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A blue aura forms around Five's hands, but he isn't able to blink. He's too tired, he's concluded. Either that, or he's drugged.
He's sitting in a bricked, and rather dirty room. His hands are cuffed to the wall, as if it would have any effect. His legs are tied together with construction rope. Sturdy shit.
"Goddammit…" Five whispers to no one in particular. He has no other options except to wait it out, and maybe a miracle if his family somehow makes a grouply decision to find Five. Five is almost positive that his family hates his guts for putting them through all that they've been through, so that was basically impossible.
He looks around the dark and dusty room, looking for anything that can lead to his escape. He doesn't even know why he is here. He has a guess though. The Commission has been up his ass lately, but he hadn't thought they would act so soon.
He's scanning the room just as he hears a metal door creek open and slam shut.
Ugh. This is it.
Five looks up, and surely enough, it's a Commission employee. It's not Cha-Cha or Hazel, this person has a green chicken mask. What the hell.
"You're awake." It has a low, deep voice. Not the soothing kind, the kind of voice that makes him want to run his teeth across pavement.
"Damn, really?" Five seethed with sarcasm. The chicken man kneeled down, opening his tuxedo coat, pulling out multiple knives and pliers. "Are you serious? You're going to torture me?" Well he'd be damned.
"Yes." The chicken man took a scalpel and tapped Five's nose with the fine, sharp end. Blood trickled down Five's face from the mere contact. "Please answer the questions I ask accordingly."
Five groaned, "you know, I don't know why I'm here. May we do introductions first?" He smiled. He's bluffing, but the chicken man didn't need to know that.
The chicken man dragged the scalpel down Five's forearm. Five hisses, not at the pain, but the fact he was ignored.
"Where is your family located?" Torturer asked.
"Hell if I know." Five deadpanned.
"Tell me." It was a demand as he shoved the scalpel deeper down into Five's arm. Okay, now that hurts. Blood spilled out like a waterfall. He pulled out the scalpel as he twisted it into his skin once more. He hits bone. Five tugs his arm away the best he could, but the cuffs be damned.
"I told you, I don't know." He looked down at his pale arm. It was pale, but now it's just caked in red. There's a gaping wound in his arm that's bleeding out to the point he might lose consciousness. He breathes heavily, "shit…"
The burning sensation in his arm grows, along with the pain.
"Okay, look. If you're looking for Viktor –"
"We don't want Vanya–"
"It's Viktor– seriously, is all the Commission is are just some decrepit morons?– I don't know where my families whereabouts are," chicken man slaps him upside the head, "but your feeble mind is too little to even comprehend that much– quit hurting me will you?–" another slap, "– stop! Jesus."
"I don't want to hurt you." Chicken man picks up a bigger and sharper scalpel. Five grimaces.
"That's bullshit," the man draws blood, "along with your employers."
"What were you doing last night?" The chicken man picked up Five's right hand– his dominant hand– and started slicing up his hands. Five wiggled, but his actions will never prevail with these chains.
"Why is that relevant?" Chicken man stabbed his hand. "Ouch! Holy shit that hurts." He groaned loudly.
"I'll ask you again–"
"'What were you doing last night?' I heard you the first time." Another stab in the palm. Five yelped, and looked around. He was sitting in his own pool of blood. He was covered head to toe with his own blood. He's going to shower if he ever makes it back home.
"You can stop now! I'm trying to remember." He wasn't trying. Last night Five got drunk. Very, very, very drunk. He vomited his organs up earlier this morning, though he has no sense of time as of right now because of the shady room having no windows. He doesn't know how long he's been here. It's also not helping that the hangover feels like he's been shot with a nail gun repeatedly in the head. The headache he has right now is something else.
He's going to lie.
"Last night I was at the library, researching." The man tilted his head as Five lied right through his teeth.
"Researching what?" His hand is now mutilated beyond saving and he's grateful this pain in the ass hasn't cut off a finger or pulled out his fingernails. He has lost feeling in his hand, but he feels his consciousness slipping away (along with his sanity).
"Gee, I don't know. I think it was…" Five tilted his throbbing head to the side, "how to escape my brutal kidnapper, or how to stop the Commission from killing my family… I'm not sure, but it's one of the two." Then, he gets punched in the face. Hard. Blood spills out of his mouth.
"Is that the best you got? The Commission accepts anyone nowadays, huh?" A kick in the gut. He winced, but it's nothing he couldn't handle. Besides, he has better things to worry about, that isn't his kidnappers poor fighting techniques, but rather, the end of the world. The Commission couldn't have chosen a better time to tie Five up and torture him! For sure.
"Shut up!" The chicken man yells as he finally stops beating the shit out of Five. Five let's out a low groan. He tastes iron.
The chicken man stands up as he hears a canister appear in its summoning technology. He walks to it slowly, turning his back on Five.
This is his chance. He should have enough energy to blink. Even though he's getting mildly tortured, he thinks he built up enough energy.
He pulls his roped hands together, making a fist that honestly hurts real bad to do, hence the stab wounds, and boom. He got out of the ropes. He stretches a little bit, his bones cracking and his joints popping as he teleports behind his kidnapper and snaps his neck. Clean and efficient.
He kneels down, ignoring his knees protests, and picks up the canister from the Commission. He dumps out the note and unravels it.
"Terminate Five Hargreeves for future extraction."
Of fucking course. He shoves the note into his pocket as he steps over his captors dead and lifeless body to blink home.
-
He blinks back into the academy, and sure enough, that's all his body could handle.
He gets a glimpse of his family sitting in the manor, the same room he happened to blink into. The last thing he sees is everyone rising from their seats before he blacks out.
-
Hours later, he wakes up in a pure white room. As much as he probably needs a hospital, it's not a hospital. It's the academy's infirmity.
He sits up and sees everyone surrounding his bed.
Now, what the fuck.
"Five! You're awake!" They all said in unison. Five looked at everyone. They all seemed very restless.
"Yo, dude, what the fuck happened?!" Diego stands, gesturing to Five's impaled hand and several cuts and bruises.
"You blacked out and we all thought you died!" Klaus says, as if he hasn't died over 50 times.
Man, his head was hurting. The hangover kicked his ass more than his captor.
"You're lucky Mom got to you in time or else you would've probably died from blood loss." Allison said as she sat at the edge of his bed.
"I got kidnapped," Five pushed the covers off of him and got up. "And tortured." He pulls out the Commission note, "anyways, the Commission wants me dead, as usual."
Everyone stared at him, dumbfounded. Did he just shake off the fact he was tortured? Did he really just say 'anyways'?
"Hey, hey, you're not supposed to stand! You have like 2 broken ribs." Viktor ran over to Five, but Five just gently shoved him away.
After doing so, Diego came to Viktor's assistance and humbly shoved Five down back into bed.
"Listen. We will let you go if you tell us about the kidnapping and everything else." Diego proposed, and Five would be lying if he didn't think this was the dumbest thing ever. He just got kidnapped, held captive without his consent, and now he's about to be held captive for the second time today and without his consent to spill some things that are better kept as a secret. The two are very similar.
Five winced as Diego held pressure against a stubborn bruise.
"Fine." Five got back onto the bed, not bothering to cover himself with the blankets. "Fine."
Everyone gathered around the bed and started at Five like vultures. They want answers, and they want them now.
"You know, Klaus, I can never understand how you like to be tied up." Five leaned back onto his pillow, trying to become one with the bed, "my captor could've been a lot better. The Commission was lousy with this one."
Allison leaned in, "The Commission did this?" She gestured to… you know…
"Yeah, who else?" Allison grimaced at Five's snarky comment.
"Give us a step by step timeline of what happened." Luther demanded.
Five stared at Luther boredly. Are you serious? Wouldn't Luther like to know.
His arm is throbbing. The pain meds probably worn off, his hand is killing him too.
Five groaned loudly, "why? It's not like you guys can do anything." Their eyes bored into Five's soul. They looked at him with wanting. Five shivered. "Fine. I'm only telling you guys this because I hate bedrest."
"Come at me, baby. I have unfinished business with these… these… hooligans!" Klaus's arms wiggled with a certain shakiness. It didn't take Five long to realize that Klaus was sober. He smiled.
"I'm sure you do, Klaus." Viktor put his hand on Klaus' shoulder. Klaus leaned into the touch. Okay, clearly, they've done some family bonding when he was bonding with his torturer. Same thing.
Everyone turned their heads to Five again.
"Well… I woke up in this room that was in urgent need of a deep clean," he looked down at his bandaged hands, "I couldn't blink. I was too tired."
Allison hummed, "too tired? What were you doing before you got kidnapped? Actually, how did you even get kidnapped?"
Before he got kidnapped, it's all very vivid, but he remembers bits and pieces of what he was going beforehand. He doesn't know if he was drugged, so it all clears.
He debates whether or not he should lie to his siblings and just say he got drunk out of his mind and probably collapsed somewhere inconvenient. A place so inconvenient that The Commission snatched him up.
But he doesn't.
"I was unconscious, probably." Five then looked at his bandaged arms. He was white all around, he felt the bandages on his legs, too. "I don't really remember."
His siblings hum in acknowledgement.
"I woke up in that room, a Commission employee with a green chicken mask–" Klaus and Diego stood up, in exact unison, and leaned in, "–before you start, it wasn't Hazel or Cha-Cha. Hazel had a blue bear mask, Cha-Cha had a pink dog mask, this man had a green chicken mask."
The two brothers sat down, but Five could tell Diego was angry. Having The Commission killed his ex-girlfriend Patch, he had every right to be angry. He's angry at the wrong people, though. Hazel is long dead, and Cha-Cha's whereabouts are unknown. What Five does know now, Cha-Cha isn't after them anymore.
Unlike Diego, Klaus went back to his giddy self, even though he was tortured excessively by the two Commission employees. Then, later, to make it all worse, time traveled and was driven to fight in the Vietnam war. Though, he probably got his revenge by getting the briefcase and putting their jobs into jeopardy. Nice going.
Five continued on into his explanation, "I don't know who he was. I later found out that he was going to kill me. He asked me where you guys were–"
"You lied, right?" Diego got up into Five's face, "right?"
Five shooed him away, his breath didn't smell the best. "Duh. Interrupt me one more time. I'll cut your tongue out." Diego huffs and sits back down without protest.
"I said I didn't know. I asked if he wanted Viktor, but he said he didn't. He didn't tell me what he was after or what he was going to do. He asked what I was doing last night. The rest is history." Five throws his blanket off his bandaged legs. "Got tortured and got out. Can I go now?"
-
After all his siblings nagging and constant annoyance, he was let out. He knows he's in no fit to be out so soon, but he genuinely cannot stand being conveyed in a bed for so long.
Now, he was standing in front of his wardrobe, seeking for his baby blue pajamas. Which he locates and pulls on with struggle. It's nothing he can't ignore.
He sprawls himself out on his made bed. His head starts to wander.
"The handler was dead,
so who sent
that order?"
He rubs his irritated eyes.
"Who is still
after me?"
His body starts to heat with the bandages hugging his skin. They're embracing him in the warmest hug he's ever gotten, but not for a good reason. They're becoming itchy, he wonders if he can remove them yet. The ones on his arm's are especially irritating.
The pain of his new wounds are surfacing again. It's almost too much to bear. He blinks down to the kitchen to retrieve ibuprofen and some aspirin.
Diego and Klaus were sitting at the table, but they were staring at each other. Five decided to ignore them, and went to get his pain medicine.
Or so he thought.
"Five-o! Come sit with us," Klaus cheered.
Five grabbed his meds, only a few pills, and a glass of water.
"Don't call me that," he groans while pulling out a chair from the dining table. "What are you two morons doing?" He downs the pills and holds the glass between his fingers. He feels the pain easing already. Thank god.
"We… we are trying to figure out your math-time-travel-thingy." Diego tapped his pen on a piece of paper with equations. The paper was his, and he's guessing the two moral idiots are trying to figure out what the variables mean. They've made some notes on the paper, a few color coded arrows and equal signs with some gel pen that they probably borrowed from Allison.
He scanned the paper on the table, willing to see what his siblings thought of psychics.
'D = Dong'.
Okay.
Five didn't need to read any further to know his brothers were nothing but complete and utter idiots.
"D means diameter or distance, you dumb bitches." Five snatches the pen out of Diego's hand and slides the paper closer.
Klaus stares at Five with his mouth agape, "it took us a whole hour to even…" Diego looks at Klaus with the same expression. What the hell.
Five ignores them, reading more of his dimwitted brother's notes.
'F = ma, F = farming, Ma = mashed potatoes???'
Five looks at… whatever that is, for a good moment.
How could they be… so stupid?
Do they think that time travel, physics, and quantum physics is just some Minecraft survival realm?
He aggressively crosses out all of his brother's notes of each variable and equation they tried to decode. He then begins to write the right abbreviations for the equations and decodes. Lord help him.
He stands up, shoves the paper and pen back to Diego, and leaves without a word.
-
His siblings were stupid. It strikes him suddenly that his siblings are inevitably stupid. He's now grieving over this thought. He might even cry. His siblings were beyond saving.
But would he save them from the end of the world anyways? A hundred times yes.
Even if it meant giving his life and if not his life, a few couple limbs? Duh.