Chapter Text
After Five had finally picked himself up from the rubble of his childhood home and the freshly buried corpses of his siblings, he thought back to something Ben had always said when they were kids, "When you have a question, the library generally has the answer."
(When they were kids. Was he not still a child? Had he really grown up that quickly?)
He loaded up the supplies he'd taken from his siblings and the rubble, talking quietly to himself and the ghosts that lingered.
"Sorry," he choked out, grabbing Luther's jacket.
"You don't need it any more," he told Klaus, slipping on his fur coat.
"I'll give them back one day," he promised Diego as he slipped his knives into his uniform pockets.
"It was ruined anyway," he mumbled to Allison as he slipped on a slightly scorched satchel he found under chunks of ceiling. Her initials in the corner of it were covered in soot.
There were a few other things. A few books of Ben's. A cup from the kitchen. Vanya's scarf, half burnt. A large shard of a broken mirror. A Herr Carlson record, miraculously untouched. (The universe had jokes, apparently) The eye.
He stepped over a large mound of busted floorboards, shattered glass, and what appeared to be balcony railing. He'd just moved around a rather tricky beam of wood when his foot caught on something small and he pitched forward, too quick to stop himself.
Glass nipped at the exposed skin on his hands and face, splinters slipping into fingers as wood scrapped away skin, as if demanding his blood as a sacrifice. He groaned, pushing himself up as he tried to ignore his scrapped palms.
Standing up, he turned to see what had tripped him, a snarl growing on his lips before it was quickly replaced with a look of utter horror.
He scrambled away, nearly tripping over once again. It couldn't be. It couldn't.
It was.
Laying there among the debris, in a tangle of wires and false flesh, her pink skirt torn and ash stained, was Grace.
His mother.
Not really. She was just a robot programmed to care about him and his siblings.
At least, that's what he told himself.
That's what she was supposed to be.
That's what she was supposed to be when she sat and bandaged his wounds, humming to him when she wrapped his broken wrist.
That's what she was supposed to be when she sent a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich in front of him every time she noticed he was lost in calculations and hadn't eaten awhile. When she sat beside them and asked him to explain, her robot brain helping him work out the kinks when he was stuck.
That's what she was supposed to be fluffed his pillows and hide his stuffed dog, Mr. Pennycrumb, behind them, even though dad had told her that Five was much too old to still have toys.
She's just a robot, he told himself, despite the tears collecting in his eyes as he took a step forward. Just a program of ones and zeros inside a shell of metal and wires. A robot. That's all.
Except she wasn't just a robot.
She was Mom.
His mom.
He stepped forward once more, inching closer and closer until he could touch her.
He reached out, fingers hesitant as he grabbed her hand.
It was cold. He wasn't sure why had he expected otherwise. The wires under her skin were no longer whirling, no longer creating a false sense of warmth to all who came in contact with her.
He looked up at her face and immediately wished he hadn't.
The flesh was tore from one of her cheeks, black oil running down her throat and stained the collar of her white blouse. Her eyes were a faded blue, staring up at him without seeing. Singed blonde hair lay messy and matted against her forehead, looking nothing like her usual perfect 60s housewife do.
Red was smudged against her mouth, and for a startling moment he thought it was blood, finally realizing it was just her lipstick. The same kind she always wore when she was smiling at him or his siblings, offering kind words in a household of cruelty.
He realized with a jolt that he'd give anything to hear her voice now, to tell him it was okay, that she forgave him, that she would never leave him, that she loved him.
Tears pricked at his eyes, but he held them back, taking a deep breath of ash filled air.
He looked around, mind racing.
He couldn't just leave her here. She deserved better.
They all did.
Burying Mom was somehow almost harder than burying his siblings. (Not physically. Compared to Luther, Mom was a feather pillow to move)
As he lay her in the grave he'd been digging for the past few hours, he decided it was because Grace was never supposed to die. All his life, as he and his siblings aged, baby fat replaced with new angles and points, Mom had stayed the exact same. Same hair, same lipstick, same face.
Her hair didn't dim in color, her skin didn't wrinkle. It was as if she were frozen in time, meant to live on forever.
His siblings had aged, and he knew one day they wouldn't anymore, as time would eventually catch them all. (Though, he hadn't realized how soon) But Mom was always the same, never changing, the sand in her hourglass staying still at the top.
She was never supposed to end up here, lying in a hole with worms and dirt surrounding her. She was never supposed to stare blankly at the sky as Five covered her in dirt and ash until the blue of her eyes could no longer be seen.
Grace Hargreeves was supposed to live.
They all were.
Like he had done for his siblings, he marked his mother's grave with slab of rock from the family courtyard, her name scratched into it with a sharp metal pole.
Five wished he had some flowers to lay down for her. She would've loved them, he knew.
Instead, he gave her nothing but a brief nod, silently swearing her justice as he went back on his mission to find the library, desperate for answers so that he may go back and stop this tragedy before it ever happened.
Years later, when Five was no longer a boy but a young man, the ash would finally stop falling, and the world's first flowers would grow back upon the grave of a mother made of twisted wire and false flesh, her love prevailing long after death.