Chapter Text
Five was tired.
Whether it was because his consciousness was nearing seventy, or because he had been jumping from apocalypse to apocalypse for the last three years without a moment to rest, he wasn’t sure.
Or maybe it was just his whole life that had been twisted from the start, bought by a megalomaniac, shaped to be a superhero for thirteen years, then lost for forty-five years in a wasteland.
When the Handler extended her offer, he had accepted it because he was desperate and had no choice. And once he was in, there was no stopping. He clawed his way to the top of the Commission's ranks, not because he enjoyed it, but because he couldn’t do anything less than excel. He didn’t thrive on the killing, never found satisfaction in the bloodshed. But still, he became a legend: in less than five years, with a one-hundred-percent success rate. No collateral damage. No witnesses. Just swift, efficient elimination. Blink, and you’d miss him.
That efficiency had left no room for reflection. He needed to gain the Board of Directors’ trust, find a way to go back in time, before the apocalypse and save everyone. That was the plan, whatever the cost.
There was never time to stop, never a moment to catch his breath. Until suddenly, there was.
His mind drifted back to those six quiet years. Six years of normalcy—if you could even call it that. They felt like a strange dream now, their simplicity almost surreal. There was a certain beauty in the mundane you could even say.
A job, a commute, sleep, rinse, repeat. The kind of life most people would find unbearable. But for him? It had been... peaceful. No stress, no pressure, no one trying to bend him to their will, no one trying to kill him for a change. For the first time, his body and mind had simply... shut down. Burnout had hit him like a tidal wave, and instead of fighting it, he let it pull him under. He didn’t need to save anyone. He didn’t need to kill anyone. He didn’t need to be anyone.
It had almost felt like retirement—a break from the relentless chaos.
Knowing his siblings were safe had been enough to quiet the restlessness inside him. They were alive—some of them were together, some had escaped to find themselves—and, for once, the world wasn’t ending. It wasn’t the kind of life he would have chosen before, not when he was younger and the fire inside him was still burning hot. But after everything, when he was mentally over sixty, the boring routine had become something close to a refuge after years of running and fighting for survival. A rare pause in the madness of his existence.
He had felt his mind mellowing as he finally found the time to grieve—for the lost years, the missed opportunities. For his dead siblings. The ones who had died in another timeline while those he fought beside lived on to have a future. Were they the same? Did it even matter? The world wasn’t burning, and he wasn’t choking on ash and dust. He could hear the chatter outside his open windows, the honking of cars. And if he closed his eyes for just a few seconds, blood and bodies no longer filled his vision.
Still, there were moments, fleeting but sharp, when he felt... off. Out of place. Like an old man wearing the skin of a teenager. His body young, his mind ancient, trapped between two worlds that never quite fit. His peers, his so-called “age group,” had no idea how much time he had really lived. How much he had seen. How many apocalypses he had walked through. He was always a little out of sync with them, always a little disconnected.
But maybe that was just the price of being Number Five. Always one step ahead of everyone, yet always a little lost.
He couldn’t say he was that surprised when things took a dive into yet another life-threatening, world-ending conspiracy. His family was like the horsemen of the apocalypse, always at the center of chaos, each one a harbinger of doom. Vanya (twice), then Allison, and now Ben... maybe it was Luther’s fault when he chose to lock Vanya instead of supporting her when she needed them the most? Or was it Klaus when he unknowingly threw Reggie’s dirty little secrets in the bin for Leonard Peabody to find? Even his first stunt into the future could have been the catalyst for the very first crisis. His family attracted disasters like a magnet.
Now, with the latest apocalypse waiting for him at home, and flipping through endless scenarios of world-ending disasters, same moment in time, different apocalypses, packed between what should be lunch and snack time in their initial timeline, the exhaustion hit him in ways it never had before. Three years of alternate endings, of jumping through collapsing worlds as if they were falling dominoes, and here he was again. Far away from his family, with no clue how to get back to them.
Lost. Always lost.
And he was starting to wonder if there was any point. Whether there was ever going to be an end to the cycle, or if he was doomed to forever run in circles, traveling through space, time, and alternate universes.
Maybe he was just too old for this.
Slash “tired”. He was fucking exhausted. He could feel his drive to survive withering away—stop by stop. The mental walls he had built to keep himself together were crumbling, brick by brick, and he couldn’t even muster the energy to shore them up anymore.
As they sat on opposite sides of the subway car, neither he nor Lila spoke for once. There were no quips or barbs, no sarcastic comments or playful jabs to distract each other from their own demons. This time, they were each lost in their own thoughts.
As the days bled into each other, desperation crept up on him, growing louder with each reality they traversed. What was the point of boarding the next train? What was the point of anything? They were lost, lost, lost, and if they didn’t die from some gunfire, zombie attacks or climatic disasters, he was pretty sure he was going to go out from something stupid, like a cold, given how his immune system was probably as fried as the rest of him.
Last time, it had taken less than a year for him to spiral into a pit so deep that he considered joining his siblings in the nothingness, numbing himself with whatever alcohol he could find. It wasn’t like the stagnant water around him was any safer, and if the booze kept his far-too-mature mind from bombarding him with the endless, cruel analysis of his situation—his hopeless, impossible situation—then that was just a bonus.
He had understood Klaus then. In a way he hadn’t before his little escape.
The same brother he’d rolled his eyes at, the one who turned to substances before he even hit his teens just to dull the edge of his sixth sense. Five finally got it—really got it. Klaus had been drowning under the weight of what he could see, what he couldn’t escape from, even at ten years old. And maybe that’s why Five found himself reaching for the bottle, even though he swore he was stronger than that. The alcohol, like Klaus’ drugs, was a release. A way to numb the helpless thoughts, the memories of his dead siblings, the utter silence of the world around him.
Because, really, how long could anyone handle the end of the world alone before something inside cracked?
And for Five, something had indeed cracked.
He had almost died—alone, out of his mind, surrounded by the endless rubble of a world that was long gone. Starving, dehydrated, powerless in his weakened body.
Yet, in the midst of it all, a small, childish part of him clung to hope. A way back to his family, a way to escape this hellish future he’d find himself trapped in.
He wanted to erase the vision of his siblings’ dead bodies, replaced them with some happier memories. He had to save his family from this future, there was no other alternative.
Even then, his mind had always been older than his body, always racing ahead—analytical, arrogant, eager to prove he was right. He would dive headfirst into any situation, certain he could fix everything. Maybe it was rebellion. Maybe it was a desperate attempt to escape the suffocating grip of his father’s control. He had always been driven by the need to prove himself, to show that he could overcome any challenge, even if it meant ignoring the dangers that came with it.
At the Umbrella Academy, every action came with harmful and deadly consequences. The world was unforgiving, and the threats they were trained to eliminate were no less so. The stakes were high, and the price for failure was often steep. So, it was almost inevitable that the first time he attempted time travel, it would cost him dearly. Decades of his life, and probably his sanity, were the price for his ambition.
Father was right, he descended blindly into the depths of the freezing water... and reappeared as an acorn.
One day, after what must have been fifteen years all by himself, as he was cold, drunk, and broken, he screamed at the endless horizon of rubble. Silence echoed back, a cruel reminder of his isolation.
That was when he saw her.
A hand, pale and still, poked out from beneath a pile of rubble. Fingers splayed out as if frozen mid-reach. His heart skipped a beat. Trembling, he reached out, hoping for anything to cling to—some sign of life, some glimmer of hope in a world devoid of it.
He pulled her free, brushing the dust from her plastic skin. A mannequin. But to Five, she was so much more.
She wore a tattered white top with black dots. Her name was Dolores, she told him in a soft, singing voice, pleased to meet him. She had an Irish accent that was oddly comforting.
He meticulously cleaned her, cared for her, treated her as if she were the last piece of humanity he could hold onto. Her black eyes would look at him, look after him as he looked after her, give him quizzical glances when she didn’t understand him, prompt him to develop some new theories, rethink his strategies. Her gaze could be approving or glaring, reflecting the tumult of his own thoughts and actions.
Dolores became his constant companion for the next thirty years, her silent presence a lifeline in the desolate wasteland. Her voice, gentle and teasing, guiding him through his darkest moments.
In a world where everything seemed to be falling apart, Dolores was the one thing that remained steady and unchanging. She was his anchor. And for decades, in this bleak wasteland, that was enough to help him hang on.