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The sound of the silence was unbearable.
But there was nothing Five could do about it. Not this time.
Usually, there were the sounds of his family just being themselves. But tonight was different, the others were all doing their own things, going out on the town.
And that left Five alone.
Which was fine.
He liked solitude, at least he always swore he did.
In fact, he often said he would be better off alone, and even though this statement was always met with eye rolls, there was never any doubt that it was true.
But was it?
No, no it absolutely was not.
No matter how annoying and infuriating his family was, he preferred to be in their company.
The rambles of Klaus or the snide comments of Diego were enough to distract him. He hated to be alone with his own thoughts.
Usually if he was all alone, he at least had alcohol to keep him away from thinking.
But tonight he didn’t have that option either.
Which only left one thing, thinking.
Thinking about what exactly? Just where his mind usually went.
The apocalypse.
It’s like he could feel himself back there.
The blistering hot sun on his face, or cold of the rain has he hid out in the rubble of buildings.
He hated the feeling.
But deep inside him, there was always a nagging voice.
Tonight it was saying, “It’s where you belong, you know it.”
Five responded in the only way he knew how to, “Shut the fuck up.”
“Why?” the annoying voice said in return, “You got yourself in that position, clearly it’s where you belong.”
“And you know as well as I do that me ending up there in particular was an accident.”
“An accident caused by your own doing, by overconfidence.”
This was dumb, and Five knew it. It was dumb to think about this, and it was dumb to be arguing with himself. But if it was, the little annoying voice had a point he couldn’t deny.
It was his fault.
All of it.
He got himself there, all because he wanted to be a little shit and proven a point to his dad, if he could even call Sir Reginald that. He had never been much of a father.
What father forces his children to kill. Pushes them to their limits to the point where they can hardly function. Isolates them into not having any idea of how an actual conversation works.
Maybe that’s why they all hated each other. They didn’t know how to talk.
It was no secret they all slightly hated one another, that if they had the option they would leave each other in a heartbeat. Hell, they had left each other in a heartbeat before.
Which made Five wonder why he would do anything for those dumbasses. He was well aware they wouldn’t do the same.
“Go, go back where you belong,” the voice said, making it’s grand return. “What would any of them do? Not a damn thing. They’d be better off.”
Five often wondered about that possibility, if they would actually be better off without him. If he had just stayed with the Commission, or in the future, and had never burdened them with the information of the apocalypse.
They wouldn’t be in the situations they ended up in if he never came back.
So maybe he should go, maybe he’d be lucky enough to end up back where he belonged. The apocalypse. He practically was dependent on it at this point, it feel something, to get a rush of emotion and purpose. It was all he had.
Well, that and drinking. Drinking filled that void too, and he kept his mind off of things like this. It made him feel free.
Besides, the amount he drank was never an issue. Not to him, and certainly not to his family. The only one who had an issue with it was Dolores, which was almost enough to make him reconsider the amount he drank, but not enough.
Speaking of Dolores, he wondered how she was doing, where she was. It had been to long since they had time to themselves, and he didn’t even know where she was now.
Maybe that was for the best, maybe he could let go of that piece of the apocalypse.
But maybe he didn’t want to.
Maybe he was relieved when a new apocalypse threat popped up. It certainly gave him something to do. It was better than sitting around, moping like all the others did.
And maybe, just maybe, that annoying little voice told him to go back to the that desolate wasteland he found himself in for decades.
It hit him suddenly, tonight was the night. This was his time to return, maybe he would be lucky and find himself back in that wasteland, somewhere familiar.
Was it comforting familiarity?
Hell no.
But it was all he had.
He pulled himself up from the bed he had been hunched over in and took a look around the room that had always been called his. There wasn’t anything special about it, just a standard academy room, but still, it would be nice to remember.
He approached the door and opened it just a crack, but something stopped him from opening it all the way.
Voices.
His siblings voices.
They were laughing about something or another, or more specifically, Klaus and Luther were laughing about something. Viktor only gave a slightly a slight chuckle, and Diego was grumbling, probably in annoyance about their antics.
After a few more comments that Five couldn’t entirely make out, he could clearly hear Klaus being to call his name. He was incredibly enthusiastic about the way he did it, almost as if he had something he needed to share with Five.
It made Five stop and take a deep, shaky breath.
He couldn’t leave them, not again. They were absolute idiots, and he could barely stand them most of the time.
But they were all he had. Only people he had ever had.
He couldn’t give that up, not now.
Klaus’s continual shouts for him eventually broke him from his own thoughts. He straightened out his suit and teleported out of his room to meet his family.
As Klaus grabbed him and began blabbering on about the night they had, which was met with eye rolls from Diego and occasional quiet comments from Viktor, Five realized something.
Tonight was not the night, the voice will not come out on top, not here, not now. Not yet anyways.
Maybe one day.