#klaus hagreeves

[christopher-the-cube]

Is Klaus wearing…. a face mask and latex gloves???!

[kaybreezy3000]

This one is a little season 4 short story I dreamed up before the real season came out. It gives us an alternate ending and a look inside Five's world both before he jumped to the apocalypse and post season 3.

~~~~~~~~It all begins and ends with Five....

(Rated Teen and Up or General. 10,409 words)(alt season 4 story with ending, reader insert style that allows anyone to be the 'you' character,-as a potential friend to Five or whatever you want to imagine, meant to be sad and sweet.)

warnings: mild description/mention of child abuse, and signs of panic attack, potential trigger by mention of bombing a building

tags: anarchist Number Five, Hero Number Five, ideas from the Gene and Jean script release but not based on what really happened, whump, fluff, trauma, heartbreak, love, revenge, forgiveness, Mr. Pennycrumb, all the Hargreeves and some of our new character mentions from season 4 but not as the show had them because this was written before it came out, Five deserves better, Klaus is awesome, You x Five, Five is amazing and with this one you get to imagine yourself a part of his story/future 👍

He Who Holds The Power

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From across the table, the couple staring back at Five took a drink from their coffees at the same time.

Five’s lips turned up ever so slightly as he swallowed down the warmth from his own caffeinated beverage. “Jean was it?” he questioned, already knowing the answer.

“Yes, I’m Jean and this is my husband Gene,” the woman replied while the man next to her intently watched him with bright blue eyes that filled his otherwise aged face with youthful looking excitement.

They were nervous, and rightly so. They were finally meeting the mysterious person who had hired them five years ago to hunt down things that shouldn’t exist but did. 

Shifting forward, Five set his empty cup down between them, then casually pulled up the cuff of his dress shirt and glanced at his wrist, noting the time before he raised a brow. “Do you have it?”

“We do,” the man said, passing him a folder.

Five opened the manila file. 

His breath caught in his throat.

Staring back at him were six masked children, all decked out in matching academy uniforms as they proudly stood there with the Eiffel Tower behind them.

Five had seen plenty of evidence already, but this was the nail in the coffin. This was all the proof he needed to verify he was right and he was justified in what he was about to do.

The date on the newspaper clipping was from early April of 2001. 

It was only five months after The Umbrella Academy’s infamous bank job.

They were only twelve years old.

He had lived a lifetime since then, but the memories of that day, and what happened to him after it, hit Five in waves of near crippling anxiety. As if the world was out to get him, it was all made worse by the hateful looking woman who had just walked by with the little yelping dog that she just zapped into submission through the shock collar that looked like it was choking the life out of him.

She looked too much like The Handler, with her fancy dress and spiked heels, and those blood red lips forming a wicked grin. Her sick satisfaction over the animal’s paralyzing fear was exactly how Five’s ex-boss looked at him as she heartlessly manipulated him into doing her bidding.

His fingers curled as his body tensed.

He forced his eyes back to the article with the faded image of his family.

He had looked about as smug as a kid could at the press conference that cold day, and he was, but not long after that, Five would find out how foolish he was to think that by merely doing his best and putting on a show for the press that he could trick his father and himself that he was good enough.

“How is this stuff possible,” Jean questioned with her eyes darting from the stained article Five had just laid down, to his hand retreating under the table where they couldn’t see it trembling.

Pushing aside all that, Five flatly said, “It doesn’t matter.”

Gene didn’t like that. 

“What?” he angrily barked. “We have been searching high and low for this stuff and we have given you tons of proof that this shit is real. That kid in front looks a lot like you,” he pointed at Five in the picture, “and that girl looks like the actress from the VHS tapes we gave you! Something is not right here!”

“It never was,” Five stoically replied while promptly pushing out his chair.

Not waiting for them to argue with him further, he left them and the paper on the table that showed evidence of his past that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. The envelope full of money he’d dropped next to the file should be enough to quiet them. Not that it would matter.

Time was up.

Five was done sitting around playing Reginald’s victim. 

Five’s fingers gently cradled the detonator in his pants pocket as he walked down the busy sidewalk with his eyes aimed at the tallest building on the horizon-the one that was adorned with huge letters spelling out the last name he had once called his own.

Reginald had erased Number Five Hargreeves and left him with almost nothing. Five had tried to move on and take his second chance for what it was, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t escape his thoughts of retribution.

In trying to reclaim something he’d lost and couldn’t figure out how to repair, Five was finally going to erase the father that had never loved him.

~~~

Not long before this, across town, with a heaviness tugging at what was left of his cold heart, the heavy door thumped closed behind Reginald at what was once The Umbrella Academy. Though parts of the exterior were in horrible states of disrepair, burnt and bashed by the spray of angry graffiti, the main stones holding together the building stood as they always had, but the home of the once famous children that were born with superhuman powers was now nothing more than another one of his many derelict properties.

Reginald had left it to rot and had taken the world for himself, and he’d done so by using them in the worst way, stripping them of the gifts inside them to fuel his machine that rebooted life on his terms.

He should have been happy with the result. He had gotten everything back that he’d always wanted, but inside, behind those walls that no one was allowed, a life from another time sat silently covered in dust and it told another story nobody else knew.

Ironically, all Reginald cared about always turned out empty.

The Umbrella Academy may not have existed in this timeline but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still there, just like his regret.

Those around him didn’t realize it, but many things were hiding just beneath the surface.

His expensive dress shoes left ghosts of his presence across the once sparkling black and white marble checkering of the foyer at the old manor. His cane tapped along, its echo hollow.

Reginald tiredly climbed the grand staircase, then slowly walked the quiet upper hall, past his children’s closed bedroom doors, heading towards the viewing room.

At a darkly paneled wooden wall, he stopped.

He glanced behind him at the settee where Grace had once sat to recharge. He could almost see her sitting a few feet away, staring off into space, blissfully incapable of truly understanding the dire situation at hand.

Flickers of another face, the same as hers, only animated with life and love, begged him for the truth he wouldn’t give. She was just another mistake haunting him.

He could have found some semblance of peace and maybe even true happiness in those he’d hurt, but like so many times Reginald couldn’t see what was in front of him, he hadn’t realized that until it was too late.

Despairingly, Reginald looked away, opening the hidden paneled door he’d felt drawn to that morning, then he shut himself inside its secret darkness.

The dimly yellowed light from the small desk lamp turned on, the chain slipping from Reginald’s fingers as his weight fell into the familiarity of his old chair. Stuck somewhere in the memories of his past, he clicked on the monitor in front of him.

His eyes fell from the surveillance screen that was playing the live news, moving across the small workspace. The pages of his detailed notes, files filled with medical records, and all the numerous journals about his children from the years he had spent with them all lay there before him.

More than ever, he wondered if he could have done things another way.

Reginald Hargreeves knew all too well the power of love and relationships of the heart, but he also knew that they could be wiped out of existence in the blink of an eye by an ugly twist of fate.

By what he could see, in this case, that ugly twist was the world’s end, again.

He’d seen the signs. Clues of his charade were all around them, buried in boxes of seemingly useless junk put in the trash as someone emptied a musty basement or sold as seemingly worthless treasures on the streets for a small fortune to those who knew.

Yes, there were those that had formed conspiracy theories about him and who claimed they were living in a false existence. They were anarchist radicals, but they weren’t wrong.

Reginald also knew his machine that had been holding this all together was failing.

The end had always loomed, and he’d thought he’d finally beaten it even though he’d done so by failing the ones he himself created and had once dared to call his own. He stole away their chance at a normal life with parents that loved them, then he made them nothing more than his adopted wards. They were his dream of a future, but he was no father to them.

“It has been said that a man who has been through bitter experiences and traveled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time.” Reginald laughed bitterly. “Sadly, not true,” he said, mocking the line he’d just quoted from The Odyssey.

The faraway sound of a determined voice calling out to him, then perfectly reciting Homer in ancient Greek suddenly caused his chest to ache.

Thinking of his wayward son that had rightly lost faith in him and then tragically became lost in time, only to suffer so much more horribly because of it, Reginald looked up at the screen again, looking at the backdrop of Paris with the glitching pulsation of reality starting to reveal the truth. A thick cloud of digitized blackness began to descend over the Eiffel tower and all around it.

He’d prevented nothing and he had caused all of this in his inability to let go of a past that was no more.

Abigail…

He’d done it all for her when really, what they’d had was gone a long time ago, he just couldn’t accept it.

A broken heart was a powerful thing. It could alter everything, and he did. He’d destroyed his children's trust in him and in each other. In his blindness, he was the one that set off this chain of catastrophic events.

It was the biggest mistake he’d ever made. He wished he could turn back time. That was why he’d come to the place where he’d messed things up so badly. This was where it happened.

Reginald clicked off the channel filled with blaring sirens and blurred pixelations from the distortion of time as it crashed.

No one was safe.

It would be happening outside his doors soon enough.

Once again, he stared blankly at the black screen.

He pushed himself up from his chair, ready to return to his tower and wait for the end, but then his weary eyes came back to the tall shelf next to him. It held dozens and dozens of videos from experiments performed on his children. His index finger slowly ran over the titles and the dates, stopping on one.

In bold black ink it read:

April 3rd, 2001 Corrective Training-Post Paris Incident (Subject: Number Five) Speed and Precision Exercise

He pulled the tape away from the many others and stuck it in, making the monitor light up with an old video that showed a day he'd rather not remember.

"It's always Number Five. He was always the key to everything, and I broke him," he whispered with his eyes glued to the small boy who was angrily staring back at him from the screen.

~~~

Using the skills he’d learned in his years as an indentured assassin, Five had done it. The explosives were all set and placed precisely where they needed to be to take Reginald’s Tower of infinite power to the ground. It was just a matter of time, and he would get his confirmation that the building had been cleared due to the fire alarms he’d hacked into and programmed to go off.

Potential casualties were a thing Five would need to add to the blood already drenching his hands. His conscience was unbearably heavy, that was nothing new, but he justified delivering even more death with the knowledge that most of the occupants of the building would be cleared of the tower, as well as the area around it due to simultaneous warnings going off in all the nearby buildings.

Quick enough, what Five had done was easily going to be seen as a false alarm, and that was intentional. Due to safety compliance rules and insurance reasons, people would still be forced to evacuate, but it was well known that Reginald and his wife rarely left the protection of his imposing skyscraper.

They would be right where Five wanted them to be.

As Five sat on a park bench in the spot he had chosen to view the glory of his efforts, he thought again of that article and his family.

He hadn’t seen any of his family members in years, but just as it was in the apocalypse, he could almost hear Diego’s voice as if he was right there, saying something dumb or bitching about the reporters that headlined Five and Luther and not him. His knife throwing brother’s heroics that day were worthy of note, but like so often in their life, the things they did right did not get them the recognition they had so badly craved.

As annoyed as Five was by Diego at times, he never felt that he deserved the punishments he received. None of them did.

Five wanted to protect them. But the truth was, he couldn’t protect them. He couldn’t even protect himself and that was never more apparent than after Paris.

On that a chilly Monday morning in April of 2001, Five and his siblings were all up before sunrise, scrambling to make it downstairs for inspection before their dad got there.

Only the night before, they had just got back from France, having completed their most recent mission. They were all a bit jet lagged and worked up still, bickering and carrying on the way only a pack of twelve years could at 5:30 am. As they thundered down the stairs, Luther and Diego were going on about who stopped the terrorists, both sure that they were the hero in the story.

The truth was nobody had individually done it, but that never stopped them from each trying to take all the credit. As a team, albeit a not very coordinated one, they took down a group that had threatened to bomb several famous landmarks, one being the Eiffel Tower.

Prior to the Umbrella Academy’s arrival in the city of light, these terrorists had been carrying out these types of attacks all over Europe for months, and it was all over the news. The agencies in place trying to stop them were no closer to doing so, and it was gaining more and more worldwide attention by the day.

When Reginald heard about the imminent threat going on overseas, he immediately loaded his academy on his private jet and set off to save the day. At first, the authorities were against sharing information with him or letting a group of superpowered kids near that kind of trouble. But when the first bombs went off outside at the Place Dauphine, injuring dozens, and killing eight, they were more interested in what he and his infamous Umbrella Academy had to offer.

As Reginald worked with the local law enforcement to pinpoint where the terrorist group was based, another bombing happened. That time it was on a sightseeing boat floating down the Seine. The Hargreeves were nearby, so Reginald was able to quickly get his team there. They did what they could to help get survivors to safety and even managed to gather some evidence that ultimately helped track down who built the bomb. Things were coming together, and it was just a matter of time before they were caught. A day later, before they could set off the next round of bombs, Reginald received intel that allowed him to intercept them before they got to their target.

As a vehicle full of explosives tore towards the Arc De Triomphe, the six extraordinary children were positioned and ready with their dad on the mics watching from above. They spotted the van trying to pull out from a side street. Luther immediately moved in and blocked its path, using his enormous strength to shift parked cars across their exit. Unfortunately, this caused them to deviate onto the narrow sidewalk to get around it.

Allison and Klaus were already trying to clear the area of civilians when the van came speeding in their direction. Five had seen it coming and managed to teleport from his position in time to move them, just missing getting plowed over.

Reginald’s screaming rattled their ears. It was nearly deafening and completely garbled. Diego improvised by hitting the driver in the neck with one of his knives as the van tore past him. All at once the vehicle started to lose control, swerving at a breakneck speed across the lanes as the driver bled out.

Reginald barked at Five to get in there and stop the van, so he jumped again, with his goal to land inside the moving target and take the wheel.

He missed.

Five had never been able to blink on or into a moving target and he shouldn’t have been surprised that he failed, and neither should the alien who had ordered him to do it.

The young boy landed on the road right in front of the van. He saw his life pass before his eyes just as Luther slammed into him, knocking him down to the cement before blocking the van from splattering his small body across the pavement. The vehicle smashed into his brother’s shoulder, coming to a metal bending screeched halt.

Five rolled back away from the wreckage, staggering to his bloodied knees as he watched in shock as Luther tried to untangle himself from the bent hood. That was when they heard Reginald ordering Ben to move in.

From Five’s vantage point, he could still see movement inside the van. There was someone else inside other than the dead driver. He blinked, landing next to the man inside who appeared to be desperately trying to set a bomb off even while he was still inside with it.

He looked over at the dark-haired boy in disbelief, his hand reaching for the gun strapped to his vest. With little to work with, Five charged at him before he could shoot, knocking him back against the side of the van. Thankfully, the gun sprang loose from his hand, clattering across the floor. The guy had at least a hundred and fifty or more pounds on Five, and was clearly trained in combat, so his effort, though carried out skillfully, didn’t take him out, it only pissed him off. He quickly turned the tables on the dazed teleporter, throwing him back like he was nothing.

Five went airborne, then landed and tripped backwards right over the bomb. The next thing he knew, the man had the gun pointed at his head. Before he could pull the trigger, using the same trick he’d done with the stapler during the bank job, Five teleported the deadly weapon away.

Just then the back doors of the van flew off. Luther had torn them off, and the moment Five saw Ben set up beside him, he got the hell out of there, blinking himself back out onto the road behind them.

Their dad yelled orders for Ben to unleash The Horror.

Seconds passed…

The terrorist, though taken completely off guard by all this, pounced for the bomb again.

Ben hadn’t moved; it was like he was paralyzed.

Completely out of breath, Diego suddenly rounded the corner, skidding to a stop alongside Five. He had a knife at the ready and instantly sent it sailing towards the persistent and apparently suicidal criminal, landing it deep in the center of his chest. The guy fell to his knees, gasping as he clutched at the blade as his blood quickly drenched his shirt.

That pretty much ended that.

Fortunately, before he died, Allison was able to rumor him into giving up where his accomplices were hiding. After that, the authorities were able to take them down before they could carry out another attack.

It was a success. No one else was killed or hurt.

After, Reginald had his children carry out interviews and partake in the usual media events that followed any mission they were ordered to take. They did as was expected of them, smiled for the cameras, and answered the questions carefully, just the way he would have wanted them to.

On the flight home, Reginald didn’t say a word.

Now, as they stood behind their chairs and his coldly calculating eyes fell over them, Five couldn’t escape the sinking feeling growing in his gut.

After a silent breakfast, before he could leave with the others to attend classes, Reginald abruptly pulled him aside. Five was quickly informed that he was of the opinion their mission was hardly a success, and each of them required aggressive corrective training to make sure it never happened again. As such, he would not be joining the others.

In his naively young mind, Five mused that his father must have liked him the most because he was the lucky one who got to be ‘corrected’ first.

Wide eyed, his siblings all watched him go. Five squared his shoulders as he dutifully walked behind his father, not willing to show his growing unease.

The Monocle had a specific exercise area for Five back in one of the old factory buildings that made up his city block. It was made up of three mostly empty floors that were exposed by a large open galley in the middle. To Five, it was clear what he intended to do with him. That place, and the things that happened there, were nothing new. He used to do bad things to him there all the time. It had just been a while since they’d played that game, so the timing of it seemed suspect.

The boy couldn’t escape the thought that maybe this time he should simply say no, no more, but he didn’t. Refusing to do what his dad wanted or even arguing would send Reginald into a fit of rage, so that was out of the question unless he wanted to start a war with him, which he didn’t. That was far from what Five really wanted from him.

Once Reginald had led his son to the secluded end of his property, well away from the others, the boy resentfully stood there with his wrists willingly exposed because he knew the drill. Reginald unkindly looked down at Five before wordlessly slapping on the two cuffs specifically made for him that acted as a sort of shock collar like a dog would wear. If Five missed a mark by even an inch, he would be punished for it. The targets were wired, and only landing on top of them perfectly stopped the cuffs from zapping him less than a second later.

To Five, this whole song and dance had always felt like a sick game of Operation, or maybe Battleship, only instead of a silly little rubber band or a marked ill-fated ship, he was the one destined to snap or sink to the depths of his own personal hell. That type of training could have been done without the cuffs, but the Hargreeves children’s award-winning dad of the Year always felt that without them, there was nothing at stake, nothing driving this most defiant son to do better.

The truth was it only drove Five to hate him. Over time, he had gotten better. Reginald’s Number Five grew more apt at wielding his power and then he wasn’t subject to that particular form of punishment; not so often anyway.

Reginald set his tea down and made himself comfortable at a small desk in the center of the lower level. He took a moment to look over his notes as his son obediently stood there waiting for him to start.

Five’s thoughts moved at the speed of light, but it felt like he was always waiting. Waiting for something to change, waiting for him to be good enough. Waiting for his father to see him.

It never came.

Once again, he was stuck, waiting for his mercy, for Reginald to see him as something other than a tool to achieve his ends. Five may have been a genius but that didn’t matter. He was so alone and powerless, which in his brilliant mind seemed counterintuitive to what his father was trying to achieve which only made him even more confused.

“It’s time to begin,” Reginald announced without so much as looking at his son as he stared at him down, wondering the reason for his cold indifference and why he didn’t care about them.

Five wanted to stop feeling this; he wanted it not to matter, but it did, it always had, and that was the problem. He needed to stop caring, but he just couldn’t, so he waited, and as always, he tried harder to prove him wrong.

‘I am worth something,’ the boy kept mentally repeating. All he had to do to make things better was to make Reginald see it! Then everything would be okay-he’d finally be able to know what it meant to be happy.

Reginald hit the timer, activating the system while at the same time barking out a slew of coordinates to specific locations. Five blinked as fast as possible to each, and of course, none of them were easy and most he couldn’t see ahead of time, which made landing them harder.

Sometimes it would be three floors up above, or on top of a narrow ledge or precariously placed on some other obstacle Reginald had created for him, with nothing more than a few measly inches to land. Five quickly noticed there were marks everywhere. He couldn’t begin to count them because there were so many. That was out of the ordinary, even for The Monocle, so he knew this was going to be bad.

Five’s mind played games with him, singing imaginary taunts in his father’s cruel voice. ‘Welcome back home, son. I am going to sip tea while I enjoy watching your mind shatter.’

At least Five was on it that day. He completed each order without a single shock until nearing over an hour of jumps, which was a new record. Unfortunately for him, at that point he was drained, sweat drenched, and dizzy, having lost count of how many times he had blinked. He knew he couldn’t get the precision required for what he was doing anymore. That was evident by his shaking hands and the stars at the edges of his vision.

Even though he started to protest, Reginald kept him at it, saying he needed to get better, figure out how to land on moving targets, and learn to go past his limits, because someday he would have no other choice and it would be a matter of life and death for everyone.

Five fought back.

He started to make more and more errors, and the shocks became more and more frequent and stronger each time. Normally, that type of exercise was an hour max, but that time was different for a reason. Reginald wanted to see him fail. It was becoming more and more apparent that his collapse was the point all along. His father wanted to prove to him that he wasn’t as strong as he pretended to be.

Five’s anger and desire to prove Reginald wrong were the only things fueling him in their sick game. That was until he finally crumpled to the ground nearing the end of the second hour.

The boy crashed to the floor after an especially bad jump, missing the precariously placed mark completely. He helplessly fell from an open ledge down to the unforgiving tiles over twenty feet below. He landed hard, the whole left side of his body taking the brunt of it. His head bounced once with an excruciating thwack. Then his dad proceeded to let the cuffs shock him back into consciousness until he was folding in on himself, unable to do anything other than tremor violently as his entire body spasmed.

When Reginald finally turned it off manually, Five could hardly make a sound or move. The mad man that owned him didn’t so much as bother to tap him with his shoe as he laid helplessly in his own drool at his feet, with blood-stained tears streaming down his face. Reginald simply announced, ‘We are done.”

Then he left his son there, broken and alone.

When Five finally made it to his knees, he lost what little contents his stomach still had in it, and then he ended up back on the tiled floor with another thwack of his head against the hard surface.

He lay there too exhausted and dizzy to move or save himself, that was until Grace came to his rescue. Then, when she tried to move him, the sudden disorienting movement and sheer searing pain of it caused Five to pass out. When he woke up an undetermined amount of time later, he was in the infirmary, and it was with his dad standing over him as he lay on one of Grace’s operating tables.

Five was unable to move, but he didn’t know why.

His eyes wildly darted around him as he fell into an all-out panic. He was attached to an IV and it was administering fluids into his right arm. Some type of bandage was on his head, concealing what felt like had to be a hole the size of the Grand Canyon based on how horrible it felt. His current mental state was not good, and he was having a hard time remembering what had happened. He vaguely remembered hitting his head.

‘Was I training?’ he innocently wondered. ‘Did I pass out and fall down the stairs again because I wasn’t eating enough to power my jumps, or was it...’

Five was visibly confused and terrified, but his father only looked down at him hatefully.

Five had to look away from him because it was only adding to how much he hurt everywhere. He looked to his right instead. The sun was low, indicated by how little light was entering through the small stained-glass window above the tall storage cabinets where his mom kept her supplies. Grace was standing there in her operating gown, a heartbreaking look on her normally comforting face.

When Five heard the main doors open and close, he reluctantly turned back. To add to his confusion, his sister was there, standing next to their dad. Before he could so much as ask what was going on, Reginald played his next card, one he wouldn’t have guessed the old monster had in him, and that was saying a lot since the boy already knew that Reginald was the devil incarnate.

“Do it,” he ordered, not taking his eyes off his questioning eyes.

Allison looked like she had been crying. Five’s heart began racing faster as she looked back at their dad, looking completely horrified by whatever Reginald was asking her to do. Then she looked right at him.

“I heard a rumor you couldn’t speak,” she said, her voice trembling as new tears ran down her face. Automatically, Five’s eyes locked on hers in that familiar memorizing trance only her powers could induce on her victims.

It was done; he couldn’t speak a word, not until she said he could.

After that, Five spent the next three days in the infirmary, unable to speak about what had happened or make one word of complaint, not that anyone came to visit him anyway. He had suffered a severe concussion and he had broken his left clavicle. He had also fractured the tibia in his left leg.

On the fourth day, just before dinner, Grace helped him get vertical and assisted him as he dressed. Then, he was told to go straight to dinner. He managed to stumble in on crutches, though it hurt like hell because of shoulder, and he was late, a fact immediately pointed out by Reginald.

Five all but fell into his chair next to Klaus and Luther, looking as bad as he felt, and unable to respond to their questioning stares other than to glare at their father with his hate filled eyes. Reginald merely looked back impassively for a moment before going back to his papers in front of him.

The second Five entered the room, he could tell they all wanted to say something, but one very clear look at the imposing man that owned them, and they didn’t make a peep. Instead, they looked down at their food. Allison kept her head down the entire time, unable to meet his eyes at all.

Everyone else, for the most part, looked stunned and very scared. Even though their dad had done that type of training with Five more times than he could count, none of them knew exactly what they did in their private time. Five never told them what Reginald did to him, and it had never gone that far before. Even without an explanation, they knew something bad had happened because it was written all over his broken body, not just all over his pitifully pale face.

That night, Klaus and Ben came to Five’s room, long after they should have been asleep. He was able to write down what happened to him even though he was hardly strong enough to do so without visibly shaking. They already knew what Allison had done because she had told Luther before she hysterically locked herself in her room. He then told Ben. Allison also warned them they were not to intervene, or Reginald would make her do worse.

Sitting on his park bench, looking back on all of it, Five figured that, all and all that particular training session wasn’t one of his best. Worse, the others didn’t get away unscathed.

When Reginald was done with him, Five learned later that he had moved on to each of them. His taste for suffering must not have been quenched, because he spent the rest of his days that week tormenting the rest of his children, and each was treated to Allison’s special kind of gag order, either before or after, depending on which made the most sense.

Reginald was trying to make the point that real soldiers were not to be heard but to listen, to take orders and comply. He was tired of their complaining and their arguing and their many mistakes. He made it clear he felt that they had it too easy, and it was getting in the way of their development. These sessions were meant to throw their individual deficiencies in their faces but as young and emotionally stunted as Five still was, he saw that all it had done was make them more isolated from each other, feeding the numbness growing inside.

In comparison to his experience with Reginald, Klause’s time in his company was pretty tame compared to his usual in that he was merely forced to take a field trip for a day to the city’s busiest morgue. There, Klaus was put front and center with untold amounts of corpses, both fresh in and refrigerated. Five never heard how many ghosts were there, because by the time Klaus was allowed to leave and come home, he looked horrified and exhausted. His nerves were a complete mess, and being rumored into quiet submission after entering the house did nothing to hide how he really felt.

The idea of that venture was that Klaus may be able to relay information about the deaths of homicide victims or even important messages to loved ones from people who’d passed unexpectedly. Five had mused at the time that Reginald maybe did have a soul because that was actually not a horrible way for Klaus to use his power. But Klaus wanted nothing to do with it, even if it was for a good cause.

Later, Five learned that Klaus did have several success stories from the day, but the price he’d paid for it was evident the moment he walked in the door. He looked more disturbed than they had ever seen him. After that day, Klaus turned to things heavier than alcohol to dull the voices that followed him home and ceaselessly tormented him.

Later that week, the Hargreeves children were all called out to the courtyard after lunch to witness Diego and Luther fight. They were forced to battle it out until both were beyond bloody and bruised. Diego took it like his father knew he would, but Reginald was using his son’s desire for approval and acknowledgement against him in the lowest way.

The sheer force of Luther’s hits, even when he was holding back, were something no one could take for hours and hours on end without excessive damage. Luther wasn’t allowed to use all his strength on Diego, or it would have killed him, but it was during this fight that Diego received the long scar along his temple that he would always bear.

Luther, though built like shit-house ton of bricks, was not impenetrable either. Diego, being allowed to use any projectile he could see, inflicted his fair share of damage. Neither did anything life-threatening to the other, as that was explicitly prohibited, but Luther had to have stitches in numerous places, and he would have several hidden scars to show for it on his otherwise perfect poster boy skin.

Diego’s nose was broken as well as several of his fingers on both hands. He had numerous broken ribs, a minor hip fracture that gave him a limp for a long time after, and his throwing arm was in a sling, fractured in three places.

Afterwards, though they were both rumored not to speak, just like he and Klaus had been, Five didn’t think they would have, not to each other anyway.

The sad thing was, before that, they actually had gotten along ok-not great, but ok.

When it was Ben’s turn on Saturday, he spent a beautiful spring morning riding upstate to a farm, listening to their dad berate him for his inability to handle The Horror’s rath. He was continually reminded how weak he was and that the only way he would become stronger was to take control of the darkness within him and own it.

“You are the killer. You are the one in control,” Reginald had told him.

“Our Ben was not a killer,” Five sadly whispered as he looked down at the pigeons gathering in the grass in front of him.

Ben may have killed more people than any of them at that point, but it wasn’t really him, it was the thing they called ‘The Horror,’ hence why he was so messed up. He never wanted any part of that life and the last thing he wanted was to take ownership of it.

Unfortunately, his field trip to the farm wasn’t to learn about the dairy industry. It was to learn how to be a one man, or better put, one eldritch tentacle baring slaughter machine. He was forced to unleash the monster inside him, over and over, letting it decimate anything alive in its path, which In that case was several head of cattle destined for the meat market anyway, but still awful to say the least.

Ben was still a mess when he got home that night. He had been carelessly hosed off and left with traces of blood on his otherwise caulk white skin. He was put on a piece of plastic in the backseat of the car on the way home, like he was some kind of filth not good enough to touch the smooth leather of Reginald’s Rolls. When his siblings saw him, his jet-black hair was clumped in a gore of sticky redness and his clothing still bore the evidence of how gruesome his day had been. Once he was stripped, Grace threw his academy uniform away.

Too bad the memories weren’t as easy to dispose of.

Ben was speechless after that, even before Allison needlessly rumored him. The only reason they all knew the details of what happened to Ben was because Vanya overheard Reginald talking to Pogo and Grace about it. The whole thing left him in an almost catatonic state. Seeing that he was unable to function normally, Ben was put under watch by Grace and excused temporarily from daily activities, spending the next two days alone in his room.

Though Allison usually got away with almost anything and she was rarely on their father’s radar when it came to anything, that time proved she was not immune to his madness. Though she may have felt she had Reginald wrapped around her pretty painted fingernails, she quickly realized she was not the one calling the shots.

It was obvious she was devastated about having to rumor them into silent submission. None of the traumatized children blamed her, but it hurt anyway. Five was bitter but he had understood. It was no wonder she normally refused to use her power unless Reginald forced her to. Taking someone’s will away from them was not a good feeling from either side of the situation and it was hard not to feel some anger at her about it.

For a long time after, Five couldn’t be in the same room with Allison without hearing her voice stripping him of the right to use his own mind the way he wanted, and that resulted in fear and mistrust that couldn’t be fixed while they were under that roof.

To him, it felt like the man that called himself their father wanted them to loathe each other as much as they hated him, because that was basically what he’d caused. They could scarcely look at one another when it was all done.

Even without words, it was clear everyone was in shock over what had happened. They were looking for someone to blame and not just their dad. To add insult to injury, quite literally, they couldn’t talk to each other about it when they were each in their worst time of need.

They went through the next week without one word of complaint because they couldn’t. Until then, Five wasn’t sure if Reginald could get Allison to rumor them like that permanently, but if he could have, he knew that he would, so at least he had that to cling to but it did little to ease how heartbroken and hateful he felt.

How they felt and what they needed did not matter to their father.

They had seen the truth. They were nothing to him and never were.

~~~

Feeling slightly off from thinking about the tragedy of that week, Five looked up, finally noticing that there was a little boy coming along the shady path he was sitting along. As if energized even more by Five’s eyes landing on him, the excited puppy the child was trying to hold back suddenly broke free of his hold, sprinting for the park bench.

“Woah there, buddy,” Five laughed as the golden ball of fur aggressively leapt up with its fuzzy paws landing on his knees so it could lick his face. Within seconds, Five’s once pristine wool pants were covered in slobber and dirt.

“Mr. Pennycrumb likes you,” the boy laughed, while scrambling around on the ground, trying to get his hands on the leash.

Just as Five was going to stand up to escape his new friend’s overly affectionate greeting, you came running up to them. “I am so sorry!” you cried as you jumped in to help get a handle on the wild pup.

Once you got the small dog pulled in tight at your heel, Five got to his feet. “It’s okay,” he assured while brushing himself off.

When he looked at the boy, the child staring up at him said, “This is my babysitter. We get to hangout while my mommy is at work. She has to work three jobs ever since the mean monster she called cancer took my daddy away.”

“I am sorry,” Five quietly replied, not sure how to respond to someone so young or to something so awful.

You looked even more embarrassed as you quickly tried to change the subject, “Really. I’m so sorry about your suit. It looks like I owe you a new pair of pants.” Your eyes flickered downwards, taking in the damage. When you looked back up, you added, “Obviously my little guy is very social. Having a four-legged beast is great, but a bit much sometimes. He's up for adoption if you're interested?” you laughed.

You reached down, petting your foster dog, then did the same to the giggling kid, ruffling his fluff of hair. Your smile faded just a little as your eyes returned to the serious looking young man who was curiously studying you.

“Not my nephew here. He is social too, but I didn’t mean to say that he’s a four-legged beast,” you corrected, followed by another laugh that touched something inside Five, making his face animate with a spark of life.

His dimple deepened.

“This kiddo is bit much too, but I love him so, so much and we’d be out here doing this together even if I wasn’t his mom’s go to babysitter,” you rambled, flustered by the way Five was looking at you through the curtain of hair that had fallen over his kind but calculating eyes.

“Don’t worry. I get it, and you don’t owe me new pants. I don’t mind getting a little dirty every now and then. Sometimes I quite enjoy it, and this is turning into one of those times since it meant that I got to meet this little guy, and his very nice companions," Five smoothly replied, and your cheeks glowed even brighter.

Just as you were about to say something, your nephew interrupted.

“You looked lonely. That’s why Mr. Pennycrumb came over to say hi,” he cutely pointed out, then surprised Five even more when he added, “Want to go for a walk with us?”

Five’s mouth opened but nothing came out at first.

Suddenly feeling like he needed to do something with his hands, he tucked them in his pockets and rocked back in his shiny shoes. Of course, that did not help him feel like he was successfully playing off his normal guy act, especially considering his left hand was sitting right next to a button that was about to destroy the city’s largest building.

“I…uhmmm. I would love to, but I have a prior engagement I need to attend to,” he finally replied with his cool green eyes moving between the expectant little boy and you.

Five almost never engaged in conversations that weren’t required of him. When he did, they were never like this. This felt different. All this from a chance encounter and a conversation with real people that were nothing but kind to him.

It felt…good.

Five hadn’t felt the glimmer of hope, or met anyone that didn't have an ulterior motive, or experienced the surprise of something that wasn’t catastrophic in…

He couldn’t remember.

Clearing your throat, you looked back at him while putting a hand on your nephew’s shoulder. Five knew that meant you were leaving, but he found that he desperately didn’t want you to.

He wanted to go on that walk, if only to have a taste of something positive and not so isolating for once.

Five’s brows furrowed as he glanced at the skyline where Reginald’s building stood as if taunting him. When he looked back at you standing between him and what he felt was preventing him from moving on, something in him fractured, but it was the exact opposite of feeling like something inside of him was broken.   

“Well…” you started. “If you change your mind about those pants or the walk in the park, we’ll be strolling by here about the same time tomorrow.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Five said, dropping his head to the side while giving you another small smile.

As you turned and left him standing there, Five was unable to stop smiling.

He took his hand from his pocket, looking down at his palm where the electronic device lay waiting.

Killing Reginald would only prove that he was right.

Five was not weak and never was and he wasn't broken.

He pried the casing open and pulled at the wires under the button that could have activated the bombs.  

The switch was dead, but Five wasn’t. Somehow, while lost in his crushing hatred and near debilitating loneliness he’d forgotten that. In his fight to end his father, he’d accidentally given up on himself.

But Five Hargreeves was not a quitter.

Chucking the broken trigger in the bushes, he started to head back the way he’d entered the park.

That was the moment when the sapphire canvas above him started to falter.

The many colors of blue and white and gray in the clouds suddenly scattered into millions of floating dots, rapidly separating in a way that was not at all natural. The phenomenon of pixelating pulsations quickly swallowed the long needle piercing the sky above the massive glass covered pillar bearing Reginald’s name.

As the top of the building where he and his reclusive wife resided was obliterated, a glittering dust of marigold colored rain began to fall over the park, blowing in the rush of wind before dusting Five’s hair in its otherworldly magic.

The site was almost just like when Reginald had drained them, only happening in reverse. The sensation of first bone chilling ice, then scorching heat began crawling under Five’s skin.

Reacting to the intense pain that felt like it was tearing him apart, Five dropped to his knees, his hands clawing at his body as he screamed.

A fire of blue light engulfed him as his powers violently reclaimed him. Within seconds, Five was filled with an ethereal glow that radiated from his eyes and his fingertips, making him look like a wingless archangel in a tailored business suit.

Then, the world as Five had come to know it evaporated, the ground bearing his weight, slipped away into the bottomless depths of time and space as he fell.

~~~

In the beginning, there was nothing. That was the way it always was. Just emptiness and possibilities, and the one who could not only manipulate time and space but could also create it.

It all started with a boy, only that boy didn’t know it until just now, when life and all material things were gone and his consciousness was all that was left.

Like Reginald had said, it was always Five.

Suspended in a vast swirl of everything that ever was and ever would be, grasping at the fibers of light flashing past him, Five began pulling with invisible hands, starting the unimaginable task of piecing together something better for all of them.

~~~

Much, much later, or six years later, but actually the exact same day it was, but back in their original timeline, but also not, depending on how you wanted to look at things and wrap your head around the fact that time only seems to be linear, Number Five Hargreeves set his coffee cup down on the table between him and his ghost whispering brother.

He was at the same coffee shop he’d been at that fateful morning in another timeline and in another time that he’d filed away among many others that were left behind closed doors inside the vast hallways of his mind.

“Oh, come on Five,” Klaus moaned. “I just got here. I thought we were hanging out today. I even told the rest of the family that we’d meet up with them later. Diego and Lila’s little brat rat is dying to see her favorite uncle Fivey.”

After looking down at his wrist bearing his Umbrella Academy tattoo, taking stock of the time, Five rolled his eyes heavenward and sighed. “Klaus, we were supposed to hangout and have breakfast, but you showed up an hour later. I have already eaten. I bought you your favorite smoothie and a bagel, so that’s going to have to be good enough because I have somewhere I need to be.”

“Where?”

“None of your business.”

“I know you. You’re up to something,” he accused.

Musing over what Klaus would say if he told him where he was going, Five got up, his hand coming to his throat to straighten his tie.

Five knew that he painted an odd picture. One of a just turned nineteen-year-old, dressed like he wanted to take on the wolves of Wall Street, but as silly as his choice of attire may have been being he had no intention of doing that, this was him and always would be. A nice suit meant you weren’t messing around, and he wasn’t anymore. Besides, it wasn’t like the world didn’t know about his crazy life story, or the fact that he wasn’t exactly the young man he appeared to be.

Thanks to having the rug pulled out from under him, or better put, reality as he had known it, Five was seeing things from a much different perspective.

Looking back on it, he still couldn’t stop kicking himself for not putting it together when he saw the other ancient version of himself laying in a diaper in that hyperbaric chamber in The Commission’s paradox proof bunker.

Now it all made sense how he had become the founder.

“Whatever,” Klaus muttered, pretending to grumble when Five didn’t take the bait and tell him what he was up to. “At least you’re finally an official grown up again and you sometimes get out of your apartment and mingle with the rest of the world every now and then. But still, buddy. Reading is fun and Dolores is great and all, but you need to spread those cute little wings of yours and fly. There are tons of other real flesh and blood birdies out there looking to strike up titillating conversations with the right dove, and you sir are all sorts of ripe with things you can use to bore people. Things like how you mastered traversing the bend in the time helix or other confusing stuff like that you like to go on and on about.”

“Shut up, Klaus,” Five dryly retorted as his fingers threaded back through his strands of hair that were hanging every which way, making him look every bit his outwardly young age.

“Go. Off with you then, young man,” Klaus teased. “Next time, it’s my plan for our date day and you are meeting me to get our nails done and then we are going out salsa dancing with Diego and Lila and Sloane and Luther. We need to show them how the better Hargreeves do their damn thing.”

“I don’t dance,” Five huffed as his fingers curled around the bready treat hidden in his pocket.

“Yes, you do,” Klaus laughed, to which Five gave him a quick scowl that just as quickly turned into a smirk because they had gotten exceptionally plastered at Klaus’s apartment only a week ago, and he’d made a total ass of himself dancing in a hula skirt and sombrero on the coffee table. When Klaus and Viktor and then Luther joined him, it was too much and the flimsy piece of Ikea furniture exploded, leaving them in a heap on the shag carpet.

Yes, things were different this time around, just as Five had hoped they’d be after he’d brought them all back to the day of Reginald’s funeral, and then proceeded to avoid all the mistakes he and they had made after it.

It didn’t mean that all the bad things didn’t happen in the years before this. It meant they got a second chance while all knowing everything that they had known about the original run through when they’d been brought back together and then messed it all up.

Miraculously, Five wasn’t just a time traveler with trigger finger you didn’t want pointed at you. He could create time, and that is how he saved the world and brought everyone back, but he did not rewrite like Reginald had tried to do.

He was smarter than that. 

No one can erase the past. It will always be there one way or another. The only thing you can do is learn from it and he did.

“I’ll see you all later?” Five softly offered, before turning to head out the door.

“You better,” Klaus said, calling after him with an outpouring of brotherly love.

The bell on the door chimed as Five walked out into the bright morning sun.

The sidewalk was packed like it always was that time of day and that was why Five almost didn’t see him. 

Reginald wasn’t dressed in his usual fine wool suit of tightly woven tweeds and righteousness. The familiar posture and weakened step aided by his cane appeared in Five’s periphery and the next thing he knew, he was looking into the eyes of someone that wasn’t supposed to be there but was.

To all the others, the eccentric inventor Sir Reginald Hargreeves had died, just as he originally did. But that ruse was a necessary end, just like it was originally intended to be the first time and Five didn’t alter that on purpose.

He knew their adoptive father was more than just the monster he appeared to be. Reginald had been wrong for what he’d done to them, but like him, he’d been desperate and he’d paid for his mistakes, over and over. 

Now, as time had intended it, Five was in a place to do something about that.

Having real power had nothing to do with ruling others or having superpowers. It was in not succumbing to the demons inside you.

Real power happens in making the right choices.

Knowing that he had made the right choice, Five nodded ever so slightly, and in doing so, he received a silent bow in return from the lonely creature passing him by.

It wasn’t over for Reginald yet, and it was far from over for Five. With his excitement building and aware that he needed to move faster, Five pulled at the power simmering just beneath his skin, throwing open a portal.

Less than a second later, he reappeared, stepping out onto a shady pathway in the park.

Eyeing his favorite bench, with sweaty hands hidden in his pockets, he sat down.

As he was looking out, his eyes seeing a ghostly mixture of realities twisting through his memories, he heard the small voice of a boy, calling out to the dog that had just broken off its leash.

It was happening almost the same as the first time.

Mr. Pennycrumb raced across the grass, kicking up the pigeons that were nibbling on the bread Five had thrown down for them.

Reaching the young man on the bench that he’d chosen as his newest friend, the puppy jumped up, paws digging into Five’s thighs as he assaulted his face with his wet tongue.

“Hey, buddy,” Five whispered as the little boy came running over with you behind him.

After slipping the yellow lab a doggie biscuit that he’d purchased that morning at the doggie bakery, Five looked up.

“I am so sorry!” you breathed as you frantically kneeled down to get your hands on the dog’s collar. “Oh my gosh, your pants!” you gasped while also trying to brush off the mud covering Five’s knees.

Realizing what you were doing after it was too late, you pulled your hand back. Your face got even redder when Five merely raised a brow at you and smiled.

“Oh my God, I shouldn’t have done tha- I just- Well, shit,” you moaned, giving into your embarrassment.

“It’s okay,” Five calmly assured. “I don’t mind getting pawed at by the wild animals roaming the park.”

You burst out laughing, your hands flying up to cover your mouth.

“Mr. Pennycrumb and my babysitter seem to really like you, Mister,” the little boy said while giggling. “Do you want to come for a walk with us since you are just sitting here all alone now that your bird friends are gone?”

“My schedule is open so I suppose I could do that,” Five returned. “But only if your babysitter wants me to…”

“Absolutely, you should totally come with us,” you quickly replied. “Please, let me pay for some new pants. I know a decent men’s store off 48th street and we are heading that way. This little fluff head just ruined your pants, so it’s the least I can do,” you added while looking only slightly less mortified.

“How about I let you buy me a coffee and I buy you and the kid a treat and we skip the new pants,” Five countered. “If after our walk, you aren't sick of me and still want to get me out of these dirty things, I can probably find a way to accommodate that while also coming up with something else fun for us to do together."

You had no clue what to say to that, your baffled expression only made Five look all the more thrilled.

"I mean, maybe we can take this kid and the pup swimming. I have two nieces that I know would love to join us and I don't need a suit for that," he clarified followed by a chuckle.

The look in your wide eyes said it all. You were as amused by Five’s odd but funny comments as he was by your kindhearted smile and fidgety ways.

Just then, the little boy’s mom and dad came strolling along, their faces showing humorously shocked levels of concern when they saw all the mud staining the lap of Five’s three-piece suit.

The boy’s father glanced at his wife just before they reached them, mouthing, “Is that who I think it is?”

It was the time of truth.

Hoping for the best, Five extended his hand to you as you stood there stunned, all of a sudden realizing who he was.

 “Five Hargreeves, and you are?”

Visibly shaking your head as you looked him up and down, you reached out, lacing your fingers between his. Giving Five your name, you then introduced your family.

From there, the walk Five had been waiting for finally happened. He finally had people in his life who wanted nothing from him other his friendship.

With a world that wasn’t on the verge of falling apart, Five was about to get what he deserved all along.

Happiness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading this. ❤️ I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have read my original Five Centric 3-part series, and the parts of this one that were describing what happened to Five and his family after the Paris mission seemed familiar, you are not wrong. 😂👍 I have been wasting my time going back to re-edit my older works and I came across a chapter in 'Number Five and the Girl' that covered that sad memory for him. I love anything whumpy and I felt that part had it in a way that touched on something for all of them. I enjoyed revisiting it, and I hoped you would find something of value in it too.  That story goes down much different than this one, but I couldn't help borrowing some of that to turn into something new that tickled our brains with some of the stuff the show has been putting out there lately to get us excited.

Long live TUA and the people who keep the fandom fun. 🤗

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[yesand87]

[imrights]

this is my shop

there are some character goods!

come and look around~

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[kaybreezy3000]

Love the ghosties and the style! 👻

Klaus’ aesthetic, hot damn, I love it so much. “I prefer to think of myself as… the prince of darkness? oOOoooOo”

[christopher-the-cube]

ARE YOU SEEING THIS?????

[kaybreezy3000]

that new head Cannon story was so good. Will you do something of a bigger scene of him in the apocalypse suffering or something like with him not okay and hitting like a mental break down and someone needs to help him. Family or whatever makes sense? Your broken season 4 five is amazing./ But anything you want to do would be appreciated

Please Hold me

~A one-shot reader request, rated General, 5780 words, This one for the sake of being different is Season 3 Five and his family, Mega Whump with no warnings other than panic attacks and traumatic flashbacks of the apocalypse

Summary: Set at the beginning of season 3, the pain that had been inflicted on Five mentally and physically up until this point comes to a head. Little did Five know, when the truth comes out and he finally breaks, he is going to get the love and support he was dying for all along.

(~Anon: Thank you for reading my last headcanon s4 story. I am so happy you liked it. I have written so many things with Five dealing with the demons we saw him fighting on the show. I never felt like they gave him his due on screen with that stuff, and then worse, he and his family never came to terms with any of it. It all just got swept under the rug for all of them, so here you go. Here's a little story that hopefully gives you what you were looking for in this request)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Standing in the lobby of the hotel Obsidian, as Five slowly passed him, looking even more out of it and mad than he did in the park right after they got their asses handed to them by the Sparrows, confused, Luther asked, “Where are you going?”

“I am going to get a lay of the land,” Five mumbled, then without another word, he made his way down the hall behind them, intent on looking for a bathroom. He didn’t feel like he was going to vomit anymore, but at least knowing where he could seemed like a good idea.

Five found his objective not long later. There was a small, very out of date public restroom just off the main foyer. Oddly, it was dark inside as he opened the door. Feeling around for a light switch, he quickly found one, and then just as fast, the brightness was painfully burning his blood shot eyes.

Moving on autopilot, Five used the toilet then found himself standing in front of the mirror, mindlessly washing his hands. When he looked up, he was taken aback.

His young face was a mess of dirty smudges and dried blood. There wasn’t an ounce of color to his skin. His clothes weren’t much better. Looking down, he saw that he was covered in grimy patches of dirt and who knew what else from the floor of Sissy’s barn. Without thinking, he tugged at his shirt, untucking it so he could pull it and his vest up.

His eyes traveled over the maze of purple and black bruises that covered nearly every square inch of his chest and torso. His fingers slowly moved over the darkest areas. There were three, and they happened to be exactly where the bullets had been after The Handler shot at him.

Five winced from the pain as he touched. His labored breathing started to get worse. He was starting to panic. The floor was swaying. His hands frantically grasped for the counter to prevent him from falling.

‘Breathe…just breathe,’ he mentally ordered himself, forcing his eyes to focus on the black and white tiled pattern on the floor.

“You can’t break. Not like this,” he panted as his insides rolled with sickness.

His head spun, but somehow, Five managed to stand up straight again, tucking his dress shirt back in his schoolboy shorts in a somewhat respectable way. 

On the way back from the bathroom, he could hear Diego talking to the rest of his family as he sluggishly moved past the reception desk, heading back to the lounge area in the main lobby.

“Apocalypse avoided or not this time. Do you guys really think we should trust Five’s take on all this timeline stuff?” Diego asked.

Realizing they were talking about him, Five slowed his zombie-like pace even more.

“After all these years alone and then the messed-up shit he did after that for the Commission, I am pretty sure it’s safe to say Five is a little out there when it comes to his way of thinking,” Diego continued. “I’m not sure if you guys noticed, but he is not exactly what you’d call stable. Did you see his little moment back there at the Sparrow’s evil lair? I had a hallucination incident too after I got goobered on, but mine was at least awesome and if it had been real, it would have been great way to solve our differences with those assholes. Five was in la-la land.”

“Ah-huh… Dance offs are very realistic when trying to stake a claim on lives that are no longer yours,” Allison laughed while looking over at Viktor sitting next to her, who smiled tensely, clearly not doing so great either.

“You have a point,” Klaus said, deciding to chime in since no one else was. Rubbing his chin, his lips pulled to the side. “Our little old guy got all sorts of freaky with his imaginary girlfriend back there. Five’s Dolores thing is just…” He frowned. “I don’t think you can just come back from that kind of thing; he's so attached. Five may be on another level when it comes to brains, but that stuff…” He shook his head. “It did something to him. Bad stuff, like very very bad stuff that ruins you,” he finished, just as Five came back into the room.

Allison’s eyes shot Five’s way, but that didn’t stop Klaus.

Thinking their worried expressions meant that they didn’t understand what he was say, he kept going. “I’m just saying, I don't know about what's going on inside Five’s head or not, but I do know he was totally shaking the sheets with his plastic woman," Klaus laughed. "I mean, who can blame him, really, after all he went through. She’s hot and she doesn’t talk back and Five likes that. And we all know that he still considers Dolores a big part of his life whether she's here with him, or not. And even worse, who knows if Five ever got laid like for real real while he was with the Commission. He has no idea what it's like to have intimacy like that, not in a way that's real anyway. Just look at him now and his cute face always bent out of shape with rage. He’s a ticking time bomb of teenage hormonal insanity.”

Klaus pointed to small boutique across the grand lobby from where they were sitting.

“Someone should probably go tell them to hide their mannequins. We have a horny little monster on the loose,” he giggled, but then, realizing nobody else was laughing with him, he followed Allison’s wide-eyed line of sight straight towards Five.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, Five,” Klaus tried but Five was already turning. “Why didn’t anyone say he was right there?” he asked, looking at the stunned faces glaring back at him. “Five, wait!” Klaus tried again, but all he got was Five lifting his middle finger as he rushed down the hall he’d just come from.

Once out of sight, Five staggered, tripping over his own feet, frantically trying to get away from them. His head was pounding so hard he couldn’t think.

Falling into the elevator, he slumped against the wall, punching the floor with his room number on it.

Rushing to beat him, Klaus took off, sprinting up the stairway to the second floor. Racing down the maze of halls, he reached Five’s room a minute later, just as he was trying but failing to get his key in the door.

Suddenly, eyes rolling back in his head, Five started to fall. Klaus quickly reached out to balance him. “Whoa there,” he gasped, finally feeling just how small and vulnerable he was and that only made him feel worse about everything he’d just said about him.

Five was not the boy they all saw, but it was hard to remember that when the tormented eyes looking back at them were that of the little angry kid they’d lost so long ago.

Five blankly stared at Klaus, trying to focus, but his eyes wouldn’t cooperate. Klaus took the dangling keys from his finger, opening the door for him so he could help him across the small room. As soon as Five was next to the bunk beds, he slipped sideways onto the lower bunk, crashing into the musty bedding.

“Just stay down man, I’ll be right back,” Klaus ordered.

Five whimpered.

Klaus appeared a few minutes later, skidding around the door frame with a bottle of water and some crackers in hand.

He carefully sat down next to Five on the small mattress, his dark eyebrows furrowing with worry. “Are you bleeding internally or something else awful and not telling us again? Because you don’t look so good, little buddy.”

“No. I’m just sick of all this bullshit," Five snapped, but his normal bite had no bark. "It never stops, and I’m just fucking tired. And don’t call me little buddy ever again unless you want me to strangle you.”

“Okaaay,” Klaus skeptically replied. “Will you eat something?” he asked, offering Five the pile of crackers in his hand. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you eat anything.

Hearing the worry in his voice, Five weakly reached out and took one cracker, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat it. He was too sick to do anything anymore. His body was shuddering and even just the mentioning of food was bringing back memories of burning human flesh and it was leaving a sickening taste of bitterness on his tongue to add to sour taste of failure that was already there.

Five’s revulsion and anger didn’t help the concerned look on Klaus’s face from growing.

“Five, I didn’t mean that stuff I was saying. You know me, I have a big mouth.���

“I know,” Five muttered. He knew Klaus meant it, because it was all true. Klaus just didn’t mean for him to hear it.

“I’m sorry,” Klaus begged.

When Five didn’t say anything, Klaus set the water down on the rickety nightstand.

Wordlessly, he rolled back the bedding and urged Five to roll under it. When he noticed the gun stuffed down the back of Five’s little shorts, Klaus took that too, placing it on the bedside table.

Five didn't have the strength to fight him. Instead, he desperately bundled up under the comforter. Laying there, falling apart as he listened to Klaus get up, a moment later, he felt the bed frame wiggle, then more blankets from the upper bunk fell over him.

“Just try to get some rest, man.” With that, Klaus shut the dingy curtains, blocking out the light and the noise of the city, then the door clicked shut.

Alone and glad not to have his brother looking at him still like he was a puppy that just got smoked by a car, unfortunately the pounding in Five’s head grew worse. When he closed his eyes, the room kept spinning like when he drank too much.

Klaus’s voice in the hall as he talked to who Five assumed was one of his siblings, eventually trailed off.

Five’s mind was as shattered and the phantom pains taking over his body had him to the point that he couldn’t fend off the exhaustion anymore. As the nightmare he was living mixed with the nightmares of his past and his heart sank even more, it hit him that his family didn’t need or want him anymore.

They never did.

With that thought in mind, everything slipped away in the darkness of his dreams.

The inside of his tiny hotel room, everything disappeared as Five lay there, finally at rest but not at all at peace.

Twisting in the blankets, Five’s sore and horribly split feet crunched along on a debris filled road in his boots that were a size too small.

The gloom of an apocalyptic horizon was all he could see for miles and miles.

His insides danced in a flurry of nerves, but there he was, almost certain there wasn’t a trace of fever this time. He hadn't eaten anything that had gone bad.

He didn't know.

He stood, facing yet another burnt building, flinching at the familiar sight of a charred body. His insides clenched from starvation even as the sight of it made him sicker.

That smell…

The smell of burnt flesh, and rot.

His mouth watered. Then he gagged.

He couldn’t…

Never that.

It had been more days than Five could count since he had put anything in his mouth that resembled food. The few canned goods he was able to find in the ruins of a grocery store months ago were long gone. If he was going to find anything salvageable, he was going to have to start digging deeper through the mountainous piles of rubble, but he had almost no strength to do it.

He was so weak. He could feel his own bones rubbing painfully against the tightly notched belt at his waist. He was starving to death, and the fear that he was never going to get out of that place was consuming him as much as his own body was consuming itself.

He felt the ground against his cheek before he even realized he had collapsed.

Then it all went dark.

When he woke, it was gloomier. The usual ominous red in the sky had grown slightly more prominent on the horizon, the only indicator that there was sun still at all. He gingerly pulled himself up to a sitting position, trying to gather his bearings.

It was almost night.

His head hurt more than before. He raised his hand and fingers slowly, inspecting a patch of dried blood at his temple.

“Passed out. Again…” he said, his mouth so dry he could hardly form the words.

He took a deep breath, looking around. His wagon with his meager finds was still only a few feet away.

Dolores looked back at him kindly. ‘It’s not like I can move on my own silly,’ she said, sweetly as she could.

In his head, she sounded like Grace.

Just that alone helped, even if it was in the smallest way possible. Five would never forget the only mother he had and her caring for him when no one else did. Even if she wasn’t a real living thing and she had no choice and didn’t really love him because a robot couldn't love, at least Five could say he had something. Something awful but good?

With Dolores, she was trying to make light of their dire situation. For years, since she’d become something real to him, Dolores had always tried to make Five smile no matter how bad things were.

Wanting to reassure her, Five managed to pull off a weak version of a smile, but only because he knew she was so worried about him.

Pain digging at his insides, Five knew that if he didn't find food and water of some kind, there was little time left and his body would shut down completely. He needed to move, or he was going to die.

Drumming up all the strength he had left, Five staggered to his feet on wobbly, bone thin legs.

“I’ll be back,” he said to Dolores. There was no need to explain that he wasn’t strong enough to pull the wagon or carry her with him. She already knew.

He stumbled along, doing his best not to fall over the broken world in his path. There had to be something left. He was certain when he had come that way two days before, that at one time, this had been a bustling neighborhood, filled with large homes and massive stores. Now it looked pretty much like everything else, and he had yet to find anything.

He walked on. Eventually his eyes grew too tired to survey the landscape, and instead they fell to his feet, but he kept moving.

After walking like that for an undetermined amount of time, Five looked up and realized there was an indication of a partial structure still standing up ahead.

He moved as fast as he could towards it.

It had to have something!

As he moved closer, he could make out signs that it had been a store of some sort.

Oh my God thank you!

Scrambling over the broken walls, avoiding the deathly glass blades still sticking out of the rubble, Five came across what he needed. Canned food, not destroyed, or having exploded or leaked out on the parched earth.

He fell on his knees, immediately tearing through his pack, looking for an opener.

He didn't care what it was, the labels were burned and unreadable if they even had any. He attacked the metal, hardly getting it open before he was desperately sucking the liquid out.

After a minute or two of that, he had forethought to open the can all the way, but his patience wasn’t much better as he dumped the slippery substance down his throat, hardly even taking the time to chew.

It was mistake.

Five lurched forwards, his stomach seizing in pain as his prize splattered to the ground.

“Fuck.” He gasped for air, fighting the sensation of sickness as each wave racked his body.

It had been too long. He wasn’t used to eating that much at once.

“You can’t be so fucking stupid!” he angrily yelled, his voice echoing in the nothing around him.

Five knew he couldn’t afford these kinds of mistakes, yet he kept making them.

He slid back on his butt, moving along the dirt, away from his mess. He fell back against a large piece of cement, thankfully avoiding the sharp rebar sticking out of it. All it would take was one small infection from a cut and he would be gone. He was too weak already.

He looked up at the sky, fighting tears…tears and precious fluid he couldn’t afford to lose.

“Just breathe, breathe…in and out…” he repeated. Gritting his teeth, air moving through his nose much too fast.

He couldn’t stop. He was spiraling.

His mind screamed at him because he could no longer speak. There is no place for this here!

With a deep breath, and then another, the darkness folding in around him eventually withdrew. Five reached over and took the can again. Slowly this time, he pinched a piece of what looked like some type of fruit and brought it to his cracked lips. This time he needed to make sure it stayed in. He let it roll in his mouth as he savored the flavor. It wasn’t ash or flesh and that was all that mattered.

After keeping that in, he kept going, very carefully. He had to stop before he finished a third of the can. Then he closed his eyes. Drained, Five fell asleep, not waking until the world around him was completely dark.

Dolores would be worried. She would be scared, but he couldn’t get back to her like that.

But he would.

He had to get back.

Even though he couldn’t see what he was doing, Five kept trying to finish the can. Eventually he did, even licking every last drop off his filthy, ragged fingers.

“You can’t die here. You can’t do that to them,” he scolded himself.

Finally regaining his senses as he started to wake up, blinking rapidly, Five looked out from under his massive pile of blankets. The room was dim, but the bright light shining in from the crack along the edge of the ugly curtains and the birds chirping outside proved it was morning.

Last, he could recall, it was late afternoon.

Or was it…?

He didn’t know anymore.

Five felt so disoriented while trying to remember what happened. After laying there for probably ten minutes or more, he finally noticed Klaus sitting next to him with a very worried look on his face. Five immediately tried to sit up, but just as fast, he collapsed back into the bed, feeling everything from the sheets to his clothes completely soaked through.

He was still dressed in his academy uniform, minus the ugly bowling shoes. His soiled dress shirt was clinging to his sweaty frame. He had no idea where he was or what timeline it was anymore.

Every bone in his body shook and quivered. Fire felt like it ran through his veins, but his outer core was frozen. The only thing that felt warm was the flood of fresh tears that had rolled down onto his damp pillow.

Seeing his normally put together brother crumbling proved to be enough for Klaus to lean over, hesitantly coming closer.

He raised his arm, resting the back of his hand against Five’s forehead. Five’s jaw set even tighter as Klaus said, “This is not good. You’re burning up.”

His words came out unevenly through chattering teeth as Five asked, “Where am I?” 

Klaus’s brows furrowed. “The hotel.” He paused and shook his head apologetically. “Remember? Dad not being all that thrilled to see his long-lost children again, and then the new and improved Sparrows doing their best to kill us?”

Five let his body fall back on his damp pillow.

“We all came back here afterward,” Klaus explained.

It should have given Five some sense of relief to hear that, but it didn’t.

Five shook his head.

“Five, you don’t need to worry. This place is safe. You can take all the time you need. If you feel well enough, maybe you can get cleaned up, maybe eat a little something?”

“I’m fine.”

Fear struck Klaus him even harder, his eyes widening. “No, you are not.”

“Yes, I am.” Five sat up and flung the blankets off, immediately regretting it. The cold air sliced into him, making him shake even harder. He tried climbing off the mattress, only to have his legs give out. Klaus was quick to react, catching him before he toppled into the nightstand.

“Five, you look like shit,” he murmured, flinching a little as it looked like Five might deck him if he could.

“Thanks, everyone keeps pointing that out. I get it. You don’t need to keep reminding me,” Five said in between labored breaths as he lowered his guard and sat back down.

“I can tell you are hell bent on something, Five, but you will be lucky to make it out of this room right now,” Klaus argued, as he smiled.

Five let out a frustrated growl, wiping his face, his fingers looking like he was trying to dig his eyes out as he looked back up at Klaus in defeat. “Help me then.”

“I will. Just lay back down, I’m going to get you something to eat. Just stay here, ok?”

“Ok,” Five replied, pushing back into the mountain of blankets. Klaus looked so relieved. “I’ll be right back.”

He scurried out of the room. Even swaddled tightly, Five could hardly repress his trembling body from full-on convulsing.

He was having a fever. That partly explained why he felt like shit. He knew that but why didn’t he know the rest until Klaus told him?

All at once, he remembered his dream, or better yet, his nightmare based on a very real memory.

He shut his eyes and tried to forget.

He couldn't. He never would.

“Why was this happening to me?” he whispered, his voice cracking.

Five did his best to force them not to, but a stream of more warm tears ran down his face anyway.

His fingers slid under his shirt, over his clammy skin. He searched once again for the torn flesh from my phantom bullet holes but found nothing.

It hurt like a bitch anyway.

Klaus startled him when he came back in, rushing over to set a tray filled with all sorts of things on the nightstand. After that, Five kept his head buried in the blankets as he discreetly swiped away the beads of sweat dampening his forehead, desperate not to show even more evidence of his breakdown.

“There should be something on here that you will like. The buffet here is the best.” Klaus said encouragingly as he tried to bring a cup of juice with a straw to Five’s lips.

“I can do it, I'm not a helpless child,” Five said, blindly taking it from him.

As Five peeked at him through a hole in the blankets, Klaus looked slightly hurt, but he quickly tried to hide it, instead, going about the room, picking up dirty clothes that looked like they belonged to both him and Diego and seeing it all laying there, Five had no idea why.

Had they both stayed with me?

Had everyone come in here?

“I’m going to go out and give you some space. If you need anything, just call.” Klaus smiled, then turned to go but quickly spun back. “Oh, I put some fresh clothes I rummaged up over there. They should work in case you want them,” he offered, pointing to the nearly baren room’s only dresser. “There’s a bathroom down the hall that you can shower up in. It’s a shared sort of situation in there.” He laughed. “Very classy old-school here at the Obsidian.”

“Thank you, Klaus. I am fine. Despite what you see, I can take care of myself,” Five assured, attempting to sound like his self-assured normal, all so he didn’t look so damn pathetic, but then as he tried to sit up again, his vision spun, and he ended up slouching on the pillows instead.

Klaus wasn’t buying it. He quickly came back over, taking the cup from his brother’s hand before it spilled. “I’m staying,” he said, as he parked himself in the torn dressing chair that he already had pulled up next to the side of Five’s bed.

After that, Five hazily remembered talking with Klaus while he helped him eat. Then he knew that he must have dozed off again, because when he awoke, the room was dark, and he was alone.

His burning fever had let up. He felt considerably better than before. He rolled over towards the faint light coming from a lamp on the dresser. Through the curtains, he could make out the faintest lights sparkling in the cityscape.

He’d slept the entire day. The clock on the old nightstand said nine-thirty.

Five heaved the mountain of blankets back, pulling his legs around to the side of the bed. His empty tray was still where Klaus had left it. He had stayed long after Five finished every last bit of food, and Klaus pretended to be resting after that as he tried to sprawl out in his tiny chair, but Five knew he was just staying to make sure he was ok. He was so scared to take his eyes off of him that he didn’t even get up on the top bunk.

Thankfully he didn’t, Five thought. If he had, the whole thing may have come crashing down on him.

“What a shithole,” Five breathed.

Five wasn’t going to admit it, but Klaus at least found somewhere for them to go when he’d had no helpful suggestions. And knowing Klaus was there with him when he was so out of it was probably half the reason he was able to let go and rest again, otherwise, with the little energy the food had given him, he probably would have laid there not letting his guard down as he ruminated on the endless supply of nightmares, he feared were waiting for him.

Further surveying the room, Five noticed there was not much to it, and he remembered Klaus saying the bathroom was down the hall. Trying out his legs, he was happy to find out they weren’t nearly as weak as before.

He made his way across the room, and sure as he promised, Klaus had laid out what appeared to be some very fitting old guy clothes, weird multipocketed fishing style jacket, and plaid fedora included. Holding them up, the pants and shirts looked like they would fit him, and at the moment, Five didn’t care whose clothes Klaus had stolen for him.

Nothing in him wanted to join them, but knowing at some point he had to, and that he needed to clean up, Five sighed. Breathing in, he realized that he smelled horrendous.

He stole a quick look in the dressing mirror and got confirmation; yup, he still looked like shit smeared with shit.

Once inside the large community bathroom that was thankfully yet oddly empty, behind the dressing curtain of one of the showers, Five worked off his soiled clothes, throwing them in a heap.

He couldn’t remember the last time had time for a proper shower. It hadn’t been in this scrawny pubescent body, that was for sure. He had been wearing most of the same clothes he had on when in the 60’s, still tarnished from when he’d gotten tricked into taking out the board of directors.

Sickened all over again as vision of their terrified faces slitting open under the blade of his ax, it dawned on Five that not all the blood and grime on him was from the fight at Sissy’s farm.

He was disgusting and his clothes needed to be burned.

In a daze, Five reached in the shower and after several attempts, he managed to get the water hot enough. After that, he stepped inside the spray and completely zoned out.

He didn’t know how long he’d been in there. Well after the shampoo and suds were gone, he stood there, letting the hot water cascade down his face, as if he could somehow wash away his sins and the events of the last two weeks.

Once again, his ignorance had put all of them one step closer to fucking everything up.

Five felt so empty, so worthless.

His dizzying array of questions and self-loathing were cut short when he closed his eyes. In the darkness that surrounded him, the steam of the shower that had felt so soothing on second, suddenly seemed to be smothering him.

He couldn’t breathe!

All he could see was the smoke and ash, feeling the scorching heat against his back and the crumbling cement under his hands as he tore through the ruins trying to unbury his family.

It was too late…

They were already gone but Five didn't care. He wanted them back so fucking badly.

He wanted to be back with them. But he wasn’t. Not really. They were right.

His eyes flew back open, panic arresting all his senses. The limited space of the tub closed in all around him. His chest heaved as he tried to take in air, and his abdomen throbbed even though the wounds that his mind told him were covering it weren’t even there. The pain sent him crumpling to the ground as he tore the shower curtain open and stumbled out. He barely managed to fasten a towel around himself before he fell to the floor, failing to stifle a loud sob.

Someone called out, their voice echoing through the silence of the large bathing area outside the dressing curtain, but Five couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even move. He curled over and began sinking to the floor when he heard something pop.

Bullets popping off in a barrage of gunfire filled his ears as his eyes darted around the small shower stall.

“Fuck, fuck, Fuck, FUCK!” he panted, hyperventilating.

Five’s breathing was nothing more than insufficient gasps as shoes like bullets clipped quickly in his direction.

Please stop, just make it stop!

His low line blurred vision had him seeing a pair of knees, and feet, but he quickly recognized the unlaced combat boots, and that gave him some hope of escaping his waking nightmare.

Klaus suddenly pushed the curtain out of his way and helped Five up so he could sit on the edge of the dressing stool, then he knelt in front of Five, his eyes running over his almost completely exposed body. “Just breathe, Five. What happened?” he asked, his voice sounding so scared that it only scared Five even more.

Forcing himself to look up at his brother, the air was still too suffocating in there for Five to think. He tried to say as much but found himself instead stumbling out of the shower. The immediate drop in temperature between the small mildew filled coffin trying trap him and the grand vaulted ceiling of the bath area was a blessing, but it still wasn’t enough.

Five staggered over to the doors leading out in a desperate attempt to escape, and on his tail, Klaus caught him just as he blinked.

“Five, what are you doing?” Klaus cried out, clinging to Five’s damp arm as they both fell out of his portal onto the roof, but not answering, like a wild animal, Five wrestled out of his hold and bolted.

Almost fully naked and totally out of his mind, Five didn’t make it farther than the edge of the building, stopping at the sight of the six-floor drop. It hit him like a slap in the face.

Wheezing he pulled in breath after breath of the cool night air. The wind was strong, whipping Five’s dark wet hair in his face. The feel of it chilled his entire body even more. The sounds of the horns honking in the traffic were like voices yelling at him, slowly helping to ground him in the now.

It was letting go, the pain…all of it. All the death, but every time Five so much as blinked his eyes, all he could see was concrete, rot, and ash and blood.

The painful toll of reliving this was becoming more and more evident each day. Five knew his mind was slipping away from him, but he didn’t know what to do to stop it. The visions were happening more and more often. His family wasn’t wrong.

He wasn’t okay.

From behind, Klaus carefully reached out, but Five suddenly cowered. Out of instinct, he raised his small arms, readying for a fight.

Looking from his balled-up fists, then back at his brother, Five was even more disgusted with himself.

He sobbed, dignity be damned, letting his body slowly sink to the black tar slicked roof under his bare feet.

A warm embrace suddenly cradled around him despite his sopping wet frame. “You’re okay. You’re not alone. It’s ok…” Klaus soothed.

He was right. The moment his brother’s arms held him, the pain in Five’s chest let up some, and so did the visions. But no matter how good it felt to have someone caring enough to touch him like that, Five couldn’t stop shaking his head. He couldn’t stop sobbing.

“You’re okay. Just breath, keep breathing, man. Slow and steady…”

Five choked in the air as he tried to pull it in slower, forcing myself to calm down and come back all the way.

He squeezed his eyes shut and flashes of cement and ash and broken bodies flew before his eyes, wooden planks smeared with Diego’s blood as Lila she looked at the Handler, seconds away from her heartbroken eyes becoming as blank as the rest. All of it was making an almost blind panic seize Five all over again.

“Everyone’s gone,” he sobbed. “I fucked up…I got you all killed. I got you all killed again!” His whole body shook, and Klaus wrapped himself around him tighter.

"How-" Klaus started but Five interrupted.

"I turned it back."

"What?"

"Time!" Five shouted as his small body rocked and Klaus rocked with him. "I turned it back to stop it from happening," Five whispered, burying his face against his arms.

"You had to save us again? God, Five... I am so sorry," Klaus breathed, his chin resting in the wet matt of hair on the back of his brother's head.

Five said nothing.

“Look,” Klaus said, “Open your eyes. I’m here, we are all here. It’s ok. Just keep breathing, it will stop. You’re having a panic attack. Just keep breathing slowly. Everything is going to be ok.” His voice came in waves and he kept repeating it, working it into Five’s mind the guiding light of love he needed more than anything and had for so long.

Five opened his eyes, seeing his long white toes lined up next to his brother’s big boots as their legs stretched out in front of them. Slowly Five turned his head to face Klaus just a little. “Thank you,” he quietly breathed, squeezing his hand tight, scared of letting it go when normally he was scared of being touched at all.

“You’re safe. I’ve got you this time. We all do,” Klaus whispered. “Just keep breathing… Stay with us, Five.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, there it is. For those that have read my first series, some of this might have seemed familiar. As I said, I have written so many things with Five breaking down and his family being there for him in ways they never were on the show, so I borrowed a little of the dream and his shower break down from things that happened in part three of that story, but hopefully this season 3 adaptation I changed it into worked for you.

I know I sure could have seen this version happening to Five, especially since right before landing in the Sparrows house when he had the shit beat out of him by Lila, frying pan to the head and all, right before a chimney crushed him and then he was shot by the Handler and had to reverse time. He never even told his family he did that as far as how the show went down. So... yeah. Five deserved more and thank you for asking for it.

Link to my Tumblr story and art posts

Link to my Master List

Link to visit me on A03

[badkitty3000]

What do you think Klaus think Five's ideal type is?

Klaus and Five are my absolute favorite dynamic, in case you hadn't noticed :)

So, here's my take. Klaus has a fandom reputation as being the out-to-lunch weirdo and screw-up (I am guilty of doing this as well). And he is...but they all are, so that's not really fair. Klaus is actually very observant of his surroundings, as well as people. It's just that he usually doesn't bother telling anybody anything of note because historically no one listens to him anyway, and after a lifetime of being ignored or laughed at, he has learned to keep most things to himself. But I would say he is the one that has actually paid closer attention to Five since he returned than any of them have.

He is the only one that acknowledges how lonely Five must have been during his time in the Apocalypse (well, Luther kind of does too I guess). He's the only one that actually listens to Five most of the time and wants to spend time with him, whereas everyone else either brushes Five off or blames him for everything ("You're a good brother"😭😭) . He notices that Five is wearing aftershave! 😂

Knowing all of that, I believe Klaus would have a really good grasp on the kind of person Five should be with. He'd be a good wing-man if they were out at a bar. I could see some very cute but dumb-looking girl wandering over to try and talk to Five, but Klaus spies her first and gets in between them, blocking her path. He looks her up and down, judging her, then starts firing questions off like some sort of sphynx with riddles that must be answered correctly before anyone can get by.

"Quick, what is the capital of Zimbabwe?"

She looks blankly up at him. "What?"

"What is the square root of 6,789 rounded to the nearest 100th?"

She stands there, blinking vacantly. "What?"

Klaus waves her off with a dismissive hand. "Shoo...get out of here. You aren't fit to breathe the same air as my brother."

He would know that Five needs someone extremely smart and nurturing, but feisty and sexual at the same time.

Five walks up to Klaus, looking confused and frowning. "The weirdest thing just happened to me. I overheard this woman say she was a pediatric oncologist that volunteers at homeless shelters, but when she walked up to the bar she threatened to kick me in the balls if I didn't get out of her way, then she smacked me on the ass."

Klaus looks excitedly around the bar. "Well don't let her get away, Fivey! Go after her!"

"What are you talking about?"

"That's your dream woman, dummy! I can hear wedding bells already! Go on...go get her, you sexy freak, you!"

Klaus turns Five around by the shoulders and shoves him in the general direction of the woman, while Five just ambles away, completely dumbfounded, but also not arguing. Klaus watches with a smile on his face as he orders another drink and silently congratulates himself on his superb match-making skills.

I feel like I could write a whole long, hilarious scenario of Klaus playing matchmaker for Five, but I'll stop since this is getting too long already. But to sum it up, Klaus would know best out of everyone who would be a good match for Five. Maybe even more than Five would! A smart, sweet, but sexy and strong lady that could hold her own against his ex-assassin brother. And probably someone he'd get along with himself, because Klaus is also a bit selfish and he wouldn't want to hang out with anyone he wasn't also compatible with. 😂

[momokodaisy]

Extremely Late Umbrella Academy Textposts That Have Definitely Been Done Before (11/?) prev | next

Bonus:

[badkitty3000]

Love this

miss SOMEONE.

[xvivinx]

“We didn’t choose this life, we’re just living in it.”☂️🌕🔪👄👻🐙🎻

[sleepycoffins-and-benhargreeves]

Why didn't Ben go into the light?

So, in S2 Ben had told Viktor to tell Klaus that he wasn't the reason Ben had stayed all these years. However, it kinda contradicts what he said earlier wherein the last few years were just "gravy"

Honestly don't know what he meant by that. I don't think anyone does?

But the biggest question is, if Klaus wasn't the reason, then what was Ben's reason for not passing? What did he hope to achieve by being Klaus's ghost companion for fifteen years?

Or is it, that what he said to Viktor was just the last thing he could do for Klaus to not make him feel guilty? I mean, he already told Viktor that he's not a monster and that he's his brother even when Ben obviously was the monstrous one in their siblings (judging by powers and being dead for years). Like, he didn't want Klaus to feel guilty and wanted him to have a somewhat good outlook of their years together so he just said Klaus wasn't the reason even when he probably was?

I just honestly can't think of anything or anyone else he would stay for?

[veliana7]

Ben: Based on genital structure, men should really be the ones wearing skirts and women should be wearing pants.

Klaus: The Scots were right all along

Five: The Scots did it to hide more knives on their bodies

Diego: The Scots were right all along.

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Swim Meets

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: Five starts going to swim meets so that he can support a friend of his brother, but he keeps coming back for someone else entirely. Warnings: N/A Word Count: 2,216 Ship(s): Five Hargreeves/Viktor Hargreeves

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A/N: I know that this installment is pretty short but I'm kind of going through it right now so please be patient with it! I also want to leave a little disclaimer saying that one of my boyfriends did sports but I never have so there's a chance that I haven't written things properly. Thank you for reading! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

“Would you come on already? We’re going to be late!” Five shouted over the din of the overly crowded apartment. It always got like this when it was sports season, especially since their sports all seemed to somehow overlap each other. He was supposed to be sharing the apartment with his closest friend, that closest friend’s new fiance, and his boyfriend, but that somehow spiraled out to his boyfriend’s best friend, boyfriend’s best friend’s boyfriend, and whoever else happened to crash on their couch the night before. It kind of made sense that they would go hang out with each other after practice, but it got a bit annoying when all four people within the household played a different sport and thus brought different people home.

Luther did wrestling and had since he was in middle school, though he was beginning to step back as it wore on his body. Sloane had volleyball and was so good at it that it was how she was putting herself through college. Klaus, the boyfriend’s best friend that was always at their house, did lacross which he had somehow managed to get started everywhere he went. Lila did hockey, or at least would when the baby that she was having finally arrived. Five himself had done track for as long as he could remember and wasn’t willing to give it up anytime soon, even if he had other career plans in mind. Ben, Diego, and Viktor were all involved in swim, which was what they were trying to get ready for now even if most of Five’s efforts to go meet his boyfriend at a punctual time were in vain.

The current people in the house were two of the other residents and the partners of the people that they were trying to go to the swim meet for.

Five had been standing by the front door with his bag slung over his shoulder while waiting for everyone else to get their shit together for nearly half an hour. He knew that he was getting readier far earlier than anyone else would even dream of doing so, but if he wasn’t badgering them into their clothes and out of the door then they were never going to get there. Luther was closest to being ready to go, with Sloane only moments behind him as she stood in front of the hall mirror to pile her hair on top of her head.

Finally, everyone had finished fucking around and was ready to go like Five had been waiting for them to. They piled out of the apartment and into their own cars, which was a relief. Five wasn’t sure that he’d be able to cling to what remained of his sanity if he had to be trapped in a car with Lila and Klaus. It was hard enough having them constantly in his apartment because of his boyfriend, whom he loved very much and would never hold anything against.

They all arrived at the building where the meet was being held relatively quickly after the others. Luther was the slowest since he drove the safest, which Lila was already teasing him about when they all finally met back up.

They piled into the building and found a spot that would fit all of them in the bleachers. The room smelled like chlorine and other people, the indoor pool smell clinging to literally every single thing in the room despite the air fresheners and filtration system that had been installed the month before.

As he sat and waited for his boyfriend to finally be ready to come out and the competition to start, Five remembered what it had been like when he was at his first swim meet. 

They had all been Freshman in college and none of them knew each other. Five and Luther roomed together and had a rather brotherly bond grow quickly between the two of them. Luther had an adversarial kind of friendship with Diego at the time, but had decided that he was going to come to one of his meets to support his friend. That of course meant that he had dragged Five along because his girlfriend at the time, a snotty woman named Allison who was on the basketball team, didn’t want to go. Five had been reluctant and complained the whole time until he had caught sight of one of the swimmers and felt his entire world shift on a dime. Viktor had been one of the best performers at that meet, likely because of the pure joy and confidence that his two brand new top surgery scars were giving him. After the meet, Five had barely been able to contain himself as he found Viktor and introduced himself. Diego had apparently already been close to him, so they were able to verify that the other was a safe person to be around and then immediately began their relationship.

Five didn’t like swimming, but he loved Viktor with his entire heart so much that he ached with it. He was going to come and support his boyfriend every chance that he got, come Hell or high water or Lila and Klaus dragging their feet.

The discontent that he had about being back in the packed swimming room was quickly washed away from him when the swimmers came out to take their place. Lila whooped and whistled when she saw Diego, which got his entire body to flush bright red with embarrassment. Five was tempted to do the same thing with Viktor, just so that he could see the normally alabaster skin turn crimson with that adorable flush. His plan immediately changed when he saw Viktor and his breath was completely taken from him.

It was much like the first time that they had seen each other, but different at the same time. Viktor was further on in his transition so even though he still shaved the longer hairs on his body to glide through the water easily, his muscles were more pronounced. The same dual crescent moon scars beneath stretched out beneath his pectorals, though they were less defined than they had been before because of how much time had passed. His short hair was tucked back into a swim cap, but Five could still see just a little bit of it peaking out around his ears.

The swimmers all lined up and then they were set free to jump into the water. The cheering had already been pretty intense from the family and friends of the swimmers, but it only got louder when they actually started competing. Luther and Five were almost immediately standing so that they could cheer for the three people that they had come to see. Klaus was still lounging back against the bleechers but was cheering for his partner just as loudly as they were.

After several dizzying minutes, the race was over and the swimmers were all getting up to grab their towels so that they could wait for their scores. Five barely cared after that. He tried his best to continue being supportive of the people that they knew and their school, but he found it hard to care about a sport that he wasn’t in.

Eventually they reached the end when all of the heats had finished competing and they were finally announcing the winners. All of the swimmers stood around each other, huddled up in towels or whispering to each other and laughing about what was about to happen. It made Five almost wish that he was at a track meet instead, even though he loved supporting his partner. He missed the camaraderie that he had with some of his friends from his own sport when he was watching a parallel to it right in front of him.

Ben had been having a bit of bad season so while he normally placed second to Diego, this time he placed third in his heat. Diego placed first, as he always did, since it was almost like he was born in the water. Viktor placed second, which was a surprise since he usually hovered around fourth or fifth. He was a good swimmer but he prioritized his music over his sport which meant that he didn’t always get in as much practice as the other.

Once the medals had been given out and everyone had been given their rankings, all of the people began to push each other in a massive swarming crowd to get out of the building. The group that Five was with hung back for a while since they were used to the crowd surging away after all of the fun was done. None of them wanted to get swept up and moved away from each other, so they hung back until everyone was gone.

It ended up working in their favor because the people that they had come to support walked towards them, now dressed but still damp and obviously tired.

When he spotted his boyfriend, Five’s stomach did the flip that it always did. No matter what Viktor looked like or if they had been rooms apart for each other for only moments, he fell head over heels in love all over again. Viktor was dressed in a pair of loose linen pants over the top of his swimming uniform. He was still lacking a shirt, instead choosing to go with an open jacket with his name and number on the back. Five would have preferred Viktor to be wearing his own, but they always switched their jackets back when they had to look the part of their respective teams. “Hello there, beloved,” Five smiled as he jumped down the last seat of the bleachers so that he was on the same level as Viktor. He stooped down, one hand moving to the side of his face so that he could bring their lips together sweetly.

“I’m glad that you came,” Viktor smiled when they pulled apart. They didn’t kiss that often in front of their friends, other than Luther and Sloane since they lived with the other couple, but it usually resulted in them being mercilessly teased. This time everyone was so wrapped up in their partners that they didn’t even notice the shared motion of affection.

“Did you think that I was going to miss it?” Five asked. He pressed a bit of Viktor’s hair back where it belonged and tried to slow the rapid beating of his heart. They had been dating for almost four years and had been living together for three, but he still felt like he was falling in love all over again every time they interacted with each other.

Viktor flushed but leaned into the touch from his boyfriend. He reached his other hand up to toy with the medal that was still hanging from his neck. “It’s only a pre-emptive meet, it’s not like this is nationals or anything,” he mumbled.

Five leaned down and kissed him again. “I will be there for every meet that you have, my love. You know that I want to support you in everything that you do.”

“I know, that’s why I count myself as the luckiest man in the entire world,” he replied with a gentle hum.

Five was about to duck down for another kiss but they were interrupted by the other members of their group. Diego was standing beside Lila with his arm around her hips, wearing sweatpants and a band t-shirt underneath his version of the jacket that Viktor was wearing. Ben was arguing with Klaus about something, but they were both smiling and their stature was loose which meant that they weren’t actually fighting. Ben was wearing his jeans and shirt like he had never been swimming in his entire life, his hair was even styled upwards like it always was. “Come on, lovebugs, we’re going to leave you here if you don’t hurry up!” Luther laughed.

It made them all laugh a little bit, in a giggly and excited mood from the recent win that they had. Viktor scoffed and said, “We can just drive to whatever ice cream parlor you guys are thinking of going to.”

“We’re actually going to get food, I’m fucking starving,” Diego complained. He glanced down towards his girlfriend. If there was a member of the group that rivaled the loved that Five and Viktor had for each other, it was going to be them. It was a very different kind of love than the one that the former did, more feral and biting teeth than tender hands and adoring glances.

“Where are we getting food?” Viktor asked suspiciously. “The last time that we let you guys pick we all ended up getting food poisoning.”

“I’m still of the opinion that had to do more with the experimental culinary shit that we tried the week before,” Lila said pragmatically.

“Regardless, you’re still not picking,” Five said decidedly. He leaned down and kissed his boyfriend sweetly on the lips before the group began to move out of the building so that they could continue on with their day. It was so much easier to be around all of the people that would no doubt be clogging up his apartment. With Viktor by his side, everything was easy.

[rebelumbrella46]

Rewatching TUA - 1x10 The White Violin

The Opening Scene /Reginald Flashback

There are certain things i noticed:

LONG AGO: There is no exact date...

We see Abigail Hargreeves (for the first time): She is in bed, sick, probably dying... 

Reginald brings her a Violin: Mentions that it’s a gift for a special occasion... it could be a birthday, an anniversary... or a birth...

If she had just given birth, that would explain why she is so weak.

They exchange some words that make it seem like something bad is going to happen and the tone they use during the conversation makes it seem like they are a couple, but it is not confirmed during the scene or later in the show (besides S3 showing us their name it's Hagreeves too...)

Then she says some things that caught my attention...

Abigail’s Words

Abigail says that she will die there but he won't... and tells him that the world needs him... so he must go and leave her...

Could it be that Abigail also had powers... that her power was to see the Future... and that’s how Reginald already knows everything that is going to happen... the apocalypse, the children... the reset...

We don't really know if she died before Reginald left. Or if Reggie took her with him and then sometime after her death, he left Abigail on the Moon (where he kept her body)

Marigolds and World

When Reginald approaches the window to free the Marigolds, we can see that his world is very similar to Earth... and that there are several spaceships taking off... probably fleeing the threat...

Where did the Marigolds came from? Are they living creatures... ? Or are they just particles that carry power...?

Earth 

In the next scene, we are shown a City Port...

There is a ship named "Carol Ann": This may be a reference to the Coheed and Cambria song of the same name.

The Inspection Card: The year of the seal is 1928 and the Number 7 stands out (which may be an indication of the Seven Children that Reginald needs for the Oblivion Project... or of Viktor's Number... who is responsible for causing the apocalypse in every timeline.

Reginald traveled Third Class: Which could mean that he has just arrived to this world, and has yet to make a name, fortune and reputation for himself... There is no “Sir”... just Reginald Hargreeves

Given the date in the Card, Reginald must be at least a hundred years old... and he was already old in this scene... So could it be that Reginald’s power is Longevity... or some sort of Immortality... (not like Klaus inability to stay dead)

The Monocle 

Regarding my previous thoughts on Abigail's powers...

She may have modified Reginald's monocle so that he could see everything she saw, so in a way, the reason the monocle is so important to Reginald is not just because of the sentimental value, but because he can see the future with it... in some way Abigail is guiding him with it... that's why he never takes it off...

Once Reginald puts on the Monocle during this scene, and sees the Umbrella Shop, he looks interested and surprised as if he just had a revelation... it could have been a vision about the Umbrella Academy...

Final Thoughts and Theories

We've seen Abigail Hargreeves since S1 and in the last scene of S3 she's finally here, so i believe she'll be a big part of S4...

My theory regarding the Flashback...is that Abigail and Reginald are a couple, could it be that the reason she was sick and he brought her a celebratory gift was because she had just given birth... to 43 beings...

It is hinted that they are aliens, so how do they reproduce or do they have normal human pregnancies? Could it be possible that Reginald and Abigail ARE the real parents of the 43 Children...?

If Reginald's power is longevity... and Abigail's is seeing the future... those two powers are related to two children we know... Klaus and Five... Reginald has always seemed interested in these two powers, above all others... just as he has interacted more times with Klaus and Five than with the rest of the kids... for example: In S1 when Klaus and Reginald are in Heaven /Barbershop, in S2 Five and Reginald have a chat after family dinner. And then in S3, Klaus and Reginald spend a lot of time together, and Five and Reginald talk as they watch the Kugelblitz wipe out the world...

If Reginald disliked children so much and only hoped to use them for the reset... then why did he give Viktor Abigail's violin...? Reginald expected him to control his powers through him...? Reginald's interest in Klaus's powers was to summon Abigail? Abigail warned Reginald about Five's time travel and Viktor's Apocalypse... Was it Abigail who saw the machine reset and that's how Reginald came to Earth and adopted the Children...? Did they create the Marigolds?

It confuses me because if the point was to save the world, Reginald only caused the apocalypse by giving power or life to these special children. So all he did was to get to the reset button because Abigail was going to die anyway and he wanted to reverse it or is it because his world was destroyed and the only way to save it was through the Earth and the children and Project Oblivion...

I have so many questions, I hope they can answer them all this last season... Anyway, it is unlikely that Reginald and Abigail are the parents of the children because of all the relationships that have been created between them (Luther/Sloane, Lila/Diego...) But I look foward to meeting Abigail... and see the reaction of the Umbrellas when they meet her...

[kaybreezy3000]

all of these are so beautiful-this man. ❤️

Ate