him to admit, Klaus couldn’t really come up with a better idea. So he resigned to frowning and silently following his brother through the house. They stopped at the doorway that led out to the backyard and Klaus looked at Five, who was looking at the target.

“Problem, mein bruder ?”

“ We can’t just walk right up and kill him ,” Five spoke in their language, for obvious reasons. “ We have to get him alone .”

“Mmm, you say we,” Klaus spoke normally, “What am I supposed to do? Stand and enjoy the show?”

Five glared at him. “You want to help?”

“No! But I don’t want to watch .”

“Then when we have him alone you stand guard at the door. Deal?”

Klaus grinned. “What door? He’s outside.”

“I despise you.”

Klaus laughed and studied their surroundings, trying to think of how they could get Dan Phillips alone with them. If only one of them was a female super model in their twenties.

Finally, one of them came up with a plan to go up to the target and ask him to review some files they had set up in another room. Five went up to go talk to him, in which Dan Phillips ignored him, and Five came storming back to an amused Klaus, steam practically coming from his ears, his face red.

Next Klaus tried to get him to show him where a certain room in the house was but Dan Phillips gave him a dirty look and told him to ask someone else, so Klaus kindly said, “I wish Death upon you,” and walked back to Five, who was holding in his laughter.

They each tried about three more times before Klaus had to physically hold Five back from marching over and kidnapping the man in front of everyone else. They regrouped and headed inside, where they both got water to calm down because Klaus was not up for dealing with drunk or even tipsy Five right now.

“Would you just relax? I’m sure we’ll think of something, we just need to take on a different approach,” Klaus tried to reason, but noticed that Five’s gaze was locked on something on the other side of the room.

“Different approach. I can do that,” Five said bitterly, then stormed over and pulled the fire alarm that was on the wall. Klaus’s eyebrows shot up and he shrugged. That was one way.

Everyone began panicking and heading out to the front yard, and Klaus took his place by the door and ushered everyone out. He noticed that Dan Phillips was the last inside, and everyone else had gone out to the front.

When their target walked inside from the back, Five stepped out of the shadows and grabbed the man, snapping his neck cleanly. Klaus winced and closed his eyes, hoping to dull the overwhelming feeling of a ghost being created in front of him.

“Alright. Come on. Let’s get out of here before we’re caught,” Five walked over to Klaus, and jumped them back to their hotel.

Klaus couldn’t help but notice that after what he’d done, Five’s eyes were a bit more colder and distant than they had been earlier on.

• • •

The Handler did not scare Five one bit. She annoyed him, she made him angry, she made him want to hang himself and forget about saving the world. But she never made him feel fear. However, sitting at her desk and listening to her yell made him feel something pretty close.

“Do you have any idea how much your actions could have compromised the whole mission?” She exclaimed, raising her eyebrows at Five and Klaus, who was seated next to him.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Five bit back, but kept his voice from raising.

This apparently was not the right answer. “Didn’t have a choice? That’s only because you weren’t prepared. You didn’t bring extra ammo because- why? Because Mr. Hot Shot over here was so confident he could do it in one go?”

Five fidgeted in his seat, that being enough of an answer for her.

“That file never specified how he had to be killed. Termination is termination, and we got the job done just fine without the gun,” Klaus cut in, and Five was very thankful that he had his brother with him.

The Handler quieted for a moment, clearly surprised by Klaus’s bravery and, even more, the truth to his statement. She took a deep breath and glared daggers at each of them in turn.

“I’ll let it slide because Number Four here is, unfortunately, correct. I guess with you two we’ll have to be even more specific than usual. Next time, just do what you’re told. Hmm?” She crossed her arms.

Five bristled, feeling thirteen again, listening to Reginal Hargreeves’ incessant repremansions. “Fine.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Klaus nodded tiredly when she turned her gaze to him.

She waved her hand, and the two brothers all but bolted out the door to the hallway. They were quiet during the walk back to their room, save for the occasional greeting from Klaus to blank spots that Five assumed were ghosts he was friendly with.

“If it’s any consolation, you did a fine job to me,” Klaus smiled a little, but Five could see the inquietude behind his eyes.

“A fine job at murdering someone,” Five said quietly, crashing face-first onto his bed and not bothering to move from his self-pitying position. Klaus didn’t answer, and Five didn’t think he would have wanted him to.

He closed his eyes and let out a breath through his nose, letting his mind wander back to the apocalypse and how he, more than anything, missed the freedom they’d had there.

The apocalypse wasn’t anything amazing. It was awful and hard to live in and Five would choose any place over it in a heartbeat.

But that’s the place itself. The way Klaus and Five adapted and what they turned it into? Five wouldn’t trade that for the world.

Like it or not, they made that place their home because all they had were each other and piles of rubble. They had enough freedom to do as they pleased, which they did, but they also grew up with each other, enough to become totally co-dependant.

Co-dependent with each other, and with the place they lived in.

“I miss it too,” Klaus said quietly. Five wondered if he had read his mind, and honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if that was an ability they had gotten from all the time they’d spent together. “Who would have thought the end of the world made such a great home?”

“We could have had less than we did and it still would’ve been a better home than the one Hargreeves gave us,” Five scowled, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling. “We escaped his hold and made a life for ourselves only to walk right back into someone else’s grasp,” Five gestured to the room around them.

Klaus walked over and sat on the edge of Five’s bed, looking down at him. “Soon enough, Fivey. We’ll be with our siblings and we’ll save the world and we can do what ever we want. We can eat donuts and drink coffee every hour of every day.”

Five frowned up at Klaus. “You think we’ll stay close?” A flash of hurt went over Klaus’s face, and Five quickly sat up. “I- I just mean… before all of this, we weren’t exactly best of friends. You talked to Ben more, and I talked to Vanya mostly.”

Grinning, Klaus messed up Five’s hair. “If seeing our siblings again messes up twenty years of speaking to no one but each other and a few ghosts, I have some serious worries about this bond we have.”

Five just smirked and reached over to squeeze Klaus’s elbow. Klaus’s face softened and he tapped Five’s in return.

They would be okay. They would find their home again.

Chapter Text

Two years passed, and Five and Klaus quickly became the most well-known and well-respected agents at the Commission. The Handler never promoted them to have any state of authority, however, because they all knew the people of the Commission would favor the men from the apocalypse instead of her.

It didn’t bother them much. Klaus didn’t see himself fit for any leadership role and Five didn’t particularly care for having one. The only authority he wanted was when it came to the Handler so he didn’t have to cower before her like everyone else.

A few months after that first mission they’d had together, Klaus had confronted Herb from the Informations offices about the report he had seen on Five.

“Come on Herby,” Klaus raised an eyebrow. “Even if you won’t take my word for it, there’s some ghosts who also saw the report and would love a chance to talk to you about it.” This was a lie, of course, but Klaus loved to lie about ghosts to scare people.

“Okay, okay!” Herb gave in. “I can explain it, but I can’t show it. We’d have to go to the labs for that.” Klaus waved his hand, and blue energy not dissimilar to Five’s started swirling around. “Wh-Which isn’t a problem! I can take you there now!” Herb exclaimed quickly.

Klaus smiled and nodded. Herb led them out of the offices and down a set of hallways that Klaus had never been down before. He watched as suit jackets morphed into lab coats and realized that he had never been here before because this was where all the smart scientists worked. They eyed Herb and Klaus, but seemed to recognize Klaus and stayed quiet.

Herb pushed open a door and let Klaus in, leading him over to one of the many microscopes and gestured to it. Klaus frowned and leaned down to look in it, only to gasp and pull away quickly.

He and the others in the Academy had normal school classes along with their training. Klaus knew what a basic strand of DNA looked like. And that’s what was under the microscope… but it was far from basic.

“Christ on a cracker!” Klaus breathed, taking a step back. “What in the everloving hell is that?” He looked at Herb.

What he had seen was a strand of DNA combined and mutated with a bunch of other strands to form something, for lack of a better term, scary .

“That’s the DNA testing that the Commission has been doing. They’re combining the DNA of the worst people you can think of; Hitler, Stalin, Himmler. You name it, they’re here.”

Klaus blinked, his mouth opening and closing a few times before finding words. “How… no. I probably don’t want to know how you have the DNA of the worst people in history, do I?”

Herb just shook his head. “Probably not. But they’re running tests by taking the DNA of our strongest field agents and adding that mutation to it. Number Five was a candidate for it, but they decided against it once they realized how close you two were. You’d notice a difference.”

This only just mortified Klaus. “You were going to put that - the DNA of the worst people on Earth- into my brother ?”

“Well, I wasn’t. But the scientists were.”

Klaus took even more steps away from the microscope. This discovery had only opened more doors to more questions about this place and what its real intentions and goals were. They needed to leave, and they needed to leave soon.

Of course, that was about two years ago. Klaus had told Five about the DNA, and Five had been mortified as well at first, but quickly got over it. He told Klaus he was able to get over it so fast because it hadn’t actually happened to him, so there was no need to worry over it, but Klaus knew better.

He knew Five was able to get over it quickly because with every mission that passes, Five’s eyes get a little more distant and his heart gets a bit more colder. If he heard about the DNA years ago, he would still be angry about it to this day.

Klaus supposed he didn’t need the DNA of the worst people in the world to get colder.

But things were okay. Because although Five killed without any second thoughts, he was never that way around Klaus. He was always the same around Klaus, if only a little sadder at times. But he still made sarcastic marks and still expressed his love. And that was all Klaus could ask for in a place like the Commission.

By now, Five could get ready for a mission with his eyes closed. He had lost count of how many he’d been on, considering all the ones he’d gone on alone and with Klaus. But he’d never lose count of how many he’s killed. Sometimes it was only one on a mission, sometimes it was five. It was always too many.

“Now I didn’t book a hotel, because this should be a clean in-and-out- stop yawning, Number Four.”

Klaus paused mid-yawn and snapped his mouth shut with an audible clack of his teeth, smiling sheepishly at the Handler, who just rolled her eyes. “Sorry. No hotel room. Go in, murder the dude, grab his gun for your antique collection, get out. Easy peasy.”

Five cast a glance to the back of the office where the Handler’s personal antique collection of war weapons and artifacts rested on shelves. Sometimes she sent Five and Klaus on personal missions like this. Five didn’t think that was normal protocol, but he never complained about it.

He couldn’t help but notice how weird things were today, though. He had barely seen anyone in the halls as they’d walked to the Handler’s office from their room. Klaus hadn’t said much, meaning he hadn’t come across many ghosts. As for the few people they did run into, they kept their gazes averted and wouldn’t stop fidgeting.

Whatever the issue was, Five couldn’t help but be happy that he and Klaus wouldn’t be at the Commission today with tensions so high about who knows what.

The Handler placed their briefcases on the desk, and Five noticed the same anxious look in her eyes that he’d seen with everyone else. His eyes narrowed as he took the briefcases from her.

“Is there something you aren’t telling us?”

“What?” She asked a little too quickly, her gaze snapping to meet his. “No, Number Five, everything’s as it is. Go on your mission.”

Five frowned, but said nothing more, and turned on his heel, leaving the office. Klaus followed after him, shooting Five a look once they were in the hallway. Five just shook his head and held out his hand.

“Ready?”

“As always, mein bruder .”

Five jumped them to the address of the parking lot they were assigned. He frowned when they arrived, noticing that the tension in the air from the Commission had followed them to this town. He jumped when Klaus placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, Five. Are you okay?”

“Yeah… I’m just getting a weird feeling about all of this.”

Klaus just shrugged. “I’ll admit the lack of ghosts here is a little unsettling.”

That got Five’s attention. “Wait. You don’t see or feel any ghosts?”

“No…” Klaus trailed off, looking even more confused. “Nor do I see any alive people, now that you’ve pointed it out.”

Before Five could think of an answer, Klaus was tackling him to the ground as something bright and charged with energy shot towards them. Five quickly caught his bearings and pulled Klaus to duck behind a car in the lot.

“How- how did you know that was coming?” Five breathed.

“I have really good awareness of my surroundings. Comes with feeling dead people in the area and having to predict where you show up when you spatial jump,” Klaus explained quickly, peeking over the car.

He ducked right back down when another thing came whizzing by. Five watched it land on the ground, create a bright, energy-charged light, and then disappear altogether.

“What the hell is that?” Five exclaimed, never having seen those bullets before. Ones that clearly transported you somewhere if you were hit by it.

Klaus just shook his head and opened his briefcase, pulling his gun out. Five quickly followed suit, aiming over the hood of the car and taking a shot at the people on the other side of the lot, as well as getting a look at them.

“They look like they have Commission-level technology, but I’ve never seen those uniforms before. You?” Five asked, firing another shot.

“Nope,” Klaus ducked out of the way from another projectile.

Five and Klaus didn’t have to communicate much to know what came next. They would fight, just like they always did. Five fell back into his pool of blue energy and jumped behind the closest shooter, catching him by surprise.

He reached around and cleanly snapped the shooter’s neck as he saw Klaus sneak up and take on another one of them. He didn’t worry- Klaus’s fighting skills had gotten much better. But he did worry about the fact that there were no ghosts Klaus could make corporeal for backup if they needed it.

“Who are you?” Five asked, raising his gun at another of the shooters before he realized that the ones he was fighting weren’t even trying to shoot him.

He glanced over and saw that the others were definitely trying to shoot Klaus.

“Better question. What the hell do you want with my brother?”

A few ran at him and the others turned to Klaus, who now had a bleeding lip and was getting overtaken. “Klaus!” Five yelled trying to get to him, but the shooters around him jumped him and held him back.

Five spatial jumped out of their grasp, only to reappear and be met with more shooters trying to hold him back.

Meanwhile, Klaus had about five of the shooters aiming at him. He slowly looked over to Five, who had stopped struggling against the people holding him, his heart hammering in fear for the person he cared most for in the world.

“Five… I love you ,” Klaus spoke in their language.

Five blinked, not even feeling the tears falling down his face. “ No !” He yelled, and watched in horror as the shooters fired at him.

The projectile latched onto Klaus and the energy surged up in a bright white light, overtaking Klaus and blocking him from view. Five spatial jumped, but right as he appeared next to Klaus, the projectile disappeared.

Taking Klaus with it.

Five fell to his knees, feeling as though everything around him was coming to a stop. 

Though he was faintly aware of the shooters started to gain on him. All he could think was no . He didn’t know what they were going to do to him or what they had done with Klaus, but all he could focus on was the feeling of complete loss inside of him.

His brother. The boy he’d survived the end of the world with. The first person he’d ever truly learned to love. He was gone, and Five had no idea where he went.

So, he did the only thing that made sense to him.

The thing he vowed he would do the second he saw his siblings and the apocalypse.

He closed his eyes and focused on the past. On the Umbrella Academy.

And he jumped.

• • •

Klaus blinked, trying to make the ringing in his ears and the pounding in his head go away. He groaned and slowly sat up, rubbing his eyes.

He was in his bedroom. His bedroom at the Umbrella Academy, with all its glory of fairy lights and drawings on the walls. He was back, and he had no idea how.

I’m dreaming , he thought, and promptly pinched his arm, wincing. Or maybe… I’m not.

Suddenly, it all came back to him. The mission, the parking lot, the strange men with their strange suits and strange weapons. The blast and the energy and the weird transportation feeling he only got when he jumped with Five.

Five.

Klaus instantly sat up, ignoring the pain that shot through his head. Where was Five? He needed to find his brother. Maybe those strange people had sent them back in time to fix things. Five was probably in his bedroom, if they really were back at the Academy.

The door opened and he whirled around, his eyes widening when he saw Ben standing in the doorway.

“Klaus? Did you find anything?” Ben asked, calm as if nothing had ever happened. As if Klaus and Five had never gone away.

“Ben...” Klaus trailed off, unable to form anything more than that.

“Yes? Have you seen Five?”

Yes. Yes Klaus has seen Five everyday for the past twenty years and can’t live without him- “What?”

Ben rolled his eyes. “ Hello ? Five. He ran out this morning and hasn’t been back since. Have you seen him?”

That's when Klaus realized Ben was a teenager and not twenty-nine. He glanced at the mirror. He was a teenager, too. Klaus blinked and looked at his calendar on the wall, where the days were crossed off with each that passed. And the one that wasn’t crossed yet...October 15th, 2002.

Slowly, Klaus looked back at Ben, his mouth dry.

“No… I haven’t seen him.”

Chapter Text

PART III
THE UMBRELLA SUITE

In front of him, as alive as ever, was his siblings. Luther, as large as ever, Diego, clearly trying to look intimidating in his edgy outfit, Allison, as fashionable as ever, Vanya still looking timid, Ben of course was no longer there and-

Klaus.

Chapter Text

Five landed on the ground harshly, but he barely felt the pain of the rough landing.

What he did feel was the pain of total numbness in his chest as he slowly raised his head.

In front of him, as alive as ever, was his siblings. Luther, as large as ever, Diego, clearly trying to look intimidating in his edgy outfit, Allison, as fashionable as ever, Vanya still looking timid, Ben of course was no longer there and-

Klaus.

Five got to his feet slowly, surprised that he was able to do that due to how badly his legs were shaking.

Klaus was there, and everything was okay and everything would be fine. He was wearing a ridiculous jacket, with his hair falling down over his forehead and eyeliner around his eyes.

His eyes.

There was a muted look of familiarity in them, but most of his face conveyed unease and confusion. And Five felt his heart break.

His Klaus had been taken from him. And whoever was standing in front of him now, it wasn’t his Klaus. This Klaus grew up in the Academy with their other siblings, not in the apocalypse with Five.

“I’m home,” Five said, staring straight at Klaus.

Then turned and threw up.

He must have passed out after throwing up because when he woke up, he was in what he faintly remembered to be the infirmary. He groaned and blinked a few times, and opened his eyes to see his sibling’s familiar yet unfamiliar faces peering down at him.

Luther, Diego, Allison, Vanya-

Klaus.

Five…

No. Five squeezed his eyes shut.

...I love you.

“Stop,” Five whispered.

“Hey,” a warm hand was on his shoulder and he opened his eyes to see Vanya staring at him with wide, worried eyes. “Five? Wh-What’s wrong?”

And Five felt so small . He glanced in the mirror on the wall and saw his thirteen year old face staring back at him. A complication of the math as he had traveled back. An error that was bound to occur with the distracted state he jumped in.

So he was small. “I didn’t say it back,” he muttered, and broke into tears.

Some part of him that was more aware and sharper found it funny how his siblings shared confused and worried looks because the Five they knew never showed any emotion at all, let alone burst into sobs.

But the majority of him just didn’t care. Because his brother, his best friend, his partner for everything was gone.

He wasn’t just gone. He was here, fine and relatively unharmed. But the one Five knew, the one he loved , was gone.

Five had to look away. Better yet, he had to pull himself together. He couldn’t waste any time. He came here because there’s a job that needs to be done. Stop the apocalypse. Save the world. Then he could cry all he wanted. But not yet.

So he took a few deep breaths and roughly wiped away his tears with the sleeve of a suit jacket that was now too big for him. He steadied his breathing and shrugged Vanya’s hand off his shoulder, sliding out of the infirmary bed.

“Number Five-” another voice stopped him, and he turned to see Pogo standing nearby.

“Don’t tell me to rest,” Five snapped, immediately feeling bad about having an attitude. “I… I’m hungry.”

He pushed past his shock-stilled siblings and walked into the achingly familiar halls of the Umbrella Academy. It was like being home, but not really. Home was anywhere with Klaus, and Klaus wasn’t here-

No. Don’t think about it, and you won’t feel it.

Five didn’t want to get angry with everyone but if he wasn’t angry he was sad and he couldn’t afford to give into the black hole in his chest where his heart used to be, because that would be feeding it until it grew and took him over completely.

So he’d settle for a short temper and snappy remarks because he needed to.

If Five thought he didn’t recognize his siblings based on their looks, he definitely didn’t know them by their actions. They followed him, totally silent, into the kitchen and crowded around one end of the table while Five worked at the other, making his sandwich he missed.

“Five, when we get back, please don’t eat those peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches again.”

“Don’t knock it till you try it, Klaus.”

Five closed his eyes and took a deep breath, shaking his head to clear the memory. It felt like a knife to the heart when he realized small things like that would always remind him of Klaus. Everything would.

“What’s the date?” Five asked, his voice shaking slightly. He cleared his throat and steeled his expression. “The exact date?”

“The twenty-fourth,” Vanya answered.

No. Too hard. Don’t look. Can’t look at Vanya yet.

“Of what ?” Five snapped, keeping his eyes down on the package of bread in his hands.

“March.” Still Vanya.

Although. The date was- “Good,” Five nodded. He could work with that.

“So, are we gonna talk about what just happened?” Luther asked.

Luther. Terrific. He could deal with Luther, look at Luther, at least. Luther had never been too close with Five. Maybe not yet. Maybe he wasn’t ready-

“It’s been seventeen years-” Luther stood.

“It’s been a lot longer than that ,” Five spat, finally looking up at Luther.

His face was the same, of a little slimmer. Same authoritative expression, but his body… Five knew he was supposed to have super strength but Luther had the muscles of that multiplied by one hundred.

“Where’d you go?” Diego asked as Five blinked to the pantry for the marshmallows.

“The future,” Five answered simply, blinking back to his side of the table. “It’s shit, by the way.”

Five’s head snapped up as Klaus raised a hand and said, “Called it!” Klaus met Five’s gaze and Five immediately looked back down before his eyes or face betrayed him.

Definitely not Klaus. He couldn’t hear Klaus’s voice and not think of-

“Five… I love you.”

No.

“I should’ve listened to the old man,” Five sighed, grabbing the peanut butter from the refrigerator. “You know- jumping through space is one thing. Jumping through time is a toss of the dice.”

There was silence, and Five slowly looked up. He was standing right in front of Klaus, who sat in the center of their other siblings, on the table. Five glanced down and saw him wearing a skirt, just as he used to in the apocalypse.

Maybe… maybe his Klaus wasn’t totally gone.

“Nice dress,” Five said, his expression staying indifferent, but his voice giving him away by being filled with softness.

Klaus blinked, and Five thought he saw a flicker of so many things- happiness, sadness, love- but a second later, they were gone.

“Oh- uh, danke .”

Five had to look back down.

“How did you get back?” Vanya asked, and Five looked at her, knowing he could face her if he’d been strong enough to face Klaus.

“In the end I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state that exists across every possible instance of time,” he said as though it were the most simple thing as he put the peanut butter on the bread.

Diego shook his head. “That makes no sense.”

Five showed the ghost of a smirk as he countered with, “It would if you were smarter.”

He almost let a full smirk show as Luther put out his arm to keep Diego back as the latter moved forwards towards Five. “How long were you there?” Luther asked.

“Twenty-two years, give or take,” Five answered, deciding not to mention the Commission. There was really no need for that. Ever.

There was a moment of silence, where they were all gaping at him. All but Klaus, who just looked sad, before realized that this wasn’t the normal reaction and plastered on a shocked one like everyone else. Five frowned but ignored it.

“So, what are you saying? That you’re thirty-five?” Luther asked.

“No, my consciousness is thirty-five. Apparently my body is now thirteen again,” Five finished his sandwich and took a bite out of it.

He couldn’t help but look at Klaus. There was an amused glint in his brother’s eye, as though he remembered the same conversation that Five did.

That was impossible. Five blinked, and the glint was gone. He was probably imagining it because of how much he wished it were true.

“Wait, how does that even work?” Vanya asked.

“Kl-” Five stopped, knowing they would never take him seriously if he were to say the truth. So, he settled on another name. “Delores kept saying the equations were off. Bet she’s laughing now,” Five shrugged and took another bite.

“Delores?” Vanya pressed.

And it’s too much. It’s too much too fast and Five drops his sandwich one the table and his eyes flick to the newspaper where there’s a face of Reginald Hargreeves and-

And Five closes his eyes. “Guess I missed the funeral, huh?” He tried to sound sardonic but it comes out shaky and weak, just like Five feels.

“How’d you know about that?” Luther asks, like an idiot.

Five slams his hands on the table and his eyes fly open. “What part of the future do you not understand?” He exclaims with so much venom that Luther steps back.

He hears his siblings telling him to calm down but he can’t and no one could ever make him calm down except Klaus. But Klaus isn’t here and Klaus will never be here again and it’s all Five’s fault for bringing him on that mission-

Five jumps.

When he opens his eyes, he’s in his old bedroom and he lets out a shaky breath and collapses to the floor. He draws his knees in and drops his head and cries . Because it’s all he can do. Because Klaus would be hugging him right now and Klaus is gone .

“Five?”

Five’s head snaps up, and he wants to hit himself for the amount of relief he feels when he sees Klaus in his doorway because then he remembers that this Klaus isn’t going to hug him because he has no reason to. Because this Klaus thinks Five doesn’t love anyone.

“Are you… okay?” Klaus asks, wincing, knowing how stupid his question sounded.

The tears are dry on Five’s face and Five schools his expression to be one devoid of any emotion as he takes a deep breath, trying to push down the sadness he knows he can’t deal with.

“I’m fine. Just ran out of energy,” Five says stiffly, and gets to his feet, walking over to his childhood closet where, sure enough, sets of the old uniform are waiting for him. “Get out so I can change.”

If this were his Klaus, he wouldn’t care. But something told him that if he started stripping, this Klaus would be seriously concerned. But, all the same, it’s still Klaus.

So, “Please,” Five added quietly.

“Five. I know we haven’t seen each other in a long time, but I think you need to talk and you can talk to me, you know-”

“No,” Five whirled around, cutting Klaus off, a dangerous edge to his voice. “Don’t say that. You don’t… don’t say things like that.”

Klaus looked almost hurt. “Okay. I know we weren’t close as kids, but you’re still my brother, we can still talk -”

“Stop it!” Five yelled, a new wave of tears in his eyes. Because they were close as kids. Closer than anyone. And hearing Klaus say they weren’t was like reopening a wound Five hadn’t been able to close yet.

“Five, I don’t know why you’re so upset, I haven’t even seen you for-”

But Five had had enough. “Yes you have! You were the only one I had! ”

And then they’re both frozen, both of their eyes wide. Five didn’t have the time to decipher what exactly he saw in Klaus’s eyes, but he knew he had made a mistake saying what he had. He couldn’t talk about Klaus from the apocalypse.

It was best if he pretended he had never even been there in the first place.

“Get out so I can change.”

• • •

“Where do you think you’re going?” God, Five so hasn’t missed having to explain every single action to someone. He turns to face Diego, who’s looking at him, his eyebrows raised.

“I’m going to find a decent cup of coffee, or is that not allowed?” Five scowled. 

Coffee is good. Coffee is normal. He could go to Griddy’s because man he’s missed Griddy’s coffee and donuts so much, and he could get away from Klaus for a little. Because being near him right now was too much.

Speaking of, Five’s eyes flick to the doorway of the kitchen where Klaus walks in dropping into a chair at the table and swallowing what seems to be a pill, and rolling his eyes at the empty air next to him.

Empty air. Ben. It must be Ben’s ghost.

Pills. Five had noticed how Klaus hadn’t really been all… there today. He hadn’t missed the glazed look in his eyes or the way his actions were slowed and messy. Clear signs of drug use. But… why ?

Back in the apocalypse after the one time Five got drunk, both he and Klaus made a pact never to put that shit in their bodies ever again. Alcohol, drugs, they didn’t want it.

“We don’t need it,” Klaus had said. “People use drugs and alcohol when they’re alone and they’ve got no one to confide in and trust and love. But we do have that, Five. We have each other. We don’t need it.”

Klaus was alone. Klaus didn’t have Five to fall back on or to support in this timeline. He was alone, and turned to drugs for the answer. Five took a deep breath, keeping the tears at bay, and looked away from Klaus.

“Five, you came from the future, threw up, passed out, cried , and then acted like nothing happened. I don’t think you should be going anywhere right now,” Diego was still arguing.

“Well it’s a terrific thing that you’re not my father, then,” Five rolled his eyes and just as Diego moved to grab him, he blinked out of the kitchen and to the parking lot, where he found a car that probably belonged to Hargreeves.

Coffee. Just focus on coffee.

Right. Five could do that.

What he hadn’t anticipated was the huge wave of nostalgia that washed over him when he entered Griddy’s. It was just as he remembered, back when he and the others would sneak out to get food from here in the middle of the night.

Kind of like what he was doing right now.

Five went up and sat at the counter, a seat over from an older man by himself. The man looked at him funny, and it took Five a moment to remember that he was thirteen again, and not a fully grown adult.

“So, what’ll it be?” The waitress walked over to them from the back room, a pleasant smile on her face.

“Uh, give me a chocolate eclair,” The man to Five’s side told her, and she nodded. “Can I get the kid a glass of milk, or something?”

Oh . Oh- she thought Five was the man’s kid. He resisted the urge to scowl.

“The kid wants coffee. Black,” Five said shortly, trying not to let his temper take over.

The woman nods slowly, glancing up as she writes. “Cute kid.”

Five looks at the man, really hoping that he doesn’t correct her. If he corrects her, she’ll start asking where Five’s parents are. Then that’ll just be even more of a hassle than mistaking him for someone else’s kid.

Luckily, the man says nothing, and Five plasters on the most kid-like smile he can muster.

She walks away to start making the coffee, and Five decides to strike up conversation- because why not? Because if he’s talking, he isn’t thinking, and if he isn’t thinking, he isn’t going to burst into tears and panic about the end of the world.

“Don’t remember this place being such a shithole. I used to come here as a kid,” he says, momentarily forgetting about his appearance. “Used to sneak out with my brothers and sisters and eat donuts till we puked. Simpler times, huh?”

The man just looked at him funny again and nodded. “I suppose.”

The woman comes back over and hands Five his coffee, and the man pulls out some money. “I got his,” he tells the woman, handing it over.

Five is taken aback by this. The only other people he’s interacted with (besides Klaus) for twenty years are Commission members, who only reminded Five of how terrible humans are. He had forgotten that simple yet nice people like this existed.

“Thanks,” Five says slowly, and notices the company on the man’s vest. Towing. “You must know your way around the city.”

“I hope so. Been driving it for twenty years.”

He would know where Gimbel’s is. And where there’s Gimbel’s, there’s Delores. Five didn’t have Klaus anymore, but maybe he could still get his other companion.

“Good. I need an address.”

A few minutes later, the man leaves after writing the address down on a napkin and saying goodbye. Five folds it up and tucks it in his pocket, and is ready to leave before he hears the door open behind him.

He catches the reflection of the people in the metal of the coffee machine. It’s the men wearing the same outfits from the parking lot, and which Five has now come to realize are Commission uniforms. 

“That was fast,” he says, not even trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I thought I’d have more time before they found me.”

“Okay,” the man with a gun aimed at Five’s head says, “So let’s all be professional about this, yeah? On your feet and come with us. They want to talk.”

Five sees Klaus disappearing with the projectile. He sees the Handler’s smirk. He thinks about how angry she must have been when Five jumped back to his siblings, seeing as that probably wasn’t a part of their plan.

“Well that’s nice. I want my brother back,” he growled, his anger showing clearly.

“It doesn’t have to go this way. You think I want to shoot a kid? Go home with that on my conscience?”

I’m not a kid , Five almost bites out, but that wouldn’t be helpful right now.

So, he settles on, “Well, I wouldn’t worry about that. You won’t be going home.”

He grabs the knife from the set of utensils on the counter in front of him and blinks. He appears behind the man closest to him and cleanly slits his throat. The man fires his weapon and hits another one, making him fall as well.

Two down.

Five appears on a table, casually leaning on it. “Hey, assholes!” He calls to the remaining people, who trial their gun on him and fire, but he’s gone before anything hits. He blinks outside on the other side of the door, looking in through the glass.

He watches as they all fire where he just was, an amused smirk on his face. When they stop, he knocks on the glass, making them all turn, and then he salutes and blinks when they start firing.

Appearing at the side of one of the shooters, he stabs the knife into the man’s side and blinks away before anyone else can react.

The next one he takes my surprise, grabbing him around the throat with his own tie and pulling him down, choking him. His friend turns, but Five grabs a pencil from the table closest and stabs him with it.

Five chucks a plate at the man on the other side of the room that’s walking over, and then takes the knife and stabs the same man he stabbed with a pencil. The man lets out a cry and falls down, and Five turns to face the last two.

They both aim at him, and he blinks just in time so that when they fire, their bullets end up hitting each other. Five appears again and grabs his tie from the dead man’s head, putting it back on.

He hears one of the men groaning and walks over, kneeling down to cleanly snap his neck and be done with the whole ordeal. He catches sight of the machine that fell from the man’s hand that has a red dot on Five’s location.

The tracker. Of course.

Five seats himself back at the counter and grabs a clean knife. He rolled up his sleeve and clenched his teeth together as he cut open his forearm with the knife, and pulled the tracker out of his arm.

Quickly, he leaves the building before anyone can see him, pulling his sleeve down over his bleeding arm and dropping the tracker next to the sewer drain in the parking lot. He fixed his tie as he walked away, letting a smirk come over his face.

Commission: 1, Five: 1.

But where to go now? He needs to fix up his arm, he knows that. But he can’t go back to the Academy. Klaus is there and the Academy itself is there and he just can’t. 

He could go to Vanya’s. She left the Academy earlier and is probably at her place, wherever that may be. Five closes his eyes and focuses on Vanya, just as he did back when he wanted to blink to wherever Klaus was.

So he focuses, and he jumps. And when he opens his eyes, he’s on the fire escape right outside a window he assumes belongs to Vanya’s apartment. Opening it, he climbs in and collapses down onto a chair, finally feeling the exhaustion take over.

The door opens, and Five reaches up to turn the lamp next to the chair on, making Vanya do a double take and breath out, “Jesus!”

“You should have locks on your windows,” Five says stupidly, because what- what - are you supposed to say to your sister who you haven’t seen in twenty-two years who used to be your closest one but then wasn’t because you got stranded in an apocalypse?

“I live on the second floor,” Vanya answers, dropping her keys onto the table.

Five lets the shadow of a grin show on his face as he counters, “Rapists can climb.”

Vanya stares at him, then turns to close the door. “You are so weird.” She walks over and sits on the couch next to the chair Five’s in, her gaze going to his hand. “Is that blood?” He looks down to see that the blood from his arm hand dripped down over his hand.

“It’s nothing,” Five dismisses it.

Luckily, Vanya was never one to argue. “Why are you here?”

That’s a great question. Why was he there?

Maybe because he barely had any time to process what had happened in the past twenty-four hours. He went from going on an assigned mission with Klaus from the Commission only to be ambushed by the Commission. Then he watched the only person he’s ever really loved get taken away from him to who knows where. Then he jumped back in time to 2019 where he now has to stop the apocalypse while also coping with the fact that he’s seeing his siblings when the last time he saw them, he was burying their bodies twenty-two years ago.

Maybe because this is where Klaus isn’t, and Five decided it was better to be without Klaus than to be with a high, sadder, version of Klaus that didn’t have the same experiences or the same relationship that the Klaus Five knew did.

But how could he possibly explain any of that?

“I’ve decided you’re the only one I can trust,” is what comes out of Five’s mouth, and it isn’t entirely a lie. Klaus would have been his first choice, but the pain of even looking at him is too great and he’s high, which also upsets Five and makes Klaus unable to take anything seriously.

“Why me?” Vanya asked in response.

“Because you’re ordinary,” he saw the slight hurt in her eyes. “Because you’ll listen.”

“Okay,” she whispered, and went to the bathroom, coming back with bandages and antiseptic. Five pulled up his sleeve, only wincing slightly when the fabric brushed over his open wound. Klaus would have yelled at him the second he pressed the knife to his arm and thought of a better way to get out the tracker.

He missed Klaus. So much.

But Vanya wasn’t too bad.

Five studied her face as she cleaned his wound, watching as she winced for him. There was a sense of fear in her eyes, the one that clearly said if she left the room for too long, Five would be gone when she returned.

He hated that he had made her feel that way. But he hated even more how well he understood that fear of losing someone and having them never return.

“When I jumped forward and got stuck in the future, do you know what I found?”

“No.”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

He could remember all too well the sight of the rubble of fallen buildings, the smoke and ash and flames from the leftover fires. He saw it as clearly now as he did the day it all happened.

“As far as I could tell, we- I was the last person left alive,” Best not to mention Klaus. “I never figured out what killed the human race, but I did find something else. The date it happens. The world ends in eight days. And I have no idea how to stop it.”

He stopped, his voice breaking. He didn’t let himself cry, though. He allowed himself to get sad because if Klaus were here he’d help Five think of something, and in the meantime he’d keep him calm and happy.

But Klaus wasn’t here . And Five needed to accept that.

Vanya was quiet, blinking in surprise, before muttering, “I’ll put on a pot of coffee.”

Chapter Text

He almost felt bad. He did, a little. 

Vanya had told him he could crash on the couch for the night and he had probably given her another heart attack by leaving. But he couldn’t stay.

He couldn’t sleep there. He couldn’t sleep at all, actually. His first night without Klaus after twenty-two years of falling asleep next to him. So Five decided to go back to the Academy because although it wasn’t his Klaus, Klaus was still there.

Luckily, the halls were quiet, since Diego was probably with the cops at the mess Five had made at Griddy’s, Luther and Allison were probably asleep, and Vanya was back at her place.

“So did you get your coffee?”

Five froze on his way to the steps, and turned to see Klaus in the living room.

“Er-” Five cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

“Okay… well I’ll tell Luther you’re back, though he won’t believe me, so if you could just stick around… for proof…”

This was so awkward. Five hated it. Things were never awkward with Klaus.

“He doesn’t believe you about a lot of things, does he?” Five said sharply, and Klaus blinked, looking taken aback.

“Well, that was forward, mein bruder -”

Five winced. Too familiar.

“-But not incorrect. No, our dear Number One doesn’t really listen to me.”

Giving up on his resolve to stay away from Klaus, Five slowly walked forward and sat on the couch across from Klaus. Not next to him. He couldn’t risk being that close- it would be too much. So he sat across from him, not missing how Klaus frowned at the intensity in Five’s gaze.

“I bet he doesn’t believe you about Ben, either. None of them do.”

Klaus looked genuinely surprised at this. “Wh-what? That Ben’s dead? No, sadly I didn’t make that up. We were all-” he stopped, looking uncomfortable. “All of us at the time were there when it happened.”

Five closed his eyes. The Klaus he knew would have jumped at the opportunity to explain himself, but this one had settled on not even bothering because of how little he was listened to.

“I’m not talking about that. They don’t believe you when you say that Ben is with you now, as a ghost, do they?”

“How… how do you know about that?” Klaus asked quietly, looking next to him to where Five assumed Ben was sitting. “You weren’t even here…”

Five winced, but understood that Klaus didn’t realize how harsh his words really were. How was he to explain that he knew what Klaus could do because he was the one that helped him develop his powers and gain control over them?

“You think I don’t know everything about everyone’s powers?” Five chalked it down to simple research. “Your ability is literally banishing and bringing back the dead, I don’t know why they wouldn’t believe you.”

Klaus’s mouth opened and closed a few times, looking at Five, then at Ben (probably), then back at Five. “Yeah…”

The look Klaus was giving him was too familiar. It was one of pure gratitude, just as he had when Five didn’t give up on him in the apocalypse or at the Commission. Something horrible clutched Five’s heart, and he stood up quickly.

“Goodnight, Klaus.”

“Yeah… Night, Five.”

Whether it was anticipation, unfamiliarity, or nerves in general, Five was awake before anyone else in the house. Which he was silently thankful for, because after making himself a cup of coffee, he was out without any complications.

He and Klaus had narrowed the cause of the apocalypse down to one fake eye. The one Luther had been holding when they found his body. So Five decided to start there, since it gave him something other than being sad and mad and scared to do.

Five appeared outside the lab, startling a couple walking by on the sidewalk. They gaped at him, and their eyes wandered down to the logo on his coat. Then, said eyes widened in realization and narrowed in confusion, because how was this boy from the Umbrella Academy from 2002 still a teenager?

Ignoring them, Five made his way up the step and into the lab. There were people walking around, trying out different prosthetic limbs or doctors in lab coats working in rooms with lots of microscopes in them.

Holding the eye tightly, Five turned in a circle, wondering where he would find information on prosthetic eyes.

“Uh, can I help you?” A voice asked, and Five turned to see a man in one of the lab coats.

Five walked over to him, holding up the eye. “I need to know who this belongs to.”

“Where did you get that?” The doctor asked.

“What do you care?” Five snapped, just wanting answers. The doctor wasn’t amused. “I found it. At a playground, actually. Must have just,” he clicked his tongue, “popped out.” He smiled innocently. If they wanted kid, they’d get kid. “I wanna return it to its rightful owner.”

“Oh… what a thoughtful young man,” The woman behind the counter said kindly.

Five grinned. “Yeah. Look up the name for me, will ya?”

“Uh, I’m sorry, but patient records are strictly confidential. That means I can’t tell you-”

“Yeah, I know what it means,” Five rolled his eyes. 

The doctor held out his hand. “But, I’ll tell you what I can do. I will take the eye off your hands and return it to the owner. I’m sure he or she will be very grateful, so if I can just-”

He reached forward, but Five scowled. “Yeah, you’re not touching this eye.”

“Now you listen here, young man-”

That was the final straw for Five. He lunged forward and grabbed the doctor by the lapels of his coat and pulled him down to Five’s annoyingly short height. “No, you listen to me , asshole,” he growled. “I’ve come a long way for this, through some shit your peabrain couldn’t even comprehend. So just give me the information I need, and I’ll be on my merry way.”

He opened his mouth, but Five wasn’t done.

“And if you call me ‘young man’ one more time, I’m gonna put your head through that damn wall.”

The woman behind the front desk muttered, “Oh dear…”

“Call security,” The doctor glanced at her.

“Yeah,” She picked up her phone and started dialing.

Five looked at her and then back at the doctor, then reluctantly let go of his coat, pushing him back. He turned and left the building, deciding to come back later with a better approach.

What approach? He had no idea.

• • •

Five did not expect to return to the Academy in the middle of a fight between Luther and Klaus, with Allison standing by Pogo, rolling her eyes. Five walked into the kitchen where everyone was, confused as to what was going on.

“See! There he is,” Klaus waved a hand in Five’s direction and Luther turned.

“Five. Were you here last night?”

Five nodded blankly.

“Told you!” Klaus exclaimed, taking a drink from a bottle of alcohol that made Five cringe. “Five, I thought I told you to stick around for proof. You know how they don’t believe me!” That’s when Five noticed the hurt in Klaus’s eyes.

Luther shook his head at their drunken brother and looked back at Five. “Just… let me know if you’re here or not, okay? Not Klaus. You never know if what comes out of his mouth is true or not.”

“It is,” Five said in a voice that sounded nothing like his own. But he was positively fuming. “Klaus doesn’t lie.”

Everyone in the room, including Pogo, blinked at Five, confusion written on their faces. But he isn’t paying attention. A memory had taken him over.

“You’re my favorite sibling, Five.”

Five rolled his eyes and kicked a rock out of the way as they walked through the ruined city. “You’re just saying that because I’m the only one you have left.”

“No. You were my favorite before, too.”

“That’s a lie. You’re lying. We barely even spoke before.”

Klaus stopped walking, glaring at Five. “You were always the strongest of us. The smartest, too. I think it was smart for Dad not to make you Number One because you’d have too much power. I admired you.”

“I never wanted to be Number One. I just wanted Number Five to be more appreciated.”

“I know. I’m not lying, Five. I don’t lie. I make jokes and I let people down easily so they don’t get hurt but I don’t lie. I see no point in that. So, you’re my favorite, Five.”

Five looked at Klaus, not really knowing what to do in situations like this. Any normal person would hug him but in all of Five’s fourteen years of life he never really had been an emotional type of person.

“Right. You don’t lie. Then, thank you. You’re… my favorite, too.”

Five blinked, and the kitchen filled with his adult siblings appeared in his vision again. Allison stepped forward. “Are you alright, Five? You zoned out there for a second.” He shifted his gaze to her and nodded slightly.

Then he turned and left the room, heading up to his own.

He sensed Klaus following him, and he didn’t have the heart or energy to turn and tell him not to. Better yet, he didn’t even have a good reason to tell him not to, other than that it was hard to talk to him.

“Thank you. For… you know. Siding with me.”

Five turned back to look at him once he was in the safety of his room and gazed at Klaus with a heavy stare before nodding. “Always.”

There was a moment of awkward silence in which Klaus would usually rush forward and hug Five until Five got annoyed, but now he just stood in the doorway, unsure what to do.

“I need your help,” Five said, and this caught Klaus by surprise.

“ My help? That’s new. What can I do, mein bruder ?”

Five frowned at that. Klaus probably didn’t know the first thing about what he was truly capable of doing, and it didn’t help that the drugs he took probably dulled his senses and made his powers useless.

“Well, first, stop drinking this garbage,” Five snatched the bottle from Klaus’s hand and threw it, watching it smash on the wall and spill down.

“ Five !” Klaus whined. “What the hell?”

“No. It’s not good for you and I don’t know why you do it because you never used to-”

Klaus rolled his eyes. “I don’t know if you remember, but you weren’t really here, and I did do it. You knew me from ages zero to thirteen, I sure hope I wasn’t doing it then.”

Five bit down on his tongue so hard he drew blood. He did know Klaus, probably better than anyone else in the world. But Klaus would get freaked out if he said all that, so he was forced to watch his brother throw away his life in silence.

“I know. But… don’t do it. Just don’t,” Five whispered, and then buried his emotions. “I need you to pretend to be my dad so I can get information from a prosthetics lab. Sound good? Great. Put on something… normal.”

He supposed he should have specified, because five minutes later, Klaus returned to Five’s room wearing a frilly shirt with a weird pattern that was so the Klaus Five knew he almost laughed and said it was fine.

But, that would be out of character. “I thought I told you to put on something professional,” he narrowed his eyes.

“What? This is my nicest outfit,” Klaus drew his brows together and Five rolled his eyes.

“We’ll raid the old man’s closest,” Five said, turning and heading out of the room.

Klaus followed behind and asked, “Am I getting paid for this?”

That caught Five by surprise. He was so used to getting help from Klaus without the latter needing anything in return, but he supposed that wasn’t the case anymore. “Um. Yeah. Sure.”

“Thanks, Fivey!”

Klaus placed a hand on Five’s shoulder and Five reacted as though his shoulder had caught on fire. He jumped about a foot away and looked at Klaus with wide eyes, who was looking back down at him, just as surprised.

“Jesus, Five, I knew you didn’t like physical touch, but that was a bit much-”

Five stopped listening because Klaus was so wrong. After he almost lost Klaus, Five never stopped hugging him back and, eventually, initiating the hugs himself. He was up for high-fives, even rock, paper, scissors games. 

But watching Klaus disappear, then seeing him in a different way… it was rough. But Five could distance himself if he didn’t have to be near this Klaus. Until he touched his shoulder and made Five want to throw his arms around him and never let go.

“Sorry. I’m fine.” 

Klaus nodded slowly. “Right. Well, just so we’re clear on the finer details, I just gotta go into this place and pretend to be your dear old dad, correct?”

Five thought about how odd it was that Klaus was now older than him (outwardly), when they had always been the same age. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“What’s our cover story?”

“What?” Five frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Klaus huffed. “I mean, was I really young when I had you, like sixteen-”

“I have an idea,” Klaus spoke up one dull morning into the fourth week of his bedrest. “Let’s give each other tattoos.”

Five looked up from his book on Fermat’s Last Theorem and narrowed his eyes at Klaus. “We’re sixteen. And neither one of us knows how to work a tattoo pen.”

“-your mother, that slut .” Five focused back on the present, listening to Klaus create a backstory. “Whoever she was. We met at… the disco. Okay? Remember that. Oh my God, the sex was amazing ,” Klaus laughed.

Five suppressed a grin at how familiar this dramatic story was. Klaus would always come up with the most exotic and creative tales to keep them entertained. He once had made up one quite like the one he was thinking of now. It made Five…

Sad. Of course. But… hopeful, too. Hopeful that his Klaus was still somewhere in there.

“What a disturbing glimpse into that thing you call a brain,” Five teased, then turned and headed down the hallway. “Come on.”

“Don’t make me put you in time-out,” Klaus countered easily, following after him.

Five smiled to himself.

Maybe things weren’t so bad.

• • •

With Klaus, Five was able to make it all the way to the office of the doctor he threatened earlier. However, his luck ended there, seeing as the doctor only called them in there to argue with them in private.

“Like I said to your son earlier, any information about the prosthetics we build is strictly confidential. Without the client’s consent, I simply can’t help you.”

Five stood angrily next to Klaus, who was sitting in a chair across the desk from the doctor. “Well, we can’t get consent if you don’t give us a name,” Five snapped, not bothering to keep his temper at bay this time.

“Well, that’s not my problem,” the doctor shrugged. “Sorry. Now, there’s really nothing more I can do, so-”

He was cut off by Klaus, who hadn’t said much. “And what about my consent?”

Both Five and the doctor turned to look at Klaus, neither knowing what he was talking about. “Excuse me?” The doctor asked.

“Who gave you permission to lay your hands,” Klaus’s voice was filled with faux emotion, “on my son.” He pointed up at Five from where he sat.

“What?” The doctor asked incredulously.

Klaus stayed indifferent. “You heard me.”

“I didn’t touch your son.”

“Oh really?” Klaus’s eyebrows shot up, and Five had no idea where this was going because he never mentioned the doctor hitting him to Klaus. Probably because it didn’t happen. “Well then how did he get that swollen lip, then?”

The doctor blinked in confusion. “He doesn’t have a swollen-”

As he spoke, Klaus rose from his seat and turned to Five, bringing his hand up and smacking Five loudly across the face. Five’s head turned to the side from the impact, and he brought his hand up to feel blood coming from his now swollen lip.

“I want it,” Klaus leaned his hands on the desk. “Name, please. Now.”

“You’re crazy,” The doctor pointed at him.

Klaus let out a dry laugh. “You got no idea.” He looked down and picked up the snowglobe on the doctor’s desk. “Peace on Earth. That’s so sweet,” and then he brought it forward and smashed it on his head.

Five just shook his head, watching the glitter and water fall into Klaus’s hair and drop onto the desk, blood appearing where the glass had cut his head.

The cut that ran from the top of his head down to his temple was bleeding, too.

Cauterizing that wound would leave a nasty and probably ugly scar on his forehead.

“God, that hurt!” Five shook the memory away as Klaus looked up, water still dripping from his hair.

The doctor grabbed the phone. “I’m calling secur-” Klaus grabbed the phone and yanked it from his hand. “What are you doing?”

“There’s been an assault in Mr. Big’s office and we need security now! Schnell !” Klaus called into the phone and Five was becoming more amused and impressed by the second.

Klaus dropped the phone and looked back up at the doctor. “Now here’s what’s gonna happen, Grant.”

“It’s… Lance…”

“In about sixty seconds, two security guards are gonna burst through that door and they’re gonna see a whole lot of blood, and they’re gonna wonder ‘what the hell happened?’. And we’re gonna tell them that you…”

Five grinned slowly, recognizing Klaus’s plan and trail of thought. It was the one they’d share when thinking of how to properly execute their jobs at the Commission.

“Beat the shit out of us!” Klaus finished, getting fake teary-eyed. “You’re gonna do great in prison, Grant. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

And Five’s grin falls. He knew Klaus was an addict and didn’t have any hold over his power, but other than that, what else did he really know about this life his brother had lived? Been to prison, lived on the streets, had only the company of the ghost of Ben.

If Five was any genius, and he was, he’d conclude that the apocalypse was good for Klaus. He would have gone down this road if he hadn’t been with Five.

Except.

Except he did go down this road.

He wasn’t with Five. The Klaus that made a garden outside their barnhouse was gone.

Grant- Lance- took them to a room with drawers of files, and started going through one of them, anxiously glancing back at Klaus every few seconds. Five did the exact opposite, keeping his gaze on anything but him.

Five stood on the opposite side of the counter as Dr. Lance and Klaus sait on top, facing the doctor. He glared at the Hargreeves brothers (to which Klaus smiled innocently) as he pulled out a file and opened it. “Oh, that’s strange.”

“What?” Five asked impatiently.

“Uh, the eye hasn’t been purchased by a client yet,” He explained.

Klaus jumped off the counter and leaned over his shoulder intimidatingly. “What? What do you mean?” He asked, an innocent tone to his voice, but a satisfied smirk on his face when he saw the doctor step away nervously.

“Well, uh, our logs say that the eye with that serial number… this can’t be right. It hasn’t even been manufactured yet. Where did you get that eye?” The doctor looked up at Five.

Who was scowling. Of course. Leave it to his luck that the eye gets made within the next seven days, cutting it too close to the actual apocalypse for anything to get done right now.

Having gotten the information he needed, Five dragged Klaus out of MeriTech, shaking his head at Klaus’s cheerful wave to Dr. Lance.

“Well, this is not good,” Five sighed as they got outside to the front steps.

“I was pretty good though, right? Yeah, what about my consent, bitch ?” Klaus laughed.

Five opened his mouth to snap at Klaus and tell him that it doesn’t matter, but something stopped him. Klaus looked proud . Back in the apocalypse, Klaus had confided in Five about how he felt useless on missions, but Five had convinced him and helped him realize how powerful and helpful he actually was.

This Klaus hadn’t had Five to tell him that. This Klaus grew up in everyone’s shadow just because he was intimidated by his powers- with good reason. The alcohol and drugs probably took the edge off that bitterness too.

“Yeah,” Five said firmly. “You were pretty impressive.”

Klaus raised his eyebrows. “ Danke , Five. Didn’t know you knew how to compliment. Sorry we didn’t get anything useful. What’s the big deal about this eye anyways?”

“There’s someone out there who’s going to lose an eye in the next seven days. They’re gonna bring about the end of life on this Earth as we know it,” Five explained simply.

Nodding, Klaus sighed, “Yeah, can I get that twenty bucks, like, now, or what?”

Five glared at him. This is where he differed from the Five’s Klaus. He would have jumped at the chance of helping Five, or at least keeping him calm. The thought only made Five bitter, and instead of acknowledging his sadness, he let it transform into anger.

“Your twenty bucks?”

“Yeah, my twenty bucks.”

“The apocalypse is coming and all you can think about is getting high?” Five exclaimed, unable to believe this was the same person that made Five promise never to drink. 

Klaus glared at Five, but brushed it off by saying, “Well, I’m also quite hungry. Tummy’s a-rumblin’.” He made stomach noises and Five shook his head.

He felt lost. He needed Klaus. The real Klaus. He needed his brother back, or he needed to do everything alone so that his idiot siblings wouldn’t mess anything up. That, and he still wasn’t used to having them back. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to that.

“You’re useless. You’re all useless,” Five sneered, then walked up the steps away from Klaus, sitting down on them.

“Oh, come on! You need to lighten up, old man!” Klaus exclaimed. “Hey, you know, I’ve just now realized why you’re so uptight. You must be horny as hell!” Klaus laughed on the last word, walking over and sitting next to Five. “All those years by yourself. It’s gotta screw with your head, being alone.”

And Five’s heart broke.

“I want to help you bury them, Five,” Klaus said quietly when he finished. “I… I’m not weak . I can handle things. Especially if they’re things as important as this. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“I…” Five trailed off, trying to keep his voice strong. “I wasn’t alone.” He looked at Klaus, not caring about how the latter flinched when he saw the emotion in Five’s gaze. “I had a friend. I loved him very much.”

Klaus blinked. “L-Loved? Well, Fivey, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you say that word before.” He laughed nervously.

“He was the first person I learned to love. He was the only person I ever loved,” Five took a deep breath, looking away from Klaus. “I think you would like him a lot, actually.” He stopped, unable to go on.

“Would… would he have liked me?” Klaus asked, a seriousness in his voice that Five had never heard this Klaus use before present.

Five looked back at him, and answered honestly. “No. But I think he’d want to.”

Klaus’s eyebrows went up, clearly unsure what to do with that answer.

He knew he should stop talking, but now that he started, Five found he couldn’t stop. “I still remember the first time I realized how much me meant to me. I messed up my equations and predicted ten more years, at least, stuck in the apocalypse, and all he said was okay .”

Klaus laughed and threw an arm around Five’s sulking shoulders. “Like I said, it’s you and me. Right?”

Five looked at his brother’s face. He didn’t hate Klaus. He liked Klaus. He wished he’d gotten to know him more back in their normal lives. But Klaus is talented and he’s caring and he brings back Five from the dead.

Five lo-

Five loved Klaus.

He looked at Klaus, who was wearing a pained expression. He seemed to have an internal argument before Klaus reached over and squeezed Five’s elbow.

And

Five

froze .

He jumped to his feet, taking several steps back and looking at Klaus with huge eyes.

“Why… why did you do that?”

Klaus looked surprised at Five’s reaction, but also at himself. “I… don’t know. Five-”

“No,” Five shook his head. He had tried. He tried to talk to and be with this Klaus and not have it bring up every memory of his Klaus, but it didn’t work. It was too familiar and not familiar enough all at the same time.

“Five just calm down, come here,” Klaus reached out, but Five couldn’t .

He stepped backwards into bright blue energy and jumped.

Chapter Text

No one had bothered him for the rest of the day. He spent it at the Academy, mapping out equations on the little wall space he had left. Grace, Mom , had stopped and forced him to eat dinner, but he was otherwise left alone.

It was later now, and Five was itching to pull the napkin out of his pocket. He did, his eyes scanning over the address written on it.

What better time than the present?

Five closed his eyes and focused on the address, and blinked to Gimbel’s department store. It was closed for the night, but that was easily fixed by him blinking inside the store. He passed by slightly familiar racks until he found what he was looking for.

“Ready, bruder ?” Klaus called, walking over to stand next to Five. “Whatcha lookin’ at?”

Five pointed to the middle mannequin. “She’s pretty.”

Klaus tilted his head as well, considering how pretty a mannequin could be. And as far as mannequins went, she was, and Klaus said so to Five. “Let’s take her with us.”

The beam from Five’s flashlight landed on the familiar face of his old friend. “Delores. It’s good to see you.” It had been so long, since before he and Klaus had left for the Commission. He missed her more than he realized.

Five. Glad to see you remember my name, at least, she snapped. It’s good to see you, too .

“I missed you, obviously,” Five reassured her.

She gave him a sympathetic look. I heard about Klaus. How are you?

Of course she heard. “Well… it’s been a rough couple of days.” Before she could answer, two people rounded the corner on the other side. Five would recognize those masks anywhere. Commission field agent specialties. “ No !” He yelled, diving out of the way as bullets began flying towards him.

Five saw Delores’s top half on the floor, and ran out to grab her, blinking away before any of the bullets got to him. He wasn’t sure how they’d tracked him, but he wasn’t going to stick around to ask.

He brought Delores back behind a rack and put her down, muttering, “I’ll be right back for you,” before blinking away.

For once he didn’t mind being short again, as it made it easier to duck behind the clothing on the racks while the two agents shot at him. They were good, however, and almost caught him if he didn’t blink away quickly.

Luckily for him, he had blinked to the front counter, where machete knives were being sold. He grabbed one quietly and flipped it in his hand, testing it out. Peeking over the counter, he saw one of the agents close by.

He blinked to the agent’s side and slashed the knife, catching their arm and sending blood spraying from the found. The other agent began shooting in his direction, and he disappeared before he got shot.

Footsteps were the one thing he couldn’t control, however, and couldn’t help how his shoes echoed on the ground as he ran through the aisle, drawing the attention of the agents.

His duffel bag he had brought was still where he left it, and he crouched low, blinking next to Delores and pulling her towards the bag.

“We have information on your partner, Number Five!” One of the agents yelled. A woman’s voice. Five stopped, his breath hitching and heart stopping. “Number Four. What was his name? Klaus ?”

Before he could rethink his actions, he shoved Delores in his bag and jumped to his feet. “Don’t you dare say his name!”

“Just come with us and we’ll give you all the answers,” The woman said, both guns trailing on him.

“I don’t need answers, and you wouldn’t give them to me even if you actually had them! He’s gone, I saw it with my own eyes. And you two are next.” She fired, and the bullet whizzed next to his arm, lodging itself into his bicep. He cried out and blinked to the front counter, ducking down so they couldn’t see him.

He was out of energy. Holding his breath, he prayed they thought he blinked out of the store, because he knew that if he tried to blink now, he wouldn’t be able to. Perks of a thirteen year old body- it drains quickly.

Luck wasn’t in his favor now, though. He ran by the doors, only to have the lights of their guns shine at him. Thankfully, sirens wailed in the distance, probably on their way after hearing gunfire. Sure enough, police cars pulled up in the parking lot.

When both agents turned towards the doors, Five dove behind the counter and hid, his hand pressed against his bullet wound, trying to stop the bleeding. 

“The bastard jumped again,” The other agent spoke. This one was a man.

“Come on, let’s go,” The woman said bitterly.

Five held his breath, his heart pounding. He felt a few tears fall down his face, either from fear, exhaustion, anger, sadness, or pain. He couldn’t tell what, exactly.

Using the very last of his energy, he mustered up all he could and blinked himself back to the Academy, where he collapsed onto the ground of the hallway he had landed in, not bothering to figure out which one it was.

“Five!” He heard what he thought was Allison’s voice. 

“Are you okay? What happened?” That was definitely Luther.

He felt arms helping him sit up, and saw Allison, though her face was blurry. “Luther, he’s bleeding! Oh my God, I think he got shot!”

“How did this happen? Five? What’s going on?” Luther demanded.

“There’s nothing… you can do…” Five trailed off, his breathing growing shallow. “There's nothing… any of you… can do…”

And with those kind words, he passed out.

• • •

Apocalypse. An awful word to have to focus on, but a helpful one. As long as he kept repeating it in his head he knew he would be able to focus on the dangerous task ahead and not the emotional struggle that came in the form of his siblings.

Five hissed in pain as he pulled the needle through his arm, sewing his bullet wound shut. He clenched his teeth and ripped the string with them, then grabbing band-aids from his mirror. Train band-aids. Did no one update anything in this house?

A few minutes later he was dressed again and climbing out of his window and down the fire escape, his bag that held Delores on his shoulders. He looked down and saw Klaus digging through the dumpster yelling, “Damn it, where’s Dad’s stuff?” Five winced as he recalled his last encounter with Klaus and kept climbing.

“I’d ask what you’re up to, Klaus, but then it occurred to me,” Five paused on the ladder to glance at Klaus, still in the trash. “I don’t care.”

Harsh words. But. Maybe they’ll help him distance himself.

“Hey,” Klaus saw him, then laughed a little. “You know there’s easier ways out of the house, buddy.”

Buddy . Five resisted a flinch. “This one involved the least amount of talking. Or so I thought.”

Five jumped down off the last rung of the ladder and turned down the alleyway to walk to where a van waited.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Klaus stopped him. “You need any more company today? I could, uh, clear my schedule,” He sipped from a silver flask that Five wanted to smack out of his hand.

But Five most certainly did not want Klaus with him. He did, of course, but not this Klaus. He wanted his brother that was no longer around.

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full,” Five said instead, pointedly glaring at the flask.

“Oh, this? No, no, I could do this whenever, just-” Klaus stepped back in the dumpster, and fell backwards. Five closed his eyes briefly, wanting to do nothing more than shake some sense into this version of his brother. “Just misplaced something, that’s all…” Five heard Klaus’s voice rise from the trash.

Not a moment later he popped back up, half a bagel in his hand. “Oh, found it, thank God !” He took a bite and Five fixed him with a sour look.

“I’m done funding your drug habit,” Five glared, then turned and started walking down the alley.

“Come on,” Klaus called after him. “Maybe I just wanna hang out with my brother- not you-”

Five realized he must have said the last part to Ben, and felt for his deceased brother that had to helplessly watch Klaus grow into the worst version of himself.

Then he was hit with a horrible thought. Klaus here didn’t have Five, but he had Ben. He was close with Ben and they probably understood each other and made jokes and memories and-

Ben now knew Klaus better than Five.

No one knew Klaus better than Five.

It was an awful idea.

“I love you! Even if you can’t love yourself!” Klaus called, and Five’s heart stopped.

Five… I love you.

He blinked into the van, and drove away.

Luckily there was an empty spot available across the street from the lab where Five could park the van and spy. He narrowed his eyes and watched as Lance walked into the building. When the doctor was out of sight, he turned and unzipped his bag, letting Delores out.

“Hey, sorry you were in there for so long, Delores,” He apologized as he pulled her out.

Yeah, along with a bottle of vodka. Why is that there? I thought you were against drinking, she said in a disappointed tone. Are you drunk?

“No, I’m not drunk,” He rolled his eyes and looked back out the window. “And I just have it because… well, you don’t have any idea how draining it is to see everyone again. I’m working now.”

Don’t tell me it’s about that stupid eye.

“Yes, it’s about the eye thing,” he shot her a sidelong look. “This is the place it was made. Or, will be made.” Five sighed and turned back out the window, “We just have to wait.”

After a few hours of sitting still and after the events of last night, and lack of sleep, Five started to get fog-headed. He blinked a few times, and saw a few white flakes falling down onto him in the car.

Ones that scarily looked like ash from the apocalypse.

Five whipped his head around, feeling disoriented, his heart beating loudly. He quickly opened the door of the van and stepped out, grabbing the handle to steady himself. His feet landed on rubble and dust.

No . There were fires around and ruins of buildings and Five could feel his breath getting stuck in his throat. Nonono .

“No… No !” Five yelled, then looked quickly to the side where Luther was tapping on the window of the van. He blinked and looked around, realizing he was still in the van, and not in an apocalyptic world.

Well. Yet.

He took a deep breath to regain his composure asd Luther pulled open the passenger seat and got into the vehicle. With difficulty, due to his size. When he finally got the door closed, he looked strangely at Five. “You okay?”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Five said, fisting his hands so Luther wouldn’t see them shaking, though his voice was steady. “How did you find me?”

“Oh-” Luther jerked his head to the back of the van, where Five turned to see Klaus sitting, dancing with Delores.

“Hey a little privacy guys, we’re really hitting it off back here.”

He then turned to face Delores. “You like them, Delores?” Klaus turned to her too, both boys showing her their bare chests.

She laughed and smiled. Yes, they look great. And as much as I enjoy the view of your torsos, boys, please put your shirts back on.

Five took a deep breath, his mind focusing on the fact that the three of them were back together. His family, his little apocalypse family, were together, and he could almost pretend he was seventeen and Klaus was whirling Delores through the barn and pulling Five to his feet to join them.

Luther saved him by chucking a water bottle back at Klaus, who laughed and ducked behind Delores. It was too much for Five.

“Get out!” He yelled at Luther and Klaus. “You can’t be here! I’m in the middle of something.”

Five turned back to the front as Klaus came forward, leaning between Luther and Five, elbows on their chairs. “Any luck finding your one-eyed man?” He asked Five.

“No,” Five muttered, rolling his eyes.

“What’s he talking about?” Luther asked.

Five just waved a hand. “Does it matter? It’s Klaus,” he meant it as a joke, and forgot that his Klaus would get that. This one would not, based on the flash of hurt in his eyes. “What do you want, Luther?” Five asked quickly.

“Um, so Grace may have something to do with Dad’s death. So I need you to come back to the Academy, alright? It’s important,” he explained.

At this, Five resisted the urge to bitterly laugh. “ It’s important . You have no concept of what’s important.”

“Hey!” Klaus cut in. “Did I ever tell you guys about the time I waxed my ass with chocolate pudding?” He laughed. “It was so painful!”

“That never hap-” Five started, but cut himself off quickly. It hadn’t occurred to him just how many memories Klaus had without him now, and he looked away quickly before his emotions showed.

Luther glared back at Klaus. “What are you still doing here?”

“What? I need an excuse to hang out with my family?”

“We’re trying to have a serious conversation.”

Klaus looked offended. “What, and I’m incapable of having a serious conversation, is that what you’re saying?”

“Luther’s right, you should get out,” Five said quickly and quietly. It was still so hard to be around him. “ Sorry ,” Five added quietly in their made up language so neither wouldn’t understand.

“ It’s okay ,” Klaus grumbled a reply, then snapped up to look at Five, eyes wide.

The latter felt like all the air had been sucked from his lungs. This Klaus shouldn’t know that language. Was it some kind of glitch in time? Five had no clue, all he could hear was his heartbeat in his ears and all he could focus on was the strange look on Klaus’s face.

He looked knowing .

“ Out , Klaus,” Luther said, and Klaus quickly climbed out of the back of the van without argument, sparing Five one last glance before closing the doors. “What the hell are you up to, Five?”

It took a minute for Five to get enough air and concentration to come up with an answer for Number One. “You wouldn’t understand,” was the best he could get out.

“Try me. Last I checked, I’m still the leader of this family.”

“Well, last I checked, I’m five years older than you.”

Luther glared at him. “You know what your problem is?”

“Really hoping you’ll tell me,” Five snapped, letting attitude take over his shock and grief of hearing Klaus speak their language.

“You think you’re better than us. You always have. Even when we were kids. But the truth is, you’re just as messed up as the rest of us. We’re all you have, and you know it.”

It hurt. To hear Luther say the truth out loud and know that denying it would be a lie. Five was used to dealing with things like that alone, in his head, or with his Klaus. He wasn’t ready to actually deal with it.

“I don’t think I’m better than you, Number One. I know I am. I’ve done unimaginable things, things you couldn’t even comprehend,” he spat, and at least it wasn’t a lie.

“Right.”

Five shook his head. “Just to get back here and save you all.”

“ Whoo !” A yell made them look out through the windshield at the store next to the lab, where Klaus was running out, obviously stolen items in his arms. A policeman followed out after him, blowing his whistle.

“Hey, bitches!” Klaus yelled, running by the van and waving at them, doging out of the way of a car as the policeman ran behind him, yelling, “You! Get back here!”

Five closed his eyes for a second before opening them. “Now I’m starting to wonder if that was the wisest decision.”

Later that night, long after the sun had set, Doctor Lance exited the lab.

Holding a dark bag, looking suspicious. 

“There’s our guy,” Five muttered to Delores, looking closely as a car pulled up to where Lance stood on the sidewalk, exchanging the dark bag for a packet. “What the hell is he up to?” The car drove away, Lance started walking, and Five blinked out of the van.

Chapter Text

Five waits around all night because, if he’s being honest, whatever Luther thinks is “important” doesn’t really matter to Five. He said it had something to do with mom but the worst Five can imagine is a battery replacement.

So, he stays.

When the sun rises again, Lance is leaving his apartment and unlocking his car with a beep. He drops his dog into the back, gets into the driver seat, and then Five blinks into the passenger one.

Lance makes a sound of surprise when he turns to see Five scowling at him. “Jesus!”

He doesn’t get much more out, seeing as Five pulls out a knife and holds it against his throat. “On chance, that’s all you’ve got. One chance to tell me exactly what’s going on in that lab.”

“I- I manufacture prosthetic devices for fake patients,” Lance explains, his voice steady but his breathing shaky. “I bill the insurance companies and then sell them for cash on the black market.”

“Including eyeballs?”

“Yeah, they’re my biggest seller. I mean, they sell like hotcakes. I-I’ve got a list, a waiting list, probably twenty buyers.”

Five couldn’t believe this guy. “So the serial number I told you…”

“Uh, could’ve already been bought. Yes, off- off the books.”

“I need that list, Lance. Names and numbers, and I need it now !”

The “doctor” took another breath. “I don’t have it. I mean, not on me. The only copy’s in my safe at the lab.”

Five let out a bitter laugh. “Well. You start the car, then. Cause we’re going on a field trip.” He reluctantly pulled the knife away from Lance’s throat to let him drive.

The world was ending and all he had to work with was idiots.

He missed Klaus.

Once they got close enough to the lab, Lance parked the car and Five led him down the street, keeping a firm grip on his sleeve. Apprehension began to sneak in when he saw smoke in the air, and smelled fire.

They turned the corner, and Five froze.

The lab was on fire.

Forgetting about Lance, Five booked down the sidewalk and towards the front of the lab, gazing up in horror at the blazing building. He didn’t get to look for long, because a second later, he was thrown backwards by an explosion at the front of the building.

He groaned and slowly sat up, staring slack-jawed as the smoke and dust cleared. The list was gone. His lead was gone.

Shakily, Five got to his feet, taking deep breaths to keep his sorrow and anger in check, and turned around, looking to see if he could find any clues as to how this had happened.

His eyes landed on the van he had been in yesterday. The windshield was covered with dust, and there were words traced backwards out on it. He crossed the street and opened the door, and peered in at the windshield from the inside, where the words faced the right way.

YOUR BROTHER SAYS HI

Brother .

Five wasn’t used to the concept of having more alive brothers, so his mind went instantly to Klaus. And Five knew that Hazel and Cha-Cha, the Commission agents, were the ones who wrote this.

And Five went livid .

Stepping into the blue energy forming, he focused his mind on those stupid Commission masks and thought about what he and Klaus had worked on as kids. Spatial jumping to a person, not a place.

Moments later, he was in a hotel room, a few feet in front of an unmasked Hazel and Cha-Cha. He took advantage of their shock and turned, only to find-

Klaus.

Who was shaking and sweating and obviously going through withdrawal.

Duck taped to a chair, duck tape over his mouth, and blood .

His chest and arms were covered in it.

Five, for lack of a better term, lost his shit.

He wheeled back around, grabbing a knife from the counter, and lashed out at Cha-Cha with it, catching her arm and making her cry out. Hazel reached for his gun, but Five growled and flung the knife towards him, feeling a bit like Diego, and watched as it lodged itself in Hazel’s leg.

As the two agents clutched their wounds, Five rushed over to Klaus and ripped the tape off of his mouth. 

“The briefcase,” Five breathed quickly. “Where is it?”

“Uh, um-” Klaus blinked, trying to get his bearings, then focused on Five. “The- the vent.”

Five ran behind Klaus to the vent in the wall and pulled it off easily, then grabbed the briefcase from inside of it. He heard Cha-Cha yell and knew he was out of time. 

He ran back to Klaus and ripped the duck tape off of his arms. “Do you trust me?” Five asked, holding Klaus’s arm tightly as the latter stood.

“Of course,” Klaus said without any hesitation.

That was all the confirmation Five needed to blink them away.

When they arrived at the Academy, Five didn’t focus on the feeling of Klaus’s arm around him as he blinked them to Klaus’s room. He couldn’t, it would only hurt him.

He lowered Klaus onto his own bed, and then hovered in front of him. Five wasn’t good at caretaking, that had always been Klaus’s job.

But he had done it before.

“I- I’m not good at this caretaker shit, Klaus. Tell me how to do this.”

Silence was the only response.

Five reached out and took his brother’s wrist to check his pulse, and ended up just holding his hand anyways.

He could do it again.

“Do… do you want to get cleaned up?” Five asked quietly, looking at the blood on his brother’s chest.

Klaus was looking at him oddly, but nodded all the same. Five quickly left to start the bath, and then walked Klaus into the bathroom.

“Er- you can do this part yourself. I’ll, um, see if anyone else is here. If they can help,” Five turned to leave, but Klaus grabbed his sleeve.

“Five,” He said quietly, nothing like the Klaus Five knew. Or even the one he didn’t know. He sounded small, small like when he woke up after falling off the cliff. Or when the ghosts had overwhelmed him.

Hesitating, Five slowly gabbed Klaus’s hand and pulled it off his sleeve. “What?”

“Last night, this house was attacked by the people who kidnapped me. I was being an idiot and was clueless and got myself taken. But do you think anyone noticed?”

No. No, that couldn’t be true. Someone must have.

Klaus shook his head and smiled sadly. “No one noticed, Five. I don’t know what would’ve happened if you didn’t find me, but I’m glad you did. I’m glad you noticed.”

And then Klaus was hugging him and it was too much, too much , too much -

Then Five was crying.

Sobs tore out of his body, the first real cry he’d had since returned home and he wrapped his arms around Klaus’s fragile frame and held him tightly and cried because-

This was all he wanted. All he wanted was to hug Klaus and be here, with his brother. With his other siblings, too, but right now he was just so angry at them because how the hell didn’t they realize Klaus was missing?

“I’m sorry,” Five whispered. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry I was never there.”

He felt Klaus’s hand on the back of his head which was so odd because they always used to be the same size, but now-

Five feels so small.

“No, Fivey, don’t apologize,” Klaus said softly. “You were there. More than you know.”

Five doesn’t have the right energy or mindset to decipher what that could mean right now. Instead, he sniffs and rubs his eyes and takes a step back. “I’ll let you get cleaned up now.”

He handed Klaus a clean towel and then left the bathroom, taking a deep breath and retrieving the briefcase from Klaus’s bedroom where he had dropped it. He glared at it, remembering the awful times he had to use it on missions.

He could use it again, now. He could go back and fix his mistakes in the last three days.

But that would mean starting over with Klaus. Again .

Five took the briefcase outside, and slammed it against the concrete alleyway.

There would be no starting over. Not anymore.

• • •

“Five? What are you doing?”

Five snapped his head up, Luther’s voice waking him. He was slumped against the wall outside of Klaus’s bedroom, not wanting to go far from him last night.

Within the second, Five was fully away and on his feet, glaring daggers are Luther and Diego, who stood next to him. “Where the hell have you two been?” He seethed.

“ Us ?” Luther raised his eyebrows. “Where have you been?”

“Two psychos shot up the house two days ago looking for you ,” Diego added.

Five turned his glare on Number Two. “And you want to know what they took instead?”

Luther and Diego were silent and confused, and Five gently pushed open Klaus’s door to reveal his sleeping figure, bruises visible on his bare chest.

“They took Klaus . And none of you noticed,” Five hissed, his voice dangerously low as he closed Klaus’s door.

His two brothers in front of him had the decency to look ashamed.

“Okay, we’re to blame for that,” Luther admitted. “We should have realized Klaus was gone. Sorry, Five.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” Five scowled.

Diego spoke up. “Either way, we only missed him because we were out looking for you. You gotta tell us what’s going on and why people with guns are hunting you down.”

Well, that was fair.

Five agreed to talk, and the three went down to the kitchen and sat down at the table. Right off the bat, Five opened with, “The world is going to end. I jumped forward and got stuck in an apocalypse. Don’t say I’m crazy or lying, I have no reason to.”

Luther and Diego shared a look, and then nodded.

“When’s it supposed to happen?” Luther asked, still a little skeptical sounding. “This… apocalypse.”

“I can’t give you the exact hour, but… from what I could gather, we have four days left.”

Diego's eyebrows shot up. “You’ve been here for four days already and couldn’t stop to say anything sooner?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Five mumbled, wishing he had coffee with him.

“Of course it would!” Luther exclaimed. “We could’ve banded together and helped you try to stop this thing.”

Five bit his lip, trying to remember to stay calm and not lose his temper. “For the record, you already tried.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Diego asked sharply, flipping a knife.

Looking down, Five frowned and tried to gather the right words to say. He and Klaus had never really planned what to tell their siblings when it came to finding their bodies and burying them. It was a heavy thing.

“I… found all of you,” Five said carefully. “Your bodies.”

Luther blinked in surprise. “We die?”

Five closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

Five couldn’t think. He couldn’t do math. All he could do was stare at his sibling’s corpses, and firmly ignore the cold stream of tears falling down his face.

“Horribly,” Five whispered. “You were together. Trying to stop whoever it was that ends the world.”

“Wait, how do you know that?” Luther frowned.

Five reached into his pocket and pulled out the eye. The eye that has been with him for twenty-two years, longer than his siblings had been with him. “This was clutched in your dead hand when I found you.”

He tossed it across the table, and Luther caught it, staring down at it with wide eyes. Five supposed it must have been eerie, to hold the thing your dead self once did.

“Must’ve ripped it out of their head right before you went down,” he added.

“Whose head?” Diego grabbed the eye from Luther to study it.

Five lifted one shoulder. “Like I said, I don’t know.”

“Tried looking up the serial number?” Diego asked, squinting at the print.

“Dead end,” Five sighed. “It’s just another hunk of glass.” Diego handed it back, and Five slipped it into his pocket.

The trio was silent before Diego stuck the point of his knife into the table, leaning forward on his elbows and pointing at Five. “You were in the middle of that shootout at Griddy’s. And Gimbel’s. Those were the same guys here, weren’t they?”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“It is if they’re going to come into my home and attack my family.”

Luther tilted his head and agreement. “Who are they, Five?”

Now this is something Five really didn’t want to get into. The Commission was an awful time and Five would have loved to avoid talking about it for as long as possible. Though it seemed like his time was up.

“They work for my former employer. A woman called the Handler.”

Even saying her name made his blood boil.

She killed Klaus.

“She sent them to stop me.”

“Former employer? What’s this really about, Five, and don’t give us any of this ‘It’s none of our business’ crap, alright?” Luther glared at him.

Five sighed, knowing her couldn’t hide it forever. “Well, it’s a long story.”

He started by explaining how the Handler had shown up in the apocalypse and explained what the Commission was, and how they balanced out the time continuum. 

“They turned me into the perfect instrument for rehabilitation of the time continuum. Or, corrections , as they called them. I wasn’t the only one, there are others like me. Beings out of time, fractured, extracted from the lives that they knew. I don’t know how they got there. But I do know that none of them were as good as me.”

Pausing, he let himself remember back on the many missions and the many people he had killed. He took a deep breath and continued.

“They didn’t realize it, but I was biding my time, trying to figure out the right equation so I could get back. That was my plan all along, get back and stop the apocalypse. Save the world. I wasn’t completely ready to come back when I did, but certain… circumstances made me.”

His brother. The boy he’d survived the end of the world with. The first person he’d ever truly learned to love. He was gone, and Five had no idea where he went.

So, he did the only thing that made sense to him.

The thing he vowed he would do the second he saw his siblings and the apocalypse.

He closed his eyes and focused on the past. On the Umbrella Academy.

And he jumped.

His brothers were quiet until Luther cleared his throat. “So… you were a hit man?”

“Yes,” Five answered plainly.

“Uh… I mean, you had a code, right? You didn’t kill just anybody.”

“No code. We took out anyone who messed with the timeline.”

Diego whistled lowly, an amused look on his face. “Anyone?”

“What about innocent people?” Luther was frowning.

“It was the only way I could get back here.”

“But that’s murder!”

Now Diego laughed, “Ah, come on, Number One , grow up.”

Five had never been very close with Diego as a child, and got easily annoyed by him, but was grateful for his bluntness in this situation. “There’s no such thing as good guys or bad guys. There’s just people, goin’ about their lives. But when the world ends, all those people die, including our family. Time changes everything.”

Five stood up, and went to check on Klaus.

Chapter Text

Since Klaus had still been asleep when Five checked, he retreated to his room to regroup and plan with the change of events that had happened.

Unfortunately, he was running out of wall space.

Fortunately, he might not need more space.

“Okay, I think I’ve got something, Delores,” Five stepped back, standing on his bed. “It’s tenuous, but promising.”

It’s about time. You’ve only been working for years.

He rolled his eyes at her.

Footsteps down the hall got louder, and Luther entered his room. “Who’re you talking to? What is all this?”

Without turning around, Five answered while writing some final details. “It’s a probability map.”

“Probability of what?”

“Of whose death could save the world,” Five spared him an annoyed glance. “I’ve narrowed it down to four.”

“Are you saying one of these four people causes the apocalypse?” Luther pointed.

Five let out an exasperated breath. “No, I’m saying that their death might prevent it.”

Luther nodded and Five turned to continue writing, but stopped when Luther leaned and and said quietly, “I’m not following.”

Turning, wondering why he was even bothering, Five explained, “Time is fickle, Luther. The slightest alteration in events can lead to massively different outcomes in the time continuum. The butterfly effect. So, all I have to do is find the people with the greatest probability of impacting the timeline, wherever they may be, and kill them.”

He jumped off his bed and grabbed some paper to continue writing as Luther walked around his bed to read the list of names.

“Milton Greene. So who’s he, a terrorist or something?”

“I believe he is a gardener,” Five squinted up at his writing on the wall.

Luther’s head snapped towards him. “You can’t be serious. Wait, this is madness, Five. You-” he stopped as Five took out a bag with a rifle. “Wh-where’d you get that?”

“In Dad’s room. I think he used it to shoot a rhinoceros. It’s similar to the model I used at work,” Five pulled out the gun and held it up. “Nice shoulder fit and highly reliable.”

“But you can’t- this guy Milton is just an innocent man.”

Five rolled his eyes. “It’s basic math. His death could potentially save the lives of billions. If I did nothing, he’d be dead in four days anyways. The apocalypse won’t spare anyone.”

“We don’t do this kind of thing,” Luther argued.

“ We are not doing anything. I am.”

But Luther wouldn’t relent. “I can’t let you go and kill innocent people, Five, no matter how many lives you’ll save.”

“Well, good luck stopping me,” Five bit out and turned to leave his room.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Luther said, then grabbed Delores and dangled her out of the window. Five wheeled around and aimed the rifle at Luther.

“ Put . Her . Down ,” he said dangerously.

Luther raised a brow. “Put the gun down. You’re not killing anyone today. I know she’s important to you, so don’t make me do this. It’s either her or the gun. You decide.” When Five didn’t answer, Luther let go.

Five dropped the gun and blinked to the window, catching Delores before she fell, pulling her back inside where Luther now had the gun. “I can keep doing this all day.”

Defeated, Five sat on his bed and held Delores close.

“I know you’re still a good person, Five. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have risked everything coming back here to save us all. But you’re not on your own anymore.”

Letting out a sigh, Five pursed his lips. Luther was right. At least, Five tried to be a good person if only for Klaus. And he wasn’t alone. He had never been alone.

“There is one way. But it’s just about impossible,” he turned to look at Luther.

“More impossible than what brought you back here?”

Well. That was an argument if Five ever saw one.

He had wanted Klaus to come, mainly just because he didn’t want to be separated from Klaus right now, but after learning he had gone somewhere with Diego, Five settled for just going with Luther.

They took one of Dad’s old cars to the spot Five had told Hazel and Cha-Cha to meet them. A long, lone road on the outskirts of town. Luther pulled over and parked on the side. Five unbuckled and leaned forward against the fake briefcase they were going to exchange.

He could feel the tension radiating off Luther, and turned to him. “You know, I never enjoyed it.”

“What?”

“The killing. I mean, I was… I was good at my work, and I… I took pride in it. But it never gave me pleasure. I had a friend and he… kept me moral. Killing went against everything he liked.”

Five still remembered the first time he killed.

His trigger finger was ready, but then he stopped when Klaus came to mind.

What would Klaus say?

What would Klaus say when he found out his brother was a killer?

Would he see the ghost of Tyler Dale following Five around?

Five took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

He took the shot.

“Yeah, well, you were gone for such a long time. I only spent four years on the moon, but that was more than enough. I’m glad you had someone.”

Five was, too. He just wished he could tell him.

“You think they’ll buy it?” Luther looked at the fake briefcase.

“Well, what I do know is that they’re desperate. It’s like a cop losing his gun. If the Commission finds out, they’ll be in deep shit,” Five sighed, knowing how stressful it was to make sure you never lost your briefcase. “Oh, not to mention the fact that they’ll be stuck here until they get it back.”

“Well, I should hold onto it.”

“Hm?” Five frowned.

Luther shrugged. “In case they make a move on you.”

A rush of gratitude swept through Five, but of course, he didn’t let it show. “Okay, Luther, but be careful. I mean, I’ve lived a long life, but you’re still a young man. You got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t waste it.”

“You’re only, like, five years older than me.”

Five smirked.

A moment later, they looked forward and saw a car coming towards them. “Here we go,” Five breathed, and he and Luther got out of the car. Hazel and Cha-Cha, still wearing their masks, passed them and parked on the other side of the road.

“If this all goes sideways, do me a favor and tell Delores I’m sorry,” Five told Luther. “And tell Klaus… just… tell him I believe in him.”

Before Luther could question, Hazel and Cha-Cha got out and started walking towards them, and Five went to meet them in the middle.

“The masks really necessary?” Five raised his eyebrows.

The agents pulled them off and tossed them to the side. Upon seeing their faces, Five felt a surge of anger and remembered Klaus taped to the chair, but kept his cool.

“So, where is it, kid?” Cha-Cha snapped.

“Wow, that’s how you’re gonna start. You know, we can get right back in our car and call it a day,” Five taunted.

“You won’t even make it halfway there,” Cha-Cha replied, pulling out their guns and training them on Five.

Of course, Five could just blink away. But he wouldn’t leave Luther in danger like that.

“Maybe. But as I’m sure you found out in your previous foray, my brother is not your average giant.”

“He’s right,” Hazel nodded. “You dropped a chandelier on him, got right back up.”

“By the time you took him out, he’d smash your precious briefcase to a pulp,” Five resisted the urge to grin, since that’s exactly what he did.

Hazel held out his gun to the side. “Probably us too, right? So how do we help each other?”

“I need you to get in contact with your superior so I can have a chat with her. Face-to-face.”

Cha-Cha still trailed her gun on him. “About what?”

“Well, I don’t believe that’s any of your concern.”

“Just don’t tell her about the briefcase.”

Five nodded, and Cha-Cha lowered her gun. “Fair enough.” He walked backwards towards Luther as the other two went towards the phone booth on the side of the road. Cha-Cha dialed in a number and Five leaned back against their car.

“What happens now?” Luther asked.

“Now we wait.”

That didn’t work for very long, because a moment later they heard the creepy tune of an ice cream truck, and turned to see one driving towards them from the same direction Hazel and Cha-Cha had come from. The two Commission agents looked just as confused as Five and Luther were.

“Is that her?” Luther asked.

But upon closer inspection, it was actually Klaus driving the truck, waving at them as he passed, and Diego sitting pale-faced in the passenger’s seat.

Five’s eyebrows came together as his gaze followed the truck. “What the hell is he doing here?”

“It’s a setup!” Cha-Cha yelled, and her and Hazel began firing at the truck.

Right when Five moved to blink into the truck to get Klaus out, and Luther moved in front of Five, everything around him slowed and froze still. A strange filter settled over everything, upping the saturation and making the world appear more blue, yellow, and green than it really was.

Five moved out from behind Luther, ducking under his arm. He hurried over to the ice cream truck to make sure he was okay, and saw him grinning widely and holding the steering wheel tightly. Five smiled to himself a little.

“Neat trick, isn’t it?”

Her voice. Five turned and saw her in one of her ridiculous outfits standing there and it took all of his self restraint not to attack her.

“Hello, Five. You look good, all things considered.”

“It’s good to see you again,” he lied. 

“Feels like we met just yesterday. Course, you were a little bit older, then. Congratulations on the age regression, by the way. Very clever. Threw us all off the scent.”

He nodded bitterly. “Ah, well, I wish I could take credit. I just miscalculated the time dilation projections, and… well, you know. Here I am.”

“You realize your efforts are futile. So why don’t you tell me what you really want?”

I want my brother back.

“I want you to put a stop to it.”

“You realize what you’re asking for is next to impossible, even for me,” the Handler shook her head. “What’s meant to be is meant to be. That’s our raison d'être."

Five pulled a gun out from his waistband and pointed it at her. “Are me and my brother meant to be separated?” He seethed.

“Klaus was limiting you from reaching your fullest potential, Five. We eliminated the obstacle.”

He held the gun higher. “Don’t you dare say his name. And how about survival as a raison?”

“I’ll just be replaced. I’m but a small cog in a machine,” she took a step forward. This fantasy you’ve been nurturing about summoning up your family to stop the apocalypse… is just that. A fantasy. I must say, though, we’re all quite impressed with your initiative, your stick-to-itiveness. Really, quite… quite something.”

Complimenting will get her nowhere , Five thought as he scowled.

“Which is why we want to offer you a new position back at the Commission, in management.”

Five let out an incredulous laugh. “Sorry, what’s that now? The place Klaus worked?”

She took another step forward. “Yes. Come back to work for us again, you know it’s where you belong.”

“Well, it didn’t work out too well the last time,” he glared at her.

“But you wouldn’t be in the correction division any longer. I’m talking about the home office. You’d have the best health and pension, and an end to this ceaseless travel. You’re a distinguished professional in schoolboy shorts. We have the technology to reverse the process. I mean, you,” she pushed his hand holding the gun down. “You can’t be happy like this.”

He kept his arm down but kept venom in his voice. “I’m not looking for happy. You took away that choice when you took away Klaus.”

“We’re all looking for happy. And it can come in many ways. We can make that happen. We can make you yourself again.”

Five glanced back at the ice cream truck Klaus sat in. “And what about my family?”

“What about them?”

“I want them to survive,” he said through gritted teeth.

The Handler took a deep breath and looked from Luther to the truck with Klaus and Diego. “All of them?”

“Yes, all of them,” Five narrowed his eyes.

She took sunglasses from her pocket and put them on. “Well,” she held out her hand, “I’ll see what I can do. Do we have a deal?”

He eyed her hand. “One thing.”

Five walked over to where the bullet that Cha-Cha shot was suspended in midair, and moved it to the side so it wouldn’t hit Luther. Then he picked her gun up and took out the cylinder, flinging the bullets to the side, and the gun to the other.

Then he went to Klaus, peering up at him through the glass of the window. “You won’t do anything to harm him ever again.”

“That is not your Klaus, Five.”

He turned to her, scowling. “Every Klaus is my Klaus. And you won’t hurt any version of him again. Understand?”

She sighed, but nodded, then held out her hand.

Five took it, and the transported away.

• • •

The second Five laid eyes on the Commission building, he immediately wanted to blink away. Being back was awful, and even more horrifying, like being home in some way. Like it or not, he and Klaus’s first “home” away from the apocalypse was the Commission.

But nothing would even be home like the apocalypse was.

“I must admit, Number Five, in all the time that I’ve been here, I’ve never met anyone quite like you.”

Being back near the Handler was awful, too. Everytime she even took a breath next to him he wanted to grab a rifle and aim it at her for what she did to Klaus. But, in hopes to save the world, he kept his composure.

“Hazel and Cha-Cha, for example, are talented, certainly, but… they can’t see the big picture. Your spunk, your enterprising spirit, well, it reminds me a great deal of myself, if I may be so vainglorious.”

Five said nothing.

“If things work out for you here, you could potentially make a fine successor, Five.”

Successor. The thought of running the company that had turned him into a murdering machine made him want to, well… murder .

They made it up the path and into the building’s main entrance, and Five finally spoke. “I’d like to discuss the logistics of my family’s safety at your earliest convenience. As well as this body replacement.”

“Such chutzpah,” the Handler commented as they climbed the stairs. “It’s refreshing, I’ll admit. Slow down, Five, all in good time. In fact, now that you’ve finally agreed to work with us, we’ve got all the time in the world.”

Wrong. He had three days before he lost Klaus again.

“The Commission works in support of a delicate balance between the timeline of events and mankind’s free will,” the Handler spoke, but Five’s eyes were trained on the window into the Briefcase Room, where he used to spend most of his time. “The briefcase is no longer part of your kit, Five. Free your mind. You’re management now. One of us.”

“Oh, wonderful! You’re going to make a great assassin, Number Five.”

He continued walking, being led up another floor.

“All the people on this floor are case managers, each one responsible for one major event at a time,” the Handler explained.  

Five peered in a room full of people at typewriters. “So many of them,” he muttered.

“Impressive, isn’t it? Being a part of something so grand. Come along,” and then they were walking. “Whenever someone chooses the wrong path, and the timeline is changed, the Commission gets a report from field agents on the ground. These field reports are sorted and assigned to a case manager. They determine if anyone needs to be… removed from the equation to assure that their event happens as it should.”

They were now at a room full of tubes that sent away familiar looking cylinders. Five recognized them as instructions he would receive while on a job.

“Based on that determination, the case manager sends instructions via pneumatic tube to temporal assassins like you formerly were, Number Five. Any queries so far?” She smiled down at him, and he wanted to hit her.

“Yeah. Who was the case manager handling me and-” he shocked on his words. “Me and Klaus.”

The Handler nodded. “Ah, you mean the apocalypse,” and took him down the hall to a room with less people and typewriters, up to a woman who looked to be in her thirties, but you could never really tell at the Commission.

“Five, meet Dot. Dot is responsible for all apocalypse matters. In fact, it was Dot here who first flagged yours and Klaus’s appearance in 2019.”

Dot smiled at Five, though less in a friendly way than in a way of someone studying their scientific fair project brought to life. “No hard feelings.”

“Well, you certainly put us through the ringer,” the Handler looked at him. “Outsmarting two of our so-called best temporal assassins. If that doesn’t spell leadership material …” she said the last words loudly, causing everyone in the room to look up. “... I just don’t know.”

Everyone began typing again, and the Handler moved to the desk in front of Dot’s. “I suspect you like a challenge, Five. Which is why I’ve given you a particularly complex first case,” she handed him a red folder. “It’s too bad Joseph Spah decided against sabotaging the fuel tank. It would’ve been so much easier. Anyhoo… if you have any questions, I’ll be right behind you.”

He frowned at her, and she left the office room. Five sunk down into his chair and dropped the folder on his desk, feeling lonelier than ever. When he was at the Commission, he’d always had Klaus to keep him sane.

But they had taken that from him.

Chapter Text

A few hours later, Five was still lazily punching letters into his typewriter, formulating a plan to stop the apocalypse from inside the home office.

“Hiya, Five! How’s it going?” Dot called from behind him.

“I must have utter silence in order to complete this task,” he replied, pulling his paper off and rolling it up. He had no desire to speak to the woman that stalked him and his brother growing up.

“Oh, O-okay,” she stammered. Then, a few seconds later, “A few of us are having lunch, and I was wondering if you…” he cleared his throat, “...you’re doing something.”

Five pulled a tube sent to field agents out from a drawer at his desk and dropped his paper into it, screwed on the lid, then got up and walked out the door, ignoring Dot’s farewell.

Although he had never spent much time on this side of the Commission, he still knew his way around fairly well. It had only been less than a week since he was last here, even though it felt much longer. He walked back to the tube room he had seen before, but right when he opened the chute to send it down, he was stopped.

“I’m afraid that’s not procedure,” the Handler stopped him, and he resisted the urge to whack her in the face with the cylinder. She took it from him before he could. “Five, meet Gloria.”

The woman at the desk in the office next to the tube room stood up. She was old and Five hated everyone here.

“Gloria is perhaps the single most vital cog in our machine. Gloria, this is Number Five.”

“Look at you,” she smiled. “Deadly little thing.”

He felt like screaming.

“So happy we decided to close the contract on your life.”

Klaus. Klaus would calm him down. Klaus would say something like, You’re too kind, Gloria, and then add What the hell? in their secret language.

God, he missed Klaus.

“I’m afraid your reputation precedes you. And it looks like you’re building on it here,” The Handler unrolled the note Five meant to send. “Oh. Karl Weber. Now tell me, why unfortunate Karl?”

“Karl Weber is the butcher at the shop where Captain Ernst. A Lehmann acquires his weekly roast. So, if Karl dies, his butcher shop is passed on to his son Otto, who never washes his hands, which is disgusting,” Five explains.

“So he’s the one who gives the captain his roast,” the Handler catches on.

Five nodded. “And that gives him food poisoning.”

“Which makes him late for work. Which delays the takeoff.”

“And to make up for lost time, the Hindenburg flies through a weather front of high electrical charge and humidity.”

“And the static electricity inside the aircraft makes it a virtual tinderbox. Tiny engine sparks…”

Five raised his hand up. “And just like that, we have…” he brought his hand down, and made a crashing noise.

Though the Handler might have been amused, she still led him back to the offices, and back to his desk.

“I’m sure you’ve all heard that Mr. Five has proven to be as adept with a pen as he was with a sword,” She announced to the others as they walked in. “Let his effort serve as inspiration to you all. Herb! How long have you been on the Lusitania?”

The man in the desk next to Five’s looked up as Five sat down. “Oh, ah… Well, let’s see, I, uh… I-”

“Sorry?”

“When I first started-”

“Sorry? I can’t hear you.”

“I-”

“Still can’t hear you.”

A buzzer cut them off. Everyone else got up and started leaving the office to go to lunch, and Five watched the Handler leave with them. When the room was empty, he grabbed the red folder from Dot’s desk and shoved it up his vest, then hurried to the bathroom to look at it.

But even locked in a stall, the Handler still found him, her red heels clicking against the tile as she went in the stall next to him. “So how’s your first day going?’

Five scowled to himself. “Couldn’t be better.”

“Glad to hear it,” she answered, and he winced at the lack at what he was hearing, shoving the red folder back up his vest. 

She began coughing, and he shook his head in exasperation. This was his life.

“I burnt my rugae. Ever burn your rugae? Rugae. The ridges on the hard palate that help us pass food to the esophagus. Anyway, I’m on a liquid diet for two days, hence the marathon of urination. One faulty cog, and nothing works as it should.”

He did not need to know any of that.

“You know, we value integrity at the office above all else. Trust is essential, and that trust is built over time. But in the event of a breach, the Commission will act swiftly and without mercy. An efficiency I’m sure you above all people can appreciate, Number Five.”

The toilet flushed, and he held the folder closer against his chest as she walked out of the stall.

“I’m feeling peckish. Have you had your lunch?”

“Not yet,” he answered, wanting her to leave .

He heard her washing her hands. “Great. How would you like to lunch with me in my office? You could eat solid foods and I can live vicariously through you.”

She poked her head over the stall door and Five almost threw the folder at her head.

“Sounds great.”

The Handler’s office was exactly how Five remembered it. He was seated in the chair across her on the other side of the desk, just as he had been when she first explained his job to him.

“Care for dessert?” She asked.

Five instantly shook his head. “I had a bad Twinkie in the apocalypse once. It kind of put me off desserts.”

“Please, indulge me,” she gestured to a dish of what looked like toffees. Five sighed and grabbed one, popping it in his mouth. “What’s that taste like to you?”

He frowned, feeling ridiculous as he asked, “The 1950’s?”

“Precisely right. Our clever metaphysics division concocted a way to perfectly distill an entire decade into a single candy. This one’s modeled after the Fudge Mutt, America’s favorite 1955.”

“Remarkable,” Five said absentmindedly. He missed Klaus.

“You’ll be happy to know it’s the very division that’s building your new body.”

This got his attention. If he could have his thirty-five year old self back, that would be ideal. Being thirteen again was not fun.

“Oh, that reminds me, I have something for you,” she pressed a button on the coms machine on her desk. “Carla?”

“Yes?” A woman’s voice replied over the coms.

“Would you bring in the box, please?”

“Certainly.”

A moment later, the woman walked in and placed a large white box on the desk next to Five, and the Handler walked around her desk to join him on the other side. “Go head, open it.” He lifted the lid to reveal larger clothes that weren’t his school uniform. “Clothes make the man, Five. Won’t it be nice when you can actually wear it? Very soon, I assure you. They’re perfecting your body as we speak.”

He glanced at her. “Thank you. It’s a very kind gift,” then he turned and pointed at her weapons display in the back of the room. “Is that a Chinese flamethrower?”

“Good eye,” she confirmed, and he walked over as she rambled on about war.

What he was focused on was the tiny hand grenades surrounding the flamethrower. If he could sneak one, his plan would be set. The Handler walked over to describe some of the things she collected, lifting up one of the grenades and tossing it. Five followed it with his eyes.

“And this, the most noteworthy, perhaps,” she picked up a gun. “My Walther pistol. The very one Hitler used to kill himself. We’re not supposed to take these kinds of things, but he wasn’t gonna use it anymore.”

To distract her, Five started talking about other things. “I have some thoughts I wanted to run by you. Some suggestions to improve Commission protocol,” he said, slipping two grenades into his pocket.

She agreed to hear them as they walked back to the desk, Five planning to grab a grenade later. “Gloria, the tube operator. Wouldn’t it be simpler if case managers were to send their own messages?”

“I appreciate the thought, I really do. But everyone loves Gloria. I- I would never hear the end of it,” the Handler laughed. “She’s been with the Commission family for years, and she’s this close to making pension.”

There was a knock at the door, and Dot walked in. “Sorry to interrupt. May I have a moment alone?”

“Of course. Duty calls. We’ll continue this discussion later, Five.”

“Sure,” he pointed to the candy. “May I?”

She smiled, “Please.”

He grabbed a few, stuffing them in his pocket, and then headed out of her office.

God, he hated that room.

Five paused around the corner to wait for Dot to leave the Handler’s, sure that she was spilling the beans on Five being up to something. The case manager left the office and he subtly followed her to the tube room.

“Gloria, the Handler knows that Five is up to something. Get this to Hazel and Cha-Cha immediately,” Dot was saying as Five blinked into the tube room and hid behind one of the tube machines.

When Dot left and Gloria began to walk into the tube room, Five blinked behind her and stapled the back of her neck with a stapler he had grabbed, causing her to fall to the floor. He quickly grabbed the tube Dot had given to Gloria and removed the paper, seeing what it said.

Protect Harold Jenkins.

Five made a mental note to remember that name, and instead, typed out a message to Hazel to kill Cha-Cha, and a message to Cha-Cha- to kill Hazel. He sent the messages into the tubes just as a voice spoke up from the doorway.

“You know that’s not how we do things here.”

The Handler was standing there, smiling tightly at Five. He leaned an elbow on the tube. “Where’s Gloria?”

Five shook his head. “Don’t know. Couldn’t find her anywhere.”

Stupid Gloria chose that moment to groan from the spot where she lay behind her desk. The Handler’s smile faded as she turned to see the woman on the floor. Sensing danger, Five slowly leaned off the tube and took a step back.

“You’re a great disappointment to me,” the Handler said as she turned back to Five. “You can’t change what’s to come, Five. I truly find it so odd that you can’t shed this fantasy. You’re a first-rate pragmatist. You belong here with us.”

“I don’t belong anywhere , thanks to you,” he seethed. “The only place I belonged was with Klaus, but now he’s gone, too. You made me a killer!”

“You were always a killer. I just pointed you in a direction.”

She raised the pistol from her office, and Five quickly blinked as she fired a shot. Someone from the hall hit the alarm, and an electronic voice started repeating Security breach in tube room over the speakers.

The Handler passed where he was crouched and fired again, but he blinked out of the way. 

“What’s the rush, Five? We’re just getting started. Is this really how you want the last line of your report to read?”

He blinked behind her. “When I’m done, I’m just done, I guess,” he smiled sourly.
She turned and pointed her gun at him. “You can’t keep this up, Five. We both know that even you have a limit.”

Hell, she was right. This body could only use so much energy at a time.

“I saved you from a lifetime with no one else but incompetent ghost hunter,” she scowled. “You owe me.”

She fired again, but she was out of bullets.

“I do owe a debt,” Five said lowly, blinking behind her to Gloria’s office, pulling the grenade from his pocket. “But it’s not to you,” he pulled out the pin and held it up, smiling bitterly as she looked at him. “And if you ever call Klaus  incompetent again…” he rolled the grenade to her feet.

“I’ll have him unleash all the ghosts he can summon you.”

The last thing he heard before blinking away was “ Shit .”

An explosion boomed, and he hurried to the briefcase room to grab one for himself, then yanked the pin out of the second grenade with his teeth, throwing it at the briefcases.

Just as the second explosion went off, he held the briefcase up in front of him, and teleported back to 2019.

Chapter Text

The next thing he knew, he was landing on the countertop of the bar in the living room of the Academy, the briefcase underneath him.

“Je-Jesus!” He heard Allison yell.

“You guys, am I still high, or do you see him too?”

Klaus.

Five jumped to his feet and threw himself into Klaus’s arms. He didn’t care that he probably looked insane to the others or that this Klaus had no idea how much Five loved hugging him, but he didn’t care. Being at the Commission had brought up too many painful memories for him not to hug Klaus.

He let out a sigh of relief when Klaus wrapped his hugs around him slowly and hugged him back.

When he regained his composure, he stood up without a word and yanked the coffee cup from Allison’s hand, downing it in one gulp.

Oh, he also decided to ignore the piece of shrapnel he felt lodged in his side. A problem for another time.

“So, the apocalypse is in three days,” he faced his family. “The only chance we have to save our world is, well, us.”

“The Umbrella Academy,” Luther commented.

Five rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but with me , obviously. So if y’all don’t get your sideshow acts together and get over yourselves, we’re screwed. Who cares if Dad messed us up? Are we gonna let that define us?”

Klaus was shaking his head. Five only just managed not to hug him again.

“No. And to give us a fighting chance to see next week, I’ve come back with a lead,” he held up the paper he stole from Dot’s tube. “I know who’s responsible for the apocalypse. This is who we have to stop.”

Allison held out her hand and Five gave her the paper. She unfolded it and frowned. “Harold Jenkins?”

“Who the hell is Harold Jenkins?” Diego asked from behind her.

Five drained the last of the coffee and chucked the cup across the room. “I don’t know. Yet. But I do know that he’s responsible for the apocalypse. So we have to find him. And we have to do it now.”

“How is he connected to what’s gonna happen?” Luther asked.

“I don’t know,” Five admitted.

Diego raised a brow and stepped forward. Five noted his arm was in a sling. “Wait, so you just know his name? That’s it?”

“That’s enough!” Five exclaimed defensively.

“There’s probably dozens of Harold Jenkinsens in the city.”

Rolling his eyes, Five retorted, “Well, we just better start looking, then.”

Allison shook her head. “I’m sorry, am I the only one that’s skeptical here? I mean, how exactly do you know all of this about what’s-his-name?”

As she spoke, Five winced and glanced down at his stomach, where he could see a dark stain on his vest where the shrapnel was. He looked up, and no one had noticed his pain. Well, almost no one.

Klaus was looking at him with a sharpness to his gaze that shouldn’t have been there for someone who’s “high”. They made eye contact and Klaus shifted his gaze to Five’s side in question. Five just looked away quickly.

“Harold Jenkins. You know those lunatics in masks who attacked the house?”

“Oh, yeah, I think I remember those guys,” Klaus scratched the back of his head.

“Yeah, the ones who attacked us while you were stalking a prosthetics doctor?” Diego glared at Five.

Five waved his hand dismissively. “Yeah. Them. They were sent by the Temps Commission to stop me from coming back and preventing life on Earth.”

“The Temps what ?” Allison arched a brow.

He didn’t have time for this. “My former employer. They monitor all of time and space to make sure that whatever is supposed to happen happens.”

“You went back there?” Klaus asked quietly, and everyone looked at him.

Five froze. There was a sense of familiarity to his look. Klaus wore that expression all the time in the Commission, the slightly wide-eyed, half hatred half fear filled look. He had the same face now, and Five could have sworn his Klaus was back.

But that was impossible. He saw him disappear. Right in front of him.

“Yeah,” Five said, then cleared his throat. “They believe the apocalypse is coming in three days. So I went to Commission headquarters and intercepted a message that was meant for said lunatics. Protect Harold Jenkins . So he must be responsible for the apocalypse.”

His siblings were quiet for a moment before they all began speaking at once.

“What do you mean protect time and space ?”

“What are you even talking about, Five?”

“I’m going after Hazel and Cha-Cha.”

“You seriously went back there?”

“Do you have any idea how insane this sounds?”

Five snapped his head up, glaring at Allison, who was the last to speak. “You know what else is insane? I look like a thirteen year old boy, Klaus talks to the dead, and Luther thinks he’s fooling everybody with that overcoat. Everything about us is insane. It always has been.”

Klaus spoke up from the couch. “He’s got a point there.”

“We didn’t choose this life, we’re just living it. For the next three days, anyway.”

“But the last time we tried to stop it, we all died. Why is this time any different? Why shouldn’t I go home to my daughter?” Allison argued.

“Because this time, I’m here. We have the name of the man responsible. Guys, we actually have the chance of saving the lives of billions of people. Including Claire.”

Allison blinked in surprise. “You know her name?”

“I do. And I’d like to live long enough to meet her.”

He had half said it only to convince Allison to take this seriously, but found out how much he meant it. Ever since he and Klaus had gone to the apocalypse, all he ever wanted was quality time with his family that wasn’t combat training.

“Alright,” Allison agreed. “Let’s get this bastard.”

Diego nodded. “You had me at Gerald Jenkins.”

Five’s lips twitched in what might have been a grin. “ Harold Jenkins.”

“Whatever. I’ve already lost one person this week, I’m not losing anyone else.”

“And Luther?” Five turned to him.

“Yeah, you guys go. I’m gonna stay behind and go through Dad’s files. I still think this has something to do with why he sent me to the moon.”

Diego looked at him. “Seriously? Now you wanna make the end of the world about you and Dad?”

Luther blinked exasperatedly. “No, watch for threats , that’s what he told me. You think that’s a coincidence? This all has to be connected somehow.”

“No, we should all stick together,” Allison stepped forward.

“We don’t have time for this!” Five cut them off.

“Let’s roll,” Diego agreed. “I know where we can find this asshole. Klaus, you’re with me.”

Klaus, who had been abnormally silent, looked up from the couch, and then at Five. He opened his mouth, then closed it, trying to find the right words.

“Klaus is with me,” Five said instantly, recognizing that look from when Klaus got paired up with someone else during training at the Commission.

But- no. That was a different Klaus.

Wasn’t it?

• • •

A drive later, Diego was parked in front of the police station, Five in the passenger’s seat, Allison and Klaus in the back.

“I know this Jenkins dude has to have a record,” Diego explained. “We just gotta get our hands on this file.”

“And your plan is to, what? Waltz in there and just ask for it?” Allison asked.

“I know the station like the back of my hand, sis,” Diego looked back at her. “I’ve spent a lot of time inside.”

Klaus laughed. “I bet you saw a whole lot through the bars of your cell.” Five glanced back and grinned at Klaus.

“I think I like you better high and incapable of making jokes like that,” Diego scowled. “Here’s the plan-”

“Plan?” Five frowned. “I’m just gonna blink in and get the file.”

Diego closed his eyes. “No, that’s not… you don’t know the ins and outs of this place, okay?”

“I literally just did this yesterday. Well, my yesterday, not your yesterday,” Five sighed. “It’ll take me two seconds, why don’t I just go-”

“Listen to me, you are not going in there. I made a call. That’s what a leader does. He leads.”

Five rolled his eyes and glanced to the mirror to see Klaus shaking his head at Diego. Allison just looked annoyed. A minute later, Diego got out of the car to go meet an officer he knew to get the file.

Biting down hard on his lip, Five stopped the hiss of pain that almost escaped as he shifted in his seat and the shrapnel moved a bit. He really needed to get that checked out, but there wasn’t any time. They had bigger things to worry about.

“You okay there, Five?” Klaus asked.

The nickname was so familiar. “Fine,” Five bit out.

Allison got out to go to a payphone, saying she needed to call Vanya, leaving Klaus and Five alone in the car. Five wanted to bring up something about Klaus speaking in their language, but didn’t want to confuse him in case it was some kind of glitch.

“I’m not high, you know,” Klaus said suddenly. “I haven’t been since… since-”

“Since you were kidnapped?” Five supplied helpfully. “I’m proud of you. And… I’m here. If you need help with your powers or anything. I’ve done it bef- I, um, studied them before, that is. That’s all.”

Klaus was looking at him as though he could see right through all of Five’s lies. 

He used to. He used to know Five best. 

“You’re not my best friend,” Five finally cut in.

Klaus smirked and raised an eyebrow, then looked around. “Oh, really? Then who is?”

Five groaned and let his shoulders drop in defeat. Klaus laughed and threw an arm around Five’s sulking shoulders. “Like I said, it’s you and me. Right?”

At that moment, Allison got back into the car along with Diego, who was holding a file and smiling smugly. “You’re welcome,” he said as he held out the file.

Allison snatched it from his hand and opened it up, making Five turn around in the front seat to see what it said. “Holy shit,” Allison breathed, and Five frowned down at the picture of the man in the file.

“What?” Diego asked.

She turned the file around so they could all see the picture. “Harold Jenkins is Leonard Peabody.”

Who apparently is the man Vanya was with.

“Well,” Klaus breathed. “Relationships never were strong in our family anyways.”

Diego drove them to Harold Jenkins’ house, parking in front. Five limped as they walked up to the front steps, then controlled his steps more when Klaus shot him a look. Allison was glaring at the house.

“Be careful, okay? We don’t know what Peabody’s capable of,” she warned them.

“Yeah, he didn’t seem dangerous when I first saw him. Looked kinda scrawny,” Diego muttered.

“Yeah, well, so are most serial killers and mass murderers. I mean, look at him,” Allison gestured to Five.

He nodded. “Thanks.”

“I forgot what teenage you looked like. You really are scrawny,” Klaus commented in an amused tone, and Five looked at him with wide eyes as Diego raised his eyebrows.

“As opposed to what? Child him?”

“We never did get to see what Five our age looked like,” Allison nodded.

Klaus laughed it off, but Five could see the look on his face. He looked as though he got caught. Five shook it off and kept walking.

“So what’s this guy want with Vanya?” Diego asked.

“I don’t know,” Five muttered, suddenly feeling very protective over his closest sister. “How about we ask him after we kill him?”

They made it to the door and Diego held a hand out. “Whoa, whoa. Hey, look, I’m gonna burst through-” he stopped, and Five turned to see that Allison had walked off and Klaus was conversing with what Five assumed was Ben. “You know what? It would be nice for people to just stick to-”

Five blinked, cutting him off. He landed in the house as Allison walked through the back door. Diego came shattering through the glass on the front door, falling onto the ground. Klaus stepped over him and walked inside.

“There were a lot of better ways to go about getting inside, Diego,” Klaus breathed, and Five walked over and turned the handle.

“You know, the door was unlocked,” he observed, and snickered as Diego got to his feet and shot him a glare.

“Yeah, well my way works just fine,” Diego grumbled.

Klaus nodded. “If fine means spraining your other arm, then whatever you say, mein bruder .”

Five froze, looking at Klaus. Ever since he’d stopped taking pills and drinking, he’d been acting more and more like the Klaus Five grew up with. It was painful. It hurt, and made Five wish for the brother that knew everything about him back.

But it also made him happy.

Though his mood was killed by the searing pain in his side.

“Spread out,” Diego continued. “Yell if you, uh… you know, you’re in trouble.”

“Inspiring leadership,” Five called after him as Diego walked into the kitchen.

“One of the greats,” Allison added.

Allison and Klaus had gone upstairs while Five at stayed on the first floor with Diego. He was searching through the living room when he heard Allison yell, “Guys, you need to see this!” He shared a look with Diego and then climbed to the attic, where Klaus and Allison were.

There were pictures from old 2000’s pictures of them, the Umbrella Academy with their eyes scratched out and figurines with their heads burned off. And there was a lot of it. It creeped Five out.

“This guy’s got some serious issues,” Diego breathed.

“It’s a hate crime to have my perfect face ruined like this,” Klaus said, gazing at a picture of thirteen-year-old him with x’s over his eyes.

Allison went on to say something, but the flight up the stairs had drained Five. He grew dizzy and looked down to see blood on his knee under his shorts, having dripped down from his injury at his side.

His breathing grew shallow as he fell to the floor, groaning in pain. Klaus was on his knees next to him immediately, Allison and Diego not far behind. 

“I knew something was wrong with you,” Klaus growled, moving Five’s jacket aside and lifting up his vest and shirt to reveal the large wound on his stomach that was steadily pouring blood.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Diego demanded.

Five’s vision was blurry now. “You have to keep going…”

“God, it’s just like when you sprained your ankle,” Klaus muttered.

“Woah, woah, woah, easy there, cowboy,” Klaus said, reaching out his hands to steady Five, but stopping a few inches away when he remembered how little Five likes to be touched. “Your ankle’s clearly busted, buddy, you’re not going anywhere.”

“No!” Five exclaimed. “No, I’m not done , I have to finish , I need to go back!”

Five was too out of it to realize this timeline’s Klaus shouldn’t know about that.

“Klaus…” he breathed.

And then he blacked out.

Chapter Text

Klaus was a mess.

Well, Klaus was always a mess, but he was a big mess right now.

“Honey, he’s okay,” Mom placed her hand on Klaus’s arm and then taped a bandage over the wound on Five’s stomach. Klaus sat down in the chair next to the bed and took Five’s hand. His knee bounced up and down, unable to focus on what Allison and Diego were saying out in the hall.

“Calm down, Klaus,” Ben told him. “He’s okay now.”

Klaus waved his free hand at Ben and then started biting the nails on it. Mom finished up and gave Klaus’s shoulder a squeeze before leaving Five’s room. 

There was a silence that followed, and all that replayed in Klaus’s mind was Five falling and passing out. And the blood . There was still some on his hands from when he held Five in the car as they drove home.

“He’ll know, you know,” Ben finally spoke.

“Know what ?” Klaus glared at him.

Ben arched a brow. “He’ll know you’re the same Klaus from his life.”

And that. Well.

He would know.

Because Klaus had slipped up. He had replied instinctively in their language, which had alerted the Commission and caused him to get kidnapped by Hazel and Cha-Cha, and then he has given Five these looks and mentioned going back to the Commission but-

But he didn’t care.

He had lived two lifetimes, the first in the apocalypse with the brother that meant the entire world to him, the second as a junkie with the ghost of another brother who now also means the entire world to him.

Growing up again was easier when Ben was there to guide him. But the quicker he realized he wouldn’t be seeing Five again anytime soon, if ever again, the less he cared about being guided on the right path.

So he did the one thing he promised to Five he never would.

He drank. He smoked. He popped pills. Anything to take the bitter edge of losing Five away. It was too painful to go through the motions of growing without him.

And then he was back. In his thirteen year old body, tears pouring down his face from losing Klaus a minute ago, and Klaus could say nothing .

Five was back, Five was home , with him , and he could say nothing .

And now he was unconscious.

“I don’t think it matters anymore, Bennerino,” Klaus sighed. “The world is ending and my brother is back-” Klaus’s voice broke, and he held Five’s hand tighter. “You were great company, of course, but-”

“It’s okay, Klaus,” Ben said gently. “I understand. The life you lived with me wasn’t your first. Five was there first, and I’ve always understood that.”

Klaus smiled, hating how tears filled his eyes. “Thanks, Benny-Boo.”

“Never call me that again.”

Klaus laughed, and fell asleep feeling happier than he had in a while.

He woke up to Five’ hand being jerked out of his, and looked up to see Five holding back his hand like he burnt it, his eyes wide and unblinking at Klaus.

“Hey, mi hermano …” Klaus said awkwardly. “Feeling better?”

Five nodded slowly.

“I…” Klaus looked at Ben, who nodded encouragingly. “You know, Five. I know you know.”

Five was shaking his head in disbelief, and opened and closed his mouth a few times before deciding on what to say. “How?”

“It was the Commission. When I disappeared on that mission, they sent me back to October 2002, the day you went missing. Only this time, I was back, and I didn’t go with you. Though I guess, the other me still did? I don’t know. But that explains why we saw my body in the apocalypse. I was with you and I was here.”

Klaus stopped and looked at Five, who had silent tears on his face.

“So you’re…” Five whispered. “ You’re you ?” He asked in their language.

Klaus let a smile take over his face. “ I’m me. ”

And then Five was hugging him. He was leaning off the bed, his arms wrapped so tightly around Klaus that Klaus could barely breathe, but he didn’t care. After twenty-two long years, he had his brother back with him, where he was meant to be.

“I’m so sorry,” Five sobbed into his shoulder. “I should have stopped them. You were alone for a whole life, I left you for a whole life-”

“Hey, hey, no,” Klaus said softly but firmly. “Don’t do that, okay? It’s not your fault and I never blamed you. I knew I would see you again.”

Five did the impossible and hugged him tighter. “I thought I would never see you again. You you, not just a different timeline of you.”

“It’s okay, Five. I’m here, it’s me. And I wasn’t alone.”

Five carefully pulled away, but didn’t move very far. “Ben?”

Klaus nodded, and focused his power to Ben, making him appear corporeal for Five. He had hidden that ability with drugs and acting without Five since no one would believe him about Ben, but he could do it now.

A gasp came from Five as he looked at Ben with wide eyes. Ben looked down at his hands and saw that they were blue, meaning he was corporeal. He beamed at Klaus, and Klaus grinned back.

“Ben…” Five trailed off.

“Hey, Five. It’s good to talk to you,” Ben smiled sadly. “From what I heard you were pretty strong out there in the apocalypse.”

Klaus noticed Five’s smile dip a little. “Yeah… thank you for, you know… looking after Klaus. I guess you two got pretty close…”

Before Klaus could interrupt, Ben smiled knowingly. “Not as close as you two were. Trust me, not a day went by where Klaus didn’t mention your name or something you two did. He never forgot you, Five.”

Five turned to Klaus, fresh tears in his eyes, and hugged him again.

“I love you, Fivey.”

Five let out a laugh mixed with a sob. “I love you, too.”

There was a knock on the door, and Five quickly pulled away and wiped his tears as Diego walked in. “Good, you’re up. We have to go.”

“Go? Five’s still recovering,” Klaus protested.

But Five was already up and pulling on his shirt and vest. “Nope. We have a world to save, come on Klaus. What’s wrong, Diego?”

“Allison’s in danger.”

That got Klaus up.

Quick enough, they were all piled into Diego’s car again, Klaus next to Ben, who was now only visible to him, in the back, and Diego and Five in the driver and passenger’s seats. “Where would Luther be?” Five asked.

“Anywhere that’s easy to sulk,” Klaus sighed. “If it was me , probably a strip club.”

Diego, Five, and Ben all shot Klaus identical disgusted looks. Well, never say that adopted siblings can’t look alike. 

“The bar, then,” Diego said, and then drove off. “Which one, though?”

“Irish Republic,” Klaus said confidently. “No man with the ego of Luther’s would go anywhere less than that.”

With little reason to argue and lack of options, Diego had no choice but to head to Klaus’s suggestion. Sure enough, when they all walked in, Luther was sitting by himself at a table, beer in hand.

“Look,” Klaus grinned, pointing to him. “Trying a little hair of the dog, are we?” Klaus asked Luther as they arrived at his table.

Luther rolled his eyes at them. “Leave me alone.”

Diego sat down next to him and waved his gloves at Klaus and Five. “Give us a minute.”

Shrugging, Klaus leaned back. “Okay,” then turned to Five. “Come one, maybe they’ll brood each other to death.”

Five grinned and followed after Klaus as they walked and stood by the doors. Klaus noticed Five watching him closely, looking so so young. He grinned down at him. “Don’t break your neck staring, mein bruder , it’s really me.”

“Yeah,” Five looked away quickly. “I’m just… happy.”

“Well, don’t get too happy. The world is still ending.”

Five rolled his eyes but smirked.

Before they could talk some more, Luther was yelling, “You should’ve led with that!” and bolting from his chair, out the doors.

Klaus grabbed Five’s arm and pulled his limping brother along as they followed Luther out to the parking lot.

Note to self: never let Diego do the talking.

• • •

The sun had set as they drove, and Five was really starting to wish that he could just blink them there. Because although he had secured himself the driver’s seat and Klaus the passenger, Diego and Luther wouldn’t stop shoving each other around like children in the back.

Every now and then Five had to remind himself to keep his eyes on the road because he couldn’t stop glancing at Klaus.

He was Klaus. He was Five’s Klaus.

And Five was home.

Luther leaned forward behind Five. “Hey, can you go any faster?”

“Ask me again and I’ll burn you with the cigarette lighter.”

Luther leaned back.

But, even still. Five pushed on the gas and sped up. Because the thought of Allison being in danger or hurt at all sat as right with him as being away from Klaus did.

Not right at all.

The sun was fully set when they arrived at the cabin belonging to Jenkins’s grandmother, and they all rushed out of the car and into the house, Luther in the lead.

Five’s heart stopped when they got inside. Luther yelled their sister’s name and ran to her side, and Diego knelt by him. Klaus’s hands flew over his mouth and Five’s eyes widened.

Because there Allison was, on the floor. Blood stained her shirt and pooled on the floor around her head, and Five saw a slash in her throat. But, even more horrifying, her eyes were open wide and blinking as Luther lifted her.

She was still alive.

Klaus had gone to Luther’s side, his hand on his shoulder, and turned back to Five.

All he could do was stare.

Chapter Text

This time, Five pushed on the gas pedal without having to be asked as they raced back to the Academy, Allison in the back with Luther and Diego. The tires screeched as Five pulled over quickly in front of the house.

“Come on, let’s go,” he exclaimed as they all tumbled out.

“I don’t think she’s breathing,” Luther called as Klaus helped him carry Allison and Five raced ahead to open the doors.

“If we don’t get her upstairs, she’s gonna die!” Klaus warned, carrying her through the doors with Luther, Diego close behind. Five followed them in, shutting the doors behind them.

They carried her to the infirmary, and laid her down. Five pressed his hands over her neck to stop some of the bleeding. Diego came in a second later, followed by their mom and Pogo. Mom quickly looked over Allison.

“She’s suffered a severe laceration to her larynx. One of you will need to give blood,” she looked up at all of them.

“I will,” they all said at the same time.

“I’m doing it,” Luther told them sharply.

Pogo spoke up. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, dear boy. Your blood is more compatible with mine.”

Klaus noticed Luther’s hurt look and spoke up. “Hey, don’t sweat it. I got this, big guy. I love needles!”

“Master Klaus,” Pogo cut him off. “Your blood is… how should I say this? Too polluted.”

Diego pushed through, “Move. I’ll do it.”

Except the second he stood next to Mom and saw the needle, his eyes rolled back and he fainted onto the ground.

“Well, I can-” Five began.

“No,” both Klaus and Mom said together. Klaus turned red and let their other speak. “You already lost a lot of blood from your injury, you can’t risk giving away any more. We’ll stick Diego.”

Once the blood was drawn and Diego woke up, Pogo ushered them all to the parlor to wait so their mother would work in peace.

“The bastard that nearly killed our sister’s still out there, with Vanya,” Diego said, pacing back and forth. “We need to go after her.”

“Vanya is not important,” Five said, then realized how that sounded. 

“Hey, that’s your sister. A little heartless, even for you, Five,” Diego pointed a knife at him.

Five glared at him. “I’m not saying I don’t care about her, but if the apocalypse happens today, she dies along with the other seven billion of us. Harold Jenkins is our first priority.”

“I agree, let’s go,” Diego nodded.

Five looked over his shoulder at Klaus, who followed along, looking a little guilty. Diego was already ahead, so Five asked, “What?”

“I… I almost took some pills again… and then subconsciously allowed Ben to be corporeal enough to punch me in the face and make me spit them out. I’m sorry, Five, I know I didn’t used to be like this, but it’s kind of hard to break this habit instantly-”

“Klaus,” Five cut him off. “It’s okay. I’m here for you now, and I know you can’t get over addiction easily. Just know I’m here for you, alright?”

He smiled a little. “Thanks, bruder .”

Yet when they arrived at the house, Five felt as though he too needed to take something.

Harold Jenkins was dead.

Better yet, Harold Jenkins was stabbed through with all of the knives and scissors in the house, blood pouring out underneath him.

“It’s not exactly what I was expecting,” Klaus finally said into the silence.

“The understatement of the year,” Five sighed.

“No sign of Vanya,” Klaus added.

Diego looked away from the body. “Let’s get out of here before the cops come.”

But Five and Klaus were both looking at the same thing. The bandage over one of Harold Jenkins’s eyes. They shared a look, and Five walked over and peeled the bandage off. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the eye he’d been carrying for over two decades.

“Wow…” Klaus breathed as Five put the fake eye in Harold’s empty eye socket.

“Same eye color, same pupil size,” Five noted. “Guys, this is it. The eye we’ve been carrying around for decades, it… it’s found its rightful home.”

Klaus squeezed Five’s shoulder. Five knew there were a lot of words in the gesture.

“We got the guy we needed to kill to stop the apocalypse,” Diego muttered.

“Yay!” Klaus cheered. “Let’s go.” Diego grabbed the back of his shirt as he turned.

“No, no. Wait, wait,” Five stopped him. “It can’t be this easy. Look, this is the note I got from the Commission. The one that says Protect Harold Jenkins , aka Leonard Peabody. But who killed him? Who did this?”

Klaus looked at him. “I have a crazy idea. Crazy- but- why don’t we find Vanya… and ask her what happened?”

But Five blinked out of the house. He knew he was being annoying, leaving Klaus like that, but he couldn’t help it. Majority of his life circled around this eye, this apocalypse , and it’s all just supposed to end so suddenly? Just like that?

He appeared in the house and checked the rooms, looking for Vanya for some answers. He heard the door open and knew that Klaus and Diego had returned and went to go meet them.

“No sign of Vanya,” he said.

“She’s not downstairs either,” Klaus added.

Diego tapped Klaus’s shoulder. “Well, I’m out.”

“Wait-”

“Where are you going? Vanya’s still out there, and so are Hazel and Cha-Cha.”

“I know. I”m gonna get my things and then I’m outta here. I got some unfinished business with those fools.”

And then he was off, and Klaus sighed and turned to Five. The latter shook his head and walked downstairs to the living room, where Delores was sitting at the bar. Klaus followed and hurried over to her.

“Delores! I’ve missed you! You look ravishing as ever,” Klaus grinned.

You don’t look too bad yourself, Klaus. It’s nice to see you again , She replied, and Five almost smiled. His family was here.

“We might have stopped the apocalypse, Delores. I don’t know,” Five sighed, grabbing materials from the bar and making an acidic green margarita. With no alcohol. He’s sticking to that, now that he has Klaus back.

That’s great! Now what?

“Now what?” Five repeated, sipping his drink and then frowning. “I don’t know. I’m open to suggestions.”

Maybe you could try growing up normally? Bonding with your other siblings?

“You were always the wisest of us, weren’t you, Delores?” Klaus sighed, sitting on the stool next to Five.

Before she could answer, there was a knock at the door. Five shared a look with Klaus and then hopped off his stool to go answer it. When he pulled it open, Hazel was standing there, pointing a gun at him.

“Hey, old-timer.”

Five gave him no reaction. “Do you have my sister? And, if not, would you like a margarita?” Hazel’s brows drew together. Five turned and walked back inside. “Come on. You’re here to kill me?” He asked, getting back on his stool next to Klaus, who tensed at the sight of Hazel.

Hazel looked at his gun. “Oh, shit, sorry. Old habits. Well, I can understand why you might feel that way, you know…”

“Well, you attacked our house, tried to kill my family, and kidnapped my brother here,” Five listed. Klaus gave Hazel a mocking wave. 

“There’s not much I can do about the past, don’t forget I’m not the only killer in this room. You got your own bloody history, pal,” Hazel said defensively. “Speaking of which, that job you did in Calhoun, that shit’s legendary. Can’t believe I’m actually sittin’ here, talking to you, after all-”

“Hazel, why are you here?” Five cut him off.

Before he could get more than a few words out, Diego came in from the hallway and tackled the larger man. Klaus whooped with glee. Five sipped his drink. The Five tried to tell Diego to stop, but to no avail.

He watched them fight for a few minutes before he saw Diego bite Hazel, and blinked, smashing a glass over Diego’s head and making him fall unconscious.

“I draw the line at biting,” Five sighed.

“Dang it, I was enjoying that,” Klaus whined.

Five ignored him. “Hazel, whatever you came here to say, I suggest you make it quick, before he comes round,” Five looked at Diego before getting back to his seat.

“I left my partner, quit the Commission, came to volunteer.”

“For what?”

“To help stop the apocalypse,” Hazel said, and Five chuckled around his straw. “What on earth could be so funny to you right now?”

Klaus looked up from the counter. “Oh, a lot of things, you know.”

“Before I answer that,” Five stopped Klaus before he could continue. “Why do you wanna help us?”

“Let’s just say I have a vested interest in a donut shop,” Hazel said vaguely.

Five raised an eyebrow but ignored the comment. “Well, I hate to break it to you, pal, but you’re a day late and a dollar short. The fact that you’re here right now means, without a shadow of a doubt, the apocalypse is over.” 

“Really? How do you know?”

“The mark is dead. Found him this morning.”

Klaus nodded. “Real bloodied up.”

“Shit,” Hazel laughed. “Really?”

Five nodded. “Mhm. And if you’re out, then Hellrider ain’t riding.”

Hazel let out another relieved laugh and then walked over to the bar sitting at the stool on the other side of Five. He grabbed the blender from when Five made his drink and downed it. Five handed Klaus the rest of his own drink.

“ No alcohol ,” Five let him know in their language. Klaus nodded gratefully and took it.

They were quiet for a few more moments before Hazel asked, “So now what?”

“You know, to be honest, I don’t know,” Five admitted. “Been chasing this thing for so long, I… I never really thought about the day after. What about you?”

“I’m done with all this madness. Time to start over. You should do the same.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

But was it? Really? Five was physically thirteen again. It probably wouldn’t be that hard to slip back into a young mindset and just… grow up again.

“It doesn’t have to be hard,” Hazel told him. “I mean, think about it like this. If you never time traveled, you never got caught up with the Handler, what would’ve happened?”

Five frowned. He really didn't know. He would have grown up at the academy with the same mindset he had before he left. That he was better than the rest and that his siblings only annoyed him.

He never would have gotten this close to Klaus. He would take his siblings for granted.

“I guess I would’ve grown up to be an emotionally stunted man-child like everybody else around here,” Five sighed, looking at Diego on the floor.

Klaus let out a laugh. “That’s what I did.”

“Well, there you go,” Hazel lifted a shoulder. “Now you can grow up. Good luck.”

He stood and walked away, and Five realized he was right.

He could grow up.

• • •

Klaus had agreed to go with Five to Gimbel’s to drop off Delores. If they really were going to start over, then they had to do it completely. And that meant letting go of Delores, who really was just a mannequin.

They walked silently through the store, the duffel bag on Five’s back holding their friend. They reached the center stand where Delores goes, and Five took off the bag and pulled her out and placed her on the stand with the others.

“Bet it feels good to be back, amongst your friends,” Five nodded, hating the aching in his heart. “And it’s okay, you can say it. We were always an unlikely pair.”

“I could’ve told you two that from the beginning,” Klaus grinned, but Five saw the sadness in his eyes. “ Me and Delores were supposed to be together.”

It doesn’t matter who I was with, we were all a family. And I’ll never forget the memories you two gave me. But you guys have to go on now.

“Right. I just wanted to let you know… I cherish every single minute I ever spent with you,” Five told her. “All eleven and a half million of them.”

It was a great lifetime, Five.

“And now look at us. We’re lucky enough, we get a second one.”

Now you two can finally mature how you were supposed to. Maybe don’t get cauterized in the head this time, Klaus.

Klaus laughed. “Yeah, definitely don’t want that again.”

“We’ll never forget you, Delores,” Five said. He gazed at her for one more moment, then pulled his bag over his shoulder and turned, Klaus following behind him. “Excuse me, miss?” He asked a worker close by.

“Yeah?” She turned to look at him.

He looked back at Delores. “Could you give that mannequin something new to wear?”

“She likes sequins,” Klaus added, and Five nodded. Together they left the store, ready to move on with their lives.

Chapter Text

But they should’ve realized that nothing is ever simple for the Umbrella Academy. It was nighttime when they got back to the house, or, what should’ve been the house.

Instead there were ruins. Ruins that looked a lot like the ruins they’d found in the apocalypse. Five grabbed a newspaper and saw that it was the same as it had been when they left back in 2002.

They hadn’t stopped the apocalypse.

“Guys,” Five said, hurrying over to Luther, Diego, and Allison, who had a bandage on her neck. Klaus followed behind him. “This is it. The apocalypse is still on. The world ends today.”

“I thought you said it was over,” Luther said.

“I was wrong, okay? This newspaper, I found it in the future the day I got stuck. The headline hasn’t changed,” Five held it up.

Diego shook his head. “No, that doesn’t mean anything. The time could’ve been altered since that newspaper came out this morning.”

“You’re not listening to me!” Five yelled, close to hysterics. Of course, when he thought he could finally rest, more problems occurred. “When I found it, I assumed this place came down along with everything else. But here we are, the moon’s still shining, the Earth is still in one piece, but not the Academy.”

“I’m confused,” Luther shook his head.

“Then listen to me, you idiot! Vanya destroys the Academy before the apocalypse. I thought Harold Jenkins was the cause, but he was the fuse. Vanya is the bomb. Vanya causes the apocalypse.”

Helicopters began flying overhead, and sirens wailed in the distance.

“We have to find her,” Luther muttered as a light from a helicopter shined down on them. “We gotta go, now. Regroup at the Super Star, go!”

Five grabbed Klaus’s arm and blinked them away.

It was strange to see so many people on a normal night having fun, not knowing what lay ahead. Five was too anxious to stay completely still, causing his leg to bounce in his seat. He and his siblings sat around a table in silence.

“Look, I hate to be the one to say this, but everyone needs to prepare,” Luther spoke up.

“For what?” Diego snapped.

“To do whatever it takes to stop Vanya.”

Allison slapped him with her notepad, glaring daggers.

“We may not have a choice, Allison.”

“Bullshit, there’s always options,” Diego crossed his arms.

And although Five loved Vanya dearly, he couldn’t see them. “Yeah, like what?” 

Diego glanced at him. “I don’t know.”

Luther got to his feet. “Look, whatever we decide, we need to find Vanya. And fast, okay? She could be anywhere.”

“Or…” Klaus trailed off, looking up from the newspaper he had opened and shaking it. “Here. Look at this.” He turned it and showed an ad for a showcase of an orchestra, and Vanya was on the cover.

“That’s right, her concert is tonight,” Diego mumbled.

“Hello,” a voice spoke up, and they turned to see a worker standing nearby. “I hate to intrude, but my manager says if you’re not gonna bowl, you gotta leave.”

A man at the counter glared at him and slammed down bowling shoes.

“Whose turn is it?” Diego called.

“Oh, for-” Luther scowled and grabbed a bowling ball, chucking it down the aisle while glaring back at the manager.

Allison turned her notepad around and tapped her marker against it. She’s our sister , it read. She was looking at Luther specifically.

“We’re the only ones capable of stopping this,” he told her. “We have a responsibility to Dad.” Now that was wrong.

“To Dad? No, I’ve had enough of-” Diego whirled around.

Luther cut him off. “He sacrificed everything to bring us back together.”

Well, he was right there. “I’m with Luther on this one,” Five said, leaning forward. “We can’t give her a chance to fight back. There are billions of lives at stake. We’re past trying to save just one.”

“Hey, you know guys, uh, maybe I could help,” Klaus spoke up.

“Now is not the time,” Luther cut him off. 

Five regretted siding with him immediately. “Let him finish,” he growled.

Klaus got up and faced his siblings. “My powers are a lot more under my control than any of you realize. Besides, Five, obviously.”

“How is that obvious-” Diego started. Allison held up her notepad that said she wanted to call Claire. Luther nodded and they went outside to the payphone.

“But- look-” Klaus picked up a bowling ball and tossed it to what looked like nothing, but at the last second made Ben corporeal so he could catch the ball.

Diego in shock, and Five grinned proudly to Klaus, who smiled back. Before they could say anything, a woman walked over, and Ben disappeared when Klaus’s focus changed.

“Excuse me,” she said, looking at Five in particular. “It’s my son Kenny’s birthday today, and, uh… wouldn’t your son be happier playing with kids his own age? Assuming it’s okay with your two dads.”

Five stared at her, resisting the urge to laugh at the thought of Klaus and Diego being his fathers. That would probably be worse than Hargreeves as a dad.

“I would rather chew off my own foot,” Five scowled. The woman leaned back and quickly brought her son away, just as Five heard a familiar whoosh of the tubes from the Commission.

“If I was going to date a man, you’d be the last man I would date,” Five heard Diego saying as he walked over to a bowling ball dispenser.

“You’d be lucky to get me,” Klaus shot back as Five pulled the tube from the dispenser.

It said his name. “How the hell did she find me?” He muttered as Klaus walked over. Then he remembered the stupid candy he took from her office, and pulled it out of his pocket. Sure enough, there was a tracker wrapped in one of them.

“She’s good,” Klaus admitted, and Five dropped it and smashed it with his bowling shoe.

Five popped off the lid to the tube and tossed it down, pulling out the fortune cookie that was inside. He dropped the tube and cracked open the cookie, handing it to Klaus when he got the paper out. Klaus, of course, ate the cookie.

Time marches on… or does it?
Rain quail, Rm 12

“You’re not going, are you?” Klaus asked.

“I am. Gotta see what she wants,” Five turned and caught sight of Klaus’s worried face. “Hey, maybe she could help. You never know. I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”

Klaus hesitated, but nodded, and Five blinked to the destination she’d given him.

• • •

He approached the green door slowly, since it was already ajar. “Five, I’ve been waiting for you,” he heard her irritating voice from inside. He walked in and saw the lady from Griddy’s donuts taped to a chair in front of the hot tub, the Handler sitting behind her.

“You must really like donuts,” Five mumbled.

“Help me,” The lady cried, muffled behind her tape. 

 But Five paid her no mind. He had bigger issues.

“It’s been a while,” the Handler said.

“Three days.”

“For you, maybe. But for me, it’s been a lot longer since I’ve seen those adorable little shorts,” she told him and he really would rather chew off his own foot than listen to her ramble on and on as always.

He ignored her comment. “Well, you’ve had time to heal.”

“Luckily, for both of us, time… is the one thing my organization has an abundance of.”

He ignored her again. “Got your message, by the way. Nice packaging, but so much for Commission protocol.”

“There have been a lot of changes since you left the Commission,” she said, walking over to him. “You really did some damage. The briefcases were all but destroyed, to say nothing of the highly trained personnel you killed. After all, what is an institution if not-”

He was done listening. “What do you want?”

“To be happy. To have a simple, unfettered life, to do the work my superiors require. But, your being here, well, it complicates all that.”

“Billions of people are about to die tonight. You can change that.”

She waved her hand. “Tonight, tomorrow. So little difference in the scheme of things. Don’t you remember the Commission’s raison d'être? What’s meant to be is meant to be, or, as I like to say, que sera, sera.”

“It’s bullshit in any language,” Five glared at her. “Why did you call me here?”

“I wanna offer you a choice. Everyone’s going to die tonight, but unlike the rest of the world, you have a way out. You can abandon your family and skip ahead to the apocalypse, take a walkabout for a few decades, wondering if I’ll come back and offer you a job again, or you can stay here, with your family, and die a horrible death,” she laughed at the end.

That was no choice. He’d choose death over a life without Klaus and a life in the apocalypse any day.

“While you weigh your options, just know your siblings are fighting for their lives without you.”

“You brought me here to pull me away,” he muttered, growing furious.

“It’s been nice knowing you, Five.”

He blinked out of the hotel room. He had to get back to Klaus.

Chapter Text

Focusing all his energy on his siblings, he reappeared in the Icarus theater. “What’s with all the lollygagging?” He called.

“Five, get down!”

He dropped quickly as bullets whizzed by him. Vanya was up on the stage, bathed in a white glow and playing the violin, emitting powerful sound waves. Commission agents were up on the terraces and coming in through the doors, shooting at them.

Doing a quick headcount, he saw Allison and Luther ducked next to each other behind seats, Diego not far away. There was no sign of Klaus, but Five couldn’t worry about that while he was getting shot at.

“Five, what the… I thought you bailed on us!” Luther called.

“I had an errand to run,” he called back, looking around the theater. “This is not good.”

Diego glanced back at him. “You know these guys?”

“Yeah, I do,” Five sighed.

When he didn’t elaborate, Diego raised his eyebrows. “ And ?”

Five turned to see more agents coming down the aisle. “Well… we’re screwed.”

A few agents came from the door across the room and had clear shots of them, but Diego flung a few knives and knocked them down. A second later, Klaus came running in, yelling that Cha-Cha was coming.

“Klaus, get down!” Luther yelled.

Five moved, blinking onto the back of the agent closest to him and turning him around so he shot the others near him, then himself.

Then he turned to help Klaus, but found he didn’t need to.

Klaus was standing with his arms out, blue energy in his hands as Ben became corporeal and pulled up his hoodie, letting his tentacles out. Each one, blue and opaque, grabbed different agents and made them drop, one by one.

Five gaped proudly at Klaus and saw that everyone else was staring at him with wide eyes. He saw Allison mouth Ben’s name. When all the guards had fallen, Klaus dropped his hands and Ben disappeared from view. Klaus laughed and grinned at Luther and Allison’s gaping faces and waved his hand. Diego had gone to fight Cha-Cha.

Of course, they now had another problem. Vanya. She was still playing, and the columns of the theater were beginning to crumble.

Diego joined them again and asked, “So how do you wanna end this thing?”

“We surround her, alright? We come at her from all angles,” Luther explained.

“So it’s a suicide mission,” Klaus breathed, leaning his hands on his knees next to Five, if only to match his height. Five stood close to Klaus.

“Yeah, but one of us could get through. It’s the only chance we’ve got,” Five exclaimed.

Luther nodded. “Are we all in?”

Five, Klaus, and Diego nodded.

“Allison?”

She shook her head. Five frowned, knowing it was hard to do this to their sister, but they didn’t have a choice. It was Vanya, or the end of all life on Earth.

“Stage left,” Luther told Diego. “Stage right,” he pointed to himself, and then to Klaus and Five. “You guys take the front.”

Five gave Klaus’s hand a quick squeeze, there wasn’t enough time to say anything, and then ran to where he needed to be. When they were all in position, Five crouched, waiting and listening to Vanya’s violin.

He heard Luther yell and saw the others begin to run. He jumped to his feet and blinked to the stage, joining his brothers. Vanya lashed out with the bow of her violin, sending out tendrils of white light that suspended them all in midair.

Though he wanted to turn to Klaus, he could barely move due to the pain overtaking him. He could practically feel the life being sucked from him, and it hurt more knowing that this was Vanya, his closest sister.

Right when he felt like he wouldn’t be able to get anymore air into his lungs, Allison appeared from behind Vanya, and fired a gun right next to her head, breaking the energy around Vanya. The light dropped Five and the others, and Vanya fell unconscious into Allison’s arms.

But not before one final beam of light shot through the glass dome of the theater, out into the night sky.

Five rushed over, along with the others, to Vanya’s side on the floor and crouched down. Klaus was next to him, and Five reached out and squeezed his elbow. Klaus looked at him and almost smiled, squeezing Five’s in return.

“Is she alive?” Luther asked.

Allison checked Vanya’s pulse and then shakily nodded. Everyone let out sighs of relief.

“We did it, we saved the world,” Luther breathed.

But then Klaus was standing, gazing up through the shattered dome. “Uh… guys?” He called, pointing upwards.

Five looked past Klaus and out to the sky, and his heart dropped. The moon was laced with lines orange, and a piece of it was hurtling right towards them. Five slowly got to his feet.

“You see that big Moon rock coming towards us?” Klaus asked.

“That’s not good,” Luther mumbled.

Klaus let out a sigh. “So this is it, huh? So much for… saving the world.”

Five grabbed his hand.

“If only Sir Reginald could see us right now, huh?” Diego said quietly. “The Umbrella Academy. A total failure.”

“At least we’re together at the end. As a family,” Luther looked back to Allison and Vanya, still on the floor.

No. Five wouldn’t allow it. He could do this.

He spent his whole life trying to get his family back. And now that he did, he wasn’t about to let them get away that easily. Part of his ability was time travel. He would do whatever it took to save them.

“This doesn’t have to be the end,” he told them. 

“What are you saying, Five?” Luther asked.

“I think I have a way outta here. But you gotta trust me on this.”

Diego and Luther both said no and turned back around but Klaus glared at them. “Go on, Five. What’s the plan?”

“We use my ability to time travel. But this time, I’ll take you with me. All of you.”

“You can do that?” Diego asked.

Five tilted his head. “I don’t know, I’ve only done it with one of you before.”

Diego decided not to ask what he meant, and instead nodded a little. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You’re lookin’ at it. A thirty-five year old man inside a child’s body, so there’s that.”

“Oh, what the hell, I’m in,” Diego nodded.

Klaus grinned and wrapped an arm around Five’s shoulders. “Yeah, you know I always go with your crazy plans, brother .”

Brother. Klaus had never called him that in their language before.

“Me too,” Luther nodded. “Allison?” She nodded, too. “What about Ben?” He looked at Klaus, he peered over his shoulder.

“Great, yeah, he’s in.”

“Great, Luther, grab Vanya,” Five said, and they all formed a circle, Vanya in Luther’s arms.

“Wait, should we be taking her?” Luther asked. “I mean, she’s the cause of the apocalypse. Isn’t that like taking the bomb with us?”

Five waved his hands. “The apocalypse will always happen, and Vanya will always be the cause, unless we take her with us and fix her.” He grabbed Klaus and Allison's hands and focused on his powers.

For a while now he’d been working on blinking somewhere vertically far away, such as going from the beach to the top of the cliff. The first tries he’d binked only halfway up the cliff in midair and fell right back down, hence why the ghosts were always under him, ready to catch him.

Today he’d done it, finally. Five never would have thought there was more to learn about his powers, but here he was, accomplishing something.

He and Klaus had worked on stretching the limits of his powers before. He could do it again. He focused, and a surge of blue energy appeared over their heads. It slowly began to lower onto them.

“It’s working!” Luther called.

“Hold on, this could get messy!” Five yelled, and Klaus gripped his hand tighter.

He could hear the rumbling outside. He felt the temperature rising. He had to get them out now .

“You can do it, Fivey,” Klaus leaned down and said just to him. “I love you.” He held him tightly.

"I love you, too."

Five blinked him and his siblings away.

The end of the world was quite quiet.