Chapter Text
Meditation was torture. A necessary evil, as far as Five was concerned, but torture all the same.
It helped Vanya center herself before training.
It struck Five as funny that it had never occurred to the old man to foster any sort of peaceful environment for his most volatile weapon during their training sessions. Instead he’d barked at her like a drill sergeant and then had the gall to be surprised by the explosive result.
And Reginald Hargreeves had thought himself intelligent. Five scoffed to himself and then winced, opening his eyes to peek at his sister.
Vanya’s eyes were still closed, but her lips were twitching.
Five was tempted to interrupt their meditation session to ask her if she was doing the breathing, if she had a clear mind, if she could hear… whatever it was she was supposed to be hearing.
But to speak would defeat the whole point of the exercise wouldn’t it?
In any case, it looked like she was breathing just fine.
“I can feel your eyes, Five,” Vanya murmured.
Five tutted and closed his eyes without responding.
Meditation was torture.
But he had to hold himself still until the timer went off. It was a mere five minutes of stillness. Five could spare that much. All he had to do was breathe along with her. It was a tedious non- task, but one that had already proven itself fruitful.
Slowly but surely Vanya was wrestling her powers into submission.
And Five was determined to bear witness. To make sure the bomb of the apocalypse was effectively defused. To fix what their father had broken.
Five had always been a problem solver.
A do-er. A fixer.
Sitting compliantly in the training room while Vanya’s little device (she’d called it a phone, but it did not look like a phone; more like a slab of plexiglass) played calming ambient noise was the last thing Five would call productive.
But it was productive, he reminded himself. It was a vital component to Vanya’s training. Allowing her the emotional control she struggled with after years of numbing anxiety medications.
So when the timer finally went off Five did his best to school his expression. To stand slowly, to maintain his calm breathing. Calm was the important thing here. Calm was the whole damn point.
Vanya smiled at him.
“Alright,” he said. “Today, I thought you could try levitating Luther’s weights.”
She had levitated their brothers, and himself, on that fraught night at the Icarus Theater. It had been a strange kind of telekinesis. Not something he would have anticipated from her powers, which had seemed more like super charged sound waves than anything else.
“Oh. Um, I don’t know how to do that on command,” Vanya said. “I’ve only done it...” She winced. “The one time.”
“I understand,” Five said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try, hmm?”
Vanya nodded.
Two hours later and their progress was minimal, but it was progress nonetheless. She hadn’t been able to lift anything clear off the ground, but she’d sort of… nudged the weights. Displaced them slightly.
They had been moved, incrementally, from where they had originally sat.
It would have to do.
While they were at it Vanya had also shattered all the light bulbs, but Five waved away her stammering apologies. A few broken light bulbs were peanuts compared with the moon she’d once decimated.
The timer went off again and Five sighed. They closed each training session with another five minute meditation.
So he sat with her. Crossed his legs together, placed his hands in his lap. He did not fidget. Did not open his eyes, much as he was tempted.
Simply sat and breathed.
Alone with his thoughts.
How did five damn minutes stretch so long when one did nothing at all?
Just focus, you idiot. Breath.
Meditation was such a Vanya thing. It did not surprise him that she found comfort in the activity. Like many of her… past attempts to self-actualize, it was a quaint idea. Right up there with therapy and writing.
He liked the way these things made her familiar. She’d begun to feel like another person. Like a stranger. Especially when he’d found her in the sixties. The amnesiac Vanya had little regard for Five. She’d thought him a rude little man. He’d see it in her eyes.
And she’d laughed in the face of their petty family drama. Five would never forget the nonchalant way she’d shrugged her shoulders at the little explosion from her powers at that dinner table with Reginald. How she’d demurred an amused little “ Whoops.”
That was before she’d known. Before she’d remembered.
The good old American government had certainly slapped that out of her when they’d-
The timer went off.
Five opened his eyes and found that Vanya was smiling at him once again. But there was a wrinkle in her brow, a tense set to her jaw.
It was a smile, but a nervous, hesitant little thing. Nothing like the defiant scowl she’d directed at him before that incident. Before her memories were thrust upon her like a dead body to a grave digger.
Was she really better off like this?
“Good work,” Five said. “I’ll see next-”
“Do you want to eat dinner with me?” Vanya said in a rush. “Uh, before you go?”
Five blinked. “Sure.”
The two of them made an odd pair when they ventured into the public sphere. Him in his schoolboy shorts and her in her tasteful button ups. She was too young to be his mother, he was too… unruly to be a student. And yet they stood too far apart for siblings. There was discomfort in the air. There was tension.
They ate their food in silence, regarding each other from across the table. And once again Five was alone with his thoughts.
Dolores wouldn’t have allowed it to drag on like this.
Decisively, Five put his fork down.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you this for a while,” Five said. “But I thought it would be too advanced to… pursue. I decided to table it.”
“What did you want to ask?” Vanya’s little frowns were more familiar than her smiles.
Klaus told Five that she’d "partied" with him and Allison in the sixties. They’d gotten drunk and danced around in a hair salon.
He couldn’t picture it.
“Harlan,” Five said. “How did you give him your abilities?”
Vanya bit her lip. “It was an accident.”
“I’m aware of that,” Five said. “But what were the… circumstances of that accident?”
She considered the question for a moment, glaring down at a bread roll. She tore the bread into little pieces. A nervous habit.
“Nevermind,” Five said. “We can-”
“He was in the lake,” Vanya said. “He almost drowned.”
Five nodded and gestured with a hand. Go on.
“I think it happened when I was trying to revive him?” Vanya touched her lips. “Mouth to mouth resuscitation. There was this… this glow. I could see it flow into him.”
“It was instinctual,” Five said. “Do you think it’s what saved him?”
Vanya scratched her cheek. “I like to think it was the oxygen that saved him.”
Five hummed. “I suppose gaining your powers was more of a… byproduct.”
“It’s like it infected him.” Vanya rubbed her arms, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “I hope that’s not something that’ll happen every time I try to k-kiss…”
She trailed off, making a face.
Five blanched and cleared his throat.
“But it could be useful,” Five said, trying to change tracts. “It’s like the inverse of Lila’s power. The ability to lend someone your strength.”
“Maybe,” Vanya said. “But it was impossible for Harlan to control. I wouldn’t want to burden someone with that.”
“With forethought and training-” Five began.
“No,” Vanya said.
Five frowned at her.
She glared at her crumbled bread roll, picking up the pieces at smashing them together. “I don’t think it’s something we should experiment with.”
“Alright,” Five said.
It was better to guide than to push. If Reginald had understood that from the start, perhaps they’d all have been better off.
One thing the old man had been right about was the human need for structure. Without a constructive schedule, without a tangible way to compartmentalize problems- to untangle them from each other- they’d clatter around at the surface. They would trip each other up.
In the apocalypse that meant carefully deciding when to buckle down with his equations and when to search for food. When to sleep and when to migrate for better weather.
Things were simpler then. It was easy to decide which issue needed immediate attention and which should be tabled.
But now his problems came attached to his siblings. Siblings who were alive now and could not patiently wait beneath the rubble for him to get his life in order.
So how to organize them? By number?
Except Vanya took priority, of course. That was a no brainer. Twice a week, Tuesday and Friday, for two hours a week. She made it simple for him by deciding on the schedule herself.
Five spent more than the allotted two hours on the issue, of course. He prepared himself for their lessons by reading Reginald's notes on her childhood training. He was determined to learn from the old man’s mistakes and gave serious thought into creating his own sort of training plan. A plan that was perfectly tailored to Vanya’s temperament.
Luther’s issue was mostly aesthetic. Five found their father’s old notes on that shoddy healing serum and was taking pains to scrutinize the formula. If he could fix the serum, perhaps he could reverse its effects.
He arbitrarily selected Monday as the day to dedicate to that project.
Diego was mostly fine, but he’d gone into a panic when he thought their mother was glitching again. Five had found a short term solution (effectively turning her off and then on again) but was giving her manual a more thorough study. He wanted to understand the way her mind worked. To give her a tune up, if possible.
This task was assigned to Wednesday.
Allison was still embroiled in a custody battle with her ex-husband. He kept tabs on the court proceedings (all public record, and a click away on those fancy computers at the public library) and read up on the minutiae of custody options in the state of California.
He made those library visits on Thursday.
Klaus’s newfound relationship to sobriety was shaky at best. He had a tangible motivation now (some ghost he was trying to contact?) but Five did not trust his brother's willpower. He strong-armed the idiot into enrolling in Narcotics Anonymous and personally made a point of escorting him there every Saturday.
And then there was Ben.
On Sundays, Five worked on a probability map. How would the timeline be affected when he saved Ben? How would the Commission react? They’d been effectively neutralized, last he saw them. Their board of members wiped out. Their field agents massacred. Even the handler was dead.
But time flowed differently for the Commission in that it didn't flow at all. They existed outside the timeline. Even if it took them years to rebuild their staff, they could return in an instant.
They could turn up to re-instigate the apocalypse.
Five had lost sleep to the possibilities, those first few nights back from the sixties. It drove him crazy because he couldn't see an effective way to plan for the Commission's return.
After all, what could he do? Fortify the Academy like a bunker in a war zone? Sequester his siblings, stock up on weapons, and wait for the enemy?
Five knew none of them would have cooperated. He discarded the idea.
No, better to make the first move himself. To provoke the Commission into revealing their hand. He still had a briefcase. Five was determined to use it.
And he was determined to save Ben.
But he needed a plan .
Sundays were dedicated to the probability map, the timeline, and scrutinizing the immediate events before and after Ben's death. It took considerable self-restraint to turn away from this task on Sunday's end, but Five knew it was the smart thing to do.
His time in the apocalypse had taught him that the human brain could not single mindedly narrow in on a single problem for days and years on end without driving itself mad. The mind needed… a diverse field of stimuli. It had to change tracts.
"Like a computer program running in the background," Five murmured. "Some of my best ideas were had when I looked away from the problem. When I let it steep in my subconscious."
"Meditation can be good for that too," Vanya said. "But you need to stay quiet, Five."
Five opened his eyes in surprise. For a second there, he'd forgotten she was in the room with him.
"Right," Five murmured.
Today was Tuesday. It was Vanya's day, so Five consciously steered his thoughts back to the task at hand.
How long had they been sitting here anyway? Did Vanya forget to set the timer?
Meditation was torture.
It was a Sunday afternoon. Five was scrutinizing his probability map, frowning at the numbers.
There was so much that was uncertain, and he was running out of space. Though he supposed he could get himself a chalkboard, when it came to that.
Someone knocked on his door. "Go away, Klaus!"
"Um." Vanya's voice barely had the volume to filter through the door. "It's Vanya, actually."
"Oh." He jumped to the door and opened it. "Hello."
“Hi," Vanya said. "How… how are you?”
Five glanced at the wall where he'd been writing, then back at his sister. “I’m well, thanks.”
A pause.
“How are you?” Five said.
“Good,” Vanya said. “I’m good.”
“That’s good.” Five put the cap back on the marker in his hand. He had a feeling this might turn into a long conversation.
Vanya peeked around him. “What are you doing in here?”
Five frowned. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”
Vanya hovered in the doorway.
“Do you need something?” Five said.
“Do you have some time today?”
Five dropped his marker. “What happened?”
“Huh?”
They both looked at each other in confusion.
“Um, nothing in particular?” Vanya says. “I just wanted to… hang out.”
Five blinked.
“But I can see that you’re busy,” she hastened to add. “So don’t worry-”
“I’m not busy,” Five said. He glanced at his work. She'd caught him halfway through an equation and his fingers twitched at the sight of its incompleteness. “I mean, this can… I can spare an hour or two.”
No one would ever accuse Five of being a dumb man, but he knew he lacked a certain finesse when it came to social niceties. Leave that nonsense for the politicians, he'd always thought. Why should it concern him?
But now it did concern him, in more ways than one. His responsibility to Vanya- to her happiness and emotional stability- extended far beyond familial bonds now.
After all, the fate of the world rested on her shoulders.
“Are you sure? This all looks, um, rather complicated-”
“It can wait,” Five said, firmly. “It’s alright.”
She looked uncertain.
"What would you like to do?" Five said.
The shy way she pulled a pair of tickets out of her pocket hit Five with a jolt of nostalgia. It was such a Vanya thing to do. If he'd sent her away she would have gone home and thrown the tickets. She would have bought another set on another day and tried again.
"There's this play I was curious about," Vanya said. "It's not, uh, super high quality or anything. It's being put on by this, like, community college? But I thought it looked interesting…"
"Great," Five said. "Let's go."
Maybe it was foolish to think the play would make Vanya happy. Things were never that simple.
As they walked away from the performance he studied Vanya's stooped posture. The way she kept glancing at her phone. The beaten scabs on her lips, which she gnawed at with a nervous energy.
“Something on your mind?” Five said.
“Uh, well it’s already been an hour and a half,” Vanya said. “And you said you could only spare two hours. Sorry, I didn’t realize the play would be that long, and it'll take at least twenty minutes to get home from here… Sorry, I didn't mean to cut it this close.”
He'd forgotten how easy it was to worry her. He shouldn’t have imposed a time constraint.
“You weren't meant to take me so literally on that,” Five said. “I’m not in a hurry.”
She looked relieved, finally pocketing her phone. “Oh,” she said. “Well, in that case…”
“Yes?”
“Well, you’ve gotta eat, right? It’s around dinner time anyway…”
“I do have to eat,” Five agreed. “Where would you like to go?”
“How’s the orchestra?” Five said.
"This thing looks a lot prettier than it tastes." Vanya poked at her artful pastry, wrinkling her nose.
"You can blame your plexiglass," Five said.
"My what?"
"The phones. They’re also cameras, apparently." Five gestured to the teenagers two tables over, who were treating the café like their own personal photo shoot.
Vanya glanced at the table in question and then back towards her dessert, puzzled. "What do phones have to do with it?"
"Businesses adapted to cater to the new clientele," Five explained. "Clientele that prioritize visuals over flavor."
"Oh." Vanya delicately tore her pastry apart and squinted at it. "Well, I guess the chocolate in the middle is good."
"Small miracles," Five muttered.
"And the sandwiches were good." Vanya offered this fact up to him like a consolation prize.
He sighed.
"They were good, right?" She scrutinized his plate, where half of his sandwich had been abandoned. "Oh no, did you hate it?"
"I liked it," Five said. "I'll take the rest to go."
The look on her face told him she didn't believe him.
"Did you like the coffee?" The pastry was crumbling in Vanya's hands, chocolate tacky on her fingers.
Five handed her a napkin.
"The coffee was fine," Five said. "You didn't answer my question."
Vanya avoided his eyes. “Which question?"
"How is the orchestra." Five enunciated with careful patience.
"I’m not… I’m not in the orchestra anymore.”
“What? Why not?”
“Well, I kind of quit?”
“You quit? ”
Vanya winced at his volume and glanced around. The teenagers were snickering at them, but Five didn't give a damn.
“Why the hell would you quit?” Five demanded.
"It's not a big deal, I just… I just quit."
“When did this happen?”
“As soon as we got back from the sixties.”
“Why?” Five said.
This didn’t make any sense.
“I didn’t deserve First Chair,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
“The actual first chair was murdered, Five,” Vanya said. “That’s the only reason I got the spot.”
Oh. Helen Cho. That's right, he'd found her body in Harold Jenkins's attic.
"Be that as it may-" Five began.
"And it isn't safe," Vanya added, firmly. She was lifting her chin now, straightening up in her seat. "It was the right thing to do."
Five took a moment to admire this flash of confidence before he considered her words. He liked it when Vanya stood up for herself. She'd made a decision and backed up her reasoning. Good.
Misplaced survivor's guilt aside, it was also true that her violin had become something of a weapon when paired with her powers. Five should have taken this into account with her training plan.
Why weren't they using her violin?
"Probably for the best," Five said.
Vanya sagged with relief.
"But you'll go back, won't you?" He added. "When it's safe."
Vanya plopped a big chunk of her crappy crumbled pastry into her mouth and carefully chewed, buying time for her answer.
Five allowed his eyes to wander as she thought and noted that the teenagers had multiplied. This entire café had a 4:1 ratio of teenagers to adults.
What were they all doing out here on a Sunday evening? Didn't these kids have school in the morning and parents to get home to?
The incessant camera flashes from a particularly boisterous patron was getting under his skin. He imagined ramming a fork through her jugular and rolled his eyes at himself.
"Five," Vanya said.
He gave her his full attention.
"How will I know when it's safe?"
"I'll tell you when it's safe," Five said. "We'll incorporate the violin into our sessions."
She shook her head. "That would be too dangerous for you."
Too dangerous.
As if he really were the child he looked and not a man who had lived in a world on fire. As if he weren't a man who had killed more people in five years than most serial killers could achieve in a lifetime.
"I recognize that smile," Vanya said with a sigh. "Anything I say against this will be pointless, huh?"
"I'm glad we're on the same page."
They were making remarkable progress. The violin was more than a weapon. It was an antenna, able to funnel her raw power, to channel it in a clear direction.
Now Vanya could actually aim at a target. Though whether that target would get levitated or shattered was still up in the air, at least now her power wasn't widely flung around the room at large.
And knowing that Five no longer had to constantly dodge around sound waves of raw power had allowed Vanya to further relax when using her abilities. To build confidence.
Things were going well.
They were meditating after a particularly fruitful session when Luther's lumbering footsteps disrupted the ambient noise.
"Are you guys done yet?" Luther said.
"A few more minutes," Five said.
"Sorry," Vanya said. "Do you need the gym?"
"No, uh, we're about to watch a movie," Luther said. "Do you guys wanna join? We'll wait for you."
Five opened his eyes and saw that Vanya's grin was beatific.
"Yeah!" Vanya said. "I mean, I do."
She glanced from Luther to Five. "What do you think, Five?"
Vanya had not yet been subjected to Klaus and Luther's abhorrent taste in film.
But he knew how to read a room.
"Sure," Five said. "Why not."
After an agonizing two hours of poorly choreographed fight scenes and sex jokes, the movie was over and Five made a hasty exit.
Spacial jumps allowed him to skip the insipid shuffle around the couch, or the post-movie interrogation from Klaus, who wanted to know what Five thought or what he liked or (in a display that often struck Five as strangely masochistic) what Five hated about the movies he deigned to watch with them.
And conversations like that could go on for hours.
When he jumped into the kitchen it was empty, and Five thought this was all the better. He went about making himself a sandwich.
He'd already sat down to eat when Vanya wandered into the room.
"Hey, Five?"
He spoke around a mouthful of bread. "You're still here?"
She chuckled self deprecatingly and he winced at his word choice.
He swallowed. "Are you hungry?"
"No, I just, I thought you might be in here," Vanya said. "I wanted to say goodnight."
"Oh, goodnight then," Five said. "Get home safely."
"Thanks," she said.
But Vanya made no move to leave.
"Was there something else?" Five said.
"Do you have plans this weekend?"
He pursed his lips, mentally reviewing his self-appointed schedule.
"Klaus has a monopoly on Saturdays," he said.
She blinked. "What, like… every Saturday?"
"I'm afraid so," Five said. "I drive him to his NA meetings."
"Oh ," Vanya said. "Oh, that's… that's nice of you."
"He's like a dog," Five groused. "It's like dragging a mutt to the vet with its tail between its legs."
She laughed at his griping good naturedly.
"But he can be trained like a dog too," Five said. "Positive reinforcement works best."
"So you reward him for going to the meetings?"
"Usually eats up the whole day," Five said, nodding regretfully. "Last week he dragged me to an aquarium."
"Sounds fun," she said.
"He made me touch a stingray." Five let his disgust be apparent on his face. It dripped palpably into his voice. "Their skin is covered in a layer of mucus ."
Vanya laughed again and this time it sounded more genuine. "You bore it bravely."
"It was cruel and unusual."
A girlish giggle, the sound nostalgic. It reminded him of his childhood. How easily Vanya could delight in such simple things, back then.
"I doubt he'd object if you tagged along this week," Five added. "The more the merrier and all that."
"You think so?" Vanya fiddled with her ponytail, loosening and retightening it. "I wouldn't want to intrude-"
"No, no, I'm sure he'd be thrilled," Five said. "Though I leave the arrangements to him, so I can't warn you what our torture will be."
She beamed at him. Five studied the smile.
Huh.
Maybe she could use some positive reinforcement too.
"But there's also Sundays," Five said. "I can give you Sundays."
His heart ached for Ben, but this was not a loss. He would not be neglecting Ben, Five reasoned, because he could rearrange the schedule with Ben as a priority.
A priority under Vanya, at least.
Ben could have Wednesday from now on, Five decided. He was almost done reading Mom's manual anyway. He would reassign her to Thursday, share that day with the custody law research-
"… every Sunday?" Vanya lost volume when she was nervous, voice shrinking as if to hide from the listener. "... math stuff. Five?"
"Don't worry about my 'math stuff,' Vanya," Five said. "Though, of course, I wouldn't want to disrupt your weekends. Do you think every other Sunday works better?"
She blinked at him.
"Perhaps the first Sunday of every month?" Five checked his watch. "I don't want to rush you, but doesn't the subway stop running at a certain point? We should wrap this up."
Instead of answering him, Vanya walked around the table and pulled up a chair next to him. Then, tentatively, she lifted an arm. Five watched her hand slowly inch towards his head and raised an eyebrow.
She blushed at his expression, but carried on with her movement, carefully placing her hand on top of his head.
"What are you doing?"
"Um, in the movies..." Vanya's hand was hovering over his head now, in light contact with his hair.
If her mortification wasn't already plain on her face it would have been obvious in the way she's begun whispering. Five had to strain his ears to catch her words.
"Like… a head pat?" Her arm was trembling. "I wanted…"
Affection, Five realized. She was attempting to show him physical affection. In her own clumsy way.
"I suppose you can spend the night here," Five said. "It is Friday, after all."
"Oh?"
"It's too late for you to be wandering about," Five said. "And if you're joining the bro date anyway-"
"Bro date?" Vanya snorted. "You did not just say that."
He huffed. "That's what Klaus calls it."
"It's unnatural hearing the word 'bro' coming from you ." Vanya smoothed the hair back from his forehead with a jolt of confidence, hiding her smirk behind her other hand. "Bro date!"
"Anyway, Klaus can lend you something to sleep in," Five said. "I'd offer you my own pajamas, but I only have one pair."
"But then what would I wear tomorrow?" Vanya finally pulled her hand away from his head and rubbed at her chin. "We'd have to stop by my apartment, in the end."
"Or you could borrow something from Mom?"
She gave him an unimpressed look.
"Perhaps not," Five said. "From… Klaus?"
"We can figure it out tomorrow, I guess."
Five prefered to figure things out ahead of time, but he was learning to be flexible.
"Alright," Five said. "Tomorrow then."
They regarded each other.
"Do you need blankets, or…"
"I'll go ask Mom," Vanya said. "Don't worry about it."
He nodded. "Then goodnight?"
"Goodnight," she agreed. "Um… I love you."
"I love you too, of course." Five did not hesitate with the phrase, but he realized as he spoke that he had not said the words in years.
"But we should say so more often," he added. "Oh, and are we agreed on Sundays?"
"Sure, Five." Vanya put a delicate hand on his shoulder. A feather light touch, at first, but then she gave him a squeeze. "We're agreed."