#and five deadpan snarks at him 'one step behind as always number 2'

[princesssarcastia]

the day that was(n’t)

edit 4/9/20: now on ao3, if you’d prefer

Allison buys two tickets for Luther and he still hunches his shoulders in, trying to make himself that much smaller.  She hasn’t let go of his hand since they left the park.  Everything is balancing on a knife’s edge in her mind, and if she loses him as an anchor right now she’ll crumble.

Her ears pop as they rise, rise, rise, and she clenches Luther’s hand and finally lets herself wonder if she can do this.  Wonder what words she can say to Patrick to make him understand that this isn’t a trick.  Allison only has two days left on this Earth to see her daughter.  (her daughter only has two days left on this Earth.  this Earth only has two days left) what if he says no what if he calls the police what if five is wrong and she destroys her last chance what if what if what if what if—

Luther pulls her hand to his chest and splays it flat, letting her feel the steady march of his heartbeat and the slow pull of his breath, in, out, in, out. Hers is coming in short, quick (quiet, always quiet don’t let him hear number three) bursts; panic like she hasn’t felt in years is rising in her. 

But.  But Luther is here.  Luther is here, and he’s holding her hand, and he’s breathing.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.

Allison lets her eyes close and focuses on him, for a little while.

                                                               —

Klaus shudders and sobs and smiles because he did it.  Dave is here.

“Klaus,” Dave smiles at him (Dave Dave Dave his heart beats).  “What are you doing to yourself, sweetheart?”

He crosses the attic, floorboards creaking in time with his footsteps, and crouches down next to him.

“I had to see you,” Klaus sobs and smiles and it’s all tangled up inside but it doesn’t matter, because Dave is here.  Dave died in his arms and Klaus scrubbed Dave’s blood out from under his fingernails, but he’s here.  It’s okay now.

“So you tied yourself to a chair?” He shakes his head.  “Wait, are you sober?”  A hesitant look takes over Dave’s face.  “Klaus, does this mean you can see—can see all the others, too?  You don’t have to—not for me.”

Klaus shakes his head.  “No, no, Dave, you’re—you’re worth every second of it.  I love you, Dave, so much.  I missed you so much,” he sobs again.  And oh, this won’t do; his eyes are so watery it’s hard to make Dave out.  He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to ward off more tears.

Dave runs a hand gently over Klaus’s forehead, pushing his hair away from his eyes.  Memories of nights spent memorizing the way Dave’s warm, calloused hands felt against him flash in Klaus’s mind.

Wait.

Klaus opens his eyes and jerks back a little.  Hands.  Floorboards.

“Dave,” he breathes, shocked, and finally manages to pull his own hands free.  The space between them is illuminated with pale blue light.  He reaches up, shaking, as Dave leans down, and their foreheads collide somewhere in the middle.

They press against each other, just savoring getting to breathe the same air.  Figuratively.  Except, well, maybe not?

“How is this possible?” Klaus murmurs, trying to pull Dave even closer.  “Is this you?”

“No, this is all you, sweetheart.”  Dave smiles at him again (hasn’t stopped smiling at him, actually, not that Klaus is any better).

“Hmmm.  Sounds like a problem for tomorrow, don’t you think?”

Dave laughs, and it’s the greatest thing Klaus has ever heard.

                                                             —

“I won’t lie to my children anymore,” Mom says, and lifts her chin ever so slightly.

Diego feels something ease inside him.  It is the first time she has ever called them hers; Sir Reginald never allowed her the attachment.

But his father isn’t here anymore.

“Mom,” he says softly.  “Mom, whatever it is, it’ll be okay.  I understand, I promise.”

She doesn’t smile and says, “Sir Reginald killed himself, in the hopes that it would bring you all together one last time.”

She doesn’t smile and says, “Pogo has been sabotaging my programming to arouse your suspicions, to keep you all investigating and focused, as a team.  As long as I was a suspect, you children would stay.”

She doesn’t smile and says, “Do you remember when I first came to stay with you, Diego?”

He sucks in a breath; it’s—what?  It’s too much at once, but also not enough.  “Why would.  Why w-w-would he kill himself?  What could possibly m-m-m—”

“Diego,” she cuts him off.  Something in his chest curls up; she’s never interrupted him when he was struggling with a word, not once, and it hurts.

Mom reaches out and grasps his shoulders. “Diego.  My sweet boy,” and now a smile flits across her mouth, as she’s looking into his eyes.  “This is important.  Do you remember the nannies you had before I came to stay?”

Something vague drags itself from his memory.  “I.  Yeah, one of them spoke french, right?”

She smiles again, but this time it’s one of Reginald's. He can always tell the difference; this one is meant to be encouragement for answering a question correctly.  “That’s right!” 

And then it slides off her face.  “They were human.  But humans are,” she pauses, “breakable.  Your father stopped employing human nannies after you all turned four.”

Breakable.  “Did we,” he swallows, “did we hurt them?”

She doesn’t smile and says, “You didn’t.  But Vanya did.”

                                                        —

Vanya presses her father’s journal to her chest with one hand and grips her case with the other as she walks the length of the city.

After Ben—when she first moved out, the only thing she could think was away.  Far away.  And Leonard’s house is close—was close—

There’s blood on her face.  There was blood everywhere, my god what have I—

No cabs.  No friends to call.  Just Vanya, making her way to the house she ran away from twelve years ago.

She is a liability you have to have powers to go this is a family matter I heard a              r u  m  o   r

But she loves them.  She loves them.  It’ll be okay.  They can help, her family can help her.  Her family will help her.  Sisters.

Time collapses.

Vanya knocks quietly at the manor’s front door, but nobody answers.  Late.  It’s late.  Her family isn’t ignoring her, they’re just asleep.  She could knock louder, but—(he beats his fist against the book until it’s the only thing she can hear, until it fills her mind and she  s c r e a m s).

Through the kitchen.  Her key fits into the lock and the door creaks open and she’s in the kitchen.  There are dishes in the sink, why are there dishes in the sink?  Mom always puts the dishes away before bed.  (the new nanny cracks as she hits the ground, and doesn’t get up again)

Maybe they’re in the living room.  They were meeting there earlier, maybe they’re still—

She’s in the living room, and she’s alone.  Just Vanya.  Some of the lamps are still on, casting a warm glow on everything.

Late.  It’s late.  Her family is probably asleep.  Vanya could call out for them (she  s c r e a m s) or Pogo (did you know?) but. 

Vanya can wait here.  She can sit here, and wait for them to notice her.  Then they can help, her family can help her.

She perches on the edge of the cushion, journal pressed to her chest in one hand, case gripped tight in the other, and waits.

                                                           —

Seven seconds from the time he drops the grenade to the explosion.  Just enough to get the year, the month the day, but his hands are too goddamn sweaty to fix the hour.

“Shit!” He grinds his teeth and flips the catches anyway.  Two days is better than nothing, which is what he’ll be if he stays any longer.

The heat of the explosion reaches him just as he slips into the void, and gets unceremoniously dumped onto the unyielding oak of his father’s wet-bar.

He gives himself two seconds to lie there and groan.  God, that hurt.  He’s thirteen years old, but you wouldn’t know it from all the aches and pains littering his body.  This is what fifty felt like the first time around. What he wants, more than anything, is to sleep for the next sixteen hours and then drink a gallon of coffee.

What, are you going to sit there and whine all day? Dolores says in the back of his mind.  Get up.  We have work to do.

Everything hurts as he pushes himself to his feet, and there’s a particularly stabbing pain in his right side, but that’s irrelevant right now.

Coffee.  He can give himself one out of two, and then round up his idiot siblings to stop the apoca—

“Five?” Someone croaks.  He recognizes that kind of voice; that’s the voice of someone who’s screamed their vocal cords to shreds.

His eyes land on Vanya, of all people, sitting alone on the couch.  Why would she be—nope, doesn’t matter.  Apocalypse first, issues later.

“Good.  You’re here.”  He marches across the room.  “The apocalypse is in two...” his voice trails off.

She’s covered in blood.  It’s splattered across her face, her chest; her hands look like she dunked them in a vat of it.  There’s a familiar looking book clutched to her chest like a life-line.

“Five,” she croaks again.  Her eyes.  The look in her eyes...Five notes distantly that it’s a wonder she can speak at all, if she’s that shell-shocked.

“Vanya,” he says warily, “what happened?”

“I didn’t mean to,” she says dazedly.  “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t.“

“It’s okay, I know you didn’t,” he says quietly, and takes a slow step closer to her.

“I just...” she looks down and seemingly pries her arm from around the book and holds it out to him.  “I found it.  Under his bed.  He had it under his bed the whole time.”

Another step, and another, and gently, he lifts the book from her hand.�� He hesitates for a second and replaces it with his own hand, letting her clutch at him instead while he examines the book.

It’s dad’s journal.

A slow, uneasy feeling stirs in his gut.

Vanya blinks, and turns her head to look up at him.  She looks fragile, and not all there yet, but it’s progress.

“Vanya, where is everyone?”

“It’s late,” she says dully.  “I didn’t want to wake anyone up,” she continues, and then shudders. 

Right.  He’s pretty sure even Diego would have gotten up to help Vanya if she showed up looking like this, but there’s clearly something else bothering her about the idea.

“I was waiting for them to notice me.  They can help me. They can help me,” she repeats, and sounds a little stronger.

“Of course they can.  I can help you too, Vanya.  Just,” he sets the book on the end table and sits next to her, “tell me what happened.”

She starts shaking.  “I think—I think I killed him, Five.  I killed him.”

There’s enough blood for her to have killed several ‘hims.’

“Who did you kill?”

“Leonard.  It was an accident,” the word start pouring out of her, “It was an accident, Five, I didn’t mean to, but I found dad’s journal and he’s been reading dad’s notes about me, manipulating me, and he wouldn’t stop hitting it it was so loud I couldn’t help it and I screamed and he was,” she gasps, “He was dead, I killed him, I killed him!”

Vanya keeps gasping at shorter and short intervals until she’s crying, sobbing.  Five throws his other arm around her shoulders and pulls her into him and feels helpless against the onslaught of tears; he’s never seen her this emotional before.

Then again, to his knowledge, she’s never killed anyone before.

“it’s okay.  It’ll be okay, we’ll fix this.  I mean, do you have any idea how many people I’ve killed?”  He tries for levity and then immediately regrets it.

But somehow, it works.  At least a little.  “You’ve killed people with your powers, too?”

He blinks in shock.  “Powers?”

Dad’s journal, the one he took notes about their training in; it’s bound to be full of dangerous information about all of them.  This “Leonard” had their Dad’s journal.  He was manipulating Vanya with it.  There’s information about Vanya in it.

Vanya has powers?

She jerks her head in an imitation of a nod, but doesn’t say anything.  Five doesn’t say anything either, just absently pulls her a little closer while he mulls this over.

His equations were always off.  It all makes sense now, though, because he was missing a crucial piece of data.  Vanya has powers.  How could he not have known?  How could any of them have missed this?

She still has tears running down her face, which is a step above shock, but not great.  All it means is he can worry about the details later.  He can feel the pieces of their lives slowly coming together in the back of his mind, but Vanya can’t wait until he figures it out.

“Alright.  Here’s what we’re going to do.”  He pulls away from her enough to help her sit up.  “You’re going to wash all the—take a shower,” he awkwardly switches tacks when he sees the look it gives her.  “And then we’ll find the others and figure out what happened.” 

And then he and Diego will go hide the body, he adds silently, but even he can tell Vanya is in no state to hear that.

“We can help you, Vanya.  We will help you.  Everything’s going to be okay.”