Work Text:
It’s the debut of the Umbrella Academy, and Five stands by his siblings as cameras shutter and Dad strides up, past the crowd, to stand in front of them.
(Calling Sir Reginald Hargreeves “Dad” comes as naturally as calling Grace, who Dad had built as their caretaker when they were four, “Mom.”
Which is to say, Five grows into it.)
Someone asks: “Are you concerned for the welfare of the children?”
“Of course,” says Dad. “As I am for the fate of the world.”
And Five is still smiling through the second part of that statement, because it is nothing unexpected, even if this speech was not rehearsed with them, exactly. It’s always been the fate of the world above them, but Five is riding the high of a successful mission—their very first!—Dad was pleased with their performance. Tangential praise is still praise. He is old enough to know that Dad will not be offering more than that, even as Klaus wonders aloud if Dad will give them the next day training off for their success and Allison pipes in that he has to! Didn’t you see all the people?
He won’t, Five knows.
Dad is blunt and straightforward and offers only the necessities, and they don’t need more than that, so it is stupid to expect more from Reginald Hargreeves.
Five doesn’t say that aloud, though.
(Because even at the very grown-up age of thirteen, Five still hopes for it.)
***
When Number Five and his siblings are nine(-turning-ten-years-old), Mom approaches Dad after another (expected to be) silent dinner and requests that they be given names. It’s for the children’s birthday, she says, and Number Five is very familiar with the expression that crosses Dad’s face. It is the one that says: If there is no advantage to such an action, why should that action be taken? Each decision should have purpose. Now, Number Five, again.
So Number Five trains (and trains and trains) until his nose bleeds and he collapses from exhaustion, because he knows Dad better than his siblings, and this is the best possible option. He gets special training so they don’t have to. (He knows that they still do. That Dad takes each of them somewhere for hours at a time, and they return, and they do not speak of it.)
And Number Five knows that names are not something Dad will allow, even as he acquiesces to Mom and says that she may grant them a set.
A birthday gift, the very first they will ever receive, and Number Five does not want it, because he knows Dad, he knows Dad, and it would be pointless. He says as much, later on, right before Mom grants them all names from One to Seven. It is Luther and Diego and Allison and Klaus and when she gets to him, she says “Five” and hesitates for the briefest of moments at his smile before continuing with Ben and Vanya.
All their (re)introductions to Dad are done the following day. There is a slight downturn to his lips when he gets to Five, just Five, but he makes no comment and they receive nothing but a perfunctory nod and a dismissal afterward. Dad knows their names. It doesn’t change anything, as Five had already known.
But while Luther’s face may falter when Dad calls him “Number One” as he always does, and Diego might clench his fists at still being referred to as “Number Two” and down the disappointment goes with the rest of his siblings, but when Dad calls him “Number Five,” it is not a slight. It cannot be used that way, because that’s his name. (It is his, and it will not be used against him. Dad knows this is a defiance. Five can see it. He doesn’t care. Or tries not to. Close enough.)
***
Approval is not something that can be won.
Five has learned that lesson well, and he has no want for it anymore.
Sometimes, he is curious though. If he could achieve something resembling love from cold, calculating, impassive Reginald Hargreeves, then surely he could find a way to twist it for his siblings, couldn’t he? Five knows that he’s drawn too much ire from Reginald for himself: he’s accepted like a fact, a mathematical calculation that says he’s passed the threshold for such things, but perhaps that is not so for the rest. It is like a proof of concept: his siblings still want for Reginald’s affection, and if Five could not help them outgrow their desire for it, then maybe he could somehow get it for them, and that would be just as good.
It is like a game between them.
Five observes him, unveils as many ways as he can about how Reginald ticks, and he applies them in every situation deemed necessary. Necessary meaning throwing himself into the path of Reginald’s displeasure to keep it off his siblings. It also means more private training for him, where Reginald tries to deconstruct him in turn, putting Five in more and more restraints, trying to see the limit upon which Five can no longer escape. Reginald has yet to reach that limit, and Five tries not to fear that day.
It is coming soon. He knows this to be true.
***
Five had not expected that day to come quite so soon, though.
But his powers have been developing as much as he had been pushing them, and they do not grow in the ways that Reginald wants them to. Five cannot simply settle into his restraints and refuse to jump. It is not like Allison, who could live her life without another Rumor, or Diego, who could choose to toss a knife without warping its direction. Five needs to, and he can feel it like a buzz under his skin when he is unable, and it will happen if it is contained. That is what Reginald does not understand.
Time travel is something he researches because spacial jumps are no longer enough. He can blink around the house for mundane moments. He can blink out of the various chains that Reginald binds him to until he collapses from exhaustion. He can blink across the country and back if he just gets the calculations right. But that rattling energy does not subside, not completely, and he finds himself jumping when he doesn’t mean to. Five will hardly admit to such accidents to Reginald—and it is a simple enough fix to blink to the right place after—but these lapses alone are enough for him to realize that time travel is now a necessity.
If he does not have control over it, Five will be unable to undo it. He does not want to get stranded in a time away from his siblings, who will think nothing more of it than Five vanishing from their lives, never to return. What fate would befall them then, without Five mediating the worst of Reginald’s imposing disposition?
It is increasingly urgent now. But Five knows what buttons to push.
He slams a knife into the dining table and speaks when forbidden to. Reginald is displeased, as he expects, but he does not concede the way Five needs him to, and the urgency is vibrating within him. He is more than ready. He has made calculations upon calculations, and he cannot wait any longer. Five runs out the door, and knows once he’s stepped out that he can’t return unless he gets this right.
Five needs to succeed. He cannot face Reginald with failure, because he cannot predict what will happen to the rest of his siblings while a punishment is doled out. Reginald does not monitor punishments. He observed private training and progress made, but not punishments, which means that anything could happen while he is left potentially incapacitated.
So he reaches out to the power that is fighting to escape him, and it happens easily. He blinks into summer-bright skies and knows it must be a few months in the future at least. He lets out a little laugh of delight, flexing his hands and trying again, just to prove that it wasn’t a fluke. He blinks into snow, still on the same street. Not ready, his ass. Shows what Reginald knows. (Rather, what he doesn’t.)
Five skips forward one more time and stumbles on the landing.
It looks like autumn now, or perhaps spring.
He runs up to a news stand and grabs a paper: April 1, 2019.
Five grins at the paper, illuminated by moonlight, and thinks about slamming it onto the dining table of the meal he had just left. His smile fades when the dim moonlight seems to shift, and when he looks up, it shifts to horror. Gone are the thoughts of time travel. Five doesn’t think before he’s blinking back down the street to the Umbrella Academy. His siblings must be in their thirties now, but that’s fine, because they should have their powers at any age, and the ability to handle—
—he halts over destruction.
There is no Umbrella Academy.
It is nothing but rubble behind a broken gate.
It smells of burning. Five spends entirely too long staring at the umbrella tattoo of a man that must be Klaus, and does his best not to lose himself over the corpse. Corpses, plural, of his siblings. Would Five find himself among them? He can’t imagine leaving their side over whatever had occurred and—his eyes drift back up to remind him of the impending disaster. It shocks Five back into focus, and he clenches his fists and tries to focus on jumping back to the past.
It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.
He can feel the exhaustion settling in, and it is the worst time for it to do so. Panic is the next emotion to settle in. He takes a step back, then another, then another, staggering over shaky legs and wide eyes as the moon above glows a molten red and breaks, hurtling towards the Earth in a devastation that the Umbrella Academy cannot hope to save. (There is no Umbrella Academy. It is dead. His siblings are dead. Five will be dead.)
And Five runs because there is nowhere he can blink to. No when his powers will allow. He has already pushed past his limits, and his little legs cannot outpace the inferno. Because the world is ending, the moon is falling, and, and, and—Five burns (and burns and burns) until everything is cold and dark and nonexistent.
***
Later, much later, a little ghost manifests in a ruined world. He is not the only one with unfinished business, but he wants for his family (he needs them) and he does not know if the light he saw contains them. So the little ghost hovers around a decimated house that was never quite a home, over bodies that were dead before the rest, and recognizes a tattoo. He knows it, and he knows it well, because it is the same one etched into his own arm. While face is not quite so familiar, the little ghost can recognize it too, and he cries. (There is no one left to see it. There is no one left to comfort him.)
He cries and sobs and screams to an empty world (a broken world, a burning world) as ash rains from the skies and blots out the sun, and the rubble is illuminated by the flames that do not subside. Not even after he runs out of energy, trying and failing to hug people that can never hug back, that the little ghost cannot even touch, that he will never be able to properly bury. (He will never be buried, either, but that is less important.)
He is surrounded by flames. He has never felt so cold. He is shaking. He is desperate. He is not yet ready to give up. So the little ghost clenches his fists (and closes his eyes and hopes and prays), shaking and shivering from the cold (and fear, and grief) until his hands are glowing blue from sheer willpower, and he begs (to anyone left, to anyone that might hear him).
Rewind. (Please.)