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“Oh, Darling,” Grace smiled at him. “What are you doing here? We weren’t expecting you this late.”
“Mom…” Five said and looked around the entrance hall looming around him, his mother was standing on the top of the stairs, there were giant cracks running through her perfectly sculpted face.
“Don’t you worry about it, dear,” Mom told him. “Your siblings are already in the dining hall, you better hurry if you don’t want to have to eat cold food.”
Five swallowed, looking down at the ground.
His shoes were splattered with blood and dust.
Always the same dream.
“You’re right,” he said. “I should… hurry.”
“You should! They’re missing you.”
Five nodded and looked up again.
“Mom?”
But Grace was gone.
He tried to teleport to the dining room but he already knew that it wasn’t going to work.
“Shit,” he hissed and walked up to the door opening it.
Just like every time the hallway was longer than the actual hallway in the house, pictures of Dad starring down at him, his eyes seemingly saying ‘I told you so.’
Five tried to look anywhere but his father. He needed to keep his eyes on the door. He just needed to reach his siblings.
Needed to warn them, needed to ignore the portraits of his father.
He needed to keep going.
Finally he reached the door and threw it open.
There they were. All of them.
Klaus was sitting on the chair directly in front of him, his feet on the on the seat shoveling food into his mouth, Ben was next to him his face hidden by a book, Diego was sitting on a chair angrily scratching something in the table with his knife, Vanya was looking down her hair falling into her face, Allison was supporting her head with her hand like she was bored, Luther was sitting next to her his hand in a fist. Five new exactly what he was holding but he couldn’t stop now, he had to get through this dream every time.
“Guys!” he said. Nobody looked up at him. They were all still just sitting caught up in whatever they were doing. “Guys, please! You need to look at me, I have something important I need to tell you.”
None of them looked at him. Not even Klaus seemed to realize that he was there.
Allison turned to Luther and said something, Five couldn’t hear what she was saying.
“Please! This is important,” he tried again. Knowing it would be fruitless. Luther looked at Allison, his hand still closed in a fist.
“Guys! Please,” Five whispered, knowing what was about to come next.
If he could he’d turn around and run back but he knew he wouldn’t be able to move at all.
It was Klaus who turned first, his face was dusty, pale, paler than was usual even for him, then Allison looking up at him, her perfect make up messed up with dust, then Diego turned towards him with a serious look on his face and a small trickle of blood running down his temple, Luther was the last to turn opening his hand around the glass eyes.
But Five’s eyes rested on Vanya and Ben who continued to stay still.
He knew what would come next.
“You’re too late,” Vanya said without moving her mouth.
“You weren’t fast enough,” Ben said. “You failed.”
And just when the dream was about to enter its worst part Five was shaken awake.
“Five! Hey, wake up!” someone said. “Geez, he’s burning up.”
“I got water we can…”
“No, Diego wait I think he’s coming around.”
He squinted, the world around him was fuzzy and for a moment all he could make out were shapes looming over him.
“Shut up both of you. Five? Hey, you’re okay… it’s fine…” slowly the shapes that were closest to him came into focus and he saw Luther’s worried face blinking down at him.
“Here you are, he’s awake guys!” he announced.
Slowly and with a lot of concentration he realized that it was Vanya and Diego standing there behind him.
Oh.
“You scared us, man,” Diego said now.
“I dreamed…” Five rasped.
“Pretty badly from the sounds of it,” Vanya said.
“Yeah you screamed the whole house down,” Diego added.
Luther hummed a little fuzzing with something behind Five. “Just a bad dream,” he told him.
“I dreamed you were alive,” he mumbled.
Vanya and Diego exchanged a look.
“We are, everything’s okay,” Luther said softly and put his hand on his forehead. “You just got a fever, Five. You need to…”
Five shook his head. “You aren’t real,” he told them. “It’s never real...”
Luther frowned down at him. “No, this is real, we’re really real,” he assured him putting his hand on his head. “He’s really sick.”
Five shook his head again hard this time, his vision swam again. He tried to get up but was pushed back softly.
Diego said something and Luther nodded, stepping back a little.
Vanya walked up to him.
“Five, it’s okay we’re alive,” she repeated. “Don’t you remember? You found your way back to us…”
Five blinked slowly things were coming back to him. “The apocalypse…”
“Right, see I had forgotten about all of that, remember?”
“But we were… there…” somehow nothing seemed to make sense to him, pieces of memories flying around in his head he tried to hold onto them but nothing seemed to stick. For a moment he thought he had something. “B-Ben?”
Vanya sighed. “We’re figuring it out, but you need to rest now okay?”
He wanted to protest get up, get away from these hallucinations – because surely that was all that they were Five couldn’t fall for his mind like that anymore - and back to the task at hand whatever that was but he was so tired and heavy and there was Luther putting a wet cloth on his forehead and Diego coming in with Allison and Klaus.
Five shivered a little starring up at his siblings. All of them, seeming alive and well.
Vanya brushed his hair out from under the cloth and smiled at him reassuringly.
Hallucinations, some hopeful part in his brain told him, couldn't touch you or place cloths on your forehead.
“It’s gonna be okay,” someone said.
But Five couldn’t make out who it was anymore, his eyes were already closing again.
“Be real this time…” he whispered.
If his siblings had heard him he didn’t get an answer, he had already fallen asleep again.