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The first thing that hits them is the horrid wave of nausea that comes with having your body torn apart and reformed within the esoteric vacuum of the space-time continuum.
The second is the feeling of solid ground hitting their feet, and they all clumsily stagger back as the blinding blue aura fades just as abruptly as it had appeared.
“Oh, good God,” Luther grunts, his groan echoed feebly by four others, and he lurches forward to hold himself up on the small table between them. “Wh...what day is it?”
Diego lifts the newspaper close to his face, squinting through the slight darkness. “April 2nd, 2019,” he reads slowly. “Day after the apocalypse.”
“Wait, so we stopped it!”
“My God, it’s over?”
“Did we…” Klaus laughs airily, just about ready to cry. “Did we actually succeed at something?”
Laughter, the first real laughter in years as the weight of imminent doom finally lifts from their chests, and god damn if they don’t deserve to laugh and drink and let go after all the shit they’d been through.
The laughter stops just as quickly as it had come when Vanya asks, soft and unsure, “Five?”
They all pause to glance at him.
Five’s eyes are stretched wide and oddly blank, staring ahead into nothing. He hasn’t said or done a thing since they landed, which is...concerning, seeing as he’d spoken of nothing but stopping the apocalypse ever since he arrived in 2019.
“Why is it so dark?” he finally says, voice far shakier than any of them had ever heard from him.
Diego shoots him a quizzical look, and cranes his neck to peer out from the foyer and into the living room, where rays of daylight are filtering in. “It’s...not. The lights are off, but it’s not dark—” He breaks off as Five stumbles forward, hands gripping the edge of the table until his knuckles turn white.
“Are you okay?” Allison’s hand brushes over Five’s shoulder, and she pulls back abruptly as Five jerks away from the contact with a sharp inhale.
He lifts a hand, brings it up to hover over his face as he blinks rapidly.
“Why can’t I see anything?”
They talk to Grace (not before Diego nearly lifts her in his arms because Holy shit, Mom’s alive, and if any of them sees the tears pricking his eyes they don’t bring it up) and she tells them with the same affectionate smile they all dearly remember that it’s only temporary, nothing he won’t be able to sleep off. She tells them it’s simply from dangerously high levels of stress, and that he needs to rest as much as he can. Of course, there are some other rather concerning details to take into consideration, like how Five consumes ungodly amounts of caffeine with the body of a literal child, or the fact that he does have the body of a literal child, so who knows what other parts of himself he fucked up along the way. But that’s a conversation for another day, and one they’re definitely going to have. What matters is that it’s not permanent, and Five does visibly relax at that.
Luther is the one who ends up volunteering to bring Five to his room, since no one else seems to be in the mood for dealing with a little old man who’s somehow more pissed than usual. Five only relents to being carried because he’s far too exhausted to blink any amount of distance, and because tearing through the fabric of reality requires all of his senses in high function, including sight.
Predictably, Five is not a heavy person, especially not to someone with super strength, so Luther scoops him up with ease, but not before warning him profusely beforehand, because Luther doesn’t exactly want to get shanked right now. Their tallest brother is a large man often unaware of his own strength, but he cradles Five with the same careful caution of holding a frightened cat. Five has to shove down the overwhelming urge to squirm away from the unfamiliarly gentle hold, and from the burning humiliation as he feels several pairs of eyes watching them leave.
“Drop me and I’ll stab you,” is all he hisses to Luther as he clings to him. Luther simply sighs an exasperated “yeah, yeah” in response, but the way protecting arms curl the slightest bit further around his body doesn’t go unnoticed.
Five counts each of the eighteen steps in his head as they ascend the staircase, and counts each of Luther’s heavy footsteps as he makes his way down the corridor. With his sight gone, even if it’s only temporary, he has no way of defending himself or his siblings from outside threats. He draws the layout of the house in his head, marking the doors, the windows, the escape routes—window at the end of the hall, window to the left of his bed—wait, can’t jump from the second floor!—distance of six feet out, fourteen feet down to the sidewalk, people will see but he’d have to take the risk—
He’s pulled back to reality as Luther lowers him to sit upright on the same bed he hasn’t used in over forty-five years, legs dangling off the side. Five lets the hand clinging to the back of Luther’s neck go lax, and they both pull back.
“Do you want to change into your pajamas?”
No. “I don’t care.”
He waits for the sounds of Luther’s retreating footsteps, but they don’t come.
“What?” Five raises an eyebrow in Luther’s general direction, crossing his arms. “Hurry and get out.”
A pause.
“I’ll stay with you,” Luther says quietly, and he hears the sound of a chair scraping against the floor. “Make sure you get enough sleep.”
Christ, if Luther finds any more petty reasons to disagree with him he’ll fucking combust. “I’m not going anywhere, do you need me to make a goddamn pinky promise with you? I don’t need to be monitored.” Five kicks off his shoes, shrugs off his jacket, slips off his tie, fumbles for and yanks the blanket back to prove his point.
“Grace said I should stay with you to make sure you rest,” As always, Luther is a fantastic liar.
Five lets out a snort. “I was literally with you the entire time. Cut the bullshit and get out.”
“Well I think you need to be monitored!” Ah, there it is, the I’m-Number-One voice, which is somehow even more grating to his nerves. “If you decided to run off without telling us again it would be very far from the first time.”
Five doesn’t have the energy to argue any longer—and, begrudgingly, has to admit his younger brother makes a fair point, but he’d sooner rip his tongue out with his own fingers than say that aloud—so he simply flops back against the bed with a loud, drawn-out sigh.
The bed beneath him is...soft, too soft, and for a moment it feels as though he’ll sink right through and suffocate. Beds were hard to find in the apocalypse, after roofs caved in and mattresses burned. Any flat and uncharred—not clean, clean was asking for too much—surface was a bed to him.
Before he can pull the covers over himself, large hands do it for him. He lightly slaps them away.
“I’m not a child,” he snaps, and has to stifle a small yawn immediately after.
“Uh-huh. Go to sleep.”
Five absolutely does not pout, and sharply tugs the blanket around his shoulders and shifts to curl on his side, back facing his brother, and obediently closes his eyes.
Almost immediately, he feels exhaustion grab ahold. The last time he had properly slept was when blood loss forced him into it, and every waking moment since has been fueled by pure adrenaline and excessive caffeine, so when he crashes, he crashes hard.
He lets the sound of book pages turning lull him into unconsciousness.
Number Five is fifteen years old.
He is inhaling fire instead of polluted air, each shallow breath a knife down his throat. There’s a rabid animal clawing wildly through his stomach until it bleeds. The hunger has gone far past a simple nauseating emptiness, instead devouring him from the inside out. Despite the blistering sun, his skin feels terribly cold.
He cannot move, so he does not move. Instead, he curls even tighter on the ground, knees pulled to his chest. He does not cry, either. It’s a waste of energy and fluids. He can’t afford to cry. He has already forgotten how to.
He thinks sleeping would be nice. A break from the hurting, however long or short, would be nice. And he feels oh-so tired, his eyes rolled back in their sockets just to keep his eyelids from falling shut, and on occasion he will forget he’s still conscious.
He knows that if he sleeps, he will die.
He knows that if he dies, he will never see his family again.
He breathes in slowly and holds the air in his still-heaving chest, lifting his head and rolling onto his stomach, digging rough nails into the dry dirt beneath. They are torn and bloodied, caked in flaking crimson, and his arms shake and shake as he drags himself across the ground. The pain of coarse rubble against the open wounds makes him lose his feeble grip.
He continues, even so, one hand in front of the other. There is no destination. All he knows is that he must move, must keep going because if he doesn’t then there’s nothing left.
He can no longer see, or hear, or think.
He wants to sleep.
He wants to die.
He wants to see his family again.
He continues.
Five hears his heaving gasps before he feels them, and bolts upright with a breathless cry.
Even as he snaps his eyes open and stretches them as wide as he can, there’s nothing to see but neverending blackness, no matter how he tries to claw at them he can’t see. He can’t see intact walls nor rubble, blue skies nor ashes, his family (alive) nor his family (dead).
God, God, not again. Not the apocalypse. Anywhere but the apocalypse. Don’t send me back.
He’s cold cold cold, and then he’s warm. It’s too warm, too stifling, so he kicks off the blanket with a wild desperation, and then it’s too cold again. He curls in on himself as tight as he can, gripping his own arms until it hurts.
The shivers never stop—he’s not sure when they started, either—but his body doesn’t listen, his lungs don’t move like he needs them to.
Can’t breathe, can’t breathe because there are ashes in the air, filling the sky and turning the clouds black until he can’t see anything at all. They fill his lungs, burning and searing his throat with every desperate breath—and his eyes burn too, from the smoke and the ashes that never really dissipated until years and years into the apocalypse.
“Lu-Luther—”
He shuffles jerkily back, fingers—not torn, not bloodied—clawing at the sheets, and the world tips upside down. His head hits the floor with a jolt of disorienting pain, wrenching a strangled cry from his throat.
It’s—
—quiet, too quiet, where are the voices? where are the people? where are they where am i?
Luther said he would stay with him. He said he’d be here, and he’s not, because his body—corpse—is buried under his own home and his eyes are shut and his skin is cold and his bloodied hand is still clutching the bloodied eye—
Five feels his powers fizz wildly under his skin as if his own body is trying to warp away from himself. He shudders again, gripping onto the closest thing to him—a chair—and rises unsteadily to his feet.
He needs to jump. He needs to get away. From what he has no idea, but he all he knows is that he needs to get far away, needs to find his family because they’re dead dead dead under piles of debris—
Five hardly registers his own jump until after it happens, until after it sends him stumbling through the fissure of altered space, spitting him roughly on the other side, wherever the other side is. His arms and knees hit the floor before his feet do, and his breath hitches as he scrambles back, reaching for something, anything to anchor himself to distorted reality.
At once, there are several pairs of hands on him, and he flinches violently back. A hand on his shoulder, a hand around his wrist, a hand around the other, a hand against his cheek. They burn, they hurt, and Five twists and thrashes away from them the best he can, but their grips only tighten further.
(“Jesus, what the hell happened to him? What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s—he’s hurt? Is he hurt?”)
Five kicks out blindly, and his heel connects with something solid.
(“Ow, fuck—I’m fine, I’m fine—we need to calm him down—”)
There’s a high-pitched, strangled sound that Five distantly registers as his own.
There’s a voice, two voices, that aren’t his own, but are much softer.
There’s sturdy arms curling around him, pulling him close.
Five tries to shove away, but the person is strong and he is weak, and he’s overpowered easily and is shoved against a broad chest.
“I’ve got you.” The voice is louder now, ghosting just above his ear. “I’ve got you. It’s okay."
Diego.
“Oh,” is all he can muster in response, his voice far too close to a pitiful whimper. With his other ear pressed against Diego’s chest, he can hear the quiet thump-thump, thump-thump of a beating, living heart.
Just as quickly as he had woken up, Five feels himself crumble.
Breaths coming out in short gasps, he buries his face into the crook of Diego’s neck, gripping the front of his shirt until it’s sure to stretch. Diego is warm, so very warm, so unlike the stiff coldness of the corpse he had once found and eventually buried with his bare hands.
Diego doesn’t try to pry his fingers away, instead only holding his smaller brother closer as Five shakes and shakes. The feeling of arms wound tight around him makes him feel safer than he’s ever felt in his life.
(There’s something so fundamentally wrong with seeing their normally arrogant, headstrong brother like this that Diego can’t do anything but stiffly hold him close as he shakes like a leaf, fragile hands holding onto his shoulders with the same desperation of clinging to the edge of a cliff, afraid to let go.
And the noises he’s making, God, the noises—all small and pitiful cries more befitting a mourning child than a battle-hardened man, and he almost can’t stand to hear them. This isn’t Five. Diego continues to repeat the silent mantra of ‘what the fuck, what the fuck’ in his head but he doesn’t try to pull away either, instead curling around his older brother the way a father would his child because held in his arms, Five is so, so small.
Diego looks up to Klaus helplessly, and Klaus tears his gaze from the shivering boy to look back at him, eyebrows raised in incredulity. But there’s nothing much either of them can do besides wait for the trembles to subside, which they don’t for what feels like a very long time.
Then, Klaus shuffles forward and reaches out.)
And then there’s a hand on his head, a third one. Five can’t help his initial jolt at the unfamiliar contact.
“We’re right here, little guy. You’re gonna be okay.”
It takes a moment longer for Five to recognize Klaus’ voice than he did Diego’s, when it’s so uncharacteristically somber compared to its usual airy lightheartedness.
Five wants to believe them, oh-so badly.
The fingers are long and thin and careful. They card through his hair, petting and ruffling like one would do to a dozing house cat. Five should’ve found it insulting, should’ve felt humiliated, but in the moment he can’t bring himself to care.
If they were under any other circumstances, if he wasn’t curled on the floor and pulled into Diego’s lap and held close by his brothers after hyperventilating, Five would’ve slapped his hand away and snapped a violently descriptive threat as he always does. He would’ve shoved them both away with a tight snarl and blinked far away to be alone.
Right now, he can’t muster the energy to do anything other than melt into the touch with a quivering exhale. Never in his life has he been touched as gently as he is now, or held like he was made of glass.
Five does not know how to be touched. Or, more accurately, how to be touched in this way. He knows the slap of the back of his father’s hand, and the sharp jab of his cane. He knows flying fists, stab wounds, hands around his throat, his hands around another’s throat. He knows how to hate and be hated, not loved.
It’s far too much, yet it’s not enough.
Five would’ve cried if he knew how to.
His brothers continue to murmur their quiet words of reassurance, a gentle litany of “it’s okay”’s and “we’re right here”’s. The blatant coddling has nausea bubbling up in the back of his throat, yet he can’t bring himself to pull away just yet.
They remain there, all huddled together on the floor for what feels like much longer than just a few minutes.
It takes more time than he’d ever admit to regain control of his own breaths, and only opens his mouth when he knows he can, at the very least, speak properly. His face remains buried in Diego’s chest, more so because he doesn’t need them commenting on how he probably looks like a complete mess than anything—or, he tells himself so. No matter how humiliated he feels, he can’t pull away. He can’t. The warmth of a body pressing against his is far too kind, and if he does pull away, something tells him he wouldn’t get that again, not for a long time. He doesn’t let go. He can’t.
“What—” happened, he doesn’t say, because he knows full well what happened.
“Really hoping you’d tell us,” Diego says anyway from above him. His chest vibrates as he speaks.
“Two of us were chilling in the living room—ah, we’re in the living room, by the way—and you popped in out of nowhere all panicked. That’s all we’ve got,” Klaus pipes helpfully.
“You kicked me in the face,” Diego adds sullenly, but with little animosity.
“You really scared the hell out of us, Fivey. I thought you were dying, Diego tried to check for injuries since you apparently didn’t tell him about the damn gunshot wound you got in the first 2019—”
“Shrapnel wound,” Five corrects tiredly. He adds before they can interrupt, “Grenade. Commission. Don’t ask, we’re way over this.”
“Wait, grenade?”
Five opts to ignore Diego. “And where is everyone else? Luther and the others.” Gone, dead, rotting away under their own childhood home.
Klaus draws his hand away from Five’s hair, leaving him to feel strangely empty. “You weren’t out for too long. Vanya’s at her own apartment to see what’s changed, she’ll be back later. Allison’s already left for Claire, said she couldn’t wait any longer. She said she was sad she couldn’t say bye to you first, but it’s not like we’ll never see her again. Luther came out not long after you fell asleep, and now he’s...moping around somewhere.”
“Getting drunk, probably,” Diego huffs. He’s already dropped the grenade thing, thank god.
Klaus hums his agreement. “Big boy deserves it, I think. He’s been through enough; we all have.” His voice sharpens. “But not you, little Number Five.” He pinches Five’s cheek lightly, to which Five jerks away with an exasperated huff. “I’ve decided to keep watch on you. We can’t have you stunting your growth even more.”
Five scoffs, but there’s no real bite to it. He can’t seem to muster the energy to be angry. “You couldn’t stop me if you tried.”
“Maybe not, but I can hide all the liquor so you’d all have to ask me for permission first.”
Diego protests before Five can. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I would, brother dearest.”
A wet chuckle tears from Five’s throat before he can stop it, the first genuine one in ages, startling all three of them. It’s short-lived; he sobers up near immediately, covering his mouth with his hand as he disguises it with a light cough.
It was such a stupid, nonsensical thing to laugh at. He’s getting soft.
“What?” he snaps before either can interject, rather proud of the lack of a tremor in his voice. The threat is unspoken, yet the singular word is laced with it.
“Nothing,” Diego says quickly, cutting Klaus off short as he takes in a breath to speak. “Don’t,” he hisses.
It’s Klaus’ turn to ask. “What?”
“I’m holding a psychopathic murder gremlin in my arms and I’m not too keen on finding out what happens if we piss him off.”
“Murder gremlin,” Klaus repeats delightedly just as Five whips his head up and growls, “Don’t call me tiny.”
Klaus apparently takes this as a challenge.
“Short stack. Shortcake.”
“Stop.”
“Munchkin.”
“Klaus, I’m warning you.”
“Fun-sized.”
“Klaus.”
“Little baby man.”
“What does that even mean.”
Five can feel his hackles rising, even as he tries to force them down. He knows Klaus is only jesting, but the sick feeling still settles deep inside his stomach and doesn’t leave. The worst thing about being thirteen again isn’t the weakened body or the abruptly nonexistent alcohol tolerance, but the sheer humiliation that follows him wherever he goes, whatever he does, no matter how hard he tries to fight it.
It’s not funny, contrary to what every single one of his siblings think. It was never funny, not to him.
Perhaps it was his expression, or the way his fingers twitch tighter where they’re still gripping the front of his shirt, that makes Diego settle a gentle hand against his bicep, patting softly in an awkward attempt at reassurance.
Five nearly flinches at the contact. Nearly. He forces his grip to loosen, and drops his other hand, away from Klaus’ prying eyes, to pat twice against his thigh in a silent it’s okay.
Diego pats back, once, in acknowledgement.
He can feel Diego’s nervousness, in the rapid thump-thump-thump of his heart that beats away against Five’s forehead, steadier than his own. It mirrors the rhythm of his heartbeat from when he had first sat down next to Vanya in ‘63. Say the wrong thing, make the wrong move, and neither will make it out unscathed, whether it be physically or emotionally. It didn’t—doesn’t help either that he’s more than terrible at knowing what to say and when to say it, something he’s painfully aware of himself.
Perhaps this isn’t quite as dire of a situation, but he’s not one to judge.
Before Klaus can think of another ridiculous tease that’d send Five into a violent rampage, Diego interrupts. “You gonna move first, or should I?” A pause, as Five tries to figure out if he’s addressing him. “Because no offense, but your bony ass is digging into my legs and they fell asleep a long time ago.”
There’s the sound of a palm slapping leather, followed by Diego’s indignant “hey!”
“He moves when he wants to,” Klaus says, in abrupt earnest.
Five doesn’t want to.
But he’d sooner crush his own thumb with a sledgehammer than openly admit so. He doesn’t bother with an answer, instead moving to push away, feeling Diego quietly unravel his arms in response. He feels terribly cold as they shift apart.
Five rises rather unsteadily to his feet. On instinct, his hand reaches out to flail aimlessly, searching for anything solid to grab ahold of and anchor him. His hand is caught by another instead, and he freezes before his grip tightens around it like a lifeline.
“Don’t go wandering off on your own, now,” Klaus tuts in mock sternness. The taller man gives his hand a small experimental tug, urging Five to follow. “We should get you back to your room, hm?”
Walking, even when blinded, is far safer than simply blinking to his room, he supposes.
“Quit treating me like a goddamn baby,” Five hisses, but allows himself to be led away anyway, falling into step behind Klaus. Heavier footsteps echo behind him as Diego moves to follow.
Five counts each step, takes note of each turn. He draws his mental map.
“Watch the stairs.” Klaus taps the side of Five’s foot with his own, signalling for him to step up. Five tries to tug his hand away to hold onto the railing, but Klaus’ grip remains strong.
Both of their grips, actually. Klaus and Diego have fallen close by his sides, holding him far too gently for comfort. Their hands are steady around his arms, and he feels Diego’s palm held firmly against his back. It makes his skin prickle, and he fights the urge to twist away. He’s uncomfortably aware of how warm their hands are, even through his clothes. It’s nothing at all like Dolores’ touch.
All eighteen steps up, he thinks he forgets to breathe.
(The Five they’re familiar with always walks with his head held high, poised with the same insufferable arrogance he always has. He wears the body of a frail child, but his presence is often larger than Luther’s. He is assertive, clever, proud.
This Five is different, all small and unsure and far too quiet, still quivering with tremors that he doesn’t even seem to be aware of himself. His eyes have lost their usual spark, now dulled down to an empty stare, as he puts one foot in front of the other with an uncertainty that Five has never had.
It’s unnerving, almost. Not just the eyes, but the quietness. Too different. Makes them hold him with the same care of handling delicate china. And for once, he doesn’t fight it.)
When they do come to a point where Five’s confident enough that he can make his way to his room without the close guidance of his brothers, his first thought is to pull away and tell them to get out, leave him alone, as he always does. But this time, it’s as if he can’t muster the will to, lacking the desire to for a reason unknown to even himself.
He hears the shuffling of fabric, and is gently guided to sit up in his bed, leaned back against his pillow. The blanket is drawn over his lap, and he pulls it up to bunch around his abdomen.
The silence throughout is positively stifling. He urges Klaus to interrupt it with something stupid as he always does, but the quietness is only met with more.
The bed dips under Klaus’ added weight, as Diego drops down in the chair Luther had pulled up earlier. Five opens his mouth to tell them to get out, that he doesn’t need them anymore, but Diego is the first to speak.
“You gonna tell us about what got you all worked up?” Diego asks as soon as he’s situated, in the ‘big brother’ tone that immediately has Five bristling.
“What is this, an interrogation?” Five tries to scoff, but it comes out far duller than he’d intended. He keeps his eyes fixed straight ahead, adamantly refusing to visibly acknowledge either one of his brothers. “Nothing happened.”
A pause.
“He can’t see you,” Klaus says helpfully.
“Well I’m raising my eyebrows at you, Five, because that’s bullshit and we all know it,” Diego snaps. “You pop in out of nowhere shaking and crying your eyes out and you expect us to act like that’s normal?”
Sure, and what the hell is he supposed to say to that? He just wants to be left alone. “I don’t cry,” Five says monotonously. That much is true.
“You were damn near.”
Five rolls his eyes with as much disgust as he can physically muster. “I commend you for trying to act like a brother after being the first to run off on your own and leaving the rest of your family to fend for themselves, but rest assured that it’s not needed. I’ve never needed anyone but myself to take care of me.”
He knows full well that he’s being harsh, perhaps a little too on the nose, but if that’s what it takes for them to stop talking then he’d gladly continue.
“You always do this,” Klaus accuses mildly from close beside him. Too close.
When Klaus doesn’t elaborate, Five relents. “Do what?”
“Deflect. You get pissier than usual when the focus is on you, and you end up lashing out at the rest of us. That’s deflecting, did you know that?”
No. “A week ago you would’ve left me the hell alone. What happened to the Klaus who thought about nothing but getting high off his ass?”
He’s ‘deflecting’ again, isn’t he? Five pinches himself.
”It’s been three years, brother dearest, I’m a changed man,” Klaus says lightly as Diego curiously repeats, “A week?” Five waves a lazy hand in a lackluster not right now. Thankfully, he drops it without protest.
He feels Klaus’ hand come to rest against his back, and his traitorous body can’t decide between leaning into it and flinching away, and it comes out as an odd jolt. They’re so touchy. They’re so...okay with touching him, so casual about it, as if any skin-on-skin contact doesn’t send fire racing through their veins in a horrid mixture of exhilaration and fear.
“It’s not...good to keep these things all bottled up,” Klaus says, continuing despite. “It’s like, uh. A balloon. Fill it with air for too long, and it pops.” He makes a pop! sound to enunciate. “Let the air out, and it won’t. Yeah?”
Turns out that while Klaus is a little too comfortable with pointing out the things about Five he himself doesn’t want to see, he’s not nearly as great with the whole comforting aspect.
Neither amuse him with a response. He sighs. “You catch my drift, though?”
“Sure I do,” Five deadpans. Anything to get him to stop repeating one of countless shitty spiels he’s had to bear.
A loud sigh. “Diego, help me out here! You were in rehab too, weren’t you?”
Diego splutters in indignation. “I was not in rehab, I was in a fucking psych ward meant for lunatics!”
“Perfect for the both of you,” Five mutters.
“Oh, you can make jokes! That’s a first.”
Five sends an impassive glare in Klaus’ general direction. “Believe it or not, but forty-five years in isolation does kind of kill your sense of humor.”
He braces himself for Klaus’ witty retort, but it never comes. Oh, no.
“I’m fine,” he says on autopilot, before either can interject with shallow words of comfort. He can’t see their pitying faces, but he can imagine them just as easily, and the image alone is enough to make nausea coil in his stomach.
“Is that…” Diego starts, pauses, and starts again, uncharacteristically quiet. “Is that why you were like that? Did something happen in the apocalypse?”
The way he says it, all dripping with pity and concern, Five want to vomit. He nearly does end up gagging, but swallows it back. “ Nothing happened,” he snaps, and it’s true—well, to an extent; his whole life happened, those forty-five years happened, and it was something he could never take back, something he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to move past because you can’t just pretend a four decade long hellscape didn’t exist at all.
Five doesn’t say any of this, however.
Neither of them buy it; of course they don’t. “You need to talk about things, Fivey. Bottling it up is like...shaking up a can of Coke. Not that coke, you know the one.” Five nearly groans aloud. Klaus continues uninterrupted, voice falling to just above a wistful murmur. “I have—had Ben, and it’s not something I’d’ve ever admitted to his face, but having someone with me the whole time was the only thing that kept me sane, I think.”
And—fuck, Klaus knows he’s weak to the Ben card. He and Ben and Vanya had all been inseparable for as long as he remembered, up until Five disappeared into the unknown. After that, well, you know how it goes.
Ben would want him to talk. As much as Five hates to admit it, he would. He’d always been like that, the gentle mediator of their fucked up family.
But Five can’t talk. He doesn’t know how to. How is he supposed to form the words to explain the jumbled mess of his thoughts? How is he supposed to tell them about the way he had found and buried his own family when he was thirteen, fucking thirteen, and was left alone to fend for himself for what he had thought to be rest of his pathetic life? How is he supposed to expect them to understand? He often forgets about just how young they really are, still innocent and simple-minded despite how unkind life had been to all seven of them.
Dolores always knew not to pry, always knew he hated talking about himself more than anything. And there was never another Klaus or Diego in the apocalypse, to urge him to speak when he didn’t want to. It’s not something he’s ever done, nor will be able to do for a very, very long time. Perhaps forever.
Five merely grits his teeth with a tight sigh, because he would sooner tear off his own nose with a nail file than admit to something as humiliating as I forgot I wasn’t in the apocalypse anymore and thought you guys were dead again and got scared and had to remind myself that you were still alive.
“No, I don’t think I will,” he bites out after a moment of silence, with enough exhaustion in his voice for Klaus to drop it at that, thank fuck. But he makes a disapproving tutting noise from beside him, as if to say this isn’t over just yet, and Five makes a mental note to never be in a room alone with him.
“Are we—what? Are we just leaving it at that?” Diego’s slow on the uptake, as always.
“If you know how to make him do something he doesn’t want to do, I’m all ears.”
A pause.
“Diego.” Five is so, so tired. The please is left unspoken, but it hangs heavily in the air.
Diego drops it.
He knows they’re giving up now simply because they’re biding their time, waiting for the opportunity to corner him again on a separate occasion. But there will be no second chance, he’d make sure of it.
“Alright,” Klaus huffs with an air of finality, ruffling Five’s hair affectionately, to which he immediately cringes away—holy shit can Klaus keep his goddamn hands to himself for one goddamn second—“You look tired, you sound tired and you’ve literally gone blind because you’re tired. You should sleep, no?”
I’m not tired, he wants to protest, because being tired means being weak and vulnerable and incompetent, but it would be more than a flat-out lie.
“Sure,” he says dully instead, because he needs to make his contempt towards them apparent and a simple ‘yes’ doesn’t cut it.
He squawks as arms circle behind his back and under his knees, and he’s suddenly lifted an inch above the bed. Five’s arms shoot up to wrap around his captor’s neck, despite it lasting for no longer than a few seconds.
“Sorry, should’a warned you,” Diego grunts as Five is dropped rather gracelessly back on the bed, this time lying down on his back.
Huffing an irritated expletive, Five shifts to curl on his side in a more comfortable position, his back to the wall.
“We’ll leave you to it, then,” Klaus says, and Five barely contains his flinch as an open hand lands on his shoulder. “To sleep, I mean.”
Five inhales, sharp and quiet.
Wait,
Diego’s footsteps sound against the floorboards, the vibrations of each growing muter as he heads for the door. “Yell if you need us, or something.”
please,
“What he said. We won’t be too far.”
stay with me,
The mattress begins lifts beneath him as Klaus stands.
don’t go.
Ah, they’re leaving him again. He’ll be alone again, but it’s nothing new, it’s always been like this, so he shouldn’t feel this bad, shouldn’t feel like they’re dying all over again. He can no longer distinguish future from present, just as he couldn’t tell up from down when he was swimming in delirium as a result of starvation, dehydration, fever, heat stroke, all four of them and more.
He is tired, he is starving, he is burning, he is dying, they are dying.
“Five?”
Klaus has stopped. Diego’s footsteps have halted as well.
Five is jolted from his thoughts. “What?” he snaps.
“You’re...you need something?”
It takes him a moment longer to realize that his own fingers are curled tight around Klaus’ sleeve.
He feels his face grow hot.
“Shit,” he rasps, mostly to himself, jerking back as if he’d been scathed. He curls in on himself to clutch his hand close to his chest, but Klaus catches his wrist before Five can fully retreat within himself again, linking their fingers in such a tender way that has him shuddering before he can help it.
“What—what’re you doing,” he says, almost breathlessly.
Klaus runs a thumb over his knuckles, making his fingers twitch.
“What do you want, Five?” Klaus asks quietly. Not sardonically, not patronizingly. Just—quietly.
What does he want?
It doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered. He’s not looking for happy.
But Klaus hasn’t budged, and even Diego hasn’t snidely remarked upon his instinctual gesture, frozen still at the doorway. They’re both waiting, watching him—he can’t see them doing it, but he can tell by the silence, and he knows the both of them well enough.
What does he want?
He wants to survive, obviously, he wants them to survive, but they are surviving, he thinks, because Klaus is touching him so he can’t be a hallucination, and if Klaus is here then Diego must be too, and if Klaus and Diego are here then the rest of them must still be alive, too.
And then what? Over the past decades, there never was anything beyond surviving. His only goal in the apocalypse outside of the grueling equations was to survive to the next day, and on the next day his goal was to survive to the day after that, and so on. That was all he knew, for the longest time.
What does he want?
He
wants
to be happy. He’s not looking for it, but he
wants
it, oh god does he want to be happy, more than anything. He doesn’t know what being happy even means anymore, but it sounds like something nice, something wonderful, and as much as he
loves
hates his siblings, he thinks that if they stayed, just simply sat beside him for a little while longer, it would make him happy—or something like that.
Maybe he’s allowed to be selfish, just this once. Just a little.
“Stay,” Five grits out after a long, long time. For a moment he wishes he were deaf as well, so he wouldn’t have to hear the wavering crack in his own voice, all childish and uncertain and not at all him. “Just for...a little while. Just—just one of you is. Fine.”
He doesn’t know what to expect, whether to anticipate if they’d oblige or simply leave. He can’t seem to breathe, as Klaus responds.
“Of course we’ll both stay,” Klaus murmurs, cutting off whatever Diego had taken a breath to say.
(He shoots the most intimidating glare he can muster at Diego, as if challenging him to protest. Diego doesn’t; he hadn’t been planning on it.)
Five is still trembling, albeit lightly enough where it would’ve gone unnoticed had nobody been paying attention. But Klaus, although a dumbass in every sense of the word, is nothing short of observant. He doesn’t even notice his own tremors until Klaus unlinks their fingers to curl his hand around other’s, hooking long fingers around Five’s much smaller ones, hesitant yet steady.
Rather than jerking his hand back, he lets his eyes flutter shut with a soft sigh, sliding his palm over Klaus’ Hello until shaky fingers are curled around a thin wrist, shifting until they’re pressed lightly over its steady pulse.
Behind the pitch blackness of closed eyes and blindness, he still sees the motionless corpses of lost family, a cruelly vivid image he’d never been able to erase, will never be able to erase for as long as he lives. Yet Klaus’ pulse continues to thrum beneath his fingertips, a tender reminder that his siblings continue to breathe just as he is, blood pulsing away beneath warm skin. He holds onto it like a lifeline, and it very well may be one.
Five hears shifting, the sound of footsteps, and for once he’s too tired to attempt to keep track of his surroundings.
He hears voices close by, yet they sound far, far away.
There’s another hand, lowering to engulf both of theirs. It’s larger, warmer, calloused with years of battle, a small taste of what Five’s now much smaller hands should’ve been. But for now, he doesn’t quite mind the smallness, doesn’t have the energy or the heart to feel the indignity, as it rests sandwiched between his brothers’.
Another, a third one, that settles in his hair. It startles him, but his body already feels so heavy that he doesn’t push it away, doesn’t even flinch. It’s the very thing that ends up easing the last of the faint shivering from his body, his limbs growing heavy as it begins to brush oh-so gently through his tangled locks—not like he’s drowning in the ocean, but like he’s sinking into a cumulus. He shudders, he sighs, he lets himself go.
(Five says he’s fifty-eight, he is fifty-eight, but he’s also the little boy who never had the chance to grow up in a world that treated him as such. He never really told either of them about what the apocalypse had entailed, but Diego knows that he was alone, and he knows that there’s nothing easy about being alone, much less for forty-five years with nobody but himself.
He’s never truly grown up, in a sense.
Diego is startled from his thoughts by a light tap on his shoulder, and then Klaus is reaching over to drag his hand by the wrist to hover over Five’s head, offering an encouraging smile.
I can’t, Diego mouths with a light shake of his head, eyes widening in mute panic.
You can.
And as soon as Diego’s fingers push into dark locks with Klaus’ silent coaxing, Five—he—he melts into the touch, eyes fluttering shut with the smallest sigh. Sure Diego had been literally hugging him earlier, but this is different. There’s the barest hint of a smile on his lips, not at all like the scornful smirk he usually wears. This one is tender, content.
He is so small, Diego finds himself thinking again. He is small, curled under the blankets. His hand is small, cupped beneath his own. His smile is small, small but very much there, as is the rest of him, and for the first time Diego is afraid of letting go, so he continues to hold him, continues to card his fingers through his hair as carefully as he possibly can, as if the boy will disappear under his grasp if he doesn’t.
Five is no longer trembling.)
“I’ve got you,” Diego says, softly.
“We’re right here,” Klaus says, just as softly.
Five believes them.
If Five happens to fall asleep like this with his hand curled loosely around Klaus’, if Diego happens to take pictures of this opportunity too good to pass up, if Five happens to wake up with eyes sharp as ever and warning them with suspiciously specific threats if they so much as breathe a word to anyone, it’s not as if anybody else would hear of it.