Work Text:
Here’s a funny story:
It’s 1953, month one, day eight, when Five gets his orders.
The Handler calls him into her office personally, which, Five has to assume, isn’t protocol, but he’s far past handbooks and regulations and rules. He isn’t twelve and training like a dog again. No, protocol can go to hell.
(The killing, of course, is exempt from this. It borders on impossible to kill someone wrong, to break rules with a bullet. There was never a protocol to breach with the killing).
It goes like clockwork. The Handler gives him his assignment. The Handler clicks her vinyl stilettos on the lacquered floor. The Handler sends him on his way. The Handler doesn’t know that Five takes a post-meeting detour to a broom closet and hyperventilates.
You’re not hurt by it, Five. Stop fighting it, Five. Eat your breakfast and drink your coffee and pull the trigger and lock the briefcase and pull the trigger and unlock your bedroom door and cry into your pillow. Bide your time from here on out, hide in the bathroom with your feet on the toilet seat and your book in your hand. Count down the days until you can flee.
He counts to ten so his breath can slow. He begins to feel nothing. This, certainly, is not protocol. His first kill will be.
Five emerges from the broom closet and goes through the motions. Picks up his rifle, turns in his slip. His hand, already slick with sweat, grips the leather handle of the briefcase. It spins like a top, and he’s gone with a crack.
The world implodes around him. Something flies at him—maybe a bullet, maybe a piece of shrapnel. The blue field around him absorbs it, and fades to nothing. He’ll have to deal with that fallout later.
The air is hot and humid, crackling with gunfire and screams. There’s a part of Five that wants to duck, and hide, and return to the consequences at the Commission. He reaches into his brain and switches that part off. He can get his hands dirty, and certainly his suit—he drops to his stomach and hides from the fire.
Five squints through the scope of the rifle, strong and clear and enhanced enough to make out what he needs to see, the mark on the target—one stainless steel dog tag, stamped and dangling on a silver chain.
KATZ, DAVID, RA01071899, A NEG, 159-30-7973, JEWISH
Katz, David.
Bullseye.
It’s 1968, month ten, day four, and Five pulls the trigger.
/
Here’s a funny story:
Whatever Klaus is saying now. Five tuned it out about three miles back, sometime between the first rest stop and the unofficial side-of-the-road bathroom venture. His head is tipped back onto the seat, just enough to comfortably rest his head without his hat pressing too hard on either side of his skull and kicking up a wave of discomfort. He hums along to Klaus, or the radio, or whoever’s chattering brightly now like a sped-up jukebox, and it’s not that he doesn’t care what Klaus has to say, because he does, and Klaus is a nice brother and good company and a better kid (Jesus Christ, he has to unpack that kind of language later. Time—what a trip), but frankly, with his size seven feet kicked up on the dashboard and his fingers tucked into the folds of a heavily annotated map, he doesn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else has to say. He’s happy.
And yes, Klaus is a part of that. Maybe. He’ll never say it aloud.
Klaus casts him a sideways glance. “Five. Five? Lost you there, buddy.”
Five’s brain lags a little bit, the way it always seems to when he thinks so hard it gets mushy (or, now and for the first time, thinks so little). He turns his head to Klaus. “Hm?”
Klaus lets out a sound caught halfway between a dramatically offended gasp and a laugh. “Nevermind. Just telling another wonderful anecdote, little man.”
Five snorts, and he doesn’t even try to hide the wrinkle-eyed grin that wrestles its way out of him. This, certainly, was not his exact picture of the future. That doesn’t make it bad. “Okay, Klaus.”
Klaus tosses a hand up off the steering wheel. “Your turn! It’s time for a little brotherly bonding. If you talk and I space out, you won’t get halfway through a very compelling recounting of your adventures with a perpetually coked up officer of the law because the car will crash. Kablam! ” He shakes his fingers in Five’s face, and Five swats them away.
“Talk about what?”
Klaus shrugs. “I don’t know…gossip! Drama! Shabang!” A squeaking laugh escapes Five, and his head is filled with swirling thoughts of puberty and voice cracks and his idiot, idiot brother, and then his head is filled with Klaus’s voice, clearer than the rest of the jabber on the multi-mile drive.
“Oh! Tell me about Delores!”
His idiot, idiot brother.
Something in him, dark and gnarled and prickling, expands in his stomach like a bristling porcupine, eating up the empty space like it’s 1953, month one, day two, his first proper meal in more than forty years. There was so much bread, too much bread, that it made him sick, and he lost the entire meal on the floor of his room. The entire night, he had shivered violently, like a leaf in the wind. The entire night, he clung to Delores’ one arm like a life raft and begged for forgiveness.
The porcupine punctures his lungs, and he heaves a deep sigh.
“I told you. We were together for over thirty years. Nothing’s changed about that in the last three weeks.” There’s a little snap to it that Five doesn’t really mean, but it’s too late to do anything about it and if Five thinks about it for too long, it’ll make him fidget his fingers and grovel the senseless apologies he’s been avoiding for years and years just to make himself feel better. He sighs again instead.
Klaus lifts his hands up in surrender, off the wheel almost long enough to make Five worry, but he sets them down and casts his eyes on the road once more. “Just asking, hermano. I know you were in love.”
Five, too, sets his eyes forward. “No. Not in love.” It’s hoarse, and half a whisper, and new, like his first mission or his first meal or like he really is thirteen again. Klaus tilts his head sideways to look at Five. “Oh?”
“There was love. That doesn’t mean in love. Not everything means in love.” The snap comes back again, but softer this time, quieter, more willing to roll over and expose its underbelly. A creature of habit.
At his side, Klaus feigns offense. “I know! I know!” Then:
“I understand that. Before…”
Klaus holds back, and Five, this time, casts him the sideways glance. Klaus never holds back, for better or worse or endearing love and affection.
“Before Dave, that was my experience. I wasn’t in love with all these people, but, ya know…there was love. Exactly.”
And the creature in Five, not the porcupine, but the soft, old dog, plays fetch.
“So what was Dave like?”
Klaus doesn’t feign his surprise this time, but he doesn’t ask questions. The Klaus policy, it seems.
He smiles, soft and syrupy, and Five can see a hint of something else, something sad and dark and flashing like a firework when he catches Five’s eyes with his own.
“He was a good guy. A really, really good guy. We fought together in Vietnam. That’s why I, uh…” he lifts his hands off the steering wheel and presses the heels of his palms to both ears. That’s right.
At the rest stop, mile nine, someone knocked over a display stand, labeled with a hand drawn sign made indecipherable as cans of beer popped open and chili peanuts rained to the ground. Five had jumped back. Klaus’s hands had shot to cover his ears.
Oh.
And it’s not like Five didn’t know Klaus fought in Vietnam, because he did, and it’s not like Five didn’t know how much it had hurt him, but it just hadn’t clicked. He hasn’t been able to feel it for himself. His head was already so full of noise that the gunfire hadn't stuck itself inside.
Klaus’s left hand drops back to the steering wheel, and his right skims the fabric over a point at his sternum. He grasps something, and Five can see a silvery chain of metal beads, and as soon as Klaus is lifting his arm over his curls, Five realizes what’s happening. Klaus runs his thumb gently over one of the dog tags, like it’s a genie lamp to rub for three wishes, like it’s the most magical thing in the world. He drops the chain gently into Five’s open hand.
It’s a lot of responsibility for Five Hargreeves, age 58, age 13, month 1, day twenty four.
Klaus pats his arm, an awkward gesture in the cramped car and certainly not made any better by the fact that one hand remains on the steering wheel.
“That’s all I have left of him. Besides, uh, memories! Ooooo, conceptual.” There’s the Klaus that Five is used to. The softened part of him wants the emotional Klaus back.
(And, although he’s not going to admit it, not here, maybe not ever, the love is there. He loves his brother so, so much. Too much to ever show. Too much to understand, or embrace, or decipher.)
Klaus pumps a little lightness into his voice, so airy and illusionary it’s like he’s floating. “Go on, then. You can look. It’s a symbol of brotherly bonding.”
Five knits his eyebrows together. “Do I want to look?”
Klaus laughs, and there’s a little bit of real hurt in it this time, but he doesn’t say anything. Bold enough that even Five can feel it. He winces. Habit keeps cropping up.
Five curls his fingers away from his palm and stares down at the tag on top.
HARGREEVES, KLAUS, RA01101989, AB POSITIVE, NO PREFERENCE
It’s very, very real.
He slides the tag sideways with his thumb, stamped metal cool beneath it. The second tag stares up at him.
KATZ, DAVID, RA01071899, A NEG, 159-30-7973, JEWISH
Katz, David.
Oh, shit.
The tags fall from Five’s hand with a jingle and disappear between the seats. The world slows down around him.
(And again, that one thought emerges: time—what a trip.)
Somewhere to the side, he can vaguely hear Klaus shouting a shocked “Hey!” and leaning down to search for the tags. The car swerves, and Five’s body goes limp with it. Klaus slams on the brakes and shakes his shoulder.
“Five. Five! Shit, shit, shit. Hey! Five! Are you ok? C’mon, man.”
Five can hear him now, like he’s underwater and swimming towards the sky. He surfaces so fast he might as well have the bends: it’s sudden, and now he’s shaking and heaving and he unclips the seatbelt and throws the door open and loses a bowl of hotel cereal onto the asphalt. Whatever switch he flicked with every Commission job, whatever switch he turned on to stop the flow of feelings, is permanently stuck on off.
He feels a soft finger through his vest. “Buddy?” It’s Klaus, and oh, God, it’s Klaus. No, no, no.
Five stiffens and, without warning, topples face first out of the passenger seat and falls to his knees on the road. He hears Klaus slam the car door and run over, kneeling to the ground and brushing his own hair away from his face. “Five? Shit. Do you need water? Talk to me. Five!”
There’s panic in his voice. Oh, no. No. This can’t be happening.
It’s 1968, month ten, day four, and the soldier next to David Katz calls for a medic.
Five wants to crawl further into the road and never get up. He can’t even look at Klaus. He tries to speak, but it’s a wheeze.
“What? Five?”
“I…I…”
“Just breathe.”
His face is hot, and his hands are hot, and so are his lungs and his ears and his eyes and he’s crying, heaving dry sobs on the open road and Klaus draws back a little, like he doesn’t want to disturb a sleeping dog, and it’s suddenly it’s like the apocalypse all over again, crying in the ruins of something bigger. Five doesn’t cry. He can’t explain this. He never cries like this.
“Five, you’re really scaring me here, buddy.” Klaus’s voice is soft, and familiar, and so, so scared. Everything is going faster now, and it’s all tinged with red hot guilt.
“It was me.” Five breaks the words through a gasp, because after all of this, it’s what he owes his family. His brother. He’s done so much for them, all of this for them, and he still fucked Klaus over.
“What?”
Five looks up, not enough to meet Klaus’s eyes, but enough to see the dog tags, retrieved from the floor of the car, hanging from Klaus’s neck.
He needs to do this. For Klaus.
“I did it. I…I killed Dave.”
It’s a whisper this time. “What?”
Five gasps another shaking breath in.
“The Commission.1968. A Shau. I shot him. I remember.”
Even the wind is quiet now.
Klaus stands, wordless, not even asking for clarification. Far past that. Far past where Five can reach him.
Klaus, for the first time in recent memory, is silent. He walks into the road, across the pavement, towards the weeds. Just walks. Five watches. Five watches, and he can’t do anything. He feels glued to the road, like the concrete is swallowing him.
Five watches as, for the third time in his 58 years of life, Klaus Hargreeves dies before him.
A car hits him. The car keeps going.
Five doesn’t realize he’s made a sound until the tailend dies in his throat. His entire body is frozen, more than before, more than 2031, month three, day whatever, when it snowed so much he thought he would drown.
He’s frozen for the first two minutes that Klaus remains dead. Then, slowly, his joints unlock. His skin can feel the ground again, and his ears are ringing, and he can hear the mantra of no, no, no, Klaus! that he’s been silently mouthing without notice. He springs to his feet, woozy and swaying, and sprints to Klaus. His eyes are closed, face limp and arms limper, and there’s a horrible, bloody scratch down his right leg. Five shakes him. He grabs Klaus’s head. He shakes him again.
He holds Klaus, shivering, sitting in a pool of blood, for the next twenty three minutes that Klaus remains dead.
No, that’s not like Five. He doesn’t dwell, or linger, or bury, not as of late. Five doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger or swing the axe. Five doesn’t stick around long enough to face the consequences, but here he is, smack dab in the middle of a country road, silently holding his brother dead in his arms.
And then, of course, Klaus decides to come back to life.
Five’s stare is dead-eyed, trained on the tall grass on either side of the road. Brain cranking to figure out his next move. Breaking the news, burying the body, bettering his retirement. Mourning Klaus, in his own way. Klaus picks this exact moment to gasp below him. Five jumps to his feet and stumbles back, stomach snapping as his stumble turns to a fall and his fall turns to a blink towards the car. His back presses flat against one of the windows, shoulders digging backwards. Klaus groans, this time louder, and slowly lifts himself from the road until he’s sitting up fully.
“What the fuck?” Five can’t process it. His hands are still pink at the fingertips with blood, his chest still heaving, his throat sore and scratched. Klaus rubs his eyes like a child. “Ow.”
“Klaus. Klaus! Holy shit, what the hell?” Five is angry, and upset, and shocked, and so, so relieved, but when he starts towards Klaus, Klaus scrambles to his feet and holds out his Goodbye hand, backing away from Five and towards the other side of the road. His voice, too, is hoarse, and wracked with pain of both the physical and emotional capacity, enough to distract them both from the slowly closing gash along his shin. “No. No.”
Five slows, but doesn’t stop. “Klaus. You were just dead.”
Klaus flings his other hand into the air. “Oh. Oh! I’m sure you’d like that if you could have your way, wouldn’t you?”
Five’s voice scratches like a bad record. “What the hell are you talking about?” The frustration is already building—old habits die hard.
“Oh, I don’t know, how you killed…Dave. I…how could you? He didn’t…there was never anything…” Klaus fumbles now, his hands pinching and flailing like he’s trying to sculpt something plausible, something real, out of it all.
“It wasn’t my idea, Klaus. I never wanted to do any of this. It was for all of you.”
Klaus laughs, high and false and horrible, and Five cringes, just a little. “No, it wasn’t! It was for you! And now Dave is dead and gone, and just…why? How could you do this?”
“I didn’t know it was him, Klaus! I didn’t mean to—”
“What, kill him? Oh, I’m sure you did.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, you idiot!” He’s wild and thrashing now, a cornered animal, and the habit of cruelty is gnashing its teeth. He tugs at his collar. “Look, Klaus, it wasn’t supposed to hurt you, or any of our siblings. It was supposed to get me back to you all.”
“That…that doesn’t fix this, Five!” Klaus stumbles backwards and fully across the street now, but Five is still by the car, and the open road divides them. That, and the death of Dave.
Klaus hugs in his arms. “Did you know it was him?”
Five scoffs. “No.” And then, the unexpected: Klaus, even from across the street, widens his eyes like wells, on the verge of tears (and Five has never been good with kids, or siblings, or people; Five does not know what to do).
His brain churns on. Klaus collapses to the grass, arms still hugged into his body. He clutches the dog tags with an attached ferocity. Five almost wants to cry again.
“I’m sorry, Klaus.” His voice breaks when he says it, from the tears and the age and every other stone-weighted stressor that’s been resting on his shoulders like he’s Atlas holding up the sky. “I am. I mean it. I’m sorry. But I can’t change what happened.” Klaus glares at him, eyes full of sorrow and rage and expectancy and a hint of red.
Five doesn’t know what else to say. He knows he’ll choke with an “I love you”. And there it is—knowledge. He goes with what he knows.
“Dave isn’t dead.”
Klaus’s chest caves backwards with an inhale, and noticeably so. Five can’t tell if it’s relief, or panic, or shock.
Actually, it looks a little like rage. Like he’s about to paw the dry soil and charge across the highway to a bloody-handed Five; a bullfight waiting to happen.
“I’m sorry, I thought you killed him.” It’s more of a strained yell than anything, because they’re across the asphalt from one another, but the wind is quiet enough that it hits Five once more like a slap in the face. Five stuffs his hands in his pockets so he has something to hold onto.
“I did. But not in this timeline.”
Klaus’s face is blank, now, not even a trace of anger. He clambers to his feet like a newborn calf. “Oh, the timeline. Right. Yeah, yeah the timeline. Always the fucking timeline, right. Great, thanks, Five.” Five fights the familiar feeling of habit, the one nipping at his heels and barking for his angered attention. This, too, he owes to Klaus.
“The reason…the reason I was assigned to him was because he would have…lived, otherwise. And you ran into him in ‘63. Klaus, he could be alive.”
He expects Klaus to fly at him, hands outstretched; to summon a legion of blue, shining, ice-cold army men from the ground; to scream or shout or question the assignment or bite at Five’s heart with a question about Dave’s survival.
But no: Klaus, unpredictable Klaus, slumps back to the ground with a tearful sigh and stares at the dog tags. His voice is bitter, and chock full of woeful and heated notes, but it’s certainly not hot with fury any longer.
“I’m fucking mad, Five. Kay? I just…I wish I had known. I wish—“ Klaus flings his hand out to Five “—I wish you had known “It’s a lot. This is just…I…I don’t hate you. Maybe a little. I don’t know. You know, it just adds to my feelings towards you. The brother tapestry.” Klaus stirs a hand around in the air. Then:
“I don’t love you any less.”
“Oh.”
Klaus doesn't love me any less, he thinks. He revels. He laughs. He wishes it weren't true. He wishes his love for Klaus wasn't the same as Klaus's love for him.
And that, Five thinks, is the funniest story of them all.