Chapter Text
On December 8th 2025, a perfect family sat in a townhouse in a nice part of the city.
It was a rather remarkable day for all of them, but mostly for one in particular. For now, they were all putting that to the side, in favor of watching the TV, and busying themselves with sketchbooks and needlepoint.
Then the little brother charged in, waving a comic book high in the air.
“I got it!” he said excitedly, “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #16!!!”
He flipped it to the back cover, and showed them all the credits.
“Backgrounds done by Someone We Don’t Care About, Someone Else We Don’t Care About, and… Gwendolyn Poole,” he pronounced.
Her parents applauded. The girl herself blushed and played at humility.
“I always knew you had a future in this stuff, sweetie!” her mother said. “You’re finally getting your life together again!”
“Yeah,” Gwen agreed, smile not quite reaching her eyes as she continued to work on her sketch. Of a masked face, with bulbous eye pieces shaded to be pink, and the mouth exposed.
It looked… so familiar.
Perhaps it was a C-tier hero that hadn’t been revamped in decades?
Five hadn’t exactly thought about what he would do, after he finally stopped the Apocalypse for good.
Sure, he’d gotten a brief glimpse of it, in the timeline before this, with the Sparrow Academy, but that was mostly just a cathartic time to kick back and celebrate. Not a long-term way he wanted to live his life.
So, he looked thirteen years old, was actually fifty eight, had no powers whatsoever, and all the time in the world to figure out what to do. Where did that land him?
In the goddamn CIA, somehow.
Not that he could say he disliked the job. It was interesting, kept him on his toes and moving. Same couldn’t be said about Diego, and look how that was going for him.
But try as he might, even in a reset universe where supposedly none of that ever happened, Five was still being dragged right back to the Umbrella Academy.
He didn’t know how the Keepers had come to the conclusions they had, but what they were saying about alternate timelines checked out, and he needed to look further to see what the deal was. Of course, no one else would have the eye for these things that he had, so he opted to go by himself, defaulting to the helpful disguise of Jerome, and stories from his real life that were just insane enough to meld in with this crowd.
“I used to be a temporal assassin. Now, I don’t know what’s real anymore,” he said, going for depressed and defeatist, as if this wasn’t the best he’d ever had it. As if this wasn’t all he had ever wanted. He was met with applause and words of comfort, these guys believing it faster than his siblings even had.
All the while, he looked through the crowd passively, trying to see if there was anyone important enough in the government to be kept an eye on. Someone impressionable enough to escalate to wholesale violence. Young adults being present at events like this was always a good way to gauge how much of a danger these people could be to state security.
Aside from Five himself, there weren’t many. Though he did clock the young girl sitting near the edge of the circle, with pink hair showing a lot of roots. Then there was a trio of boys sitting closer to the center, wearing shirts with alt-right slogans on them. At sixteen, this was only edgelord behavior, but a very dangerous sign that they had been allowed here still. A more hippie-esque guy was there, too, with hair tied in a long braid and wiry glasses, complete with chain.
Not a lot of kids, but if they were buying what the Keepers were selling, and it ever went further… well, he wasn’t looking forward to having to deal with that.
From what he could gather, the Keepers believed that they were in the wrong timeline due to artifacts crossing over that didn’t line up with this current reality. Physical objects, memories, that sorta thing. They had yet to show any kind of proof for that claim, but Five doubted they just showed anyone these kinds of one-in-a-million artifacts. He might have to stick around and do more digging.
Hearing other people speak, and it was obvious that not all of them were actually describing other timelines. They were just frustrated with their current lives, and believed themselves to be living happier lives somewhere. The perfect lives, even. (This was the perfect life, for seven people. No one could appreciate what they had.)
Also, some of these were just anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. Definitely enough of the language was pointed enough that Five could confidently say they were spiraling into becoming a hate group in the next five years, regardless of whether they were right about the timelines or not.
The meeting wound down, and he left, returning to his actual job. Going to ask his boss to continue pursuing this further down the line. He was being oddly resistant to Five looking into the group, was the thing, but if Five showed him his progress rate on all his other case files, and his concerns about the Keepers, he knew he’d get through to him.
But his niece’s birthday thing was this afternoon, so that meeting would simply have to wait.
Diego was frazzled. Kids’ birthdays were always especially fucked, with the addition of his siblings, in-laws, niblings, and Grace’s own friends, who he wasn’t ever going to fucking remember.
Which was why he had to focus on one thing in particular, and block out everything else.
The one thing right now was cake. And if you wanted cake, everyone needed plates.
He was barely paying attention as he shoved paper plates into people’s hands. Which made sense when a teen he had handed a paper plate to jolted, and looked at him in confusion.
“Dude, I’m not part of this party,” he said, looking mortified.
Diego blinked, trying to connect the boy’s face with anyone he knew. Only to come up blank.
“A little old for this scene, then,” he laughed himself, trying to offset the awkwardness, and took the plate from him to take it back.
“I’m here for someone else…” the boy squeaked, but Diego wasn’t listening anymore. Because Luther had just kicked the cake into the air.
Goddammit why was he still part of this family.
Allison didn’t know why she even tried anymore. Every time she reconnected with her family, it made her feel worse.
Granted, it wasn’t entirely her fault this time, but, y’know. Didn’t exactly hurt that she was there. Making everything worse, like usual.
At least Claire didn’t have to see her when she came back to the house, anxiously sucking on her vape. Her baby was safe with her cousins, so Allison was safe to fall apart without feeling like an entire disappointment. Just half of one.
Except on the doorstep, there was a girl, sitting on the ground, hoodie pulled tight over her head.
“You expecting anyone?” Klaus asked, squinting at the girl, who shielded her face when the headlights of Allison’s car beamed into it while pulling into the driveway.
“Nope. You?” Allison asked, trying to keep her voice casual.
“I don’t talk to most of my friends anymore,” Klaus said glibly. Allison knew.
She got out of the car, locking up behind her as she approached the girl. “Hey, kid, you need anything?” she asked. The girl rubbed at her eyes, looking dead on her feet. Strands of pink hair came out of her hoodie and she didn’t bother tugging them back in as she smiled tiredly at Allison.
“Uh, I’m Gwen,” she introduced herself first. “You’re Allison Hargreeves, and...Klaus Hargreeves?” she tilted her head slightly to look at Klaus, who was giving her a wide berth while also trying to get to the door behind her.
“How’d you know that?” she asked, trying not to sound too suspicious, on the off-chance this was a response to one of her auditions. In the middle of the night. Maybe she’d been here earlier and was waiting to give the news in person?
Gwen shrugged, “Uh, you know how it is. Did some digging. A lot of digging, actually. Figurative and literal, both. And I kinda want to ask you one question, to tie everything up.”
“What do you mean, everything?” Allison asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Research project for college undergrad. You grew up in this same city, right?” the girl asked.
“...Yes?” Allison said. “What kind of research project?”
Gwen was cut off by a loud beeping sound. She groaned and fished through her pockets to pull out a ringing pager.
“It’s nearly curfew, so I gotta get back,” she explained.
“How old are you?” Allison asked, looking at her. She looked old enough to be an adult, and not exactly the type who was on probation. There was something about the mannerisms that gave it away. Looking at the eyes, though, there was a flinty look that reminded Allison of herself and the other Umbrellas.
Gwen squinted at her. “I don’t know you. Why would I answer that?”
“Fair enough,” Klaus backed her up, looking delighted to cross the doorstep once the girl moved away from it.
“I have to go work on my lines for tomorrow,” Allison said, unlocking the door and letting them both inside. "And I don't have enough energy to care about whatever that was."
Within the perfect family’s townhouse, there was a member of the Keepers.
This was regular, as most people are bound to surprise you with their secret beliefs. This held steady if you were to go into the bedroom said member had.
What once was a room festooned by superhero memorabilia, there was now only red string and photographs of mugshots and disasters. Post-it notes, with gripping thoughts such as ‘what happened 2 the internet?’ and ‘sleep study, 8 pm thursday’
The resident of said room was not present, when the door opened.
“Gwen, I’m ready for your meeting,” the intruder called out, rubbing product into his hair.
He looked around when he noticed a lack of person. Then moved closer to the conspiracy board.
It wasn’t a Thursday, but one of the other notes did give a clue as to where she had gone.
All the mugshots were connected back to a point on a map. Marked with a drawing of an umbrella. Next to it, in fresh ink, had been added: ‘Confirmed’.
The intruder swore and left.
“Where are you going, honey?” a woman called out behind him.
“Gwen left for the youth group meeting without me, uh, Mom!” he said, sparing no other explanation as he slammed the front door behind him.
Ben wrinkled his nose as he looked around the dump that the former Academy had turned into. Rotting, just like the rest of them. And all the others seemed to be just as unaware of both of these facts.
The lights of the main room didn’t work, so they were working off the streetlights shining through the cracked and foggy windows. Which was why he noticed when a humanoid silhouette blocked off the window near the entrance.
He waited for a long moment, to see if the person was going to do anything. But then the person just turned around and walked away. Not an attacker, just a stalker, by the looks of it.
Ben growled under his breath slightly as he rushed to the door and threw it open. The person had already long disappeared down the street.
“Ben?” Luther hovered behind him, “You can’t leave right now, it’s already your curfew.”
Ben groaned and shut the door behind him, putting the specter behind him.
Five was in with the Keepers, and finally had access to the artifacts. On slideshows.
At least he had confirmation that the Umbrella Academy’s existence was the linchpin between the different timelines.
Funny meeting Lila here, though. He should tell Diego about this, right? Or did the man already know, and book club was the public excuse? He sure as hell couldn’t ask about it right now. Maybe soon after, once this little cocktail party was over and he could drag her to a private place to talk.
The door to the apartment creaked open, and all heads turned towards it as one, as a young teen with a floppy blond mohawk thing leaned in, looking contrite.
“Cecil?” Jean said, seeming to recognize him. “You missed the presentation!”
“I’m sorry,” Cecil said, looking at her with wide forlorn eyes. “My sister’s on the loose. Have you seen her?”
“Gwen? No, honey, I’m sorry,” Jean said, looking genuinely so.
Cecil nodded, “Thank you. I was really looking forward to finding out more about the Umbrella Effect, but my sister can’t wait. I’m so sorry. She’s the only one from my…timeline I know is still herself.”
Gene nodded along, “People like that are very rare,” he looked meaningfully at Jean. “Keep a tight hold on her, alright?”
Cecil nodded, and then awkwardly excused himself.
“God, some of these people are real lunatics,” Lila said under her breath.
“You’ve been working this scene longer than I have. This Gwen girl one of the lost causes?” Five asked, fishing more for gossip than anything.
“Oh, definitely,” Lila said, but didn’t elaborate. Instead, she looked at the door, from where a few other people had trickled out. “I guess things are wrapping up. You want to go interrogate me somewhere else?”
“I know a place nearby,” Five said, thinking of the deli which always put the right amount of sauerkraut into his sandwiches.
He wasn’t entirely sure what to ask Lila yet – you think these people are legit? You planning on telling Diego about this anytime soon?? – even by the time they got to the deli. He was postponed from having to ask any such question, as they were interrupted by someone following them into the deli and then right up to their table.
She was the girl with pink hair he recognized from the Keepers meeting that morning. Had swapped the hoodie out for blue and red color block one with a star insignia on the chest. Some sort of merchandise, but he didn’t recognize it.
Lila, on the other hand, did. She rested her chin on her hand and looked at the girl, “Ah, Gwen! Your brother’s looking for you, love.”
“Nancy,” Gwen said uncertainly, dragging a chair over to sit at the table uninvited. “Teddy worries too much. I’ll head back to him soon, I just need to clarify something right now.” her eyes were fixed on Five. There was something in that gaze that reminded him of the other Umbrellas. Not himself, of course, he came with the wizened eyes of someone who was mentally sixty four years old.
She wasn’t old. But she’d certainly seen shit. Enough for him to consider hearing her out, even when Lila sing-songed under her breath, “Total picnic…”
Gwen pointed at him. “You’re Number Five of the Umbrella Academy.”
Her tone left no room for debate, but Five really wasn’t going to let that go so easily. He leaned back and played it cool, no matter the shock he felt every time he heard that name again. “Sorry, you’re confused. I’m Jerome.”
“You’re definitely not Jerome, your legal name is Five Hargreeves spelled with two Es instead of EA, which is a pain to remember. C’mon man, we’re on the same side here. I knew it the second I heard you talk in that Keeper meeting.”
“I was lying to fuck with them,” Five told her matter-of-factly, even though she had somehow gotten his full name.
“Yeah, because they’re repackaging the Rapture into some bullshit sci-fi schtick,” Gwen rolled her eyes. “But there’s a grain of truth in this, and you know it. The alternate timelines are real, and they are bleeding into each other. You know it, I know it, and Lila knows it, so let’s stop pretending.”
He appreciated her forthrightness. Also that she had definitely done her research, if she knew Lila’s real name too.
“Alright then, I’ll play,” he relented. “Say you’re from an alternate timeline. What was it like there?”
She lit up. “Okay, so…!”
This was the easiest way to see if someone was just making shit up. Because a lot of those folks came up with ridiculous fantasies about what their other lives were like, how awesome and incredible they could be, if they were simply given the chance.
He’d heard a lot of batshit stuff this past day with the meetings, and before as well from the other members he’d scoped out before gaining an invite in. But the story Gwen Poole laid out for him was…
Far beyond even those ludicrous ideas.
“You think,” he had to repeat, because he wasn’t sure he’d heard that right the first time. “that in the timeline you belong in, superheroes are very common and all over the place. And you were a mercenary that people called Gwenpool, and you fought vampires with a half vampire, and fires with a guy called… Spiderman?”
“With a hyphen,” Gwen corrected.
Lila was chewing viciously to keep her laughter in. “She’s taking this from Deadpool and shit.”
“What?” Five turned to look at her.
“You know, superhero comics?” Lila said, and when he showed no sign of comprehension, she groaned, “You’ve been a teenager twice over, how have you never picked up a single comic book?”
“The shoddy science infuriated me,” he replied simply. And before she could accuse him of being a pretentious prick, he decided to turn the conversation back around to the girl who had necessitated this conversation. “You heard the lady, you’ve been reading too many comic books and watching too many movies. The superhero bug’s bit you, and there’s no timeline out there that can satiate it.”
He wouldn’t wish it on her, anyway.
“But the Umbrella Academy mainly appears in merchandise and novelty comics, too,” Gwen argued. “There must be some way that other timelines are influencing people. A shared universe that they’re all experiencing, and bringing to life through art. A solid place we can go to.”
“Sorry to tell you this, but I don’t think that’s possible,” Five said, turning back to his brisket.
Lila laughed to herself as she considered it. “Maybe we’re in one big comic book, and the pieces of merch are easter eggs or hidden adverts from the creators. That’s about as believable as this timeline junk.”
Gwen didn’t take offense at this. Instead, she seemed to be genuinely considering it as she stood up, and began to pace in long, careful steps.
Oh boy, he should’ve respected Lila’s take on the situation for once.
“No, no, but it makes sense,” Gwen was now saying to herself, and he since he wasn’t required to reply to that, Five busied himself with finishing his sandwich and getting the fuck out of here.
The bell over the door rang, and a fourth member to this car pileup entered the fray, now in the form of the brother.
Lila seemed to be having the time of her life as she waved over to him. “Cecil! Nice to see you’ve joined us.”
Gwen perked up, turning around, only to slump again. “You’re not Cecil.”
“Cecil isn’t real, Gwen. I’m Teddy? Your actual flesh and blood???” the brother said, smiling at her in a way Commission workers did around Five. “I told you I’d go with you to the meeting, and you weren’t there. Why were you talking to these guys?”
“I was clearing something up, and they’ve given me a bit to think about regarding how to get back to my timeline,” Gwen said, going back to pacing, carefully putting one foot in front of the other, heel to toe.
Teddy grimaced, going to brace her. “Gwen, we’ve talked about this. The Keepers say interesting things, but it’s only fantasy. Alternate timelines don’t exist. There’s only the one.”
“I’ll prove you wrong, Teddy, just give me a minute!” Gwen had now progressed to stretching her arms as wide as possible, forcing Teddy to move away from her, or risk being poked.
He looked shiftily at Five and Lila, and then moved so that he was between them and his sister, back towards Gwen. When he spoke, it was with barely restrained rage and frustration, “I don’t know what you’ve done to my sister, but I swear, I’ll…”
“We haven’t done anything,” Five interrupted, before the kid could land himself in hot water for threatening a federal agent.
“Yeah, your sister came with the crazy pre-installed,” Lila agreed.
He softened slightly, “She isn’t crazy. She’s just going through a hard time right now. I thought, now that she had a solid gig, she’d settle down and give up on those fantasies, but… seems not.”
Behind them, Gwen was still thinking aloud to herself, garnering no attention at all, as there was no one else inside, and even the cashier was fighting to stay awake. “Now that I think about it, I just need to step here, and then reach for the edge to-”
Then there was a blip of pink and white, and she vanished.
Both Lila and Five straightened up.
Teddy whirled on his feet to the spot where she had disappeared from. But the expression on his face wasn’t shock. It was concern and fear.
“What did you do?” he asked them both, voice shaking with emotion.
“Nothing, honest!” Lila said. “We can’t even do that shit anymore!”
Well, their cover on that was gone, at least.
“I know you didn’t literally teleport her somewhere else,” Teddy replied impatiently. “Just what did you say to her to make her do that.”
Wait a fucking second.
“She can blink,” Five said, the pieces connecting in his head far too slowly. “Your sister has powers. Do… you have powers?”
“Nobody has powers, okay?” Teddy snapped, going from frustration to fear. For himself, this time. “W-we’re all just ordinary!”
“Right…” Five stood up carefully. Lila followed his lead after he pointedly side-eyed her. Teddy backed away from them, but too little, too late, the two dragged him out of the deli by the arms.
A car slid to a stop in front of them, and Five dodged a flailing teenage limb to look at the driver, only to see- “Diego?”
“Five?” his brother said, looking equally surprised. Which was weird, because why else had he stopped here. “What’s with the mustache? And why’re you and Lila kidnapping, well, a kid?”
“Hostage!” Lila said.
“Interrogation!” Five added at the same time.
“You guys have no idea what you’ve unleashed!” the boy struggled harder. But he had the proportional strength of a limp noodle, so it wasn’t going all that well.
“Are you going to help us or not, husband dear?” Lila asked, a little short of breath.
Diego was already opening the back seat doors, “Jesus Christ, fine, fine, everyone inside!”
Once they were driving again, he hopefully looked at Five through the rear-view mirror, “This official CIA business?”
Five repressed the urge to roll his eyes. “Yes, Diego, the CIA makes a habit of randomly nabbing children who haven’t done anything out of delis in the middle of the night. Consider this the start of my interrogation, pipsqueak: How old are you?”
Teddy grumbled something about him being taller than Five, but admitted, “I’m sixteen-ish.”
“And what’s your real name?” Lila asked. Good call. If he’d used an alias to get into the Keepers, they couldn’t be sure that he and his sister didn’t use aliases in public, either.
Five still couldn’t believe it. Powers, in this timeline, after it was reset to not have them.
“Theodore Poole Junior!” the kid looked close to tears. “But most people really do call me Teddy! I just call myself Cecil around the Keepers because those guys are literally going to do a hate riot one day, and I don’t want them having my real name to track me down with.”
Now that, they were on the same page about.
“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on!” Diego yelled loud enough for them all to fall silent.
Five stared at his hands, forming a vice grip around the boy and just daring him to try and jump like his sister. He knew out of all of them, Diego and Ben had taken the loss of their powers the worst. Diego at least had a support system to fall back on, so things didn’t get as bad as Ben, but he was still looking to feel like a superhero again, in whatever way he could.
He had settled down recently, become more content with the fucking incredible life he had. If Five were to tell him about powers reemerging, would he throw it all aside to chase after that spark?
“It was after book club,” Lila said haltingly. “Me and Five randomly bumped into each other there, so we decided to grab sandwiches together.”
“At ‘book club’?” Five snorted. “Respect his intelligence a little, alright? Your wife’s been going undercover to investigate a cult-slash-philosophical-movement that thinks the universe is split into an infinity of timelines, when in fact there’s only supposed to be one correct one.”
The car veered dangerously, “And you didn’t even tell me?” Diego asked, voice thick with betrayal.
“Eyes on the road!” all three of them yelled at him, instead of trying to deal with that can of worms.
“Five, why would you tell him that?” Lila immediately turned on him.
Five glared her down. “You two can talk over why you didn’t want to tell him in the first place. Don’t drag me into whatever domestic hell you’ve got brewing.”
“Seconded,” Teddy croaked.
“You don’t get an opinion on this.”
Diego breathed loudly. “You know what? It’s fine. That can wait. I followed you, because I thought you were cheating on me. But turns out it’s even more fucked up than that, so whatever. I saw you two talking with the girl, and then the boy, and then the girl walked off to the side, and you guys came out dragging the boy out with you. Care to explain?”
“The ‘girl’ was part of the Keepers, but on the more fucked up level where she thinks comics are like a peek into other timelines and shit, and she’s convinced she’s from one.” Lila said.
“Like the Avengers?”
“Exactly,” Teddy seconded, “But it’s not true. Er, she just thinks that because these people got into her head. It isn’t true.”
“So you’ve stated,” Five said, growing suspicious of that assurance. He continued the story for Diego’s benefit, “Crazy girl hunts me down, identifies me by full government name, and guess what? She can blink.”
There was a pause.
“…Can’t most people?” Diego asked like he was afraid to sound stupid. And yet he was still managing it. Realization hit him a moment of judgmental silence later, “Oh! She blinks like Five used to?”
“Not before this point, she couldn’t,” Teddy said.
“And yet you don’t seem surprised by that development,” Five noted. “What do you know about me and powers I may or may not have? And what do you know about your sister’s powers?”
The kid whimpered and shook his head. “I- I can’t say what she can do. A lot, but it’s not the same as a regular power. Also I have no idea who you are, other than that Gwen was interested in you, and had been looking into the Umbrella Academy for a while.”
Well, that gave them absolutely nothing to work off.
“Be a little more specific,” Five told him. Lila had found a knife from somewhere and was now resting it against his neck to provide a little more incentive.
Teddy gulped audibly. “I don’t quite understand it and I’m not supposed to be talking about it, either. But uh- I guess it’s too late now, huh? Well, Gwen has. A bit of a shaky grip on reality.”
“So what? Put her in therapy. Or lock her up in the loony bin, for all I care. A little bit of psychosis doesn’t cause instantaneous teleportation,” Lila said, and she was clearly thinking of her own time in one of those places, because her grip on the knife tightened, and Teddy squirmed.
“It’s a little different than that,” he managed to squeak, and Lila moved the knife further from his carotid, making him gather the courage to get more than a few words out every minute. “She has a shaky grip on reality. Which means that if she starts thinking that something isn’t real, and is in fact malleable and not beholden to laws she might otherwise expect to hold true… she can kind of grab the reins and start running the show herself.”
“Large-scale reality manipulation,” Lila realized, gobsmacked by the idea. “You couldn’t lead with that? And I thought it was just Five’s little hops!”
“I knew it was different,” Five said automatically, and when she looked at him disbelievingly, he elaborated, “I know what a temporal jump looks like compared to a spatial one. You could try to change the hue, but I would recognize it anywhere. But the patterns were wrong. The ripples looked like… words?” he shook his head.
“She thinks this is some kind of comic or writing or something, probably,” Teddy said. “So it’s bending to reflect that. Starts with bending time and space, and then it begins to spiral as she figures out the new rules she thinks she’s going to bind herself to.”
“Well, that’s going to become a headache soon. Great job, Lila,” Five muttered bitterly.
“Sod off, how was I supposed to know that making a joke would start all this,” she stabbed back. “How’d she get those powers anyway? Was your sister born on the first day of October 1989, to a woman who wasn’t pregnant when the day began?”
“She’s eighteen, how would that even work?” Teddy asked, shaking his head. “And I don’t know! She just gets them. When she starts thinking the universe is a lie.”
He was about to say something more, Five was sure of it. But then his eyes flickered towards him and then away, and he refused to say anything more.
“You seem to know a lot on the subject,” he said. “Considering your sister apparently didn’t know this before. You messing with her mind or something?”
“No!” Teddy yelped. “I love her! I want the best for her, and the best is… well, what’s best for us is staying here. Where she works a job at the movie theater, and is going to become a proper comics artist down the line. She doesn’t have to do- well, the things she does.”
Cryptic, cryptic, cryptic. Exact kind of answers he hated most.
He tried to make a grab for Lila’s knife. She smacked his hand away. Trying to save as much face as possible, he continued civilly, “Is this girl a threat?”
“No,” Teddy said. And Five could see he believed it, too. “She’s powerful, but not unkind. Very empathetic and caring. It’s just the people she doesn’t think are real that she has a little trouble around. You guys don’t fall into that category, so you’ll be fine. Just don’t provoke her? Please??? I don’t know what she’ll do now that she’s awoken her powers but please don’t try and fight her, it won’t end well.”
Five considered this information. What had been the first real sign of people with superpowers in this timeline after six years of living in it had spiraled quickly into realizing that said person was on the fast-track to becoming the world’s first supervillain, too.
“I think you’re good on that front, kid,” he decided, leaning back. “She’s big into that superhero-villain stuff, right? Well, look around you. See any heroes to challenge her? Or villains?? She wouldn’t bother with it here.”
Teddy relaxed slightly, “You got a point there.”
“I still very much count her as a threat,” Diego called from the front.
“Relax. Sounds to me like once her little training montage is done, and whatever the crazy reality changing powers are, she’ll have a god complex. Odds are, it’s a benevolent one, if Teddy’s character assessment is bang on,” Lila said, for once backing Five up on something.
“Hold up, so we’re not even going to do anything about this?” Diego asked, flabbergasted.
“What’re you gonna do with no powers and no god-complex girl anywhere to fight?” Five returned. He looked at Teddy with steely eyes, and handed him his business card, “I’m trusting to believe you on this, and will look further into it. The CIA will be paying careful attention to you from now on, so be on your best behavior. If she comes back, or you want to confess that you have powers of your own, call me. Also if the world is at stake. I don’t know what I’ll be able to do with my current resources, but I’m sure I’ll figure out something.”
“Thanks, sir,” the kid looked a little starstruck as he took the card. Diego seething with rage for either not being the one handing out speeches like that, or never having gotten a CIA phone number, did not go unnoticed.
“Alright, then, Teddy, where do you live?” Lila asked, voice saccharine as she finally put the knife away. “It’s dangerous for you to be walking the streets at night, you know? We’ll drop you off.”
“Teddy, why’re you out so late?” Martha Poole held him close. “And where’s your sister?”
He shrugged her off, feeling too drained to pretend this was his real mother.
“Gwen went to stay at Alice’s place,” he said. Did Alice exist here? Or had he forgotten to mention her when they were setting this up? No, wait, she should be out of town for college these days-
But his mother bought the story. Of course, she did. Would be a really terrible cover if she couldn’t.
He dragged himself up to his bed, and buried one hand tightly on the sheets, the other pressed to his chest, where his heart was threatening to beat out of his chest.
The enormity of the situation was crashing into him once again. Because holy shit, he lost his sister again. He watched her move around, experimenting with the space for the first time since the idea had come to her, and then she had vanished. Slipped between a gap in reality mortal minds were never supposed to perceive.
It was going to happen again, and under his watch.
His breathing was growing increasingly frantic.
He clutched onto the sheet, and reminded himself desperately that it was real.
If Gwen was experimenting with the time and space aspect, the first thing she would do is go backward. She’d know everything all over again.
Would she be angry? How angry???
Measures had been taken to see that the controls of this place didn’t shift easily towards her, but one could never be sure.
Teddy lay there at night, and wondered if he could die in a world within a world within the collective imagination of millions of creatives.
Five was going to get to it in the morning. He swore he was.
Except when he woke up to a ringing phone, it wasn’t to Teddy confessing to having memory manipulation powers, or Diego having unearthed a new lead somehow.
It was Allison. Telling him that Viktor had been kidnapped.
This news coming so soon after the revelation about the near god-like strength they might soon be dealing with had Five white-knuckling the receiver as he asked Allison. “Do you know who took him?”
“Some guy called Sy Grossman? He’s a dry cleaner, apparently.”
Okay, that was fine. It was going to be fine. They weren’t in apocalypse territory, yet.
It really did turn out to be fine, as they walked out of that rescue mission saddled with another rescue mission, and boxes full of mostly junk, but also not-so-much junk.
Five looked at the jar of half-empty Marigold, and for a second, he felt like the girl last night. Standing on the brink of a cliff, ready to jump right back into a world of adventure and excitement.
Except he already knew that it was nothing but torment. And those experiences gave him the strength to put it away.
“Let’s get some food,” Ben announced. “I’m fucking starving!”
“Some of us have important things to do,” Diego said, eyeing Five pointedly, “Cases that need to be worked on.”
“Some of us not including you,” Five reminded him. “And I could eat, even if I’m not getting involved with the Jennifer thing.”
His family was the one gleaming part of this entire timeline, after all. Even if he had yet to see all of them happy at the same time.