Chapter Text
"When I was a kid I never double checked my work. It drove my siblings nuts. I remember, after a particularly rough test, Luther said I had a big head because I was bragging about how fast I finished. I laughed him off. He was being ridiculous. I was always right so why waste time confirming it?"
Five carefully runs his thumb against the edge of a paper from Vanya's book. The page tells a story about them all sneaking out at night to go to the zoo. Dad would kill them if he found out about that. Reginald probably never read what Vanya wrote. The margins of the book are covered in Five's scrawled notes. He doesn't bother looking at them again; every time he closes his eyes the equations burn bright through the darkness.
"You don't need to worry Five. You got the math right."
"We," Five corrects, "got the math right. You helped a lot Dolores."
Not really. Well, she sort of did, since she told him when he got the decimal point in the wrong spot but that was the extent of it. She's better at…well, at everything else.
"We got the math right," Dolores agrees.
Five has spent the last thirteen hours double checking his equations. He's gone over each and every multiplication sequence and fraction. He's obsessed over each decimal point and factored in every little details. Dolores even agrees that Five's got it right and she's always been harsher on his work than he is.
Five is going home. He wishes he could've gotten back before he had to bury his siblings corpses but it's fine. Not a big deal. He did it and it's dealt with and now he'll go home and he'll make sure they never die like that. Make sure they die of old age or some such crap, rather than crushed to death in a fight that ends in the world.
He hugs Allison's jacket tighter around himself. It's too big and he has to roll up the sleeves a lot so they don't get in his way but he never takes it off. Dolores says it smells terrible but he doesn't have enough water to waste on washing things. Five isn't sure you're meant to wash leather. If he breaks it-Five doesn't wash it. It's the apocalypse and he has bigger issues than laundry.
Five has the eye he got from Luther's hands and one of Diego's knives tucked in his pocket. It's different than the one Diego used when they were kids. Sharper and without a handle. Sleek almost. Five's cut himself on it more than once but he won't admit that to Diego when he sees him. Five has one of Klaus's bracelets tied on a chain around his neck; he couldn't risk it getting snagged on something when he goes scavenging.
He didn't find anything from Vanya or Ben. He didn't find their bodies to bury. That's okay. It won't matter in half an hour when he's home, in the right time period, and he gets to keep them safe.
Five'll be their older brother. He's aiming to get back a week after November 12th-he has to make sure he doesn't go to far back and end up with two Five's because that would be a hassle-and they'll all still be thirteen. He'll be over a year older than them.
He's been in the apocalypse over a year
"You're stalling."
"I am not."
Five is not stalling. Why would he be stalling? He wants to get home. This math will get him home. He's sure of it.
"Then why are you still here?"
"I'm getting my thoughts in order."
"You know what you're going to tell them. You've known for months. There's no thoughts left to arrange."
"Well, I'm still deciding if I should give them the ridiculous speech or the helpful one."
"Five," Dolores says warningly.
"I'm kidding."
They've work shopped the speech for his siblings a lot over the last year. It should be perfect now. A good mix of light hearted, so he doesn't scare them, but serious enough that they understand they need to listen to him. That they have to do better. Be better.
If they're better on missions than Ben won't die. If they're better as the Umbrella Academy the world won't end.
Oh and they're going to be kinder to Vanya when Five gets back because apparently they were real assholes. Moreso than usual.
"You're not being fair to the others. Vanya wrote the book. She's biased."
"Well, they were still jerks," Five mutters.
He looks over the equations again. Has to be sure that everything's just right. If he messes up he could end up in the 60s or something and then he'd have to wait a few decades to get back home. Who knows what impact having two versions of himself in the same timeline could create. He'd rather not find out.
"You're stalling Five."
"I just-"
"You have to go. I'll be there for you when you get back. Right where we met."
"I know Dolores. I can't wait to introduce you to the others."
They'll love her, Five knows they will. Klaus and Dolores can talk about fashion, they both like flamboyant colors and styles, and Dolores can bond with Allison over their love of movies. Before everything, before the end of the world, Dolores was an actress too. Maybe she could help Allison with her career, if she still wants to be an actress this time around. Dolores can talk books with Ben and she'll know how to get to Luther, know how to talk to him in ways Five never can. He's to abrasive to really connect with Luther but she's good with people. He'll like her. Diego will too, mostly because Dolores and Grace will definitely be friends and he'll like anyone who's nice to his mom. Dolores and Vanya will trade embarrassing stories about Five but he'll deal with it if it means everyone is safe and happy.
"I feel like I already know them."
"Well, my stories might be a bit biased," Five jokes. She smiles softly.
Five loves when he gets to make her smile.
Five pulls on his gloves so the seams sit just right and double checks that the eyeball is still in his left pocket. The thud of his fingers against the glass is reassuring. He looks up at the ruins of his home. The fires have gone out but the rubble is still everywhere. He knows his siblings bodies are buried a few dozen feet away.
He'll never forget pulling cockroaches off of their corpses.
"You won't have to do that. They won't end up like that. You can save them."
Five nods at Delores words. He looks over his math, scrawled in the margins of Vanya's book, one last time. He puts it in his coat pocket, so he won't risk losing it when he pulls himself through time, and looks over his shoulder at Dolores.
"See you soon."
Five balls his fists and feels blue light surround him. He breathes through the electric cackling that courses through his veins. The warbling noise that always accompanies his teleporting is strong in his ears. He keeps replaying the equations in his mind over and over again, pushing them onto time, imposing them firmly.
It isn't working.
He can feel the blue light fading and the electric feeling dying down. He pushes further and time seems to slip further away. The harder he tries to grab at it the worse it gets. He can feel it shifting through his hands like grains of sand and he yells out in frustration before closing his fists tighter and scrambling to get any sort of hold.
I'll take anything, he wants to scream. It doesn't have to be in November. It doesn't have to be in 2002. Just let me go home. Just let me get close. Just let me get there before Ben dies, just let me get there before they all die.
Five falls to his knees on the ground as time pulls itself away from him. There's nothing left but rubble and the smell of buried corpses and Dolores who isn't even breathing as she waits to see how Five will react.
The first time he failed to travel home he didn't understand what he was in for yet. He just saw the destruction of their house, of his home, and wanted to go back to somewhere safe. Then he saw the bodies. His siblings bodies. Then he kept trying. He stood surrounded by their corpses and tried to go home over and over and over again.
The first time Dolores was around when he failed to travel back he screamed and threw things and broke the meager supplies he had managed to gather because he was just so angry that he was still stuck there. Still in the apocalypse. Still trapped at the end of the world.
Five lets his hands unfist and drop to his sides. He stares at where the door to his home should be. The door he was going to run to then teleport to the other side of, because it would definitely be locked. Then he'd go and find his siblings. He'd find them training or in their rooms if it was night and he'd gather them up and they'd go to Griddy's. He'd pay, he found cash on the remains of a bunch of bodies to make sure he could pay, and he'd explain the future over donuts and coffee.
He was going to take them somewhere safe, and explain everything over food, and he was going to keep them all alive.
Five doesn't cry correctly. He's out of practice. He was never in practice to begin with. It was heavily discouraged with Reginald. He didn't tolerate displays of weakness and Five wasn't the weak type to begin with. He barely cried over his siblings bodies-bodies in graves that are within sight of Five-and he's barely cried in the apocalypse. Waste of water and time.
Five is working and you don't cry while you're on the job.
Five doesn't try to stifle the sobs as they violently tear themselves out of his throat. It feels like his tears are grabbing onto him just like he tried to grab onto time; desperate and longing and feral with no goal other than survival. He lets his head drop forward as he shuts his eyes. His tears drip downwards onto the mask over the lower half of his face. They sting against his skin.
He can still see the equations burned into the back of his mind. The wrong equations. The ones that don't work. Five doesn't even know where he went wrong so how can he fix it? How can he get home when he doesn't even know how he's fucking up?
"It'll be alright."
Dolores sounds disappointed in him to and he bites back apologies; they don't matter. How can they matter when Five can't fix this? He can't get her home, can't get her back to her life, and any apologies for that are meaningless until he can.
"You'll figure it out. We can go looking for a new book. There's a school we haven't checked yet-"
"It's hopeless Dolores. We're going to die out here and no one will be left to bury us."
"Don't talk like that."
How else can Five talk? He doesn't even know where he went wrong. He goes over the equations in his mind, examines them from every angle, but there's nothing. Nothing that seems out of place or wrong.
"We can't give up hope."
"I can't do this. I can't get this right."
Dad was right. Five went into the ice and never acorned. Dad told him so and now all of Five's family will die to prove that lesson. Five might as well have killed them himself.
"You'll find a way home."
"Murderers don't get to miss their victims."
"You didn't kill them."
"I let them die. Is there a difference."
Dolores is silent. She agrees. Five knows she agrees, even if she's to kind to say it.
"You owe them, Five. You don't get to give up. This version of them is dead. Gone. You can keep that from happening." Dolores sighs and Five knows she is turning her head and looking away from him. She always does that when she has to be brutally honest. "You killed them this time. You don't get to give up and leave them to die all over again."
"I know."
"Then why are you acting like you've forgotten?"
"I thought it was over," Five whispers. "Eating roaches, sleeping next to a fire that never really makes us warm, entirely alone except for rubble and corpses. I thought we could go home."
"We will. It'll just take a bit longer."
Five looks over his shoulder at her. She's sitting in their wagon with a hand outstretched in his direction. Her smile is sad but kind. Five takes her hand and stands up; he doesn't really put any of his weight on her. He doesn't want to hurt her. He pretends though, so she can feel like she's helping.
"I just wanted to take them to Griddys."
"I know."
Dolores always knows.
"What else are you going to do, once you get home?"
Five sits in the wagon next to her and hugs Allison's jacket tightly. He can't feel it through his layers of clothes but he knows it's there. He knows it's there.
"After we go to Griddy's we'll go home-"
"No, that's not what I meant. I don't want to hear about the plan I want to know what you'll do once everything is okay."
Right.
"I'll take Vanya and we'll go see an orchestra show or recital or whatever it's called. I'll take Luther out of the Academy and we'll go bowling. He always asked to do it and I always said no."
How could Five have ever done that? Said no to his siblings asking to be around him?
"Focus Five. What will you do with Ben?"
"Train him so he doesn't die."
"No plans. Just what we'll do once everyone is safe."
"We'll…we'll go to the bookstore. I'll get him whatever books he wants and then we can go sight seeing later. To a park or something."
Ben would like that. Getting to see a bit more of the city, a bit more of the world. He didn't get to see enough of it before he-
"Five," Dolores reminds him, "that's not what we're talking about. What will you do with Klaus?"
"Get him in rehab. Fine, yes, okay, no more plans. I'll go shopping with him and he can choose one outfit that I'll wear sometimes, as long as it isn't to ridiculous. I'll get him some yarn to. He likes knitting."
Maybe Klaus could teach Five to knit. He tried to learn on his own, out here, but it hasn't worked yet. No idea what he's doing.
"Diego?"
"We'll go steal some stuff for Grace. He always wants to give her gifts, really good gifts not just stuff we make at the house, and that'd make him happy."
"Allison?"
"I'll take her to a park," Five says immediately. "We'll go on the swings."
"A park?"
"I promised I'd take her. Before all this. I never did so I, I'd take her to a park."
"Which park did she want to go to? Did it matter?"
"There was a specific one she wanted to try."
They saw it after a photoshoot for some ridiculous magazine. The Umbrella Academy comics were selling well and Dad wanted to keep pushing that fame forward. Said it was about making the criminals scared of them but it didn't feel like the pictures they took were particularly threatening. Five refused to cooperate for most of it and Dad had just rolled his eyes and let Five sulk off to the side.
Allison had gotten overwhelmed by all the people trying to talk with her, photograph her, get her to pose just right. She was always the most popular. She knew how to play to the crowds but she just…she wasn't in the mood.
Five had grabbed her hand and teleported them right out of the room. Allison looked over her shoulder for just a second, then at Five, and they both took off running until they were out of the studio and bent over gasping for air on the roof of the building. Allison had laughed and threw her hands up to the sky. Most of her face was obscured by the domino mask but not her smile.
They sat down and talked a bit. Not much. Mostly just complaining about how annoying the photo shoot was. Five asked if she wanted to run off farther and Allison had declined. Said they were pushing their lack as it was. He called her a daddy's girl and she shoved him. He pretended to fall off the roof and teleported behind her. He got to see her worried expression turn to annoyance as she stuck her tongue out at him.
"What does that have to do with parks?" Dolores asks, sounding intrigued.
"We saw one outside the studio lot. There were a lot of kids there. She said the swings looked fun and I agreed. We were talking about how Diego and Luther would definitely get themselves hurt trying to swing higher than each other when Dad found us. He was mad."
Furious was more like it. They were in so much trouble when they got home. Allison still snuck over to his room that night, knocking on his door, asking if he wanted to sneak out and go to the playground. Five had been in a bad mood. He took the brunt of Reginald's anger and Allison hadn't even tried to help him. He said no. That they'd go another day. Allison made him promise.
"We, uh, never got there in time," Five admits. "We got stuck out here first."
Allison has a daughter now. She probably takes her daughter to parks. Or, she did.
"Can I see it?"
"What?"
"Can I see the park she wanted to go to?"
Five can go now. No one to stop him.
"Yeah. Yeah you can."