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Number Five knows he’s not something to be loved.
He has known it from the beginning, when he forms his first thoughts instead of babbling and drooling on the floor, a psychological zombie baby. He does not possess enough words, then, but it is something intrinsic, really.
Back then, on wobbling stumpy legs, he assumes they all love each other.
They have nannies, sure, but it is not as if Five could ever bring himself to care for them, as soon as he realizes they are just passing faces, paid in wages to wrangle them around. And Pogo neither because the chimpanzee only acts like he cares (he cares more about Reginald).
And Dad cares about what they can do for him, and only that. About some kind of greater good. He is pleased with perfection, which means never.
Five remembers his first years as being close to Seven and Six. Not only the latter numbers, but the most sensitive ones by far. They learn to be quiet very quick, steady hands, polite smiles, sad eyes. Five takes too long to learn his lesson, his emotions quick and overwhelming and volatile.
The consequences speed him along, though.
His powers, he finds after throwing up on the training room floor, are a tool that can harm him and others. And his Dad will use it.
By the time he is five he knows how to steel himself, knows how to hide. How to be uncaring right back at his supposed father.
The other two never do.
These consequences haunt him for the rest of his existence.
He loves his other siblings too, he supposes, but he feels strangely unmoored around them. Almost alien, at times. They seem to automatically understand things he does not, unspoken rules, rituals foreign to him.
Sometimes he can’t bear to be around them.
One is too big and stiff, a suck up, Two acts like he is different but is really not, Three thinks she is entitled to everything and Four is loud and boisterous.
But they only have each other. He cares, and assumes they do too.
One winter day, they’re in the courtyard. They’re eight. It feels very big, because eight is divisible by four and two. The ground is damp and slippery with molten snow, and One nearly slips and falls as he clumsily chases after his siblings.
Five isn’t participating. He thinks it makes them look stupid, is all. And he doesn’t like running because he always ends up bumping into something or actually slipping and biting back tears. His blinking isn’t much better at the moment- Dad says it’s because his spatial awareness is abysmal. It sounds very bad.
So instead, he‘s crouched on the ground, a little away, watching them from the corner of his eye, picking at dead grass in the cracks.
Seven is probably somewhere else. With the stiff blonde lady. She’s a robot apparently, and Five was excited at the thought of a real robot until he saw her. She just looks like a lady in a dress, no metal, antennae, wires or blinking lights, and she is boring.
One is chasing after Two now, Two shrieking and shoving past Four, who is cackling maniacally and bolting into the other direction. One and Two have started to try to constantly one-up each other, which makes games with them boring and predictable.
Two tries to avoid One by ducking around Five, to his annoyance, and still ends up getting caught. It’s freeze-tag, apparently, because he just stays rooted to the spot after nearly getting bowled over by One‘s excessive strength, scowling.
One starts chasing after Four, who stops laughing and starts shrieking too. Two, predictably, grows bored after the minimal amount of seconds. He glances at Five, who is still crouched on the ground, prying the moss from between the cracks with his chewed down fingernails.
„Hey“, he hisses, almost as if he’s really frozen in place. It’s silly. „Why… why aren’t you p-playing, too? You could b… bail me out of here“, he pleads from between his teeth.
One catches Four.
„Shhh, you’re frozen“, Five shushes him. Dirt gets under his fingernails despite them being as short as possible. He tries scraping it away, but his fingernails are too short for that, too. One catches Six.
„Fiveeee“, Two whines. „We-we’re gonna lose!“
„I‘m not playing so I don’t care.“
Two now really turns his head to glare at him. „You’re… you’re so mean! Th-that’s why One… always w-wins!“
Five rips more moss from the crack. Its roots keep clinging to the dirt, creating a winter-hard earthern underside that follows the shape of the crack and leaves it empty. „I‘m not playing and you’re frozen“, he says.
Two growls.
„Y-you’re so… so weird!“ he pushes out.
One catches Three, and the game is over.
Five stills his hands as Two stomps away from his prison and starts complaining about fairness.
Normally, he‘s not really affected by his siblings throwing words at him. Most of them describe a temporary state, like being mean.
Weird, however, stings.
He’s not even sure why it’s different, it just is. Or more, while being different it makes him feel different. He looks up from the courtyard, watching them stand around, arguing about something trivial, and it hits him that he is not like them.
Not like them at all.
He’s not easy, does not want to be, knows how to be, either, but it hurts worse than any scraped up knee. He knows he shouldn’t care about it, but as their courtyard time ends and they’re ushered back inside, it gets stuck in his head on a loop.
Weird.
In the lessons after, he is stuck watching the back of Two‘s head, dark hair slick, thinking, not listening.
He thinks he is a smarter than them oftentimes because he does that a lot, thinking, but normally that also entails him learning something too. Becoming even smarter. Listening and then thinking about what he heard instead of just parroting it.
But this afternoon, he just can’t. He absentmindedly scribbles down numbers on a worksheet he’s not even sure are right, ignoring Pogo droning on.
Maybe he’s just weird because he’s better than them. His answers turn out to be correct, so what if he doesn’t bother with the trivial matters that concern his siblings? What if he doesn’t want to run around shrieking? What if he likes reading more?
He feels fine about that until he watches One and Two glower at each other over their worksheets, and his stomach stings.
They don’t like each other because Two is jealous that One is Number One, and One doesn’t like that Two wants to be Number One.
Two thinks One is better than him so they argue a lot. Sometimes it’s hard to believe they‘re supposed to love each other.
Five slumps a little in his chair.
What if they start hating him?
What if they already do?
When Pogo lets them go, he feels horrible. He loves Two but Two thinks he’s weird. Do the rest of them think he’s weird, too?
He‘s heading towards his room, (splitting off from the others) eyes on the polished floor, when he nearly bumps into someone.
It’s the Robot Lady.
„Oh!“ she says, smiling very widely. It’s a strange reaction.
She’s wearing huge pink skirt and heels. It makes her look very tall. Five takes a step back but doesn’t say sorry, because there’s no one around to tell him to. The Robot Lady crouches to his level in one, smooth motion, trying to look him into the eye. He doesn’t, because he just wants to be alone.
„Oh dear, are you upset?“ she says. It sounds stiff and… weird but also, why would she ask that? (How would she even be able to tell?)
„Are you a real robot?“, he blurts out. Because despite the stiffness, she looks like those women from old adverts, red painted lips, curled hair.
„Yes. My name is Grace“, she answers kindly. „Your father built me.“
She’s different from Pogo. She‘s different from Dad. He wonders how he even managed to make her.
„You don’t look like a real robot“, he says instead, cautiously meeting her gaze. She‘s hidden her teeth again, but her lips are always slightly turned up at the corners.
„Well, that is because I‘m taking care of you children! Metal is a bit too cold and hard for that.“
He thought she was only made for Seven.
He considers her again. She’s not one of his siblings- he can tell her without arguing or hurting her, because she’s not his siblings, she’s a robot.
Her presence suddenly feels a lot more awesome.
„I‘m upset because Two thinks I am weird“, he whispers, a prickling feeling running over his back, the one he feels when Dad is angry at them for failing. „I‘m not like him or the others, not even like Seven. I‘m just… different.“
Grace frowns, hard. Tilting her head at him she gets up again. „Come with me, Number Five.“
He follows her. She walks slowly despite being tall enough to easily be way faster than him, her skirts swishing and heels clicking with every step.
They end up in the living room in front of a bookshelf, her hand wandering over the titles until she seems to find the one she’s looking for. „There’s some people like you, that think very hard all the time“, she says absentmindedly. „With heads up in the sky. Like angels not yet arrived on earth.“
It is a strange way to say it, but then, Five supposes they are both very strange, apparently.
The book is shelved a bit too high for him to reach and impossibly thick. He could probably get it by himself if he got better at sticking his landings after blinking. Grace skips a huge chunk of the book until she stops at a page in the last quarter.
THE UGLY DUCKLING, the title reads in clumsy, old print. The pages are slightly yellowed at the edges.
Five is confused. She’s showing him… fairytales.
„Number Five“, she says as she marks the page, „Maybe this is a good story for you.“ She smiles again and drops the book into his hands- it’s heavy and almost too large for him to properly grip it.
He looks up at her and her strange, constant half-smile, and she briefly rests her hand on the top of his head. Then she turns and leaves.
-
After dinner, he tries to read from the page Grace marked. The book creaks a little when he opens it- it’s so huge it seems to want to collapse under its own weight like a star. The pages smell strange and musty, the print sometimes a bit blotted.
He’s pretty sure they had to read a similar story already for class, but that was almost two years ago. So he tries.
The ugly duckling is different. It looks different, acts different and can’t (or won‘t) do the things everyone around it does. He feels a strange sort of kinship to it only a few pages in. It doesn’t know how to be a proper duck. The other ducks don’t like that.
That is, until halfway through the story he realizes its true problem.
The ugly duckling is utterly useless.
It gets itself into dangerous situations without knowing how to get out, it can’t lay eggs, it can’t do anything and it loses its family. It’s lonely.
Number Five is not useless. He never will be. He’s capable, he’s smart. He can’t be like that.
The ugly duckling only becomes happy when it finds others like itself. Suddenly it’s beautiful, useful, it’s a swan.
He doesn’t want to be a swan. He doesn’t want to leave his family. He doesn’t want to be so different that his only option is leaving. He loves them, and all he knows is here. Angry, hot tears blur his vision as he slams the book shut, dropping it onto the floor next to his bed.
Maybe they wouldn’t have hated the swan if it were actually useful.
So, Five should be useful. Should be better than that stupid swan. Dad wants them to be ready soon- and Five will be. He will be better and more prepared and he will be useful enough to stay with his family and not be happier anywhere else.
In the following months, he throws himself into training with renewed vigor. He starts blinking all the time. It makes him hungrier, though, and while One shoots up and only gets taller Five stays very short. They start get used to Grace. Two starts calling her mom. Five supposes he is sort of right because she acts like mothers in the stories they read or movies they watch.
Still, sometimes his siblings imply that he’s strange or weird or different when they’re mad (mostly because it makes him angry- they all use cheap shots). But he learns not to care as much, because at least he’s useful. He slowly starts banishing the ugly duckling from his mind.
But when Grace and Pogo decide they should have names, with Dad agreeing to keep some kind of charade of normalcy, and she gets to Five, he suddenly starts to feel dread creeping up his spine like cold fingers. He thinks about her calling him some meaningful name, like some angel, forever reminding him even if she doesn’t mean to. And besides, he hates it.
He hates change and he likes numbers and he doesn’t want to be an angel not yet on earth because he is right here and angels aren’t real but numbers are and what does it matter that he thinks more than other stupid people and he doesn’t want to change.
He likes being Number Five.
He doesn’t care.
He interrupts her sentence, ignores Pogo scolding him for rudeness, ignores his newly named siblings gaping at him. He’s Five and he’s useful.
Nothing more.
When they start the missions, he’s simply called the boy. And that’s enough.
He grows calculated, smarter, capable. Of course it’s never enough for Dad, but he finds himself not caring, less than his siblings.
Even Klaus, who just pretends not to care, making small talk with ghosts on missions, misbehaves for attention. It’s painfully clear, the older they get. Allison is simply frustrated, sometimes making comments but taking no action, Luther still worships the ground the man walks on. Diego still thinks he’s edgy and not like everyone else in the house. Ben is quiet but still lets his tentacles tear criminals apart for approval.
Vanya is invisible. He thinks she’s the closest to understanding how he feels about Dad, or will be, someday.
The older he gets, the more abundantly clear it is: dad doesn’t care about Five and in turn, Five doesn’t give a single shit about him.
He only cares about his siblings. Because despite being overwhelmingly naive and stupid, he loves them. He’s useful for them, not Reginald Hargreeves.
They’re the ones to hold his hand, to sneak out at night with, to hug, to talk to, to read books with, and they have been there since the beginning. He can insult them and not be punished with hours of training, and he can love them and not be used up for all that he is.
One night, all of them crammed into a booth at Griddy‘s, Diego knocks his shoulder against his.
„Why didn’t you want a name?“, he asks out of the blue, voice low as their siblings chatter, powdered sugar smeared stupidly around his mouth.
Five wonders why it even occurred to him to ask.
„I didn’t need one“, he answers plainly.
Diego huffs. „You’re so weird.“
It doesn’t sting that much, weirdly enough, squeezed between his brother and the window, scarfing down donuts like their lives depend on it. It doesn’t really matter. He knows they need him. He scouted ahead, he‘s the reason why they even snuck out.
He’s satisfied with that. Love is transactional, anyways.
„That’s because I‘m smarter than you“, he answers, baring his teeth in a shit-eating grin.
A few weeks later, his bloody, small, useless hands try to bury an adult Diego under concrete rubble.
They’re all cold, they’re all adults and still they left him alone, and he can’t just let him rot. He just saw him a few hours ago. Now Diego is tall, he‘s twice his age, a new scar on his face and Five has to bury his corpse.
He loves them and they’re all dead.
He thought he was smarter than that.
And where had that gotten him?
He’s useless and trapped at the end of the world.
Maybe an angel arrived on earth just is a demon. He’s certainly in hell. He’s boiled alive every day for the rest of his life. He’s not an angel, never will be.
He’s useless and he can’t help them, because they’re all dead.
And he tries to fix it, he does. All he knows is doing that.
It’s the only way he knows love.
It’s all he can do. It’s surviving, alone, for 45 years at the end of the world. It’s taking a deal that means ripping himself apart. It’s making himself a monster. It’s truly ripping the angel down to earth, becoming the demon crawling out of hell, hands covered in blood.
All so he can fix it.
All so he can be useful again.
Maybe it’s hard for them to love him, but he can save them and that’s enough for him, is it?
(It’s not, the eight year old in him whispers,)
(It never will be, the thirteen year old that never grew up adds.)
He’s never had a chance at real love, he knows.
He’s not something to be loved.
He tries again.
He tries again.
Shit.