Chapter Text
Five Hargreeves was having a terrible day.
A terrible couple of weeks, actually, if the timeline was really concerned.
His plan to stop the apocalypse and save his family didn’t work out the way he planned.
( Distantly, in his mind, he kind of suspected it never would. )
But that’s why he ultimately decided to listen to his heart instead.
The hope was that there could be more to his life than surviving a dying world and working the rest of his feeble life as a two-bit assassin. To just sit down and watch the soot-less sky, settle near a park where it had real non-burned-to-ash trees and food that wasn't cockroaches or foraged fungi that wasn’t actively rotting.
Actually relaxing, and not being worried about the potential end of the world coming down, of even surviving it a second time.
A single week was all it took for them to fail, everything he worked so hard to prevent coming back in a full circle.
And it was all because of Viktor.
( Because he left him alone, left all of them alone, too selfish to see what he had rather than what he could do- )
Being alone for more than 40 years gave Five a more logical and survivalist way of thinking. It probably didn’t help that the cold dark nights spent with nothing more than a mannequin and a gun were the only constants in his life.
Nothing more than the alcohol that always burned down his throat, the bitter taste better than the constant smell of dead ashes on his breath.
An umbrella tattoo that constantly stared back and mocked him, being the only one left of seven.
But the hope that he could actually learn to live a normal life, with the only people he ever cared about in his entire existence, truly gave him the push he needed.
( The same push that made him go forward, the one calculation overlooked that cost him everything- )
The same hope was shattered early, and stomped on by everyone and anything that came his way.
Despite Reginald’s warnings, and the commission's attempt at hindering them, the very apocalypse that was supposed to be stopped, was the very thing Five and his siblings created in the end.
Unable to salvage the mess that was created, with the moon being destroyed and all that, the only thing to do was to go forward.
But instead, they went backwards.
Way too back, and separated.
( "Why do you get to decide? You're the reason we're stuck here in the first place!" Viktor snapped at Five's retreating back, making him turn in immediate fury.
"If I did nothing, we would all be dead right now, thanks to you!" Five yells back, his hands trembling in unrestricted tension. )
And the mess they made just became bigger and bigger, until it was a mess that could never be fixed.
Everyone has their own story in molding their future, changing the timeline with every interaction with the public. With every person they killed, every person they didn’t kill.
Until it did, and the commission was eradicated.
Going back on it, Five should have known better.
There was never a moment in his life he didn’t need to fight to survive, and going forward again, it wouldn’t have been any different.
And things were very different.
( “This isn't your home,” Reginald says calmly, looking down at them, always looking down at them, over the second floor.
“What are you talking about? This is the Umbrella Academy,” Allison steps up, confusion and anger lacing over every word.
“Wrong again,” Reginald turns away, “This… is the Sparrow Academy.”
“Dad, who the hell are these assholes-“ )
In the end, there was nothing he could have done differently or better that wouldn’t have still made him end up where he was now.
The training videos at the commission always got under his skin, the science behind the Grandfather paradox contradicting everything that he stood for. Everything that had led up to that moment in time.
Though, it was always confusing. An acorn he never became, but maybe should have been, just to understand why everything had come to be.
Because after all, his greatest flaw, which ultimately cost the universe, was the illusion that he could be in control.
Five never had control, not on his powers, the future, or the past. Even his own life was something that was controlled from the very beginning, Reginald and the Handler having a hand in molding him into the person he became before and after the apocalypse.
Always moving with time, always losing time.
It was an odd sense of beauty, Five would think distantly at the edge of the end of the world.
Where nothing truly mattered, and his need to survive was gone.
What was there to live for, when the Kugelblitz finally wiped out everything existing on Earth? Nothing could fix it, and he should have listened to his future self when he had the chance.
( “ Don’t save the world,” Five’s future self says to him, his final breath taken away to heed his warning. )
Because that’s what he did, disillusioned himself into feeling as if he had a chance in the first place.
The betrayal of his sister wasn’t something he didn’t think would happen, only hoped it wouldn’t, only to stay bitterly disappointed anyway.
( “ STOP !!” Allison howled using her ability, while Five and the rest of the siblings that were still alive writhing in agony behind her, stuck in place.
Reginald doesn’t even flinch, never turning to see the damage he does or can do. He only hastily scrolls through the holographic device, ignoring the painful cries of his adopted children. Ignoring the world to achieve his own selfish desires.
Five didn’t even notice her pick up the weapon until he was on the floor; the dead body of their once-thought-human father, with a chunk of his head missing, no longer touching the screen.
Instead, it was Allison who took his place.
It was Allison who presses the button. )
In the end, it was obvious just how selfish they all were.
The suffering that they all went through, the loss of loved ones, and the lives they so carefully created, shattered every time he came around.
It made an impact on how they reacted throughout the timeline.
Selfish humans who are urged to do what they want , rather than what they ultimately need to do.
( Though, Five never got a chance to be as selfish as he wanted to be. He had to always go forward, he couldn’t afford to waste even a second of precious time that could be used to prevent the apocalypse, to save the world.
Because it all started with finding the person with the missing eyeball, finding his siblings in the past, taking out the board of directors and getting a briefcase, defeating the commission, to stopping the apocalypse for the third time in a row- )
It was a breaking point.
And as much as he wants to deny otherwise, they avoided death as much as they caused it, and Five knows no amount of time could ever atone for that.
His hands were bloody, and they would stain everything he remotely touched, the decay of the world always following behind him.
It was in his lungs, his body submerged with death since he was 13.
It was the end, and everything would turn black, the world they were in would finally reach its end.
...Until the universe caved under him.
It was truly a nightmare to wake up and realize he wasn’t with his family.
Another true horror to begin when Five hears the wail of a baby.
The almost unimaginable to realize it was him making that noise.
Uncontrolling of his actions, he could only continue to wail as several nurses cleaned him and brought him to an unknown woman. A woman with unusual green hair and eyes, round and soft in a way he never understood someone could naturally be.
The feeling of being held in a too-small body was something he could unusually relate to.
( It still didn’t make it any worse, he was 58 years old and stuck again. )
Cooing, the green-haired woman gingerly readjusted her grip on him, the swaddling causing him to huff uncomfortably. His face must have been flushed and too chubby for him to see clearly. Her hands were extremely gentle, though that should have to be expected since he could believe he was just born.
“My little Izuku,” She whispered lovingly in Japanese, smiling widely despite the sweat and tears falling down her face, “Oh my precious baby ...”
( Five doesn’t think anyone has ever looked at him with so much love. Distantly, he remembers a dirty and barely stable mannequin, the imagined love he clung to desperately. It overrode the feeling of cold stares and resentful fury, everyone’s trauma and nonsensical rationality encompassing the timelines that were doomed from the start.
He likes to think his birth mother had stared at him like that when he was born, that at least for just a moment, someone truly did love him, without having to be useful or in charge for once. )
And though he wanted to stay awake, Five’s eyes began to involuntarily close, exhaustion bleeding into his weak body.
Background noise started to fill in, and Five no longer had any grip on what was going on. Voices were passing through his ears, conversations he desperately needed to hear lest he be unprepared for whatever they planned on doing to him.
( ‘What’s going through puberty one more goddamn time ?’ Five could only bitterly curse as his consciousness began to black out. )
It was happily apparent that he wasn’t going to be sold to some random rich psychopath, again.
Though, Five should have probably deduced better, since the lady he first opened his eyes to, never once tried to let him go during the time they were at the hospital.
It was odd to Five, to be taken care of so intensely.
( Even Mom, as much as she could actually try, couldn’t truly empathize with the demands that an actual human child needed. Not unless it was functional to Reginald Hargreeves - and that list was very specific to murder and survival to the highest degree. )
Time began to pass way too fast for Five while under the vigilant watch of his new caretaker.
His new name, Izuku Midoriya, was something that he didn’t think he could start calling himself.
He was Number Five, brother to Luther, Diego, Allison, Ben, Klaus, and Viktor Hargreeves.
Part of the renowned Umbrella Academy, and the creator of the Commission, his life couldn’t be so easily forgotten under a new body.
His skin, untarnished by the blood and death he barely survived. The blood and death he instead caused to others.
It felt foreign and itchy, an imposter living under smooth undamaged skin. He wasn't a child, he hadn't been one the day he jumped into the future. There were no innocent people in his eyes anymore, there couldn't be if he wanted to get back to his family alive.
( “What about innocent people?” Luther sat across him, listening to him talk about his time through the commission.
“It was the only way I could get back here,” Five could only muster up the energy to say, his voice drained of its usual snarky attitude.
“But that’s murder,” His sweet, yet more often than not moronic brother, remarks in blatant disapproval.
“Jesus Luther grow up.” )
And yet unsurprisingly, life continued on anyway.
Number Five, no, Izuku, began to learn that the life he was born into wasn’t as he suspected it to be. The life he began to live wasn’t even of his own universe, something he finds out while listening to his caretaker, Inko (his mother, his mind tries to whisper), while she was watching the news in their living room.
It becomes apparent to Five that he traveled to another alternate universe where everyone had abilities.
"Quirks," they called it, the abilities they possessed that made them different from the average human being.
It was phenomenal, as much as it was something he truly never believed could happen.
Reginald, despite his tight lip on the topics of other superhumans like his siblings during the time of their youth, couldn’t keep hiding the truth from them in Five’s third continuum spatial jump to the future.
The Sparrow Academy, with children also born on October 1st, 1989, were just as unordinary as them.
The ultimate truth of 43 women in the world, who were never suspected of being pregnant, became pregnant with extraordinary children, who would eventually grow up to have particular abilities that no one else in the world would ever have, was something that their dear Reginald had a play in.
The mothers that he and his siblings never got to meet, were being sold off for large sums of money and whatnot.
( A part of Five always resented that, as much as he acted otherwise. There was a reason he detested the idea of going with Klaus to see his mother. He couldn’t understand the idea of trying to get closure from someone so willing to give them up for some petty cash. )
The revelation of other people just like them wasn’t something surprising to Five.
No, he’s made far too many calculations ever to rule that possibility out.
But a society where everyone was unordinary, and possibly executed even far more advanced abilities than he and his siblings could ever imagine?
Now that was something very perplexing to him.
Overwhelming, even.
His new handler, his mother, shows these abilities off daily. Grabbing his soft blanket, his bottle, wipes, all with the flick of her hand as she levitates the items towards herself.
It was as fascinating as much as it was unnerving.
Spending most of his time in a crib or with Inko, he has nothing but time to think and reflect on what's going on in the world around him.
Without having basic mobility in his arms or legs, Five can only reluctantly decide to stay docile and non-aggressive to the woman taking care of him.
To not stab or scratch at the hands he didn’t want touching him.
It was anxiety-inducing, to not be able to have the body coordination to run or fight if he needed to protect himself. Because it was never a want, not for someone like him, never for someone like Five.
Abandonment issues and PTSD trauma aside, he’s always been a scrappy little shit that preferred the company of himself, independence being the only thing tolerable in the eyes of all his past handlers.
Even when he reverted back to his younger body in the second timeline, he never had an issue doing what he needed to do, despite the condescending and disrespectful looks and conversations he’s had with other people.
The Handler certainly didn’t seem to care either, with her leering hands and stares at his prepubescent body, his only salvation that she could never afford the time to act on how she felt without always trying to kill him first.
He remembers her comments sometimes, and wishes that he was strong enough to kill her the first time he saw her without facing any repercussions. She was the one to shoot down his entire family at the barn, and she was the one who framed him against Lila.
( “Start small .” Reginald’s words echo into his mind, " Seconds. Not decades.” )
All in all, this was a variable that Five never planned to expect, thinking that the end of the world meant the end of the world .
It made him too curious, and too angry that he was confined to a small crib with no proper mobility.
He needed to write, he needed to move. There were too many variables to investigate, and too many paradoxes that needed to be questioned.
Where was he, and why was he reborn into another world? Was this something that Five could even fix?
But an even deeper question was, did he even want to fix it?
With no one to keep him company but a lonely mother who doted on him constantly, he couldn't see anything that he could do differently anyway.
His siblings were dead, most likely. Or separated into even farther alternate universes.
Was it selfish of him to want to find them anyway? To ruin their lives all over again in the name of being a family? Didn’t Five already do that to them, and make them wait years just to make them lose everything all over again?
Five was tired.
Exhausted , actually.
And even though this time he’ll be alone, with no driving obsession pushing him towards the future or past, he wants to live .
He wants to learn what growing up really feels like. He wants to be able to eat trashy junk food without feeling like throwing up. Five wants to go to school and learn something besides quantum theory and physics. He wants to see how his hands look without scarring or blood.
Most importantly, Five doesn’t want to be alone.
And so far, with how everything is starting to look to Five, he might just have it within reach.
He can already feel his soul feel at ease with the amount of time he stays in his crib, the only dangerous thing in the house being Inko's alarm clock.
It will be hard at first, he knows that.
His long-term obsession was something that he might never get over no matter how many times he’s reborn. But it might be easier this time around, with how easily he can see his new caregiver tends to him.
It might be easier to forget the pain and smoke in his lungs now that they’ve been cleansed out, the only thing he could constantly smell in the air was lavender from the air mist Inko liked to spray around the house.
This time, he might just have a chance to stay.
It felt wrong, on the deepest level to even think about leaving his siblings behind, but he knows what Dolores would say to him.
What she's always told him, how she always felt about him tearing himself apart.
She would want him to live. To seize the opportunity to actually grow up.
And that was as good as a reason to any to finally let himself rest.
Maybe tomorrow Five could think about everything more.
It seemed like he now had the time.