Work Text:
Five slams hard into the concrete ground, catching his fall with his elbows and causing muddy water to spray into his ears. Ignoring the pounding of his head, he scrambles unevenly to his feet to face the pulsing blue light behind him.
“Luther,” he tries to call, wind whipping away his breath. “Diego!”
The world goes white, and Five gasps, wet pavement pressing beneath his hands. Did he… did he fall to the ground? Five blinks, before squeezing his eyes tightly shut as the pain in his head spikes. He can’t remember what happened between standing and being on the ground, but rocks are digging into his palms, so he might have fallen again.
With that thought, Five’s headache spikes again, every nerve in his body lighting on fire as his brain threatens to split in half. Someone’s moaning, and Five has half a second to think it might be him, before a new wave of pain washes through his skull.
Time has passed, Five thinks, when he becomes aware of his body again. His hands are clenched tightly around the bottom of his blazer, and it takes him a few seconds to force them to uncurl. He groans as he slowly rolls to his feet, body heavy, as if every muscle had been tightly clenched for hours.
On unsteady feet, Five glances around. His stomach sharply drops, as he takes in the empty alleyway.
“Allison?” Five calls, halfheartedly, wincing as pain briefly spikes through his head.
“No need to call so loud, I’m right here,” a voice groans, and Five whips around, only to be faced with the deteriorating bricks in the alley wall.
“Allison?” he calls again, hope lacing his voice.
“Not Allison, but it’s nice to know I’m pretty enough to be mistaken for her,” another voice says, this one sounding like Klaus. Five spins around again, chest tightening when he confirms that no one else is there. It’s just him, alone in an alley. Hearing voices when no one’s there.
God, it’s like the apocalypse again, Five thinks numbly.
“We’re in an apocalypse?” Luther’s voice joins the bunch, and Five lets out a shaky laugh as he runs his hand harshly through his hair. If the laugh is a little hysterical, there is no one around to judge.
Except Dolores. Dolores was always there to judge, but Dolores is gone now. He already misses her.
“Dolores?” Five hears Allison’s voice say, with a confused lilt.
“Yeah, I don’t know man,” Klaus’ voice joins in.
“Where are we?” Another says, and Five puts his hands over his ears, as if it will help. It hadn’t helped in the apocalypse, not when it was just him and Dolores, and it won’t help now, not when Five knows that it’s all in his mind.
It’s always all in his mind. He can smell the decay of bodies, and when he blinks, he can see the ash drifting in the air, with fires blazing in the distance. It would be beautiful if it weren’t so deadly.
He watches the fires burn, heart pounding rapidly in his chest. And then a scream interrupts the silence, jolting Five back into the alleyway, chest heaving as he forces himself to breathe.
“What was that?” Diego’s voice whispers in his mind, and Five uses shaky hands to straighten his blazer. No more time for dallying. He needs to figure out where he landed, the precise date and time.
And then, he needs to find his siblings.
“Uh, Five…” Allison’s voice echoes through his skull.
“Wait,” Klaus’ voice mumbles, overlaying Allison with a breathy laugh. “Are we in Fivey’s head?”
Five studiously ignores them, walking towards the edge of the alleyway. Or at least trying to walk that way, as voices erupt in his head, causing the pain in his skull to spike and white nothingness to blink across his vision. Five feels himself stumble, and braces himself against the alley wall.
“What do you mean—” overlaps with “Five, wait, FIVE—?” and merges into “—some kind of hive-mind bullsh—" and Five is helpless against the noise building up, until someone is screaming, and he can’t hear anything anymore—
And then Five is clasping his hands unsuccessfully around solid concrete ground, and it is blissfully silent. Five can feel white-hot pressure building against his eyes, and the promise of a wicked headache pulsing behind his forehead—but the voices, and the pain that had accompanied them are gone. His head is fine, even if it is pounding and he feels sick to his stomach from the whole ordeal.
Somehow, all he can think is time travel has never affected him like this before.
Five moves his hand across the concrete, feeling small pebbles grate against his skin, before cracking his eyes slowly back open and blinking until he can see the alleyway again.
Warily, Five stands up, tensing at every sound he makes. He shakily leans against the wall and breathes, trying to think.
“Five?” Allison’s voice says, hesitantly. Five remains silent, and debates answering. It’s not like anyone is watching though, and if it really is just his mind, well… it’s not like he hasn’t dealt with it before.
“Yes?” he answers, stoically.
“Are we really stuck in your mind?” Allison’s voice asks, and Five doesn’t know what to say back. He isn’t entertaining the idea that Allison, and potentially some of his other siblings, are stuck in his mind. But is it even possible for a time travel mishap to cause such an event?
After all, one tiny decimal error caused Five to transfer his consciousness in a 13-year-old version of himself. In a way, something like this is quite similar, yet also wholly novel… Which is to say on a purely theoretical level, there is no way to prove whether or not transferring consciousnesses into one body is possible through time travel, and therefore no way to truly rule out such a thing as a possible occurrence… Which is to say, he really doesn’t know.
And when he’s the resident time travel expert, he’s really supposed to know these things.
Unfortunately, time travel is complicated.
He hates time travel.
“Well that’s just great,” Diego’s voice mutters sarcastically. “He doesn’t know!”
“I didn’t say I don’t know,” Five heatedly responds, before he can process that he’s responding out loud to what’s probably just his own deluded mind.
“Well you thought it,” Diego’s voice mutters.
Great, Five thinks sarcastically. They can hear my thoughts too. They’re his own delusions, it makes sense that they’d know what he’s thinking. Although, his delusions have never been so overt about it before.
“I mean, it definitely feels like we’re stuck in his mind,” Klaus’ voice says, grating against Five’s nerves.
“I think it’s safe to say that we are,” another voice says, and it’s a kick to the chest because, that’s Ben’s voice.
“Ben?” Luther’s voice asks, soft and fragile like he too can’t quite believe who he is hearing.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Ben’s voice says, before multiple voices begin speaking over one another at the chance to speak to Ben again.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s just Ben,” Klaus’ voice raises over the clamor, effectively cutting off most of it, until Diego’s voice speaks.
“It’s good to have you back, buddy.”
“It’s good to be back,” Ben responds, before pausing. “If you can really call this ‘back’.”
“Alright,” Five interrupts. “Role call.”
Five can only hear his finger tapping impatiently against the wall, before Luther starts.
“Number One.”
“I thought we were past the numbers,” Diego’s voice comments, before groaning. “Number Two.”
“Three.”
“Fourrrrr…”
“Number Five.”
“Six.”
Five waits, and then frowns. “Vanya?”
Five taps his finger against the wall behind him, and no answer comes.
“No Vanya then,” he concludes, after a long silence.
“She was unconscious before we all time travelled,” Luther’s voice comments. “Maybe she’s still asleep.”
“It’s possible,” Allison’s voice says.
“Sleeping Beauty,” Klaus’ voice says, and then pauses. “Not sure if we can call it sleeping beauty if were all trapped in Five’s body…” Klaus muses. “Not to say you aren’t beautiful, but—”
“Stop it,” Allison says, and thankfully Klaus shuts up.
Five slouches into the wall. He’d… he’d like to say that his siblings aren’t stuck in his mind. He doesn’t know which is the worse option, that he’s having auditory hallucinations, or that his siblings really are stuck in his mind. Because if they are stuck in his mind, it means that the equations he used to transport his siblings and himself were drastically off. And he doesn’t know how he’d be able to fix something like this, because if his siblings truly are sharing the same mind space as him, he has no idea if there is a limit on how long his brain can handle them, or if there are any adverse side effects.
If his siblings are truly in his head, he doesn’t even know where their bodies are, or where to begin with the equations. It took him decades to discover the right equation to travel backwards in time. He doesn’t want to see how long it takes for him to discover how to separate his sibling’s minds from his own.
“Five, you good there buddy?”
And hallucinations or not, he doesn’t want to have to deal with his siblings in his mind 24/7. They’re annoying enough in person, thank you very much. He knows he’s pissed off a lot of people in his life, but he’d love to know who he pissed off this time to be stuck with his siblings like this. Whoever he’s pissed off, he’d like to threaten them until they’re violently drowning in their own blood and gurgling for mercy.
“Jesus.”
As much as it sucks to think about, he’s starting to have a hard time not believing that the siblings in his head are the real deal. It’s quite possible that his mind is playing tricks on him, but it all feels a little too real.
Although, delusions tend to feel too real at times, and Five knows this.
But until there is contrary evidence, there isn’t much harm in assuming they’re real for now. It just means that Five will have to start trying to find a way to get his siblings separated from his body and back in their proper physical forms. Preferably before they start suffering any consequences for sharing the same brain. Although where to start with that, he has no idea.
Five breathes out slowly, scanning the alleyway once last time. A sharp glint catches his eyes, and he snaps his head around to watch a person in a second-story window disappear behind a curtain. Atop the building sits various strange contraptions. Five grins.
He might know just where to start.
With clenched fists and a quick flash of light, Five jumps inside the building by a set of stairs. Taking the stairs two at a time, Five carefully approaches one of the doors in the hallway, a strong wooden door with ‘Mortimer Gussman D.D.S.’ printed in gold lettering. Five tries to peer inside, before giving a quick knock.
The door to Five’s right opens, and a small man peers out.
“What do you want?” The man asks, and Five shifts into the man’s personal space.
“Hi, I’m selling encyclopedias for my youth group,” Five starts.
“Really, Five?” Allison says disparagingly, in a quieter corner of Five’s mind. Five ignores her.
“I was curious if—”
The man shuts the door in Five’s face, and Five can feel his face twist. Time for Plan B. Five warps the space around him, popping into the man’s kitchen.
The man gives an undignified yelp, and scrambles for a weapon, eventually grasping a small kitchen knife, while Five casually watches with a smirk.
Five can feel a small wave of disapproval from Allison, but none of the siblings in his head make a comment.
“How’d you do that?” The man asks, waving the knife in Five’s general direction.
“Don’t really have time to explain,” Five approaches the man with a smile on his face.
“You from the Pentagon? Huh?” The man questions, shoulders tensed.
“Yes,” Klaus says, gleefully.
“No,” Diego says, in offended horror.
“Definitely not,” Five echoes.
“CIA? FBI. KGB?”
Five doesn’t grace the question with a response.
“Is that fresh?” Five asks, spotting the coffee. He blips over to it, and the man lets out another yelp. Five ignores it, glancing over, and then pouring himself a cup. The man moves closer to Five, the sharp object still pointed in his direction. Five takes his cup and walks past the man into the next room, taking in a whiff of the caffeine.
“Hm. This Columbian?”
“It’s my own blend,” the man replies, and Five makes a face, before catching sight of the newspaper clippings on the wall. Observing the various equipment and UFO newspaper articles, Five walks around, before turning back to the man.
“You ever heard of, uh, Area 51?” Five asks. “Roswell?”
The man lets out a breath, midway between a scoff and a chuckle. The knife clatters to the floor as the man swirls around on the spot, glee on his face. “Hot damn!” He exclaims. “Whoo! See, I always knew we weren’t the only ones.” Five leans on a nearby table, while the man continues, previous hesitancy around Five’s visit forgotten. “See, Eleanor thought my head wasn’t screwed on tight, but… but it’s all true, yeah? UFOs, crop circles…”
“Um,” Luther says in the back of Five’s mind.
“Well, the truth is out there,” Five says, and Klaus begins cackling into Five’s brain.
“Is he…” Diego starts, a mixture of shock and fascination.
“No, no, no, no,” the man says, slowly approaching Five as he gestures empathetically. “The truth… the truth, it’s… right here in front of us. Tell me, wh…” Five leans back as the man enters his space, eyes large as he stares at Five with wonder. “Why is it always an anal probe?”
“Any closer and I’ll melt your brain,” Five says, squinting his eyes and giving the man a tight and dangerous grin.
“Five!” Allison says.
“He needs a little space,” the man says, backing away immediately, Five watching every movement like a hawk. “Yes. I’ll be over here.”
“All those contraptions on the roof, you built those, right?” Five questions.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, sure did,” the man answers. “Yeah, I’ve been tracking anomalies in… in the atmosphere. Just waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For you,” the man gestures, and Five squints. “For all of you.”
Aha. Five wriggles his fingers in anticipation. This is what he is here for.
Five leans in closer to the man, eyes focusing in on him. “You’ve seen others?”
The man nods emphatically. “Yes! Yes. It all started in 1960, the year the Silvertone Omega was released. I was in the middle of a sale when something very… strange happened. For the past three years, I’ve witnessed five energy surges in that alleyway out back.”
The man waves his arms. “Same thing every time. A bright blue light, then something appears.”
“Did you get a good look at any of them?”
“Yeah, the first one,” the man says. “And the big one. They all kind of collapsed when they arrived, like dead weight. I’m not even sure if they were alive.”
“Did you get close to any of them?”
“I tried to. By the time I managed to get to the alleyway, they had always disappeared. Like they were never even there.” Five examines the photos on the walls, dread sinking into his stomach.
“So something happened to them?” Five asks, wandering closer to the window with the view of the alleyway. Peering outside, he stares at the empty space, no signs of what could have happened.
The man continues blabbering in the background, but most of it becomes theories about who Five’s siblings are and how they came to that alleyway. The man doesn’t know much else. Five has hit a dead end. Again.
He has the voices of his siblings stuck in his head, he knows that his siblings somehow did arrive over the span of three years in the same alleyway… but he has no idea what happened to them, or how to get them back to normal and out of the 60s. He’s back to the drawing board.
“Five…” A voice whispers, and Five can’t tell which sibling it is from. “Five!”
Five snaps back to focus, glancing at the man, who is still monologuing, and then glancing around, before looking through the window, where his eyes catch on a figure in the alleyway. Five lurches up, leaning to get a better look. The figure is wearing a white suit, and is inspecting the dirt on the ground. Beside the figure, set on the ground, is a very familiar briefcase.
Two more white suited figures join the one in the alleyway. One of them glances up and locks eyes with Five, confirming Five’s suspicions.
“The Swedes,” he breathes, something flickering in his chest.
“The who?” Five hears, and ignores.
The trio of homicidal siblings are dangerous, but so is Five. And if this is what he thinks it is, then he just might have a lead for what happened to his siblings. Five feels a feral grin slip onto his face.
Time to begin an investigation.
Five pulls at the space around himself, disappearing in a cocoon of blue light, leaving only a man startled out of his monologue in his wake.