Chapter Text
"I'm the only one that has to die," Viktor spat, a sense of finality set deep in his words, his bones.
"No," Five began, snapping his head towards his brother, "I won't let you do that."
Viktor crossed his arms. "Why not? All that my powers have ever done was cause harm, but this? This will do some good, once and for all."
"But then you die! And we're not even sure if that'll work!" Allison's voice boomed, reverberating off of the walls. Her face was grief-stricken, devoid of any color. She already had to watch Claire, her only daughter, get blinked away to another timeline. A timeline where she'll forget all about Allison. "I already lost my daughter, and if I have to lose you too, then I'll be damned sure I go down with you."
A cacophony of buildings collapsing, gunshots blearing, and innocent shrills of the few civilians not absorbed by Ben and Jennifer ripped right through the walls of Luther's abandoned house; resonating in the bodies of the Hargreeves'. Their faces contorted with the noise, coiling up as the sound only grew louder.
The Cleanse was well on its way.
Viktor was sure in himself. He was part of the team. He was the strongest, the most guilty, and the most forgiving. It was time for him to save the world, and if that meant leaving it so he never had the chance to end it again, he would do it. He could forgive himself later.
Viktor stood straight, throwing out his hands. "I'm sorry." It was a little too quiet, a little too fast, but he meant the words. A blue burst of energy shot from his hands, wrapping up his siblings and Lila in tight cocoons as he began to suck the damned chemical out of them. He resisted the urge to scream as an agonizing pain wracked his being, but he could not help the way his eyes screwed shut against the pain.
(And if he couldn't bare to see the pain and betrayal on his siblings' faces, well they'd certainly have to forgive him later.)
Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Five, Ben. Lila. Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Five, Ben. Lila. Viktor reminded himself. That's who he was doing this for. His siblings. (His siblings who he was sure were going to never forgive him. His siblings who never gave him a chance in childhood. His siblings who were the biggest assholes no matter the timeline. His siblings, the ones he'd do anything for. The ones who were there for him in adulthood. Who never cared when he said he was Viktor, not Vanya. The ones who treated him. like their brother, and he assumed they always had.)
Death was an easy concept to accept. It was even easier to accept it in exchange for the lives of his siblings. They were always going to do better things than him, he just knew.
Viktor fell to his knees, screaming and gasping, veins popping from his head and his eyes bulged from their sockets. His body was overcome with an unbridled surge of raw power, and it hurt. He was glowing, he was shaking, he was angry, and he was in pain. He stood with a vengeance and balance not all his own, finding it in himself to graze his eyes over his siblings.
They were gasping, trembling, sweating, their hands clutched to their chests. They looked up at him, and the only thing clear on their faces was fear.
"Viktor!" Diego choked. "Yo - you ass - asshole!"
"I'm the only one that has to die." Viktor didn't hear the rest of his siblings, barely registered the stuttering movements of their mouths.
He crashed through a wall of the house with blast of energy. The monstrous combination of Ben and Jennifer threatened to consume Viktor whole. To cleanse him from this earth as if he were a plague and they were humanity. It's exactly what he wants too. He reaches out, already feeling the burn of the orange substance rolling off of Ben and Jennifer pooling around his feet. Once his fingertips touch the Cleanse, he expels the mass amount of power writhing within him.
It runs from his veins like blood, drains him of his life, weakening his defense by the second, but he's not losing. He musters a grim smirk as the shrill of the monstrous Cleanse is being injected with Marigold. He's nearly done, the Cleanse is shrinking, His body is weakening--failing. All Viktor must do is shoot the final surge of Marigold from his body. He sinks his hands in further, flexing his arms, bracing for the final push, sweat rolling from his hairline. He sucks in a constricted breath, fingers tensing, and--
"Viktor! NO!"
Arms wrap around his torso, forcefully yanking him away from the Cleanse. He's lifted to the air, and just like that, his power surge is broken.
"The subway!" A sibling shouts, most likely five, and Viktor is being jostled around in the arms of one of his siblings as they begin to run.
He's weak, he feels like he's been dipped in lead, left to suffocate and die. Wanting to move, Viktor turns his head, only for an unbearable pain to shoot through him. He whimpers, blinded, giving in to the urge to go limp.
The sibling holding him, shifts him so that he's thrown over one shoulder, bumbles down a flight of stairs and then, not long after, he barely hears the ding and closing of a door.
"Luther, How's Viktor?" He can hear someone ask. It sounds like Klaus, but Viktor can't be sure of anything.
He's jostled again as Luther replies, "He's still alive, but might be knocked out." There's concern and a thick sense of trepidation in Luther's voice; it makes his muscles tense.
"Not promising," Five spits. "Lay him down."
"What? On the ground? You don't know how dirty--"
"I said lay him down!"
Luther obliges.
The cool feeling of the train floor feels nice against Viktor's sweat soaked back.
"Is anyone else feeling a strong sense of deja vu right now?"
"Not the time, Diego!"
"Where are we headed?" Allison asks, watching Five strip Viktor of his coat to lay underneath his head. He checks for a pulse, keeping Allison's worries at bay with a small nod.
"No idea."
"What?" Luther yells. "How do you not know?"
Viktor stirs. Nobody notices. Lila stands. The siblings fall into an argument.
"Lay off, This train is fucking confusing! I would know, I was stuck here for seven years!" Lila doesn't help mitigate with that sentence.
Diego scoffs, hurt. The train speeds up. Viktor stirs. Viktor whimpers.
"We were all supposed to die! Isn't it going to restart now? Are we seriously going to do this again?" Allison can't get past the lump in her throat. The big, ugly lump lodged in her throat that reminds her of Claire and Ray and how she fucked everything up once again.
The train speeds up. Viktor coughs. Viktor begins to wake up.
"Viktor had to go and play hero! He fucked this up! We had it all planned out, and his masochistic, self-sacrificing ass fucked it up! Don't blame me!" Five angrily stomps his foot, yelling in the faces of his siblings.
The train doesn't stop yet. Viktor coughs, blood on his tongue. Nobody notices.
Klaus watches, trying to find the words. "Hey, Viktor isn't all to blame!"
"St - stop," Viktor rasps, curling his fingers into a half hearted fist. His eyes don't open.
Nobody notices.
"I'll reiterate: where the fuck are we going?" Diego is losing it.
Viktor manages a fist, weakly. "Stop.." He's too quiet.
Nobody Notices.
"We're lost! We're lost! The train hasn't stopped! We're lost!" The siblings can't comprehend that sentence, it only make their bickering louder.
"STOP!" Viktor manages a broken, raspy yell. His eyes shoot open, pain ripping through him tenfold, and a short, forceful burst of energy zips through the air; the siblings wobble, some lose their balance.
Everybody Notices.
And then everything crashes into a florescent, shining white.
The train stopped.
~~~
Groaning, Viktor rolls on his side, clutching his blanket above his head, rubbing his temples to ease his migraine. He feels like one big, throbbing stress headache and it's not doing anything to ease the nausea sloshing around his stomach.
"Oh, good, you're awake," a voice laughs, sounding relieved. Viktor's heart dropped to his stomach. "I thought for certain we woulda needed to load you up in the truck and drive you out to see a doctor."
Viktor's eyes shot open, his heart falling further, reaching the floor. That voice...
The thick accent.
The lightheartedness.
The Texas drawl to its words...
The blanket was slowly drawn away from his face, and staring back at him was a fear he long ago accepted he could never face again.
The figure drew in its brows, a frown clear on its face. "You still feeling sick?" A cool hand touched his forehead. "Oh, we might need to go after all, you're still burning up."
Viktor's stomach lurched. He gagged. "S - Sissy?"
The woman laughed, trailing her hand down to touch his shoulder. There wasn't a hint of intimacy to it, nor a hint of friendliness. It was motherly. Viktor could vomit. "Don't tell me you've forgotten who I am?" She's smiling. "Did your sickness cause a bout of amnesia too?"
She's making a joke.
She's making a joke out of him.
He curls his knees to his chest, his lip wobbling. "S - sickness?"
Sissy nods seriously. "You've been sleeping for three days! You came down with a fever and then bam! the doctor we had come down here said he ain't ever seen a thing like it."
Viktor was numb, his face staring blankly back at the woman sitting in front of him. He didn't hear when she called to someone. Nor when she laid him back down, pulling the blanket back to his waist.
He laid like that for what felt like hours, and it very well could have been, time was never consistent, never to a Hargreeves. Viktor only budged when Five came into the room, holding a glass of water in one hand and two white pills in the other.
His face was sharp, cold, a seriousness contorting it. "We need to talk." He shoved the glass into Viktor's hand, spilling some, and watched as his brother swallowed the pills reluctantly.
"What did I just take?"
"Pain relief." The reply was curt.
Viktor rubbed his eyes, sitting up slowly. He squinted at Five. "What?" The boy spat.
"Why do you...look like that?"
Five scoffs, "Like what? Younger? You tell me." Five sits on the neighboring bed that was primly made, it's black sheets and blanket barely creasing.
"Me tell you? What the hell are you on about? I just woke up!" Viktor's stomach rolls.
"You know what you did."
"What I did? What the fuck do you..." Viktor blanches, memories bombarding him as viscerally horrific images.
Ben, Jennifer, the Cleanse.
His siblings.
Their acceptance of death.
His acceptance of death.
The Marigold, the Durango.
Him taking the only reliability from his siblings.
Him screwing everything up.
His vision is blurry as he locks eyes with Five. "Get the others."
~~~
"Oh, finally nice of you to wake your ass up," Lila drawls sardonically.
The Hargreeve Siblings pile into the room, shutting the door behind them. Viktor takes good, long looks at each of their faces. Faces he hasn't seen like that in well over two decades. Younger, a bit chubbier, acne spots.
The faces of teenagers.
This time he does vomit. He pulls a bucket that was graciously left by his bedside to his chest and empties what little remains in his stomach into it. He coughs, splutters, and washes down the acidic taste with the little water he had left.
His siblings stare at him, unblinking and angry.
"What?" He asks, stupidly.
Diego scoffs incredulously. "What? you try and take on that behemoth of a monster--"
"The Cleanse," Five cuts in.
"Whatever--after taking our Marigold, almost die, and then have the audacity to leave us in some fucked up alternate reality while you sleep for three days and all you have to say is what?"
Viktor throws his hands up, backing himself into the farthest corner of his bed. "Woah! Wait, I didn't put us in this timeline! Last I remember was being picked up and thrown into a subway!"
"You blasted us with your power and right after that happened we ended up here!"
"Coincidence!"
"How? You're the only one with any powers left! You did something!"
"I woke up to arguing and freaked! How is that my fault? I was trying to save all of you!" Viktor's heart pounds in his ears as he argues with Diego. He tried to help them. He tried and he failed. He failed. He failed. He failed. He's a failure. He's a failure. He's a failure.
And he always has been.
"Can't you see that?" His voice breaks, it hurts. "I was trying to kill myself so the rest of you didn't have to. I don't - don't know how we got here. But we are. Because I failed. I failed, alright, I admit it. But you guys wouldn't let me do the one thing that I could get right. So don't you dare put all of this blame on me." His chest heaves, his face reddens, he feels what little of his power he's got left spark a flame within himself.
Nobody responds. Nobody speaks for a while.
"You don't know how stupid what you did was," Allison bravely speaks, her gaze trained on the floor. "We were supposed to go together. And you wouldn't let us. That was selfish. It was all of us, or none of us. We might be fucked all over again, and that's your doing, but it's also the rest of our doing too." She musters the strength to look at her brother. "But now that you're awake, we can tell you the basics of what we know."
"Please."
The rest of the afternoon is spent talking, informing, and planning. Viktor's heart clenches when they tell him about Sissy.
She's his mother.
She's the adoptee of all seven of them. Lila is known as the girlfriend of Diego, her parents live just down the street. They have a Ben. But he's not their Ben or Cleanse Ben. He knows nothing of anything involving them. Harlan is a mute, three-legged dog.
A dog.
How sick was that? Harlan couldn't even be a person in this timeline. It made Viktor swell with anger and sorrow.
They live on a farm in Texas. All the way back in fucking Dallas, Texas. Viktor shares a room with Five, Luther with Diego, Klaus with Not-Ben-Ben, and Allison as the only girl gets her own room.
They have an adoptee Father. Carl.
Viktor's nose scrunches at the revelation. "I mean I figured, but man was he an asshole. Terrible father and husband. Just all around a shit person."
The year was 1999.
"Shouldn't we only be ten?" Viktor's brain was muddled, he was still feeling very ill, the pills having only hindered the sickness.
"I don't even question things anymore. We figured out that we're all sixteen," Luther answered, for once it was helpfully.
"How?"
"Sissy asked if we were getting excited for our junior year of Highschool, wasn't that hard to figure out."
Viktor nods lethargically. "What month is it?"
"June eleventh. Oh and get this, we go to a Private school, so we basically just hopped from one brand of uniform shorts to the next," Klaus cackles.
"Oh, great..." Viktor was feeling queasy again.
"I think that sums most of it up?" Allison finishes.
"Wait, Sissy called me Viktor, so that means I'm already out as trans. And they are just...fine with that? Like no yelling, or promises of taking me to church, or anything?"
To that, the siblings had no response.
"And, I sound masculine, which means I'm still on testosterone. I'm...so fucking confused."
Five shrugged. "Call it a small blessing. We'll figure out the rest of that tomorrow. right now though, it's dinner time. Don't be late."
Viktor nodded, getting out of bed shakily after everyone had left. There was a mirror hung up on the door. He looked questioningly ay himself.
Recently cut hair how he likes it, acne, a hint of peach fuzz on his upper lip. He looked like himself, well, he looked like shit, but himself no less. He sounded like himself. But he didn't feel much like himself.
Deciding to change clothes, he opened the first drawer of what he assumed was his dresser. A pencil case sat snugly next to socks tucked haphazardly away.
Testosterone case.
He barked out a laugh.
This timeline might fucking suck, but it might just suck a little less as long as he still had his Testosterone.