#they jump from timeline to timeline to cause apocalypses as a family

[sharkneto]

So. Season 4.

Let’s start with the good. In no particular order -

The road trip. Loved the energy of them all together again and suffering mildly and looking terrible. I appreciate we didn’t waste a bunch of time with them without their powers.

Gene and Jean were great. Loved their energy, the right level of weird. Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally were perfectly cast for the roles.

Liked the idea of the Keepers, the consequence of all the timeline meddling leaking through.

Loved the concept of the subway-between-timelines. That aesthetic slaps for the map alone.

 The Truman Show Christmas Town. They nailed the creepy energy, I liked how ridiculously well-armed it was, I liked that they all died badly, I liked that the Umbrellas got to flex their powers. Diego’s flipping and bullet-mancy was fun, as was him cheating at the axe game to win his kids toys. Luther finally being properly bulletproof was also nice.

Ben Doc-Ock-ing around on the Horror. And the Horror dragging behind him while powers were booting back up. Silly fun.

Loved that Viktor dated and was unable to hold on to every eligible woman in Halifax. Daddy Issues strike again and again, poor guy.

It makes no sense for the level of tech in the show, but I did laugh at Ben being a Crypto Bro. That is the exact way in which his personality sucks.

Jerome and Nancy. If they had left Diego being suspicious of Lila seeing that “little Greek guy” as a “haha it’s just Five!” joke, it is very funny. But they didn’t. Alas.

I didn’t hate the ending! I will always think redemption through living is a better and more powerful conclusion, but them all dying to save the world because they’re the force causing repeat apocalypses was always on the table as an option. I thought they did a good job hitting emotions, them all snarking together until the end felt in character and heartfelt; if other writing choices didn’t happen before it, I think they could have really stuck that landing. I thought the easter eggs of characters from earlier seasons was fun, I hope the Handler still sucks as a regular person.

Overall, I was vibing for the first four episodes. Was it perfect? No. It was never going to be, but I could overlook the usual UA cringe and plotholes because my favorite guys were back on the screen and having good character moments together and fumbling along to save the world. I don’t usually care about spoilers, but I worked hard to avoid S4 spoilers specifically because I didn’t want expectations. The show was going to do what it was going to do, and I didn’t want to judge it for things it was never going to be. And that strat worked well for the first half of the season! It was on par with S3, which I’m an apologist for – had stuff I liked and stuff I was going to be happy to ignore, but overall we’re having a good time! My favorite dysfunctional family is here, I had missed them!

Then Ep5 hit. And we’re onto the problems and things I would change (under the cut --)

The biggest problem of the season is that the pacing was wack, in both an internal time-frame and technical-writing frame.

Internally, media for some reason has no idea how long a year is. Some of the Hargreeves’ problems at the beginning of the season would have worked much better if we were jumping in at year two or three of being in the new timeline, six years is a long time. Diego and Lila’s growing pains at being parents and living a domestic life, how to balance having kids makes more sense to be at this point. And the first couple years of adapting to no-powers-new-universe is way more interesting that hopping in once they’re all settled into mostly-sad patterns (which is in character for them all, they’re disasters). Why not an opening montage of them in their active struggle? Why are we picking up six years later? Unfortunately, because of Ep5, it does feel like the whole point of such a long time jump was to get Five’s body to a legal age and not just so Aidan wouldn’t have to pretend he’s physically a teen anymore (even though we have 30-year-olds playing teens all over other TV shows).

From a technical writing standpoint, for a show that only has six episodes to bring about a satisfying conclusion to a plot as convoluted and bonkers as UA has, they squandered Episode 5. The first four episodes we were moving along, finding plot points, getting Umbrellas in position to move things forward, and then Ep5 hits and is anyone except Viktor and Ben doing something for the plot??? The show is at its strongest with the Umbrellas are together, and it went out of its way to split them up. I also usually love character time, but we had no time to spare! We spend most of the episode either with Five and Lila in the subway, or with Klaus in the world’s most fucked-up situation. And neither do anything to build meaningfully towards the final episode! A weird choice to have your show screech to a halt in its penultimate episode.

Usually, Klaus’ side adventures loop in some important detail that pushes things forward in an unexpected way – he destroys Hazel and ChaCha’s briefcase because of Vietnam, he finds the Kugelblitz, he puts Reggie in position to use Oblivion. This time? He’s getting used and abused by a gang and buried alive to be reunited with Allison so that we… gain nothing? Except Klaus and Allison have made up from their fight? Why did I have to watch Klaus get possessed and fucked for that to happen? Why did they do that to him and me. I don’t mind angst and the incredible fucked-up situations, but it has to be earned and the story didn’t gain anything from it. Klaus just had a horrific time because that’s what he gets, I guess.

And now we get to Five and Lila. Five and Lila, Five and Lila, Five and Lila. The thing is – I don’t hate the idea of them. Obviously, it’s not anything I was ever going to ship on my own, but if they’re going to do it, I can see how and why. They even set it up in a way that I go “yeah I get it.” The thing is, after setting it up, they completely forgot what makes either character themselves or compelling so that they could be shoehorned into Cottagecore Bliss in the greenhouse and the most boring romance possible. If we're committed to doing this, I wish they’d had a weird trauma-bonded relationship in the rat pits of the subway, I would have understood that. Supported it even, tbh. Let them be weird and feral together, yelling and emoting at each other over eastbound vs westbound trains. Instead, Five, who for the past three seasons has been driven by his need to save his family, is happy to delay returning and give up on them to keep very quietly playing house with Lila. What the fuck. Lila, who cannot handle domestic life with Diego and her three children, can handle being a housewife with Five and wear soft sweaters and dresses. They didn’t try to kill each other once! I said way back after S3 aired that I didn’t like Lila’s pregnancy plot because it was going to tie her down in weird ways, and lo and behold! UA writers cannot write women, and it sucks that Lila was yet another casualty of that.

And then the whole thing shafts Diego. I know Diego and Lila don’t have a particularly healthy relationship, but he’s an Umbrella and Lila’s mom is the Handler. I think they do pretty well for what they’re working with, they have a fun chemistry, and it seemed (before this season) they really loved each other. Why did Steve write them off instead of letting their arc be them falling back in love (well, I guess that was Diego’s arc. Wasn’t Lila’s)? Now the three of them get to spend the final episode of the entire show in an unhappy, unnecessary love triangle instead of us getting to watch the Umbrella Academy fully join together to save the world one last time.

After all of that, the rest of my complaints feel like small potatoes. Why don’t we do another numbered list to round out this essay. In no particular order –

It sucks Ben was the plot driver of the season and then doesn’t even get to die with his family, just melted and turned into mindless Cleanse Goo. I was excited for him to get to do more, was excited for a payoff for Viktor trying to return the favor of Umbrella Ben sacrificing himself for him. I wish the Cleanse was more squiddy because it was made out of the two squiddiest characters.

UA has gotten more and more flexible with powers as the seasons have gone, but I straight up do not know what Allison’s power was at the end. Was she telekinetic? Was she Rumoring reality? Why did we have to use that to graphically crush a man’s balls in front of Claire? I liked that the powers got an upgrade and a twist, for the most part, but that only works if we know what they are. Lila has laser eyes and I thought that was it until they needed her to mimic powers again in the last episode. Five can’t blink anymore because he now just goes to the subway (still an aesthetic that is cool, and a cool way to have it tied in a different way to time), unless he’s doing it with Lila? Viktor just has energy now, I guess, sound doesn’t seem to be part of it.

Abigail. I did not fully follow what her motivation was. I wanted her to be comically evil, worse than Reggie, but – again- UA writers can’t write women so I guess she was just a good guy benevolently taking skin suits so she could get the world to end to save the world. Boring. Reggie also should have recognized his wife even if she was wearing Gene and kissed Nick Offerman.

Why didn’t Five have a reaction to his Apocalypse? He had PTSD flashbacks in S1! He was trapped there for four decades! It’s been six years but it’s not like he was working on his mental health during that time. No reaction???? Don’t even get me started on Delores and his “Good thing I’ve never been married” comment.

I’m not usually for fan service, but it felt like the season was actively trying to avoid fan service. Was Gene and Jean’s dance really the only dance party of the season? Five doesn’t have a single fight scene to fun music? Five doesn’t kill anyone all season??? What the fuck.

I wish the Fives in the Five Diner were Sean Sullivan. Bring back Old Five, why would Five fuck up his jump back in every timeline.

The gratuitous fat shaming. It’s always been bad with Luther, but absolutely ridiculous the comments made about Diego.

I don’t particularly like Sloane but where the fuck was Sloane. And I hope Ray not being in the show was a scheduling conflict, because that was tragic that he off-screen left Allison with no further explanation or context. Didn’t feel very Ray.  

A lot of character arcs from over the whole show stagnate or go backwards. Luther is back at the Academy after working to build his own identity. Klaus I guess has to be on drugs if he has his powers. I don’t know what’s going on with Allison and Claire’s relationship – it seems bad at the beginning but just sort of fixes itself when they go rescue Klaus? Diego tries to have an arc to understand how much good he has with his family, but the writers won’t let Lila be part of that. Don't get me started on Five.

I wish the writing team cared enough to actually know the characters. Luther’s powers aren’t tied to him being gorilla’d – that was a separate event, why would the marigolds re-gorilla him. Lila likes bracelets, one of the very first things she did in the show was take and keep the one Diego made. It’s little things, but they go a long way in making us know the creative team cares, rather than just jerking around these characters because they have an idea the think is funny or shocking and requires characters to go against their established personalities and motivations to pull off.

Overall – it was fine, which is not the energy you want when finishing one of the most popular shows on one of the biggest streaming platforms. I get why people are upset, I get a lot of mourning is happening, but I hope we can find a spot where we can enjoy what we have and play in the space again.

It was always going to be a rough goodbye. This show, as cliché as it is, changed my life. I started writing because of it. I’ve made some incredible friends because of it. It helped me figure out I was trans, because of Elliot Page. I’m going to miss it. I’m going to keep hanging around here having fun with the characters, but I’ll miss the fandom, too, as people move on to whatever the next new thing is.

It's been a ride, everyone!

[lightshiningforth]

Maybe the way to have saved the world was to stay in the 1960s at the end of season 2. After the last battle, the Hargreeves all slip away and live quiet lives. Yes, they’re wanted criminals… but it’s also prior to a lot of technology that would make them easy to track. They could skip town, change their names, lay low.

What real reason is there to go back to 2019? Five believes that if they go back, the original apocalypse will not happen, but there’s no basis for that other than the Handler’s word, and the Handler is untrustworthy. The Commission wants them to go back, since they don’t belong in the 1960s, but they just defeated the Commission in battle. They’ve already mucked up the timeline, anyway - they met Hargreeves before any of them were born and told him things he wouldn’t have known, otherwise. They’ve also caused several national incidents. Going back to 2019 will NOT bring them back to the 2019 they knew. Five, of all people, should know that (and it always bothered me that he didn’t, and that everyone was shocked to find a new reality in season 3). They’ve changed history. It’s too late.

So, why not exist in this timeline? I think it would be hard for Allison, who would have to give up on the possibility of ever seeing Claire again. But this time, she would have Ray with her. This time, she would be able to mourn safely, and wouldn’t spiral.

Luther would find a new job, move on from his unhealthy fixation with Allison, come to care for her in a normal brotherly way and love Ray as his brother in law. Maybe he and Diego would live together as chaotic roommates.

Diego would get twitchy trying not to do things that draw attention to himself. Maybe he’d be a vigilante again. Maybe he’d be a small town cop. But when Lila comes back (and she will come back, there’s no reason she couldn’t try her trick with Stan in the 1960s), they work things out and build a life together.

Klaus would struggle for a while, absolutely. No Ben. No Dave. Freshly relapsed. But he would come out of it, too. Maybe Diego would help him, like he does in the first season. Or Allison would, like she does in the fourth. But he won’t be alone again. Perhaps Dave survives the war - don’t we see him join a different military branch at the end of the season? Perhaps Klaus changes the timeline just enough that he lives. Perhaps they meet again, by chance. Perhaps they hit it off.

Or perhaps not. Maybe that’s too much of a paradox (if Dave joins a different branch and never meets Klaus and lives, then how can Klaus have met him and lost him and gone back to warn him?). That wouldn’t stop Klaus from meeting another nice young man and living together as “roommates.” He still remembers his relationship with Dave. That’s real, that matters, he mourns it. But he moves on and he’s happy.

Five retires. Sure, he’s twitchy for awhile. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop. But finally he relaxes, puts on the retiree hat he does in season 3. Goes fishing and road tripping. Jumps in to see his family whenever he wants. He and Lila hate each other, but they agree not to kill each other for Diego’s sake. Hate eventually morphs into begrudging respect.

Ben is gone. It’s tragic. But he saves Vanya, and he crosses over. He’s at peace.

Vanya, Sissy, and Harlan would run away together. Vanya would become Viktor, making them all the more difficult to track. They would realize Harlan has powers, but it wouldn’t ruin his life with Viktor there to help him manage. He’d also help him cope with the guilt of having caused the death of his abusive father - who knows more about destruction and guilt than Viktor Hargreeves? Maybe Viktor would even remove the powers, and let Harlan be a normal little boy who grows up to be an ordinary man.

Now for the fun part. Since Harlan isn’t out of control in this reality, he’s not going to accidentally kill the mothers. So, all seven Umbrellas will still be born. Now what? Five is adamant that they don’t meet each other, but when have the others ever listened to Five?

The real question… will Reginald Hargreeves adopt the Umbrellas, or will he adopt the Sparrows? If he adopts the Sparrows, there’s the difficulty of watching another superhero team (plus Ben! A Ben who looks just like their brother!) go through their traumatic childhood. Plus wondering how their other childhood selves are doing out there. But if Reginald adopts the Umbrellas… oh boy. Now the clock is ticking on another apocalypse.

Imagine the Umbrellas, old now, trying to stop their younger selves from causing an apocalypse. When do they intervene? Do they try to stop Five from leaving? Save Ben? Tell little Vanya that she has powers? Threaten Reginald into being a better father? Or is it Leonard they try to stop? Or each other - does Viktor talk down Vanya, does Luther talk down Luther, etc.? Is this now another potential paradox - for if they prevent the apocalypse, then these versions of themselves won’t jump back in time, so how are they now here and elderly and preventing the apocalypse?

Anyway. This would be fascinating to me. And I’d like it more than whatever season 4 was.

[cupcakeslushie]

Okay. I've been tip-toeing around this AU for a while now, but I just got caught up, and now I think I have a (decent) grasp on what's going on. So I wanna go over everything I know so far to see if I'm right or wrong on anything. Don't know if you'd be willing to correct me or not. Either way, I hope my mistakes can help you understand what to clarify to other fans like me. But, I also have some questions. You probably won't be able to answer most of them, but it's at least worth a shot.

First, where's Venus? Like, why is she not in your comics that are (sort of) separate frome the canon now story. The ones that skip to the future way after all the turtles reunite. Did she die? Did she escape? Is it because she wasn't introduced yet when you made those comics?

Two, why do you keep on making references to the future timeline? I know you're planning on possibly making your own stuff leading up to the events of the movie. It just gives me a jumpscare when I see certain...imagery in those comics. I guess you're hinting at what your version of the future apocalypse would look like, but it just hurts to see. Specifically in the comic explaining both the events and aftermath of the movie and the bad future timeline. It's starting to really confuse my brain as to where this story is headed. What's meant to be the main focus? The Hamto's reuniting? The aftermath? Or the future?

Third, did you make all those min-comics before you started the actual AU? Or did you do them during?

Fourth, are any of those mini-comics relevant to the actual story now? Or have you changed your mind on a few things? It's just that everything is so all over the place, I don't really know whether to trust if they're accurate. I know most of them are just there for funzies, but the longer ones concern me. I guess I'm just not used to the storyteller doing sequel, start, prequel, start, sequel, prequel, prequel, sequel, and then end. Or maybe it's just me, and I'm sleep deprived.

My little observation speech is gonna take a while for me to get out in your asks because when I get theoretical, my speech gets long, and my proper English goes down the drain. So I'll be back. I appreciate your work very much. Despite the pain it causes me, it's still amazing.

I’ll try my best to clear up what confusion I can!

1. As far as Venus. The answer is kind of a mix of, I was still figuring out her design and backstory while coming out with some of those early comics, and then, once I had that down, I wanted the boys to grow strong bonds as a main cast. That’s why a lot of the side characters are only making small appearances in the Sep!AU Life stories, as those are mainly for the boys reconnecting. (Usagi shows up the most because I love him and am totally biased towards him).

This maybe hasn’t been stated outright, but I wasn’t really expecting so many ppl to like Vee as much as they do, and now im trying not to spoil too much of her story. It’ll unfortunately just take us a while to get to the meat of it. Since the boys reconnecting takes up a lot of the early s1s2 story, Im trying to follow the familiar Rise blueprint of Draxum, Shredder, Krang, and then in s3 we’ll have crazy fun new stories with the extra characters.

Ive also decided to take this little nugget from one of the Q&As, and use it for Venus instead of Jennika. It was a much needed bit of inspiration to explain why Venus sorta disappears for a while and will go through some major physical changes (not yet revealed) before the family can figure out a way to reach her.

2. I’m not sure if you mean jump scared in a bad/triggering or neutral way, but if you need me to tag anything on those posts please let me know!

The glimpses of the future timeline, are being scattered throughout wherever they parallel the present story in little ways, but that’s only for now. As we get closer to the movie plot, bigger chunks of the future will be revealed, because the future versions of the boys will have a larger role to play in the present timeline. So we will need more backstory than what the canon got. And also I just enjoy drawing my future versions so sometimes I don’t think too hard on a reason. I just like throwing them at ppl with no warning or reason.

When s2 ends, I plan on collecting all the future related stuff that’s been released, and recapping it for easier reading. Right now, it’s just little sprinkles of foreshadowing to give ppl an idea that, ‘oh crap. The doomed timeline is a bummer’. In my mind, I guess i thought it’d be kinda like a fun scavenger hunt for clues, but maybe ppl don’t like that 😅

3. All of the side-stories were written as the main comic was/is being released. A lot of them resulted from asks that just spawned the need to expand on certain ideas, or a desire to give all the turtles their time to shine.

For instance, when I was doing Donnie’s section of the main comic, it was a good few months where we hardly saw anyone but him and Venus. I wanted to just mix it up, and give Raph some love with his ‘Raph Time’ short. When Leo was front and center in the main, we hardly saw the others, so Mikey and Donnie got their little ‘Secrets’ short (and it was also I fun thank you for EW making it so far in the tmnt sep competition).

4. Anything that has been reworked/revised or just plain dropped should have an ‘Edit’ note because yes—I have gone back and changed some things, but more so from the asks i got in the early days, and some movie idea drafts.

All the short comics done in the last year, especially the ones that are listed in my pinned post, are canon and fall somewhere in the timeline. They’re like supplemental reading though—extra meat to give the world and the characters more personality. They do have particular backstory plot and important info in them, but nothing that shouldn’t eventually be re-visited/repeated in the main story.

um I hope that cleared up some things! I know it’s kind of a crazy amount of lore. I’ve tried my best to organize it in the pinned post, huge timeline, and search bar tags, but I know it’s getting harder and harder for newer ppl to jump in as it just get bigger. Thanks for reading regardless!

[holdmytesseract]

New Old World [EoH]

Daryl Dixon x fem!Reader feat. Teddy Dixon

Summary: Being stranded in the Commonwealth changed the life for you and your little family. Adjusting to this new, yet old world wasn't easy. Neither for you, nor Daryl and certainly not for Teddy...

Warnings: Alternative Ending/Different Timeline! TWD things? fluff, talks of babies, swear words, Daryl being the smol insecure bean he is, age gap

Set in the Commonwealth!

Word Count: 3,2k

a/n: This story is part of the EoH universe, but has an alternative ending with a different timeline. 🤗

Tagging: (in the comments ☺️)

Life in the commonwealth was strange - and yet so familiar. It felt like getting thrown into another dimension. Another world. Well, perhaps it was normal to feel like this after five years of fighting for survival every day in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. You had seen every cruelty this world had to offer and now... Suddenly you landed in this community, where the most people's worry wasn't the undead anymore, but how to… earn money? It felt wrong and nevertheless you couldn't deny that it was somehow... right.

Two strong, yet soft hands on your waist ripped you out of your thoughts and daydreams. "What yer thinkin' about, sunshine?" You smiled at hearing the gravelly, loving voice of your husband from behind you. Reaching up your hand, you buried your hand in your lover's hair. It had grown so much the past years. The dark brown strands reached in soft curls over his shoulders by now - and you absolutely loved it. "Just about this... What we have here..." The answer you got was nothing more than a low grunt. You knew Daryl didn't trust this place yet - and you understood why. Money, jobs, restaurants and Halloween? Oh please...

But on the other hand... A piece of normalcy and not fighting the dead, other people and death itself was what you all wanted - and it broke your heart that Alexandria couldn't be that for you at the moment.

"I still dunno 'bout all this... Feels... weird." You nodded. "I know, but... Until we can go back home, let's make the most out of it, yeah?" Daryl didn't answer, just huffed out a breath. Not unusual for the man who didn't need much words. Instead, he gently moved; went to press your back against his chest - which felt hard and not really comfortable, like you noticed instantly. Turning in his embrace, you realised why... Daryl wore his commonwealth uniform. Right, you remembered. Your man had suddenly a job again and was working. "Are you off to work, cutie pie?" You witnessed, how Daryl's cheeks reddened softly at your chosen pet name. "Yeah... Jus' wanted to say goodbye, 'fore I leave." You nodded; scanning his handsome face with your eyes. He had grown over the years - of course. Got even more mature and responsible-minded. You sensed major DILF energy radiating from him.

"How sweet of you," you said, leaning closer to place a soft, quick kiss on his lips. "Have fun - I guess, and don't let yourself get stressed so much. I know Sebastian Milton is an asshole, but you and Rosita will make it. Think about picking Teddy up from school with your cool stormtrooper armour. He's going to lose it - and he'll be so proud, seeing his dad being one of the 'cool soldier guys'."

School... Another crazy thing. Sure, you tried to teach Teddy a few things and there had been a lot of small education thingys in the past five years. Be it in the prison or Alexandria. It had always been there but this? This was a whole other thing. This was a real school. With real teachers and actual classes. Something you hadn't seen in over seven years.

"Ya think so?" You smiled and gently scratched his slightly grey goatee; feeling the hairs tickling your fingertips. "I know so." You then stood on your tiptoes, in order to involve Daryl in another loving kiss. But a firm knock on the door of your sparse, small apartment caused you to jump apart; ending the kiss way too early. "Daryl?" Rosita's voice sounded from the other side of the door. "We gotta go!" You sighed; wrapping your arms tighter around your husband's neck. "Seems like duty calls..." "Mhm..." Daryl grumbled and turned his head towards the door. "'M comin', Rosita!" He lifted his hands to your arms, trying gently to loosen them from around his neck - but you kept on holding on; not budging. "I gotta go, sunshine." You pouted, but eventually let go of him. "I know, 'm sorry. But I promise, I'll be back soon." You nodded and watched with crossed arms, how Daryl grabbed his helmet; ready to leave. "What are you up to today?" You shrugged your shoulders. "I dunno. Perhaps I'll visit the rest of the fam." Daryl nodded; knew of course what you meant, and walked towards the door. "I love you. Be careful, yes?" "Love ya, too. Don' worry. I always am. 'Sides, Rosita's gonna hold me back from doing some stupid, headless shit." With those words, he opened the door and marched out. It stayed long enough open for you to see your friend. "Hey Rosita!" You waved at her. "Y/N," the black-haired beauty answered; smiling at you, before the door fell in its hinges.

While your son was at school and your husband at work (It still sounded crazy in your head.), you spent the whole morning with cleaning up the apartment - which mostly consisted of collecting Teddy's small carved artworks. Since his father showed him how to carve something (mostly spears to hunt fishes or other weapons to defend himself) out of wood, he was obsessed. Whenever the opportunity was given, you'd find the boy sitting somewhere underneath a tree - or even up in a tree (the safer option), carving. He practiced year after year and by now, he was really talented. If Teddy just wouldn't leave his little figures and weapons laying all around the apartment...

After that, you decided to take Dog out for a walk. The fluffy Belgian Malinois with the brown-black fur was a faithful companion of your little family, since the day Daryl brought him back from a hunt. Teddy fell for him immediately anyways, so... And as much as Teddy loved Dog, Dog loved Teddy in return. They were a great duo.

"Dog, come on, let's go out. Time for walkies." Dog's ears perked up at your mention of 'walkies'; head lifting. "Come on!" You tapped your thigh - which was his sign to literally jump up and run to you. You giggled; petting and scratching the fur behind his ears. "Let's go." You opened the door and out Dog ran. He was a very loyal and well-behaved animal. Daryl had trained him well. He'd never run off or leave your side - unless he had a good reason.

It was quite a beautiful day today. The commonwealth was bustling with people. Some of them working, some of them enjoying their day off. You hadn't a specific destination in mind, when you took Dog out. Most of the time, Dog decided on where to go. Today, the faithful Malinois led you to a very good friend of yours. A member of the family - without a doubt...

Dog already saw him from afar, grooming a white-brown patchy pony. Dog announced his - and your presence with a loud bark. The man with the black, greyish dreadlocks turned on his heels at the sound. A smile crossed his features, as he saw you and your four-legged companion approaching. Dog ran up to him; tail wagging in excitement. Ezekiel squatted down, in order to welcome Dog. He literally jumped Ezekiel; paws landing on the King's shoulders, causing the man to laugh heartily. Dog liked Ezekiel and Ezekiel Dog. There was no doubt about this. It was fact.

You came to stand beside the pair; Dog still enjoying Ezekiel's petting. "Hey Ezekiel." The King straightened; stood up again, in order to properly face you - much to Dog's disappointment. "Greetings, Y/N. What a pleasure to see you! Tell me, what brings you to my modest, little farm?" You shook your head, smiling. "Dog decided to bring me here. I think he wanted to visit you. Nevertheless, it's great to see you, too." Once again, the man laughed, scratching Dog's head in an affectionate manner. You adored Ezekiel. You really did. He was always so positive. A true ray of sunshine. A very kind man - and now, here at the commonwealth, he was able to do what he loved again... Being a zookeeper.

"How are you feeling today?" You asked him then, referring to his medical condition. "Oh, I'm feeling great, Y/N. Thank you. Better every day." "That's really great and reassuring to hear." He nodded; one hand still petting Dog, who was sitting beside the man now. "Well, if it wouldn't have been for Carol and Tomi, I probably wouldn't be walking this earth anymore as a living man." "That's why we are all a big family. We help each other." The King nodded, "Truer words have never been spoken, dear friend." giving you one of his brilliant smiles. "How is Teddy doing in school? Carol told me he had quite a rough start?" You sighed, nodding. "Yeah, he had... It was after all the first time for him to go to a real school. Sure, he had his friend, Nick. But unfortunately, Nick is in a different class. So many new children and all so much different from him - and Nick. Most of them weren't on the road. Anyways not as long as we were. He never had an easy time adjusting to new, different things. He was quite afraid of attending school."

The corners of Ezekiel's mouth twitched into a small smile. "Well, this sounds to me quite like someone else we know..." You understood that reference, of course. Both, you and Ezekiel knew exactly who you were talking about. You giggled; shrugging your shoulders. "Like father..." "...like son." The King finished your sentence, laughing. "Well, I hope Teddy is able to adjust soon." "I hope so, too. Just have to give him some time..." The man nodded. "I'd say so, too. If you're looking for a little distraction for him, you are more than welcome to send him - and Nick over to me. I promised Teddy to teach him how to ride a horse already quite a while ago. Now, I finally have the time - and opportunity." "Sure, I am definitely going to do that. Thank you." He smiled; nodding. "Of course."

While you were still out with Dog, walking through the whole commonwealth, Daryl made his way to the elementary school, in order to retrieve his son. After all, he had promised him - and since Daryl went to school directly after his shift, he was still dressed in his commonwealth armour. The archer was really looking forward to this. It was his personal highlight of the day.

"I need to pick Teddy up from school," he told his friend. "See ya later?" Rosita nodded. "Sure. I have to look after Coco as well." With that being said, the two long-term friends parted ways.

Daryl made his way to the school then and waited in front of the rather big building for Teddy to come out. It was quite a bit ridiculous for the archer - and also a whole new experience. He would have never thought, that he'd pick up his son from school one day. Not after the world went to shit. Back in the early days, everybody had different problems than sending the kids to school. Surviving, for example. Getting enough food on the table for his family - and all the people who became his family.

"Daddy!" Teddy's happy, relieved voice urged to Daryl's ears; announcing his son's arrival. A soft smile spread over Daryl's face, when he saw his son running towards him. He squatted down; waiting. Teddy ran straight up into his awaiting arms, hugging him. He may be ten years old by now and would soon grow into a man, but for now, he was still Daryl's little boy - and he'd enjoy every hug he got. "Hey, buddy! You good?" Teddy didn't get to answer the question his father asked him. A group of three other boys had approached them.

"Your dad is a commonwealth soldier?" One of them with glasses and bright blonde, tousled hair asked; eyes wide. Teddy nodded proudly; stood beside his still crouching father and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. "Yep, he is!" "Wooow..." Every boy of the group was stunned. Teddy started to smile proudly; his shyness suddenly forgotten, as the boys finally noticed him. Due to his cool dad. It made the young Dixon happy - but he also knew, that they were probably just going to like him because his dad was one of the countless commonwealth heroes.

"Let's get goin', huh? I bet your mother already waits for us..." Daryl noted; noticing immediately what game those boys played. Teddy nodded and turned to his seemingly new friends to say goodbye.

After that, Daryl and Teddy walked home together. "So... How was school?" The little boy shrugged his shoulders; his mood suddenly changing fast. The school topic wasn't an easy one... "Okay, I guess..." "You get better along with them other kids?" Another shrug. "A bit." That didn't sound convincing. Not at all.

Daryl stopped in his movements and turned to face his son. Once again, he squatted down and placed both his hands on Teddy's small shoulders. "Alright, talk ta me, buddy. Don't bottle everythin' up. I used to do that too, y'know. 'S not good. Spit it out." Teddy sighed and bit his lip nervously - a habit he copied from his dad. "I just feel so lonely... 'Specially without Nick... The other kids think I'm weird." Tears were shining in the young boy's blue-grey eyes. Daryl saw it. Despite his long, softly curled bangs of brown hair. "Why?" "Because I'm not as good in school as they are. A-And because I know more about gutting a fish, then our home country..." Daryl's heart ached, as he heard that. He knew how his son felt. He knew the feeling of being an outsider.

"Hey, Teddy... Don't listen to 'em. Ya hear me? I know it's not easy, but always remember... You're so much better than them." Teddy looked up at his father through teary eyes. "H-How?" The archer smiled. "Firstly, 'cause you're a Dixon and secondly, 'cause you're a survivor. You know how to handle a walker. I taught ya everything ya need ta know - except hunting. But we'll do that as soon as you're a bit older. That's why. It might sound hard and cruel, but those kids would never survive out there alone. You do." At those words, Teddy's eyes lightened up again - and he smiled. The same, sweet smile you always smiled. A smile Daryl loved above everything and would never tire to see.

"Really?" The archer nodded. "Really." The boy threw his arms again around his father's neck; hugging him tight.

You were already back home again with Dog, when you heard the front door getting opened and closed again. The barking of Dog echoed through the small apartment, followed by your son's giggles.

Unfortunately, you couldn't spend the rest of the afternoon together, since Daryl had to go back to work. Nevertheless, you had a great day; took the boys out for some riding lessons with Ezekiel and prepared some dinner together with your husband's mini-me. That's what Teddy was - and it hadn't changed over the years. The boy was still his father's spitting image. Even the tattered, ripped jeans hadn't changed. He only had grown into them by now.

Now, you were sitting at the small dining table, together with Daryl and Teddy; eating dinner. Dog was laying on his little blanket; sleeping. Everyone was eating in silence - until Teddy came up with a conversation both, you and Daryl didn't see coming. Like, not at all…

"Mom, dad?" "Yes, sweetie?" You asked, while Daryl only grunted in response; needing to chew first. "We, uh, talked about our families today in class and... Almost every other girl or boy told us about their siblings and how much fun they have with them. I-I know I've got Dog and Judith and RJ and even Coco, but... Can I, uh, can I have my own little baby brother - or sister?" Daryl almost choked on his foot, hearing this, while you blinked rapidly at your ten-year-old. "I-I promise I'll look after him or her a-and protect them and play with them!" "Teddy... Sweetie..." You started; having to swallow hard and take a deep breath. "This, uh, this isn't an easy decision and not just to be made within a few minutes. Especially not in this dangerous world. I- We, your dad and I will have to think and talk about this first, okay?" Teddy looked at you with his soft, blue, greyish eyes - and nodded. "Okay." "Can you understand that?" "Uh.Huh, yeah." The conversation had turned someway, somehow slightly awkward, so you left it at that. Daryl had said absolutely nothing; didn't even make a peep.

Later on, once Teddy was in bed; sleeping safe and soundly with Dog in his arms, you approached your husband, who stood at one of the windows; having a smoke. Wrapping your arms around his now black sweater clad torso, you pressed your cheek against his right upper arm. "What do you say?" "What do I say to what?" You decided to not beat about the bush. "Having a baby again." Daryl took a drag of his cigarette, before puffing out a small cloud of smoke. "I dunno if this is a good idea, honestly." "Why? I mean, we're safe here now. Soon in Alexandria hopefully as well. If not now, then when?" Daryl merely shook his head and you could swear that he was chewing on his bottom lip. "'S not that, sunshine... Even though I don't trust this place. I trust in Alexandria." "What is it then?" You asked; rubbing his sides affectionately. He paused; didn't answer you straight away - almost hesitating.

"'M not gettin' younger, ya know..." You frowned and adjusted your position, in order to look at him. You were hugging him now more or less sideways. "What does that mean now, cutie pie?" "What I said." You were still confused by his words. You clearly didn't understand - and Daryl noticed. "Y/N, 'm in my mid almost late forties now..." "So? I'm sorry, my love, but I don't really see the problem? You don't have to worry about a biological clock, unlike I... And as we speak, the time is running out so slowly." Daryl took a last drag of his cigarette and stubbed it out. Then he turned to face you; biting his lip again. He was clearly troubled by that topic. You could see it in his eyes. "You think 'm not too, uh, old for that?" You shook your head, smiling. "No, absolutely not." The corners of his lips lifted slightly into a crocked smile. "So..." He started; turning to face you wholly. "You really want that? With me?" You cupped both his cheeks with your palms; nodding. "More than anything. I thought about it for quite a while, honestly."

Daryl blinked; was quite a bit surprised. "Wha'? Really?" "Mhm. You're such a good father for Teddy, so why not make you a daddy again?" The arched blushed at your words; and he couldn't help himself but to smile even brighter. "Ya think we can handle a newborn and a soon-to-be teenager?" You giggled; now running your hands down his chest. "I thought we can handle everything, Mr. Dixon? After all, we handled the end of the world. I think there's nothing that can better that." "Well... I guess yer right." You giggled once more. "I'm mostly right, cutie pie."

[lahotelbellamuerte]

𝐇𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐥 𝐎𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐧 - floor four. men in suits could be a kink...right?

series masterlist ! current: men in suits could be a kink...right? ! next: no body, no crime

pairing; slight five x phoenix, lilah x diego (allude) warnings; suggestive language, five hating phoenix, not proofread! word count; 6.0k notes; none for this one

NOW WE ALL KNOW THE STORY OF EIGHT HARGREEVES. She was born as the favorite, and Reginald trained her to be the best. She becomes tired of the present and decides to go into the future with her boyfriend. Five Hargreeves. The two were oh so in love, thinking they were the smartest, strongest, and best. Well, obviously they were very wrong and got stuck in the apocalypse with no way back home. The start of the very disaster of a century. 

Right back to the blonde, who has a kid, who dies because he was born with abilities he couldn't control. Just like someone we know—spoiler alert—it's Eight. For someone given so much attention, you would think she would, right? Anyways joins the Commission, and there the grand plan grows. 

Since she wasn't the one with the ability to save the universe, she went out to find the person who could. It was dear old little —REDACTED—oh, right, you can't know her name yet. Phoenix is a different version of Eight. Old lady Eight only told the small girl of what was to come, but not the complete plan. 

Now onto Phoenix, the prodigy with her abilities. Unfortunately blind, but that didn't stop her from expanding her capabilities. Practically being able to see with her strength at listening smelling and tasting, vision was no longer necessary for her.  At the age of thirteen, the young girl figured out how to jump time. Being stuck in time was fun for the girl, able to steal without a trace. And being placed on the Commission's radar became even more exciting. A fun game of cat and mouse. 

Obviously, they were never able to catch her. She was good at what she did. Even escaping the grasp of one of their most skilled agent. Five Hargreeves, who had only failed the mission titled "Phoenix's flames." 

Eventually, the girl returned back to her home timeline, hoping to live it out to old age, after ruining her age by jumping through time. A 30-year-old stuck in the body of an eighteen-year-old. But nothing ever goes to plan for the girl, as a few months later after returning a family from a different timeline is calling for her help. 

"Chrisy, you did a great job at explaining it," Phoenix called as she sat on the counter of the bar. 

"I'm so confused," Diego muttered grabbing his head from a headache. 

Five sipped on his coffee, "Shocker," he replied. 

"Well, someone killed our mothers, so we shouldn't exist. But clearly, we do exist and the universe can't handle it, which is a problem," Viktor said after hearing all that Five had to say. 

"Big problem," Phoenix and Five chorused, who turned to give each other a glare. 

The purple-haired girl then scoffed and looked off to see a kid goofing off, "Stanley! Now is not the time to be doing karate, okay?" he yelled at the young boy. 

Stanley looked back holding a pool stick and glared, "Mom said I need to practice," he replied. 

Diego paused slightly, "Yeah, well, she's not wrong. You're very bad," he added twirling a small knife in hand. 

"Well, I saved your pathetic ass," Stanley added with a whine. 

She turned to Diego and gave him a thumbs up, "Cute kid." 

Diego only gave her a mocking smile. Not being able to conclude that isn't the girl they grew up with. Now it was a purple-haired girl with blunt bangs, and tattoos. And not to mention blind. 

"Okay, hold on. Five, so we caused a paradox. What does that mean," she asked leaning against a pillar. 

The boy looked over at his sister, "It's hard to say, it's all been theoretical until now, but things have started to disappear." 

Viktor gave a confused glance, "What things?" 

Phoenix hopped off the counter, "Right now? Cows, and according to boy genius, lobsters," she paused and sighed, "But I've got a feeling it's just the start." 

Allison scoffed, "A feeling?" she asked walking then closer to the two who always seem to cause problems, "You know, you can't drag us through hell because you have an itch only an apocalypse can scratch. And then expect us to deal with the fallout," she continued only to stop right before the girl with dyed hair, "You're not the boss. 

The girl tilted her head at the voice, "Listen, Shirley Temple, I'm not the one who put you into this. You are in my timeline. So I'd pipe down if I were you,  I haven't known you long enough to feel remorse if I hurt you right now," she finished a pulse of energy coming off from her, enough to push her slightly. 

Before Allision could respond, Five pulled the girl behind him, "Look she has nothing to do with this, but I'm telling you something terrible is coming." 

"Then let's attack the sparrows, grab the briefcase and go home," she instead now leaning to glare at him and the blind girl. 

Five sighed, "This is our home Allision, accept it," he replied not noticing his grip still around Phoenix's wrist behind him. He only let go when Stanley knocked down a whole bunch of furniture. 

Diego sighed, "That's it I'm telling your mom," he yelled. 

"Ohh..." Stanely mocked as if he was afraid. 

Recognition went through Five's eyes, "Wait where's Lila?" he asked the boy. 

"Shower, I told her she could stay with us," he replied. 

Five then grabbed his coffee and let Phoenix's hand go, "Let's go Bird," he whispered. 

Diego turned, "Wait where are you two going?" 

The girl turned to face him her dimple showing as she smiled. Lifting her hand to stick her finger against her tongue and suck on it. She laughed when Diego recoiled and shivered at the sight. Watching her catching up with the other teen. 

"What did you do?" Five asked with a sigh, he was too old for this. 

The girl giggled and throw an arm over his shoulder, "Just grown-up things," she replied and removed her arm and followed him through the hotel. 

"You disgust me I hope you know that?" He said finishing the rest of his coffee and throwing the mug elsewhere.  

"Well you can't hate me, I'm the only one capable of helping you and your little family," she replied running her hands to untangle her hair. 

Then the two made it to the showers, Five pushed the door open, "What the hell are you doing here?" Fived asked. 

Phoenix looked over at the woman in the tub and laughed, "Wait your joking?" she laughed, "Lila?"

 The blonde looked over at the new face and recognized her, "Well if it isn't little firebird," she sounded, "What are you here with the Perv for?" 

Five rolled his eyes, "Don't flatter yourself, Lila. I like my women a little less likely to kill me in my sleep." 

"Ugh I'd kill for a bath, but Lila darling, you could talk to him about what none sense," she replied and started the water on the other bath, throwing in soap bubbles. 

Behind her, she didn't even realize Lila throwing a knife at the boy she had come in with, but he disappeared a few feet in front of her. Not caring she lifted her shirt and bra above her head, not missing the lingering eyes of the teen in the corner. 

"Are you seriously getting naked right now?" he yelled doing his best to avoid his eyes at the girl, but that was a mistake as her body distracted him. Lila appeared behind him and slammed his head on the mirror next to him. 

Stepping into the warm water she sighed, "Yes, I'm filthy, plus you can handle whatever this is," she called out and watched as Lila stuck out her leg and kicked him right in the stomach. 

"Whoo! Go, Lila!" Phoenix called shaking the water to create more bubbles around her. 

Five fell to the floor when Lila kicked him in the face, but he grabbed a towel near the tub, wrapped it around his elbow, cracked it, and began choking her. 

"Whoo go Five!" she yelled again now having popcorn in her hand as she watched the very fun fight. 

The blonde began gasping for air as he held her tightly, and she blinked and grabbed the knife she had thrown originally. Came back to him and attempted to stab him in any way possible. But he was able to get a hit and he slammed his palm against her chin. Grabbing a tray to protect himself from being stabbed. Straining he pushed back and was able to throw it away altogether. 

As they continued their hand-to-hand, Phoenix couldn't keep her eyes off them. God did she miss good fights after she came back to her timeline. After throwing soap and kicking her in the face she tapped out. 

"Alright enough," she said picking up a towel, "Why are you here with the worst shithead ever?" Lila asked Phoenix who was enjoying her soapy bath. 

She shrugged, "He found me," she replied as she scrubbed her neck and arms. 

Five rolled his eyes, "As much as I love your little reunion, we have bigger concerns," he said. 

Lila rolled her eyes, "Yeah? Like what?"

"Remember the grandfather paradox?" Phoenix called out from the tub. 

Lila finished tying up her towel and looked at the two, "Well, I read the training manuals that you read," and paused to look at the purple-haired girl, "And you stole, why?" 

"Because it's happening," he replied seriously. 

Lila clicked her tongue and looked over at Phoenix, "Is he being stupid?"

The blind girl shook her head, "Nope, little number is not." 

"Hand over your briefcase. I need to go to Herb and find out how he let things get so cocked up," he replied seriously not being able to believe the two women in the room knew each other. 

"Hand me my knickers over there will you?" she asked and pointed to the bath the girl was currently near. 

As he threw her the clothes, he realized there were two cases, "Lila why is it that you have two briefcases?" 

She rose her brows quickly, "One is yours, nicked it from the Sparrows. Go on give it a go."

Five put one of the briefcases down as he turned the other and tried to travel. Feeling panicked he picked up the other and attempted the same. Just to get the same result of the machine powering down. 

"This can't be happening," he whispered, "The odds of one of them failing is in the millions. But two of them..." 

"Astronomical, yeah," she replied with an indifferent tone, already gone through the whole disappointment, "So, what does that mean exactly? End of the world?"

He shook his head, "Much worse apparently," he paused and looked over at the girl behind him, "bath time is over Bird, we all have to work together." 

"Shit," Lila and Phoenix chorused in agreement that they didn't like Five. 

Phoenix sighed and stood from the bath and stepped out, "Hand me a towel, hmm?" she asked Five who was the nearest, and looked up to avoid the naked body of the girl. 

Lila couldn't help but smirk as he reached walked over to one and walked backward with his arm holding it. God this man truly was made to love every and all forms of Eight. 

"Thanks," she replied securing it around her chest. 

The three made their way towards the exit, Lila coming out first. 

"Lila?" Diego called out when he saw her exit the bathroom.

"Hm?" she asked seeing Stanley and Diego. 

He walked closer to her, "You need to take this kid with you," he tried to say then watched as Five stepped out with briefcases, "The hell were you doing in there?" 

"Bathing," Lila replied not caring. 

Diego rose a brow, "Together?"

"Diego, that was your name right?" A new voice appeared making his eyes grow even bigger as he noticed her towel as well, "we don't have time for this, we have got some important shit to do," she replied as she pressed herself to Five's back peaking over his shoulder. The three started to walk away. 

Number Four was confused once again, "Both of them?" he whispered to himself, "Woah wait what's more important than family?" 

"End of the world," Five and Phoenix chorused. 

Walking to the elevator, "Do you not have any more clothes?" Five asked her as he hated the fact that only a towel covered her. 

"Why does it make you uncomfortable?" she asked stepping into the elevator that opened. 

Five shifted, "Yes actually." 

"Why? You've seen your wife naked, haven't you? What is the difference between my tits and hers?" The purple-haired girl asked not caring about others seeing her naked, "Well actually mine are pierced but the same difference." 

Five turned to look at her with a deadpan, "I was married to hers, not yours," he paused, "I respect that you are a different person than the woman I married." 

Phoenix shrugged but didn't reply and waited for Lila to join in the elevator, "Harsh, babe, harsh," the girl whistled, then leaned in, "You still love him." 

"Shut it Bird," Lila said with a roll of her eyes, ignoring the laughs of the girl in the elevator. 

She crossed her arms and shrugged, "Oh! I should get us clothes now for the end of the world! I'll get to you!" before any of the two could tell her to wait she was gone with a crack. 

Five sighed, "I forgot she could do that," he said softly with a roll of his eyes. 

Five Pheonix couldn't help but get him a three-piece suit. She had the liberty to choose what to get him. The small black vest that hugged his waist was her favorite piece. Just roll up the white sleeves and he was set. Plus the black slacks and shoes she chose were great. Not to mention she had a thing for suits, but we won't go into that. 

"You look hot in the suit, not going to lie, old man," she muttered as she watched him button his vest, well his silhouette looked attractive. 

The teen boy rolled his eyes and ignored the purple-haired girl. 

Lila had a more laid-back type of situation. Getting her back into her favorite boots, a pair of grey skinny jeans, and her green jacket layered above. 

Now, let's hear Phoenix out...she's in the land of the free and couldn't help but channel the inner cowboy in her. She wore a burgundy long-sleeve rolled up to her elbows and a cute tight little brown leather vest, straight black jeans that went over her now brown cowboy boots. Oh, do leave out the brown belt, with a thick silver buckle with a phoenix design on it. 

As the three settled into a small tight closet, five couldn't help but roll his eyes at her outfit, "You couldn't have chosen something more normal?" 

The purple-haired girl scoffed, "Oh old man, I'm in the land of the free, I need to dress the part." 

Lila laughed, "Oh did I miss you little Firebird," she said rubbing her hand over her fringe, "See this is who I expected your wife to be." 

Five paused his actions to look at her then Phoenix, "What? Stupid?" he replied with a smirk looking at her.

"Har har, eat shit old man," the girl replied with a lift of her middle finger towards his direction, instead continuing to help the grouchy old man. 

Then Lila held a battery charger, handing him the last of the clamps. as he was the only one that could do it. At least that's what Phoenix made them think. 

"Ready to hot-wire this briefcase?" Lila asked and looked over at the nervous five. 

The purple hair girl dug into one of her pockets, and brought out a bag of popcorn, "Light him up Pitts," she whistled. 

Turning the dial sparks flew all around the room as he tried putting his powers through, but to no avail. He rather squirmed in pain as he did so. 

"Ah, shit!" Five wailed in pain as the shocks continued to go right through him.

All the while the two women in the room laughed at the sight. Finally, the cocky man feels pain. 

Slamming against the wall he couldn't handle the pain, "Lila!" he continued groaning until he let it go, grabbed a towel, and tried to put out the fire. 

"Truly wonderful, can't believe Old Lady Eight was married to this," Pheonix muttered feeling the heat in the room as she munched on popcorn, "Yeah, had a feeling that wouldn't work pops." 

Five glared over at the two amused women, "Well, I'm glad my pain amuses you." 

Lila snapped and nodded, "You have no idea, It's like my therapy."

"I just personally don't care," the teen girl added lifting herself to sit next to Lila. 

Closing the door behind him he glanced at the two, "Well, now we are down to one-half dead briefcase, and my jumps are only accurate up to a couple of minutes. So, essentially, we're screwed," he told them pacing up and down the hall. 

"Maybe, maybe not," Lila said taking the popcorn from her dear friend and eating one with a smile. 

The purple-haired girl shook her head, "Naur, the last time you gave me a smile like that I ended up in some dragon wasteland!" she hissed. 

Lila shook her head, "No I mean Five is pathetic as you know," she offered as the two looked over to glance at the boy, "But you have powers like no other, with your help all three of us could get there." 

Five scoffed, "Are you telling me all this time she could jus—" 

Phoenix lifted her finger to his lips to shush him, "—now, now, love, the adults are talking," she paused then turned to face Lila again, "You barely trust him as it is—"

"—He killed my birth parents," she interjected with a raise of her brow. 

The teen nodded, "She's right," he informed the new girl. 

"And your entire family stood by while the greasy Swede put a cap on the woman who raised me," she added staring sadly. 

Five then lifted a hand, "The Handler was going to kill you, Lila. In fact, she did kill you and my wife, the person who somewhat cared about you. Then I rolled back time and let the meatball do his work," he began explaining to the blonde, "And if you're leading Diego on as payback for what happened in Texas. Trust me I have the very right to do that too, but he may actually love you and was just pissed you kept him on a leash." 

Phoenix leaned into him, "What did Diego do?" she whispered. 

Five sighed, "He slept with my wife, don't worry I beat the shit out of him already," he replied as Lila thought about what he had said, "Come on Bird, you might be a use for me," he said and grabbed her wrist once again. 

Tears brimmed her eyes as she was told the long-time coming truth, "What do you know? You got your wife killed," he retaliated hoping to hurt him just as much as she was hurting. 

As Five was dragging the blind girl he paused and turned quickly toward Lila. His brows furrowed in anger, "Do not talk about Eight that way, you don't think I blame myself enough without you telling me that? I loved her more than you will ever know," he hissed stepping close to the blonde. He was fuming at the thought they couldn't fix the timeline, but bringing up Eight was a sting he never thought would be possible. 

Pheonix frowned from beneath her glasses, her hand subconsciously moving to his wrist, not realizing the teen stopped in his tracks. 

"This is insane. There is no way we're gonna get past this to make it to the Commission," she said shaking her head, knowing the two would only bring back more painful memories each time. 

The purple-haired girl then moved forward and pushed the two apart, "Alright I get that you two will never get to trust. But how about think of it as honest lovely hatred," she finished with a sigh looking at both of them, pointing towards the room they were just in. 

The two former Commission assassins paused and nodded, "Great now let's hold hands and sing kumbaya," she finished and walked forward to open the door, not forgetting to grab their hands and pull them in. 

"Y'know I still don't get how you can see if you can't see," Lila then asked as the three shuffled back into the room. 

Phoenix snorted, "I like to call it seismic sense," she started, "Every breath, sound, and step I take let out these sounds or vibrations, that lets me 'see' perse," she finished and let their hands go and began plugging stuff into the wall. 

"Okay now the both of you relax, especially you Firebird, we don't need to end up at the beginning of time," she told glancing over at the purple-haired girl who just shrugged. 

Five sighed in disgust, "I can't. Your breath is terrible," he huffed. 

Phoenix gasped and smacked his arm, "Five that's rude!" 

Lila laughed at the two, "First of all garlic is for winners," she paused and looked back at the machine, "Enough foreplay!"

Five shook his head, "This is stupid," he sighed then gripped Phoenix's hand as her other held Lila's. 

"Alright, you two are about to feel what true powers look like," the blind girl laughed. 

The Ex-Commission employees began powering up as Phoenix's hands began glowing. What tripped Five out was the color, unlike his wife's, hers was a dull red snaking around his and Lila's arm. He thought she was kidding when she said they would feel it. But the minute the case began crackling he felt a heavy weight on his arm. The power that surged through him felt dark and heavy, nothing like Eight's. 

"It's starting!" Phoenix called as she felt all of time course through her veins, "Oh it feels so good!" 

Five glanced down at her and noticed the cracks of glowing yellow on her skin, "How is this enjoyable for you?" he yelled as he was straining himself along with Lila. 

One second they were in the library, the second the three zapped through time and landed in a heavy snowstorm.

As Phoenix landed, she fell forward, hands landing on the soft snow. Feeling the cool air on her face as the harsh cold winds blew on it. She couldn't see, all the noises and the soft ground made everything look so grainy, "I can't see anything!" 

Five looked over at the girl to see her staring forward in panic, "Here give me your hand!" he yelled over the storm, he then watched her move her hand around in panic, "I can't see dipshit!" she hissed. 

"Right! Sorry!" he yelled and moved to grip her hand, "Thanks Lila, now we're in the Ice Age!" he yelled angrily. 

The blonde looked around and shook her head, "Shut up and turn around," she said gripping her body in hopes of keeping warm. 

The time travel turned and looked at the destroyed building, "The Commission," he whispered looking at its state. Then he moved to follow a laughing Lila towards the building. His hand tightly gripped Phoenix's hand who stumbled through the snow blindly. 

"So this is what it's like to not see!" she yelled over the storm, her hand moving to grip his forearm, "Don't think that I like you one bit," she said over the snow. 

Five huffed, "Trust me I know," he said walking quicker and pulling her along. 

The minute they stepped into the building the girl detached herself from him. Touching a wall momentarily, "Ha, this place went to shit," she huffed feeling all the ruined building. 

The three looked around at its ruined state, "I was just here, how long was I bloody gone?" Lila asked nobody really. 

Five sighed, "It seems the Grandfather Paradox, is affecting everything," he said putting the briefcase down. 

"Even places out of time it seems," Phoenix muttered, her hand touching the old railing by her. 

Lila looked over to the girl, "Is that possible?" 

Phoenix shook her head, "This is just a few of the images Eight showed me when she visited," she said moving her finger to adjust her glasses. 

Five moved to pick up the suitcase and felt a rumble, "Bird watch out!" he called as he saw the falling ceiling. 

But it never reached her, the pieces all like sand fell above her, "I'm invincible Five," she said turning to walk up the steps. 

"Yeah that's what my wife said and she's dead," he mumbled walking after her. 

The purple-haired girl scoffed, "Yeah, well I'm not Eight," she huffed. 

As the two continued to walk over the piles of rubble, Five walked into the infinite switchboard. He turned the dial to get any type of broadcast, "Do you see this?" Five asked the girl standing behind him. 

"I can't see anything dipshit," she muttered with a roll of her eyes. 

"There's been a rip in the space-time continuum. It's swallowing everything. Oh, my sweet Dot, Iris, Josh from accounting, they're all gone...." Five turned the dial to speed it up, "I've tried everything! I don't know what else to do. The timeline is collapsing. This is...the end."  His voice ended and yelled as he disappeared. 

"That's great because you and your family came here, everything I know of will end," she sighed crossing her clap. 

Lila then showed up, "I could kill for some scrambled eggs right now," she said walking in. 

Phoenix looked over at her, "Y'know I haven't eaten, we should get lunch after this," she said with a smile. 

Five rolled his eyes at the two, "Shut up both of you. This is bigger than the timeline and your hungry stomachs."

The blonde rose a brow, "What's bigger than the timeline?" 

"The entire universe my friends," she replied stuffing her hands in her pockets, "I should've got myself a jacket," she mumbled the rest. 

"Missing dogs, people...It's the opposite of the Big bang," he said looking at the two, "Instead of the universe expanding, it's now collapsing in on itself." 

Lila nodded and snapped, "Like a prolapsing rectum," she replied quickly. 

Phoenix snorted at the answer, "Oh god I missed your stupid answers, Lila," the girl replied then walked off as she got a sense of deja vu. 

The Founder...Find them. Was the voice that echoed in her head, the familiar voice that she had met all those years ago. Her feet carried mindlessly all to follow the visions and whispers in her head. Not realizing the dark red energy following her around. 

As she made her way toward the halls, she couldn't help but lift her hand to her chest. Her heart felt heavy as it pumped faster the further she went into the collapsing building. 

Five and Lila moved through the building, silently they became more worried when they couldn't hear or see the blind girl anymore. The worse part had to be the glowing cracks on the wall forming on the ground and walls. Almost as if leading them to where they needed to be. 

As Five walked through the door he gasped at the sight, "Jesus christ Bird, what is happening with you?" He asked walking towards her, pulling her arm so he could see her face. 

"I feel fine," she said, "But I think I found what you were looking for," she added looking back at the door. 

The time traveler sighed as started sweating, reaching his shoulder and beginning to scratch the feeling. The feeling felt all too familiar. 

As Lila got denied access to the room she looked back at the two behind her, "Jesus you're sweating like a dodgy shrimp," she motioned to Five squirming with the collar of his shirt, "And you are spiraling Firebird, your red is everywhere." 

Five rolled his eyes at the statement, he had an idea of what was wrong but he didn't want to believe it. Instead, he moved forward to try and scan his own eye through the device. 

"Y'know if it doesn't open, I can always blast it open," Phoenix offered. 

Lila laughed, "Firebird you can't see around you right now, but you are already causing something to collapse," she answered her arm over her shoulder. 

The large mechanical door chimed, "Access Granted," the female voice called. 

The three watching—Phoenix felt—the large door slide open to reveal a large room with marble walls, with smoke falling from its' sides. 

"Well this room is big," the purple-haired girl called out walking directly to the small table with liquor, "Nice to know dear Five is granted here." 

"That's him huh," he paused to put the book down, "The Founder," he sighed, walking to follow Lila who was watching the man in the glass. 

Phoenix followed close behind with a whole bottle, "It's odd," she simply said taking a swing of the drink. 

Five furrowed his eyebrows from the odd words coming from the blind girl. The sight of the old man confused him even more, "It can't be," he paused. 

Lila rose a brow, "What's wrong?" 

The teen paused as he continued to theorize why he was there, "It's me." 

Lila began laughing as the purple-haired girl spit out her drink. 

The purple-haired girl wiped her mouth, "You're telling me this old fossil is you? The founder of this place? Your employees sent to kill me for years?" she rambled as she joined Lila in her laugh.  

Oh, the irony. 

"No way," Lila cackled, "This whole time you've been complaining about the Commission, and you're the one who founded it. Classic!" 

"If I did, I have no memory of it," he replied still confused about what was happening. If this man founded it, wouldn't Eight be a part of it also? He refused to do anything without her by his side. So why wasn't she here?

Taking a swing of her drink Phoenix snapped her fingers, "You know what's weird," she mentioned and paused stomping her foot, "I've never forgotten anyone I've met, and this fossil is one of them," she said then looking ahead. 

Five snapped his head toward her, "You mean me? I'm the sam—" 

The girl lifted her finger to cover his mouth, "—You may be the same, but at the very same time you aren't." 

He smacked her hand away from his face, "The only reason I know it's me is because of Paradox Psychosis, but in here I can't feel it." 

There was silence for a while before a breathy low voice spoke, "We were never too bright were we?" the voice began, eyes opening to glance over at the three, "The operations bunker is paradox-proof. I constructed it as a panic room in case of a collapse in the time continuum. In this room, all permutations of yourself can exist. You must be here because of um Kugelblitz." 

At his words the girl swallowed another dunk of liquor, "Shit," she muttered. 

"What is that cheese?" Lila asked confused. 

Five flickered his eyes to Phoenix at her response then back at the old man, "It's German for 'ball of lightning,' it's an extra kinky kind of black hole." 

Lila frowned, "The kind that can suck up entire timelines," she mumbled glancing at the old man. 

"Bingo," the man muttered. 

Five sighed, "So, how do we fix it?"

That's when Phoenix remembered him, "You don't," she answered for an old man. 

In her youth not only had she been visited by Eight Hargreeves herself, warning her about what was to come. But years later, Five Hargreeves the very man came to tell her one mission. Do not help me when the day comes. Let the Kugelblitz take it all.

 Five's eye twitched at the response, "What do you mean by that?" he hissed towards her, "And you created this, so you must have a solution," he finished glaring at his older self. 

And in harmony, the two chanted, "All that will be left is oblivion," they whispered. 

The time traveler didn't like this one bit, why did Phoenix out of all people know what was happening? Was she a part of this? Could she be the answer to repair the timelines? He didn't listen when Lila asked, as his eyes were training on the purple-haired girl who looked ahead. 

Bumping into something the case opened and showed his missing arm and tattoo on his chest, "This is what you have coming," he said. 

"Listen to me, you ass. I have no idea what you told Birdy here, but I just spend the last 20 days running around saving the world from apocalypses, only to keep trying to save the world. My wife die at the hands of my adoptive father. I'm stuck in a teen body, hormones raging," he muttered angrily at the old man, "And all I wanna do is go out and buy a 1970's Corvette Stingray."

"Five I'd take it easy on the old man," Phoenix tried to say calmly, moving her hand to his shoulder. 

But his crazy eyes blared at her, "Bird this is between me and myself, it's bad enough you look like my wife, so shut up," he hissed and look back at the man, "Now, this Kugelblitz, it is not some tiny leak that we can simply fix by patching a couple of pinholes. It is a giant trash compactor that is grinding up the universe and consuming it whole," he continued to slowly hiss into the face of Older Five, "So tell me..how do you stop it!" he pushed out harshly. 

Older Five paused and looked over to Pheonix, the girl with the circular glasses covering her eyes, "Whatever you do," he began but choked for a minute, "don't save the world," he finished his eyes rolling to the back of his head. 

The purple-haired girl clicked her tongue, "Well his heartrate is gone, I'm assuming he's dead?" 

But that obviously didn't register with the teen beside her, "Five!" How do I fix this?!" he yelled hoping that the man wasn't actually dead. 

"Again, no heartbeat, I have extremely good hearing, I would know," she added with a huff. 

The teen had a confused look on his face, he didn't know what to feel at the moment. Everything about what was happening felt like a lie. This couldn't be happening, he was supposed to fix the timeline, and get his wife back. Not just for himself but for all of his family as well. 

Sighing and shaking his head at the dead man, he glanced at the woman in the room, "Can I have the room?" 

Phoenix frowned, "I don't really think it's a good idea—" 

The teen closed his eyes, "Bird, please, just listen to me this once," he asked looking in her general direction. 

The girl scoffed and waved her hand, "I'm leaving on my own accord, not because you told me to," she added grabbing Lila's hand on the way out. 

But as she stepped out her head began to throb. Letting out a sharp breath she fell to the floor the ground shaking and trembling as she did. 

Her surroundings all shifted and she saw herself younger self by the ocean.  In her old school uniform, and behind her stood a tall man in a suit. 

[sidmjkgc]

Because I keep reading comments on how Sylvie is a bitch, too harsh, too cold, too selfish, too mean to everyone, how she doesn't care about Loki or anyone else... I decided to write this.

It's around 3k words of character study, with a bit of speculation here and there, and it's basically:

The Loki series, from Sylvie's point of view.

She is born in Asgard, she's a princess, heir to the throne. At some point in her early childhood her parents tell her she is adopted, she is not actually Asgardian, she is a Jotun. We don't know if in her timeline Frost Giants are seen as monsters like in Loki's one: maybe that experience was traumatic for her, or maybe not.

One day she is playing with her toys, all alone, and a door opens and some guards come out to grab her and kidnap her. She doesn't know where she is, what is this place: it's a scary place where soldiers take prisoners, hurt them, dehumanise them. Prisoners have to go through a procedure where they get scanned, dressed in a uniform complete with a collar, they have to sign some documents and then have to face a trial, where they are all judged as guilty no matter what, and then pruned. Sylvie is a child, she is scared, she doesn't even know why this is happening, where is her family, her home. She doesn't want to die, so she bits the guard that is stil holding her arm and steals a tempad to run away.

Where does she go? We don't know. Maybe she tries to go back home, her timeline, but has to run away again as soon as the minutemen come for her. Maybe she tries other timelines, causing multiple nexus events during the process. She has to constantly be on the run, hide, eat roadkills to survive.

Probably at this point she changes her name. Maybe being Loki is what causes the nexus events. Maybe if she was called something else, like Sylvie, the minutemen will stop chasing after her. But they don't. They keep coming. And she has to flee again.

One day she stumbles on a timeline that is about to get destroyed by an apocalypse of some sort, and no door opens, no minutemen come. She figures it out: hiding in apocalypses is the trick to survive. So she starts looking for disasters and dying worlds, places that are about to disappear, places where she can eat something, sleep a few hours, maybe have a shower and find some clothes, places where people are about to die, where no one makes it out alive but her, walking out a golden door just in time.

Sylvie can't make real connections there, she can't make friends, find love, have a family. Sure she can spend a few hours talking to people, learning her magic, maybe test it on them. She can live through their memories, listen to their cries and weeping stories while the world around them crumbles. That is all she will ever have: watching scared people crying and being in pain, a world after another being destroyed, annihilated. She was a princess and now she's a fugitive, jumping from apocalypse to apocalypse. And she still doesn't know why, they never even cared to explain to her what caused her nexus event, what she did wrong, maybe being born was a mistake? Maybe she was never supposed to exist.

So she makes a plan: destroy the organisation that took her life, that put her there. She starts to create nexus events on purpose, to take their equipment, steal as many reset charges as possible to bomb the timeline and cause so many nexus events all at once they won't be able to find her, so she can go to whoever is in charge and ask them why and kill them, took their life like they did to her.

Sylvie finally kidnaps a minutemen and enchants her to see her memories, to interrogate her and find where to actually go. And that's when this idiot comes, this Loki from another reality, and he thinks it's about him, as if she had the time. And he fights her, steals her tempad and brings her to the worst apocalypse ever. And now they are stuck there until they find a way to recharge the tempad before the end of the world. The idiot, this Loki, is annoying, but charming. They have so much in common, he is the closest thing she has to her home, to her past life, to her family that she can now barely remember. Anyway, he's a clown, he gets drunk, he destroys her mission once again, and also the tempad in the process. But he tries to offer a solution to escape the planet, although that doesn't work out.

After all these years living in dying worlds, watching people die before her eyes without an escape, her turn has come. Sylvie understands their fears, their sadness, their desperation, how those apparently meaningless last connections are actually really deep. She has no way to escape this time, she watches as the meteors crash down, but she is not alone, she has someone besides her, she has found her connection, and it cuts her deep like a dagger.

And then two doors open, minutemen walk out, grab them, bring them to the TVA, that scary place. She's alone again, waiting to be interrogated, probably some torture too, she needs to escape again, and then a minuteman walks in and asks her to enchants her, and she does. And this person believes her, wants to help her.

Renslayer, the woman who kidnapped her when she was a child, comes to collect her, to bring her in front of the Time Keepers to kill her. And when Sylvie asks her about her nexus event, she says she doesn't remember, as if it was never important, as if Sylvie is just a casualty, just another day in the office. Even the Time Keepers don't answer, they don't care. She wants to destroy them, and she does, with the help of Loki and the soldier, but they are just robots, dummies, smoke and mirror.

Sylvie is defeated at this point, tired, sad. Everything she did in her life, every part of the mission that led her to this, means nothing, just like the severed head at her feet. And then Loki is about to tell her something, and he gets killed right in front of her eyes. It's Renslayer who killed him, and Sylvie now is mad, oh real mad, and she demands answers, wants to know who is in charge and why all of this is happening. The woman in front of her keeps stalling with the help of a talking clock, but she does say something useful: Loki is still alive, he was sent at the End of Time. Maybe she can find Loki and finish the mission with his help. She prunes herself to find out, the minutemen won't have this satisfaction.

In the Void she finds a monster made of smoke that is guarding something important. She also finds the man who was working on her case, he says he wants to help her. She then finds Loki, and another bunch of Lokis, and they make a plan: enchant the monster, find whoever is in charge on the other side.

There is one problem though: Sylvie knows that Lokis, by nature, are not trustworthy, she is one after all. But this Loki assures her he will not betray her, he will be by her side. And she trusts him.

The plan goes through, they have finally found who is in charge. And he's slimy, deceiving, cunning, a devil. He tells them that this was his plan all along, that he paved the way for both of them, so they could take his place in running this machine that destroyed her life. Or they could kill him and wait for whoever variants of himself comes next, some of them are very dangerous. Sylvie doesn't need to think about it: she wants him gone, dead, she has been wanting to pierce through his heart since she was a child, she is dead set on this. Nobody, nobody, should never ever decide on someone's fate, someone's destiny, someone's life ever again. She's never got free will, she's going to give free will to everyone.

But Loki stops her, tells her to wait. He wants a seat, he wants control, he wants power, he says he wants her to be okay. How did she fall for it? Why did she trust him in the first place? She won't let him stop her, she has to push him away before she does something stupid. She kisses him goodbye and kicks him through a timedoor, even if it breaks her heart.

And then she is alone with He Who Remains, with the man in charge, with the man behind the curtains. And he doesn't resist, doesn't beg for his life, doesn't plead. He takes the knife in the heart and tells her they will see each other soon.

Sylvie is alone, her lifelong mission is over, done, complete, there’s nothing more to do. The man who put her there, who changed the course of her life forever, is now gone, dead, he's just a corpse sitting in front of her. She has waited for this moment her entire life, dreamed about it, and now she just feels tired, empty, alone, defeated. She falls on the floor and cries. He was right, others will come. Loki was right, and now he's gone. She can't admit that, she's too proud. She makes a new plan, a new mission: she survived all these years on the run, she can keep doing it, even if something worse than him comes, and she will kill every variant that will set foot on the timeline.

She grabs the advanced tempad and sets some coordinates for a branched timeline: Broxton, 1982. She finds a place to eat, she turns around to check the place, the vibe, the imminent destruction that has always been there... And she doesn't find it. People here are laughing, eating, chatting away, everyone is relaxed, the tornado sirens aren't blasting off, there isn't smoke from a fire, the sky is clear with no clouds or meteors, there is no imminent death, she is safe. For the first time since that day in Asgard, she can take her guard down, relax, stay.

And she does stay. She lets her hair grow, she finds a place to sleep and call home, a car to drive around, she even finds a job and she's good at it. She makes friends, she can have hobbies now, she can finally live. And if anything comes, if a variant pops up on the timeline she will take care of it. But as of now, nothing has happened: no threat, no death, nothing. The branches are not dying, she is living.

It's almost been a year, she's at her job, serving customers like every day, she's fine, her past feels like a dream now, a memory. And then Loki walks in, and he's with Mobius and a prisoner, and her past crashes through her. They talk, but Loki can only talk about the TVA, about the impending doom, about destruction, and she's done, she's tired, she doesn't care anymore, she has been through this all of her life and for once she wants to step away, be safe, be happy. In fact, she will kill anyone who might come for her, anyone who might take away her new life.

And then the prisoner says the entire timeline will die. Of course it's the TVA itself, bombing every branched timeline like they always do, and she cannot allow it, she has to stop it before it happens. So she helps Loki and his friend, she goes there with them, and then follows them to the TVA where she can see on the screen all the branches dying. The TVA is the problem, it's rotten, broken, there is no way to repair it, it must be burned into the ground before something worse happens.

She goes back home, but it doesn't feel the same. It's not safe anymore, the branch might disappear anytime, a variant might pop up anytime, her friends might die anytime. It's bittersweet, it looks safe but her survival instinct has kicked in once again.

And then a variant does pop up, a variant of He Who Remains is on the timeline, and she has to stop him before he does something dangerous. And of course Loki is there, between her and the variant, trying to stop her once again, and he seems able to talk only about the TVA, like it's the only thing on his mind. They fight, she has the upper hand this time, and she's dead set on killing the variant. But he begs, he pleads for his life, he just wants to make his own choices. And this is not like the one she killed before, this one looks different, less dangerous, more human. She spares him. She trusts Loki will do the right thing.

Renslayer is also there, and she doesn't beg for her life, she just tells her to kill her there and now, like He Who Remains did back at the End of Time. Sylvie has dreamed about killing Renslayer so many times it became an unhealthy obsession. She did something similar for the man in charge of her destiny and life, and what good did it do killing him? Nothing, really, it just left her drained. She opens a timedoor to the End of Time and kicks her in.

However, a variant of He Who Remains is still out there, she has to keep an eye on him, so she goes to the TVA. Loki was right, the timeline is imploding, the Temporal Loom is not working anymore, and this variant might be actually helpful. They have to do something now, quick, work on it.

That's when Mobius suggests to take it slow, to relax, to sit down and eat some pie. Branches are dying, time is imploding, and he just wants to eat a cake. Of course, to him this is nothing, he doesn't have friends on the timeline, a family, a home. Or maybe he has but doesn't want to know. How selfish of him to just be ignorant about it, to just look the other away. It really is just another day in the office for him, isn't it?

Of all the places she could storm off, of course she ends up in fucking pie land. Loki follows her, talks to her. He tells her that he asked for her help and she ran away, but she's here now, trying to do something, isn't she? It's not just because she couldn't kill the variant, he begged for his life, maybe she's turning soft, that would be a problem because soft gets you killed. She learned that all those years on the run, jumping between apocalypses. Loki tells her that being soft is not a weakness, it can actually make you stronger in the long run. He knows from his brother, and he knows from his new friends at the TVA.

She's still not really sure about it, about any of this, she wants to know how this will work, what are they going to do with the variant and all this place. And what does he suggest? To replace He Who Remains, to take people from the timeline when it's convenient and then put them back, monitor them, just like another TVA. It's like playing God.

Eventually, she follows him. She has no other choice than to help him and his friends to repair the Temporal Loom, so she can get back to her life on the timeline, to her friends. But even after saving the variant from Renslayer, the variant becomes spaghetti and the Temporal Loom explodes right in front of her, a burning bright light. She's fast enough to get away with the advanced tempad on her wrist, or maybe she thinks she did but she just appeared back on what has become her branch.

Everything looks the same for a while, at least that's what she tells herself, even though she sees stuff disappear from time to time, turn into spaghetti in the corner of her eye. And then Loki is there, again, and he asks for her help, again. He calls her selfish, because apparently it's selfish to want a life, to want to live on the timeline, to not want to die. She's been running all of her life and she can finally rest, she might be selfish for this but what's wrong with wanting something? What's selfish about wanting to live? And what's his motive anyway? Why is he desperately trying to bring back the TVA? Is it only to restore time? He wants his friends back, he doesn't want to be alone.

Yeah, Sylvie understands that. She had a life before all of this, she had a family, friends, a home. And then she didn't anymore. For a long time of her life, she was alone, nowhere to stay for more than a few hours, no friends or even an acquaintance. Loki was the first one she could call a friend, but then he betrayed her and came back only to ask her for help or talk about the TVA. And now he is doing it again, and now he's also kidnapping his friends from their timelines, from their life, because he doesn't want to be alone. That's selfish. He should just let go, write his own story, his own destiny.

She leaves him there, she needs to unwind all these thoughts swimming in her head, all this sadness. She goes to the record store, some music might help her calm down. She's listening to a song while she ears her friend cry out her name, she turns around and he's becoming spaghetti, everything is becoming spaghetti, the lp she was listening to is disappearing in front of her, the branch is just a giant pile of spaghetti now. Sylvie does what she knows best: open a timedoor and walk away from the apocalypse, just as she did before, all her entire life.

She is not safe anymore, Loki was right, the branches are all dying, everything is falling apart, turning into spaghetti. She runs to him, she doesn't know what to do, she warns him, she asks for help, but it's too late: this branch is also dying, people are turning into spaghetti in front of her, one after the other, just strings floating in the air. She can't use the tempad, there's nowhere left to go. She looks at Loki and feels her body become strings, floats away.

And then she's back. Loki is in front of her, the strings are floating in the air next to her, she looks at Loki, there's nowhere left to go.

And then she walks out the timedoor, tell them that everything is falling apart, the branches are dying, they have to do something. And Loki tells them he did it, he learned how to control the time slipping, he can do it, he can rewrite the story.

And then they are back in the TVA.

[herrscherrofyatta]

hi i was the one who asked you for the amber x herrscher!gn!reader and i had a long way to found you again because my dumbass didnt follow you back than which im very sorry about. And you did amazing with the request and i saw that your still open so if its not a problem could i ask for a continuation of said amber x herrscher!reader like they defeated the honkai or something or they made a family somehow XD

I'm glad you liked it! I was kinda hoping to write more about them so I'm glad you want a continuation! I'm definitely going to write like a different version of this since the new chapter came out and it gives me ideas lol! Hope you enjoy!!!

A month or two had passed since Otto Apocalypse succeeded in his plan of changing the past so Kallen Kaslana could live even if it didn't change anything in this timeline.

You wondered if in other timelines would you and Amber be together like you two are right now, hand in hand as you two stroll around the Hyperion on your break time.

Things were calm, something you weren't quite used to since you always had to move from place to place to prevent yourself from being captured for simply being a herrscher.

"How are you feeling from the training with Kiana and Bronya?" Amber asks as you two pass by a couple of your co-workers.

"A bit sore but nothing I can't handle," you reply as you two turn a corner only to be met with a scene of Theresa holding something in her arms, clearly stressed as you two approach her.

"Theresa? Is something wrong?" You ask, making her jump as she looks back.

Her eyes glance down at her arms before showing what was the cause, to you and Amber's surprise it was a baby that looked around to be a couple weeks old at best.

She begins to explain that someone had left this poor baby just outside the ship and that a couple of valkyries found the poor child out during their shift.

"We can conduct an investigation to find the mother and return the baby...." You suggest to Theresa as Amber takes a closer look at the sleeping baby wrapped around in the blanket before moving around a bit, seemingly wanting to start crying.

"I'm good at finding parents of lost kids back when I was in the city." Theresa thinks to herself, taking your words into mind. "I can gather some information in town to find the parent, it shouldn't take long."

The loud crying of the baby startles you and Theresa, "he's been crying non-stop," she sighs as Amber gestures her to hand over the baby which she did.

Blinking at the sight of Amber rocking the baby in her arms trying to calm him down, you smile a bit before she looks up at both of you, the baby cries a bit quieter but still there. "He's hungry, I don't think we have any formula on board."

"I'll head to town and buy some there while finding anything about his parents." You say, Theresa agrees and you prepare to leave, giving Amber a quick kiss on her cheek before leaving the ship.

Theresa looks at Amber a bit amused, "you know a lot about taking care of babies," the taller white haired woman looks at the baby before responding.

"I've seen (Y/n) take care of crying lost children before in the city, so I thought I should know what to do if a lost child stumbled in my path."

Theresa smiles, "then I'll leave him to you. Any problems you know where to find me."

Amber nods, "of course."

The day goes by rather slowly, it was only until the sun was setting had you finally returned. Carrying a bag in one hand, a stoic look on your face, walking at such a slow pace towards the Hyperion.

The events of today were no different from ones you have seen and experienced in the past but still, they left your heart heavy in the end.

'Please....take of him....take of my son.'

Closing your eyes at those words, your brows furrow as you let out a sigh.

'....give him a future I cannot give him....please.'

Walking through the corridors, you pause when you finally arrive at the door of Amber's room. You knew she would be here, taking care of that poor child. Preparing yourself, you put on a smile as the doors open.

Amber looks up as you walk in, "I got food for him." You hold up the bag, "luckily a vendor was selling formulas. I brought enough for the kid."

Setting the bag in the small table in the corner, you turn around to be met with Amber standing there, her eyes glancing down at your coat, "you have blood on your coat, are you hurt?" She asks, tilting her head to the head when she looks up at you.

"I'm fine," you lie, "some guy was starting a fight, this is his blood. Don't worry, I'll wash it off later."

You say, smiling at her, she eyes you, before the baby that was sleeping finally woke up, demanding for food.

Amber quickly returned her attention to the crying baby as you left the room with a can of formula, heading to the cafeteria area the ship had.

While waiting for the machine to do it's job, you stand there in deep thought, not noticing Theresa seeing you and walking over.

"You're back, did you find anything?"

You shake your head, back facing her as you speak, "found the mother, beaten to death, she said her last wishes to me."

"and the father?"

Your hand turned into a fist, feeling angry just thinking about that sorry excuse of a dad.

"I beat the shit out of him, you could say I placed judgment upon him." You sigh, crossing your arms, "he was an abusive man, if the mother had not brought the kid, who knows he would've done."

Theresa gives you a pity look, you seem kinda shaken up about the whole thing, "did...." she doesn't finish her sentence, the look on your face is enough when you turn around, bottle in hand.

Instead, you give her a tight smile, "I'll be going now. We can talk about it more in detail tomorrow."

Arriving back to Amber, you hand her the bottle as you lean against the wall, watching as the baby sucked on the warm bottle of milk.

"I didn't find anything," you began, Amber looks at you, "but that doesn't mean the mother just tossed him away for no reason."

"why do you think that?"

Your gaze shifts downwards, "...just a hunch, just look how good he was taken care of till now." The white haired woman looks at the baby who gives her a smile. "He was loved until the end."

She smiles, caressing his head gently, "I see."

For the next few days, the two of you took care of the nameless baby until Theresa voiced out that you two should adopt him, seeing how you two warmed up to him.

Amber was hesitant at first while you remained stoic but went along with what she wanted to do. In the end, she decided to take him in so now you guys have a little family.

"What should we name him?" Amber asks, changing his diaper as you laid in the bed with your eyes closed. Remembering his mother's last words to you, "I think...we should name him, 'Yasu'. It means quiet and it suits him well, he's an awfully quiet baby, hardly gives us any trouble." You point out.

Feeling the bed dip to your right, you open one eye, Amber holding Yasu, "alright, 'Yasu' it is."

Sighing, you smile, "looks like I have to put in double the effort to protect my family." You comment, missing the way Amber's face flush at your words.

This idea with the new chapter in game works so well, the angst potential this has....

Masterlist

[lovinggreeniehours]

❤️💚🩵💜 with five? :D (@comfortingstars)

YAYY FIVE STUFF YAY (<– literally did a jump as i saw this)

❤️ how did they meet? was it love at first sight, immediate enemies, or something in between?

HEHE. HEHEHE

ehem im normal about pre relationship arifive i swear

okay um. first important information you need to know is that five can time travel! his power revolves around manipulation of time and space, but he hasn't had the chance to delve into that properly

so five ran away from home and time traveled forward to the future and found himself in 2019, aka the end of the world! and five is ultimately trapped there because he doesn't know the coordinates to travel backwards in time 😭 no he didn't think that through at all

so arifive met in the apocalypse. ari's power essentially doesn't let him die, and he can regenerate any damage his body takes no matter how bad it is. and that's how he survived the world burning down long enough to meet five :)

(ari's account looks a little different though. the thing about five and his family is that they're all superheroes, and essentially celebrities. they even have fictional character counterparts in the form of comic book characters. so. let's just say pre-apocalypse arion had a very clear favorite)

💚 do they both realize they have a crush early on, or does it take them forever to realize?

five is a blockhead so he just. forgot that was an option. he doesn't like calling it a crush anyway 😭 i guess it took him a while to register that he cared. but then after a few hours maximum of agonizing about it, he accepted it rather quickly. five doesn't like dwelling on things, so he's quick to just move on and adapt

as stated before, ari had like. a raging celebrity crush-ish on five before the apocalypse so the first few days were like. the most embarrassing moments of his life compiled lol um. he definitely knew he liked five, but it took him a bit to get over the fact that five was much more of an asshole than he thought he'd be 😭

🩵 do they both act different once they realize they’re falling for the other? maybe stuttering or fidgeting or daydreaming more often?

ari is just coping here okay 🫡 rip guy. f/o turned real. he's a bitch and you want to kick him sometimes. you still like him though. what now. i'd say he's doing fine. but five really doesn't understand how or why this guy seems so intent on helping him?? like okay?? weirdo (😭)

five discovered he had feelings and then confessed like 2 hours after that so yeah! i guess there was a change!! i guess!! i don't think i can imagine them changing so suddenly because they both affect each other so much over a gradual course of time though

💜 how do they confess? is it a grand gesture or in a more mundane moment?

something like both? maybe? it doesn't really look like a grand gesture to me, even though it probably is. it's just that the way they do it is really soft and quiet and all that,,ww

it's a culmination of their main conflict: five might have to leave him behind one day to return to the past and stop the end of the world. since arion would be considered an anomaly in the timeline, there might be consequences if they stayed together

the day five realizes that he just can't do that is the first time he sees ari having to heal from a major injury (he shielded five from an explosion). he won't die, he knows. but for a moment, he just wondered. what if. for a moment he tried imagining a world without him, and then that was it. he couldn't do that. so he told him. immediately. there wasn't really anything special about it. they just talked. like they always do. arion had his doubts at first. the last thing he wanted to do was cause five trouble (he's been trying to keep him alive all this time already, he cant let that go to waste) but if there was anything five was good at, it was proving people wrong. so if arion thought five was just going to leave him all alone in some barren wasteland like he wasn't worth a damn, then. well, i guess he was wrong? :')

[thenightmareofyourdrems]

                   ˜”*°•.       Exhaustion .   Saving  a  world  that  didn’t  want  to  be  saved ,  jumping  from  one  timeline  to  the  other  only  to  condemn  it  to  destruction .  What  if  this  was  their  fault ?  What  if  their  mere  presence  was  the  reason  behind  the  death  of  billions ?  It  was  possible .  However,  how  could  one  save  the  world  while  being  the  problem  in  the  first  place ?  ❝ I  don’t  know . ❞  Was  his  mere  response .  Did  he  think  he  liked  it  any  better ?  That  he  didn’t  feel  bad  for  making  them  start  all  over  again ?  He  hated  it .  However,  he  couldn’t  find  a  better  option .   ❝ I  don’t  know  what’s  causing  it  either .  However,  indeed,  it  is  probably  us  again .  Either  directly  or  indirectly. ❞ 

He  trusted  them .  Perhaps  he  didn’t  show  it  enough,  however  he  counted  this  family  as  a  team .  He  wanted  them  by  his  side,  wanted  to  feel  like  he  wasn’t  a  total  outsider .  He  was  still  responsible ,  though .  He was  the  one  with  the  most  knowledge,   most  experience  with  timelines  and  Apocalypses .  He  was  older  than  all  of  them  too  -  and  perhaps  somewhat  responsible  for  dragging  them  into  one  timeline  after  the  other  every  few  years .

He  didn’t  want  to  shout.  Didn’t  want  to  participate  in  another  dispute .  In  the  end,  everyone  in  this  family  was  tired  -  and  it  was  reasonable  really .  Countless  were  the  scornful  remarks  reaching  the  tip  of  his  tongue ,  however  where  would  that  lead  them ?  To  more  arguments ?  To  more  dead-ends ?   ❝ What  do  you  want  me  to  do  then ?  My  ways  have  obviously  failed,  so  what  would  your  ways  have  been ? ❞  And  as  abrupt  as  his  tone  might’ve  sounded,  he  meant  it .  If  his  siblings  could  figure out  a  better  solution  than  constant  fleeing,  then  he  was  going  to  accept  it . 

Diego clenched his jaw, the familiar tightness in his chest flaring up at the words. He hated this—hated the feeling of helplessness that came with the knowledge that everything could fall apart again, that no matter how hard they fought, it never seemed to be enough. But more than that, he hated how Five always seemed to carry the weight of it all like it was his burden alone.

“Of course, the timeline’s unstable,” Diego muttered, pulling his wrist free from Five’s grip. He ran a hand through his hair, the frustration evident in every movement. “And let me guess, it’s somehow our fault again, right? We can’t just have a life without everything going to hell.”

He let out a sharp breath, trying to rein in the anger that simmered just beneath the surface. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Five—he did, more than he cared to admit. But the constant cycle of disaster and the nagging feeling of impending doom were taking their toll. They were all tired, but it always seemed like Five bore the brunt of it, and Diego wasn’t sure if that was fair. Hell, he knew it wasn’t.

“What are we supposed to do, huh? Run again? Jump into another timeline where we’re just going to screw things up even more? We’ve tried fighting it, tried fixing it, and look where that’s gotten us." he threw his arms in frustration.

“And you—” Diego pointed at Five, though there was more exhaustion than anger in his gesture now. “You act like it’s all on you, like you’re the only one who has to deal with this crap. But guess what? We’re all in this mess together! Maybe if you stopped trying to shoulder the whole damn world on your own, we could actually get somewhere.”

[paperpocalypse]

red.

50 Wordless Ways to Say “I Love You”: 20. Washing their back/hair in the shower.

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x Reader 

Word Count: 1,662 words

Warning: Implied/referenced murder

[A/N: No shower, just sticking Five’s head underneath a sink faucet. Also Villain!AU :)]

It really was too bad.

You had liked Elliott – honestly, you did, and you don’t like a lot of people. Sure, he was ridiculously paranoid, and his Jell-O molds boasted flavors that could alter the timeline all by themselves. But he had been a nice man, a harmless man, and you don’t like killing nice, harmless men unless you have to. Personally, anyway.

If only he had been cooperative for a few more hours …!

“What a shame,” you murmur, tucking the last corner of the blanket underneath his head. At least taking a bullet to the heart was almost as quick as being incinerated by a nuclear missile. Somewhat. In any case, you think to yourself as you stand up, he’s as good as gone; Diego and Luther will probably want to bury him once they get back. Societal convention, and all that.

“Anybody still here?”

(Speak of the devils and they will appear –)

“In here,” you call out, smoothing out your clothes and hurrying into the kitchen before the two brothers – mainly Diego – can make their own conclusions about the living room. As expected, they greet you with suspicious frowns as you come to a stop in front of them.

“What’s going on?” Diego demands.

“Hello to you, too,” you reply lightly. The man only narrows his eyes, and you scratch the back of your head, absently wondering if he does, in fact, like you enough not to turn you into a knife block. “So … things got a bit out of hand with Elliott while you guys were out.”

“What do you mean?” Luther asks.

You shrug. “I had no choice.”

“No choice?”

Diego’s jaw clenches, and he pushes past you towards the living room. “What did you do to him?”

“What he would’ve done to me if I hadn’t shot him first,” you reply evenly. You linger on the boundary between the kitchen and the living room, staying a respectful distance away as they stare down at the covered body. “If it makes it any better, it was quick. I didn’t torture him or anything like that. Not that I know how to.”

“Lucky for him,” Diego retorts. Nevertheless, his expression is calmer that you thought it’d be, and it puts you less on edge. It’s obvious that he’s still upset about it, however. “At least he didn’t suffer too much.”

“Yeah. He didn’t have much time left, anyway.”

The two brothers nod reluctantly, glancing at each other and then down at the body. You cross your arms, fingers brushing the hand-sized weapon just above your hip as Diego turns and bumps past you towards the door again. Probably to find a shovel. Luther, the big old softie, lifts Elliott from the red-leather sofa where you had wrapped him up.

He moves toward the front door as well but stops in front of you, uncertain. “You wanna …?” he starts, motioning the body towards you slightly.

You shake your head. “You two should do it. I already did my part.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I know you got along with him pretty well, and –”

You cut his rambling off with a pat to the back, ushering him along – if you look at the Elliott-shaped cargo in his arms any longer, you might actually start feeling guilty. “I’m one hundred percent positive. Just hurry up, yeah?”

He blinks down at you, then nods. “Okay. Just – come down if you change your mind.”

“Sure thing.”

With that, the hulk of a man wanders away with Elliott, and you walk over to the now vacant couch. Sitting down, you press your palms down into the leather. Is it still slightly warm? You resist the thought of standing back up and lean into the backrest instead. Jesus, you’re getting soft. He was expendable. There’s a thousand more Elliotts out there in a thousand more timelines, anyway.

Inhaling deeply, you take your pistol out. The barrel has, of course, cooled down by now, and you inspect it with careful fingers. But before you can take aim at one of the UFOs tacked onto the far wall, you hear a sound downstairs.

“Five?”

His footsteps are nimbler than usual as he climbs up the stairs. You put the pistol down and push yourself out of your seat, blinking in surprise as the teenage, bloodstained face of your partner comes into view. Everything about him is bloodstained, actually.

Save for the black suitcase gripped like a lifeline in his hand.

“So that’s where you disappeared to?” you exclaim, immediately taking the suitcase from Five and placing it on the coffee table as you shepherd him to the bathroom. “A killing spree without me? I had to settle for the conspiracy man.”

“You did it already?”

“It was in self-defense.”

Five scoffs lightly, shedding his jacket and leaving it on a chair as the two of you walk through the kitchen. “I’m sure it was.”

“It’s true! I mean –” pushing the bathroom door open, you consider, “fine, I got a little stir crazy while everyone was gone. But I didn’t think he’d pull the rifle on me.” You turn on the sink and feel the water run through your fingers, cold and then warm. Perfect. “But enough about me. Whose blood did you bathe in?”

Five loosens his tie. “The board’s,” he tells you.

He keeps his expression professional, but there’s no mistaking the pride just begging to surface in his tone. You raise an eyebrow and hum, tugging him closer to the sink by his tie.

“Impressive. But there’s more, isn’t there?” you guess, trying not to sound like an eager child. Your eyes rove over his profile. “Here, let me wash your hair. It’s getting crusty.”

He rolls his eyes but leans over the sink nevertheless, grunting a bit when you push his head underneath the faucet. Pink water streams down onto the white porcelain and into the drain. As you lather up a bar of soap and begin scrubbing his hair, he speaks, his voice somewhat muffled by the lip of the sink. “I offed the Handler, if that’s what you’re asking.”

A grin spreads across your face. You rinse the last of the bubbles from Five’s hair. “It was.”

“You sound happy.”

“I’m ecstatic.” Running your fingers over his hair one last time, you force your hand off to grab a towel. “Almost everything’s in place now, isn’t it?”

“All there’s left to do is reset the suitcase, have Vanya blow up something next to JFK, and then all of us can head to Commission headquarters.” Removing his head from underneath the faucet, Five holds out a hand and you place the towel in it. “Smooth sailing from there.”

“Well, I do love a good boat ride.”

He huffs out a chuckle as he finishes drying his hair, running the towel under the water again. Your heart turns soft and goopy when his eyes dart to meet yours knowingly, just for a split second, before he wrings the towel out to wipe the blood from his face.

It’s a moment you’d like to savor a little longer, but the image of the suitcase in the living room inevitably shakes you out of it.

“Alright, I’ll leave you to it while I work on resetting the suitcase,” you tell him. “Shouldn’t take too long – ten minutes or so. I hope all of your siblings are back by then.”

“Highly doubt it,” you hear him mutter as you head out the door, and you don’t bother to hide a snort. Each one of the Hargreeves – Five included, even though he often acts like he’s above it – has a fondness for wreaking their own special kind of havoc on each timeline. Might as well have some fun before pulling the plug on humanity, after all. Burn your name into the book before it closes.

You slip into Elliott’s bedroom to grab a hangar, then head over to the living room. The suitcase sits innocently where you had left it; you carefully undo the latches and open the case just enough to sneak the hook in. Each one of this particular model has a sweet spot – and you could find it in your sleep. You had helped design the damn thing, after all. Not that your contributions were ever appreciated.

No, Dr. Geraldine Tynnsdale had to be a “true kindred spirit with the vision of the Commission” for the past twenty-five years.

Taking credit for everything.

After some careful prodding, you feel a satisfying click.

“There we go,” you praise the suitcase, withdrawing the hangar and popping the lid open. A sense of adoration fills your chest, replacing your feelings of malice as you stare at the familiar array of knobs and buttons. Beautiful. “Let’s get to work, shall we?”

Just as you thought, it takes less than ten minutes to get everything in order. The bathroom door unlocks just as you finish inputting the coordinates for headquarters, and you look up at Five (who’s now sporting a freshly cleaned uniform, at least for the visible bloodstains) with a self-satisfied smile as he approaches the sofa. Overwhelming pride for a job well done fills your bones; you had missed your projects dearly these past two weeks.

“Ready?” He tilts his head contentedly, hands in his pockets.

“Ready,” you echo, standing up. “I suppose we’ll have to round up your siblings now.”

The flat look on Five’s face makes you snort again, and you pick up the suitcase while placing your other hand in the crook of his elbow, escorting the two of you towards the back door where Luther and Diego had gone. 

Soon, you think, you’ll be free. Free to do whatever you like, make whatever you like, with Five at your side and no one to answer to but yourself. 

A smile graces your face as you squeeze Five’s arm. Whoever said that happy endings don’t exist for people like you?

[sharkneto]

Really random ask but i just thought of something interesting; if the commission exists in Number’s timeline, how would he react if they gave him a job offer?? (before the events of HIT, he has no idea what the commission is)

i just wanna know how number would react to the commission? i imagine he’d consider saying yes for a tour of this Really Cool Time Travel Organization, but at the same time he’d absolutely hate them.

This has been sitting in my inbox for a while (sorry) and it's partly because I'm bad at answering asks and partly because... I never fucking considered this? And it's such a fun and interesting what-if, too! What if Number got recruited by the Commission?

So, the Commission of course exists in Number's timeline - it exists in all timelines - but the canon reason they don't bother Number is 1) apocalypse is still on and 2) when things change enough for his branch to be on their radar, Five is causing them so many problems they don't have resources to divert and fix it and it's a "we'll get to it after we deal with Five" (which they never get a chance to do because Five keeps causing them problems and destroying their resources).

But if the Commission had been smarter, they should have gone to tap Number before he ran into Five again and before they tried blackmailing Five into a contract. It's an obvious solution - they know the kind of stellar work Five can do, and their Five is all jaded and too broken from them leaving him in the apocalypse for too long (oops) to control properly. That's a dud, but maybe this younger version of him is workable - controllable via inexperience rather than destroyed will?

From Number's end, I think he'd be wildly curious and initially interested. Shifting Mirrors Five was a secret agent for years in no small part because he thought it was cool. Time Agent is *even cooler* than secret agent. And he knows about Time! These guys know about Time! He could learn so much! He could be a Time Agent. Before he learned more about it, I think he'd kind of make a plan of "finish my degree with Sarah and then go do this for a bit before coming back and getting my PhD." It's time travel! He doesn't have to miss any time in the real-world, they only want five years, they can't complain that he's putting it off a few months to finish his degree because they can just jump ahead and pick him up then - wins all around.

Where this all falls apart for the Commission is Number has better morals than Five. Five is better at the "a few hundred dead so I can save the world (my family)" rationalization and long game. Number coming in would just be killing people to keep the timeline on its arbitrary track. He doesn't have a "direct" A to B on how this helps him stop the apocalypse (even if the Commission is stringing him along about that). He's pragmatic, he's practical, he fucking hates killing. Any solution that doesn't involve a life being lost, he's going to take it (Marcus only dies by his hand because he misestimated how heavy the dumpster was going to be and didn't have time to recalculate if that was going to be survivable for poor Marcus, he regrets grunts dying in the big living room battle and none are killed by him. In the alternate timeline, Carmichael only dies by his foot because Carmichael just killed Five and Rob and Sarah are in direct danger from him). Number is not going to play their game, is going to look at how they keep the timelines managed and say "that's bullshit".

So you absolutely nailed it - he would absolutely want a tour of the time organization, want to know all about what they're doing and how they do it and think it's so neat --- right up until he learns about Corrections and how their entire operation hinges on incidental murders to keep the timeline neat and orderly to their arbitrary criteria. And then he'd want to destroy them brick by brick.

[liagazed]

𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐬 , 𝐦𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐬 ; 𝒇. 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒈𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒔

summary: five and (y/n) decided to "chat" in the bathroom after coming back from the 1960s timeline.

tags: five x gn!reader. makeout session. kind of fluffy. 15+. implication of smut, but no actual sexual intercourse. takes place in the beginning of season three.

a/n: i wrote this at 5am while sleep deprived, i'm sorry if it's weird

word count: 1.4k

April 3rd. It was the day after coming back to your designated timeline. Well, not exactly.

Either way, you and Five's dysfunctional family needed a break after trying to save the world from coming to an end twice in the span of a month. But mainly you and Five, after enduring years of torture from the spending time– forty five years–  in the apocalypse and the commision. So for the 58 year old teenagers, a break was very well deserved.

Everyone else was sleeping, so Five decided to take you to the bathroom to "chat".

He'd closed the door, locking it, and kissed you softly, and you obviously kissed back. The kiss was sweet and passionate, becoming slower and more heated as Five pressed you against the counter gently. His hands roamed your back and sides, eventually landing on your waist. You'd situated your hands on his shoulders, already moving a hand to fiddle with the hair on the nape of his neck.

Five slowly lowered his hands, positioning them on the back of your thighs as he brought your body closer to his, away from the counter.

"Jump." He mumbled against your lips, and you obliged. You wrapped either of your legs around his waist, Five gripping your thighs a little harsher to hold you tighter and sit you down on the empty space on the counter he had cleared prior to your visit from your own room.

Five pulled away from your lips the slightest bit, admiring you as he did. "Missed you." He flashed you a breathless smirk. 

"We were separated by rooms for a couple of hours, Five." You responded, a hand making its way up to Five's hair, messing with already disheveled hair at the top. 

"That's way too long." Five replied, pressing his lips against yours harsher than before, causing you to be taken aback a little bit, kissing back afterwards. 

"Fuck, you're so perfect, you know that?" Five mumbled against your lips as he tilted his head to the side a little, deepening the kiss, his hands sliding under your shirt to rest on your bare waist.

You let out a muffled moan into Five's mouth, slowly pulling away to retrieve a hand from his neck and bring it to your mouth, covering it in embarrassment. 

"Did you just–" Five asked, his eyebrows furrowing a little. "I might've" you replied, sounding muffled. Five just chuckled in response. "You're cute." Five removed your hand and replaced it with his lips, kissing your cheeks and forehead as well.

"Thanks," you mumbled with a shy smile, a roseate shade dusting your cheeks as you watched Five smile at you, a soft and endearing smile that could melt the hearts of anyone within a hundred feet from here.

Five was quick to bring his lips back to yours shortly after, but more gentle. This time, he let you lead him on, whether to carry on with your session, or to just go to sleep. You obviously wanted more, so kissed back harshly, a devilish grin now being plastered on Five's face, which you could feel against your lips.

Five got carried away, letting his tongue slip into your mouth, causing you to grip onto his hair tighter. He pulled away for a second, catching his breath as he did.

Five didn't hesitate to pull you back in for a kiss as soon as he could. You kissed back with the same amount of pressure he did, causing him to grip your waist tighter and pull himself closer to you. He placed a hand flat on your back under your shirt, rubbing small circles onto your back gently. 

"My pretty baby." He murmured against your lips, your stomach tossing and turning as if it were a gymnast.

Five moved his free hand to rest on your thigh, gripping it slightly as he hovered over you a little. 

Five pulled away slightly and admired you. He watched your every move as you pant in an attempt to catch your breath. 

Five's lips find their way to your jaw, leaving a trail of kisses from there to behind your ear, which he knew was one of your weak spots. "Oh, God, Five." You let out a quiet moan as he smirked against your skin, trailing kisses down your neck, marking the territory as his.

"Y-you're gonna leave marks," you whimpered under him, your hand massaging his scalp as you did, causing him to groan slightly.

"Good. You'd look so pretty with my marks on your neck, sweetheart." Five mumbled into your skin, leaving a deep, crimson bruise on your neck that he soothed with his tongue. He admired his work with a grin, continuing to leave a trail of sloppy kisses down your neck.

You fumbled with the hem of his button-up pyjama shirt as he kissed his way back up your neck, eyes meeting with yours once he was done. 

He placed a hand on your cheek, the other on your waist as he flashed a soft grin again. That damned grin. "I'm glad that since we're officially retired, we can do this now." He said as he leaned forward and planted a kiss on your forehead. "Yeah, me too." You replied, glancing at his lips when you did. Five smirked at that and began to kiss you once more.

Jeez, do you ever get tired?

You kissed Five hard, grabbing his collar to pull him closer. He grabbed your hips and pulled them closer to his own, shifting a little in front of you.

You fumbled with the first button on his shirt, undoing it, along with the second one. Five messed with the waistband of your pants, slightly moving it down. You grinned into Five's mouth, thinking you were about to have the time of your life, until–-

"HEY!" you and Five both got startled with the machine gun knocking at the door. "FIVE, GET OUT, I HAVE TO TAKE A SHIT!" someone yelled. It was Diego. "AND I AIN'T USING NATURE'S BATHROOM!"

"WE'RE BUSY, COME BACK LATER," Five responded as he continued to kiss you slowly, a low, delighted hum being released against your lips.

"We're– IS (Y/N) IN THERE?" Diego asked loudly once again, but this time, you heard groans coming from Klaus and Luther, so you chuckled to yourself as you pulled away from Five's lips. "Yeah, I am." You smiled as you turned your head to face the door, causing Five to pout at you.

"STOP SCREWING, AND GET OUT SO I CAN PISS!" Diego yelled, knocking at the door maniacally again.

"We AREN'T SCREWING!" Five replied. "We were about to," Five smirked at you, "But you interrupted us!" 

"Ew, gross, just get out." Diego retorted in disgust, rattling the door knob.

"Why must you be so loud? It's two am!" you heard Luther let out a muffled groan.

"Let them fuck in the bathroom, use the outside one, it's not all that bad" Klaus replied. "Let them be horndogs!"

"No! They can be horndogs later, I have to shit!" Diego rattled the door knob harder then before.

"Okay, okay, fine, we're going." You aforementioned rapidly, looking Five in the eyes, then his lips, and back to his eyes.

Five's annoyed expression softened once he looked at you. "We can continue this later, my love," he spoke softly, pressing a gentle kiss to your lips.

Five helped you off of the counter, readjusting your clothes after and fixing your hair, along with Five's. You both stood in front of the mirror as you fixed yourselves, Five buttoning his shirt again as you straightened out your clothes, Five sending you a wink as you got composed, causing you to smile and blush.

You unlocked the door and opened it, eyes being met with an unhappy Wish™ version of batman, Diego fuckin' Hargreeves, who had interrupted your time with Five Hargreeves.

"Good morning, pendejo." You said, standing in the doorway as Five stood behind you, wrapping an arm around your waist.

"Yeah, yeah, get out– is that a hickey?" He asked as he pointed to the mark on your neck Five had made. You were quick to cover the mark, Five smirking as you did. 

"Nope, go take your shit." you walked off as you pushed Diego into the bathroom. "It is a hickey." Five whispered with a devilish grin as Diego walked in, shaking his head as he shut the door and locked it.

You and Five walked away from the door frame and stood elsewhere in the room, Five wrapping his arms around your waist and placing his head on your shoulder. "Let's go to sleep, shall we?" He murmured softly against your skin, placing a gentle kiss on your hickey. "We can continue that later, sweetheart." Five whispered into your ear, kissing the shell of it gently, sending shivers down your spine.

"O-okay." You chuckled nervously. ❦︎

a/n pt. 2:

Have a good day idiots, ily <3

- vee ☕

[tempestaurora]

the umbrella academy season four ending? consider yourself fixed and also fuck you for being so shit in the first place

we didn't choose this life, we're just living in it

In a deli somewhere in the spider’s web of subway lines that crisscrossed throughout the multiverse, Five sat down opposite himself. There were fourteen other Fives at the tables, reading newspapers, drinking coffees; another seven behind the counter serving, aprons tied over their suits and hair brushed carefully behind their ears.

The Five in front of him looked identical to the Five that he was. In fact, they all did, like he would forever stall out at twenty and vanish to the trainlines that held the worlds together.

A waiter Five set down a pastrami sandwich and a coffee in front of him; identical offerings to the opposite Five.

Five, the he that was himself, said, “Care to explain all this?”

The Five that sat across the booth replied, “In another timeline, there’s a version of ourself that secretly really wanted to open a deli. It’s free to do it in the subway stations.”

“Huh. And the rest of these chucklefucks?”

Five gestured around the room. “All versions of ourself who have given up.”

He raised his eyebrows, glancing at the Five without the suit jacket and the Five missing an arm. “What, this where all our dreams go to die?”

“Basically,” his doppelgänger replied. “We’re all Fives who realised that there was no way to save the timeline. Not when there are so many. One of us is the version that’ll go on to create the Commission, the rest of us—”

“Sit around on your asses all eternity?”

“Hey, we’ve tried.”

Five rolled his eyes, sipping at his (fairly dogshit) coffee. “Evidently not enough.”

“Is 147,000 times enough for you?”

Five thought back to his family, hiding out in the Manor, the end of the world clawing through the city to get to them. He thought of his seven years with Lila, the temptation that she held and the steadfast refusal to touch it with a fucking barge pole, lest his conscience rip open a hole in his chest for doing something that could directly hurt one of his siblings in a real way. He thought of the fourth apocalypse he’d tried and failed to stop; likely a small amount compared to the Fives in this room.

He wondered if any of them were him, or if they were all from the other timelines. Is that one brooding in the corner just him in six months? Is the one behind the counter making the peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich for a particularly nostalgic version of himself just him in a week’s time?

He eyed the other version of himself, whom he’d seen walking past the train when he’d needed the fucking breather at the end of the world. He would return to more or less the same moment he left; Ben and Jennifer’s conjoined monstrosity stampeding towards them – he just needed the space to think without his siblings yelling and venting and desperately trying to annoy him into thinking up a new apocalypse-diverting plan.

“No,” he said, “it’s not. So tell me what you haven’t tried.”

There was a ledger. Deli Owner Five kept it in the back, and as he pushed his way into the office, he noticed the other Fives looking at him with pity in their eyes. Just another dumb fuck, they must be thinking. An idiot with hope still in his eyes.

The ledger was long, but at least it was alphabetised. It detailed the plans (time jump, kill Viktor, murder Reginald) and the results (Viktor causes the apocalypse, Allison causes the apocalypse, Ben causes the apocalypse). The other Five had been telling the truth when he’d sighed and said, “It’s always us.”

The Hargreeves children always cause the apocalypse, even in the timelines where they’re not adopted by Reginald. The new Hargreeves children do it in those ones – the Sparrows and Phoenixes and Stars and Violins and Griffins; all their associated academies ending the world in increasingly outlandish ways.

He spent a few hours on the ledger before finally eating that pastrami sandwich and then asking if Deli Owner Five had any hard liquor. He did, and Five downed a few fingers of whiskey before straightening his jacket and heading for the door.

“You headed back?” The Five who lured him here asked.

Five opened the door; it chimed. “Sure am.”

“What this time? Going to die with the family? Going to drag them into another doomed timeline? Make them start their lives over from scratch again and miss their families again?”

Five rolled his eyes. “No, dipshit, I’m not.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Five curled his smile into that snarky piece of shit grin he’d perfected over the years. “I’m going to do something not a single Five in 147,000 attempts has tried.”

That got the attention of the diner. Waiter Five asked, “What’s that?”

“I’m going to own up to my mistake and fix it.”

Continue reading on ao3

oh ho ho wrote a fic that fixed it

[queermarzipan]

I have had a headcanon about why Five founded the Commission rattling around in my head since like three days after I watched season 3 and I just sort of integrated it into my thoughts on the show and I was just reminded that ACTUALLY IT'S NOT "COMMON KNOWLEDGE" IT'S NOT CANON IT'S A PERSONAL HEADCANON so here it is

The Five who founded the Commission is not Five. As in, he has had roughly the same life as the Five we know from the show, but they are not the same person, because Old Five did it with the crucial difference of doing it without the Commission. The Commission wasn't a factor in this Five's life, because as we have seen, Time does not work like that. Closed loops that paradoxically set themselves off don't exist. Five travelling back in time was always going to result in him changing what had (from his perspective) already happened, not causing it to happen. So from the opposite perspective, a Five that founded the Commission could not, under any circumstance, have previously encountered the Commission. Because on Five's personal timeline, it didn't exist yet.

(Getting excited about the fact that I now know why the Commission has a Fixed Timeline of its own like Five does — because a Five is there)

So what does this mean?

I think it's safe to assume that the Five who wasn't picked up by the Commission was unsuccessful, the first time around, in preventing the Apocalypse. Apart from the whole issue of him simply Not Knowing Enough, if he'd initially succeeded and gotten his family back, he would have had no reason to ever time travel again, let alone create a time travel organisation to "protect the flow of time", and especially not one that had goals that conflicted with his family's continued living.

So he jumped back to redo — and made the same mistake as before. He went too far back.

Now, do I think he went back to the 1960s, Dallas specifically? No. I think Young Five's jump in the show was affected by the JFK assassination having been the last place he was before he jumped to 2019, and expecting the exact same outcome with different variables is not smart.

BUT. He did take them back to before they were born, AND somehow prevent them from being born in the first place. Whether that's by (roughly) the same series of events in the show (highly improbable) or by talking to Reginald and impressing upon him that it was his fault they ended the world, and to please leave them alone, thereby inadvertently causing Reginald to decide not to release the glowing orbs after all (slightly more likely, but this theory also required some of the miracle babies to exist), or something else, he gets hus siblings back to the changed 2019 to find that he's created a (not yet named) Kugelblitz.

And then Reggie uses the miracle babies to create his perfect universe — and this is the sticking point — killing Five's siblings in the process.

Here we have Five, in a new universe where none of his family exist because their lives were literally used to save the world, without even his powers, and he immediately invents time travel and creates the Commission, an organisation with the end goal of recreating the exact timeline he came from, and by proxy, his family. Only everyone else he brings into it is just fed the "preservation of the timeline" line, because what he's doing is Selfish with a capital S. But also, I might argue, in character. Five taking "do anything to save his family" to the level of "create an organisation of time assassins to recreate his family" is very on-brand.

And when he encounters a younger version of himself — could be 13, could be 63 — he can only tell him "don't save the world", because if he hadn't tried to do that — if he'd just died in the first apocalypse — he might have at least gotten to see his siblings again in the afterlife. Now he can't.

[lyctorism]

rewatching tua s2 and just in awe of the fact that after Five retrieves Viktor in episode 3 and explains the circumstances of Viktor's life and the impending apocalypse there are several astonishing circumstances at play I noticed.

For one, and most significantly, Five has clearly failed to elaborate whatsoever on the fact that he is in fact not fourteen, as he appears, but he is in fact a fifty eight year old man capable of time traveling independently trapped in the body of his fourteen year old self. This is made more evident as Viktor is on the phone with Sissy, explaining he found his younger brother. This is excessively funny, as Viktor is just come to terms with the fact that his "younger" brother is fourteen and yet gives off the disposition of having the wisdom and serious demeanor of a man who has lived countless lifetimes and committed unspeakable acts, unbeknownst to Viktor. And Five just. Does not elaborate. It is simply not important.

For two, and this hurts so excessively: as Five is explaining how the apocalypse happened in the previous timeline before they jumped and were scattered in Dallas, he declines to elaborate exactly what caused the apocalypse. Or rather, who. When Viktor asks what caused the apocalypse, Five says "asteroids", the same that did away with the dinosaurs but worse. He specifically does NOT mention that Viktor induced these asteroids with his powers. He goes out of his way not to. You could argue that Five had the intention of not forcing Viktor into a panic induced spiral that might trigger his powers, or a similar episode to what happened previously (as Five gives as a reason in the episodes following). I would not argue this but I am a simple man. I see vulnerability and my screws loosen a little.

For three, I started thinking about the implications of him not telling Viktor and how Five clearly cares for him. Five is, as we know now more so after s3, a deeply devoted family man. His whole life now has been about loving and saving his family. It's literally his fatal flaw. It made me think. Like Charlie Kelly at the wall with his diagrams and newspaper clippings and connecting red strings. Does Five ever know about the peanut butter sandwiches? Did he ever gain access to the infinite switchboard, or Reginald's surveillance tapes, and steal glimpses at his family's life after he disappeared? Did he see Viktor in the kitchen at night, face flooded by the soft warm light from the kitchen stove, gently spreading peanut butter over white bread and folding them into sandwiches before leaving them on a plate in the middle of the floor? Skittering back to his room before anyone could know. Did he see Diego, in the arms of Mom at night, his tears hidden in her shirt folds but not his sobs? Klaus who tried so desperately to call him from the void at night, cross-legged on his bedroom floor, countless nights before he gave up? Luther who talks to his portrait the years following, who hears the sour disappointment under Reginald's voice. Allison who sees the pain in Viktor's eyes and wonder if hers look the same. Does he know? Does he ever?

[rebelrobin86]

12. Autumn

(Robin)

(Part 2/3, continuing with 2022 storylines from Time Travel and Apocalypse AU.)

Robin and Nancy had been in 2022 for just over a week now. Robin felt so happy in this timeline, she was honestly thriving.

They found Steve and stayed with him. Steve was happier. He currently lived in a house, that felt more homely than his parents house, but still a huge house with enough bedrooms for his many children.

Of course, being 55 years old now, most of his kids had moved away from home. This meant plenty of spare bedrooms, to help his friends needing somewhere to stay.

Steve offered one of his rooms, for Robin and Nancy to stay in, while adjusting to the modern world. He understood their unusual situation and wanted to help them as much as he could.

Robin loved asking Steve many questions about the future, he helped and tried to answer as many questions as he could.

Steve was out at work, leaving Robin and Nancy alone in his house.

Robin walked in to the bedroom and smiled, standing in the doorway watching Nancy do her make up. Robin recognised one of their favourite songs playing from their 2022 playlist.

We fell in love in October - Girl In Red

"We fell in love in October. That's why, I love fall."

Robin walked towards the window, looking out at the Autumn weather. Nancy looked up at Robin, they smiled at each other.

"Looking at the stars, admiring from afar. My girl, my girl, my girl. You will be my girl.

My girl, my girl, my girl."

Nancy played with her hair one last time in the reflection, before standing with Robin.

"You will be my world."

Nancy paused the music.

"Looks so beautiful."

Robin unsure if she heard Nancy right.

"What?"

"The trees, we were looking at."

Nancy smiled.

"I love October, glad that's the same here."

Robin really didn't understand what Nancy could prefer about 1986 to 2022, the fantastic media representation, fascinating modern technology and seeing her best friend Steve so happy.

"Hey Robin, do you want to go for a walk?"

"Yeah, definitely. We could check out the local park for a nice fall walk together."

"That sounds nice."

When they got to the park, walking through the crunchy colorful crisp leaves, watching as the October orange leaves fly around the trees from the breezy autumnal air.

Robin admired the atmosphere, looking down fondly at the conkers, pinecones and leaves, she loved collecting as a child.

Robin felt a soft hand running through her hair with a quiet giggle from Nancy.

"Nance?"

Nancy held a red leaf and showed Robin.

"This was in your hair. I thought you would want me to get it out."

"Thanks."

Nancy gave Robin the leaf to hold. Robin twirled the leaf through their fingers. Robin held Nancy's hand, as she got an idea.

Robin ran happily dragging Nancy with her as they both laughed. Nancy squeeled.

"ROBIN?! What are you-?"

Robin jumped up and down excitedly in the huge pile of colorful leaves.

"Jump, Nancy, It's fun!"

Nancy grabbed Robin's hands, she then thought about it before they both jumped. Leaves flew around the air. Robin mischievously let go of Nancy's hands, Nancy felt this and looked cautiously.

"Don't you dare!"

Robin holding a small pile of leaves threw them at Nancy, causing Nancy to scream.

"That's it!"

Nancy retaliated picking up leaves and throwing them back at Robin, as Robin ran hiding behind a tree, also screaming.

"NO!!!! Nancy!!"

Nancy threw the leaves back at Robin, they screamed and laughed continuing the playful leaf fight, which caused the mess of leaves on their clothes and in their hair.

"This was fun, but we should get home."

Robin surprised to hear Nancy say 'home'.

"Not home! I just meant Steve's, we should get back to Steve's and get cleaned up."

Nancy shook her head embarrassed. Robin took Nancy's hand again, as they continued walking through the park.

"I know. I love fall, should we tag along on Steve's family day tomorrow? Go to the corn maze and pumpkin patch with his kids and grandkids. That sounds insane saying that, Steve's grandkids!"

Robin stopped, feeling guilty as if she broke a quiet agreement to not discuss the future or past, while they were enjoying the present.

Robin thought about the Starbucks they walked past, with a Pumpkin Spice Latte poster in the window.

Robin didn't even know what a Pumpkin Spice Latte was, they had never even seen a Starbucks before, but she wanted to try it with Nancy.

"I'm sorry. Maybe after the walk, you and me could stop by Starbucks and get Pumpkin Spice Lattes?"

"Yeah or maybe hot chocolate at Steve's and a movie?"

"With the mini marshmallows?"

Nancy smiled softly, looking at Robin.

"Of course."

"How can I say no to that? You do make the best hot chocolate, Nancy."