My favorite Umbrella Academy WIPS ❤️
Lygerside Daydream
(Or the one about hallucinations and a life that never was)
Delores kisses his check. “I missed you.”
Five smiles, taking her smooth hand between his calloused ones. “I never left.”
The conversation dies around them and she laughs, melodic sound surrounding him, echoing like it shouldn’t.
“You always do.”
—--------------------------------------
“Cinque, amore.” She says, wearing her favorite sunhat; the one she almost never uses in fear of wearing it out, the one with a mirriad of flowers that don’t match, the one with flowers he doesn’t remember the name of anymore.
It’s only Delores and him, as it has been for a long time. It feels like forever, sometimes.
Or: there’s something wrong, Five knows, he also knows he would do anything to keep Delores looking at him like that.
—----------------------------------------
There’s this story he heard a long time ago; so long that details twist and shape into something new. There’s this story that changes in every iteration, but the end remains the same.
“Do I know you?” She asks, tilting her head like a bird. “I feel like I know you.”
There’s an answer trapped in his throat, between the larynx and the trachea. She keeps staring, eyes so dark he can't see the pupil and a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. The clock on the wall stops at seven.
The scarf around her head is a nice shade of blue, it reminds Five of–of something; there’s a series of numbers written in chalk on the board, displacement equations she had been working on before he arrived, there’s a wrong decimal. The clock on the wall is stuck at seven.
“I don’t think so.” He finally says.
The smile widens and it should feel mocking, a threat, but instead it’s like coming home. Five smiles back.
“Delores.” She says. He says. The clock ticks again and the room turns black.
.
There’s something that is not quite a man at the bottom of the hill. Man-shaped, earth-teetered, unmoving with its gaze fixed in the gravel sky. Up, up, up where it can never reach, up where time is the same as it has always been.
Its fingers twitch, once, two and thrice, its neck is sore, bruised in a way it doesn’t notice anymore. The gray shifts and time doesn’t forgive, so it takes one step after the other, feet rising from the broken concrete, heavy, breaking the vines threaded into its broken boots, life that clings, uncaring.
It keeps walking.
Capgras Delusion
(or the one where Five returns earlier and tries to find a way to take his siblings from Reginald)
It's a hit or miss if the smoke will offer him comfort or send him into a panic attack, today it seems it's the first one and he exhales.
"He's hurting them," Five says, relying on the script. It’s been two years, they always have this conversation and it always goes the same way.
“Teaching them, Mister Five, powers like yours
"You read the book." Vanya's book, he let him read it under Five's supervision. It's the only reason he hasn't tattled to Reginald.
"I did, Mister Five and I still think that if we offer it to your father--"
"No," he says and this is an usual argument, too "it's alright if you admire him, but don't be blind to the kind of man he is. He will push them harder and this time Ben won't be the only one to die."
He wishes, not for the first time, that he had Allison's power. These inane conversations would be over, then.
"How many of us have to die for you to realize?" Five says, getting off script. But he's tired "How much more suffering will be enough for you?"
Pogo is frustrated, too and Five had been careful of pushing him too far all this time, but he can't sit idle anymore. Not when his siblings are crying every damn night for a man that doesn't give a fuck about them.
He has plans already in case Pogo tattles. In case Reginald knows he's here.
It would be easier if Pogo was on his side, yes, but he can work even if he doesn't. Five can do it. He has to.
"There's nothing I can do about it, I take care of the children, but--"
"He already made Be–Six kill the rabbits, didn't he?"
Pogo’s face falls and something twists inside Five.
"I have a plan," Five says carefully.
Maggot Pie (heh)
The fucker left them a note in the fridge, which is more than he would’ve left a few months ago, but still–A. Fucking. Note.
If I don’t return at 9, assume I’m dead. (Or look for me, which amounts for the same with the kind of organization this family is capable of) — 5
And then a direction below.
It’s nine and a half already. There’s nobody else at the academy and Diego is only here because there wasn’t any orange juice left in his apartment and he was craving some. That he hasn’t been at the Academy in over a week and seen some of his siblings for longer is unrelated.
He pats his pockets and lets out a sigh of relief when he feels the little portatil phone, --smartphone, according to Luther’s lectures, who took with shiny eyes and disgusting ease the new technology of this timeline– it’s usually a roll of the dice if Diego will remember to take it with him, useful as it is, it’s matter entirely if it’s going to remain unbroken.
He calls Luther first, who the most likely to come back running at the first hint of danger, with the rest of them is a hit or miss. He answers after two rings.
“Return to the Academy now, there’s an emergency.”
He hangs up before Luther can respond.
The thing is–Five is usually good at knowing the kind of danger he will face when he goes out like this; sometimes he takes one of them, one or two times Luther or Viktor, usually Diego, because he’s out kicking ass anyway while the rest want to live peacefully, or as peaceful as a Hargreeves can get. And if he deemed his mission dangerous enough to leave them a direction and an hour–
When Diego finds him, he’s going to fucking kill him. He’s going to make him wish he died in his little errand.
He shakes his head, not useful right now. He’s certain Luther called Allison as soon as Diego hung* up, if he’s not with her already. He calls Viktor next.
“Come to the Academy. Five is missing.”
Then Klaus and it’s actually a miracle when he actually responds.
“Return to the Academy or I will burn your clothes.”
He hangs up before his shierk can leave him deaf. Sometimes different measures must be taken to make them do shit. It’s like herding cats. It’s not that they wouldn’t come for Five, but they do overestimate his capabilities.
Diego, as the one that goes the most with him on these missions to thwart the Commission’s efforts to ‘correct’ the timeline, is intimately aware that he’s far from indestructible, as much as he likes to pretend otherwise.
And, boy, how he likes to pretend.
In between maps of probabilities that make sense to nobody but him and single-minded [...] to razor to the ground his former employers, they’ve been worried about him, or rather, they’ve been worried about how his new obsession could come back to bite them in the ass.
It’s an uncharitable thought, but it’s an uncharitable world and all the Hargreeves are selfish at heart.
For what is worth, Five tried to relax the first days, weeks even, after they arrived to the new 2019, Diego knows, he went out to do who knows what in hilarious grandpa clothes nobody dared to make fun of in fear of him going back to the uniform; he hung out with Klaus, the two of them disappearing for days at time, returning suspiciously giggly, but there was no way Diego was poking at that within a ten foot pole*; he stayed sometimes in Viktor’s apartment and the two little [rascals] were actually getting along again.
And then he holed himself up in his room for three days straight and when he came out it was with the intense look he had when he first arrived at the funeral talking about the future.
He even put on a suit and everything.
There is no way Diego is telling him this, but he misses his little grandpa outfits and his easier smiles and the way he actually talked to them.
Now there’s a note Diego stumbled across on pure chance and him going alone on a mission he was clearly reluctant to go when he could have taken Diego with him. The fucker didn’t even bother
He glances at the clock. Nine and forty.
His leg is bouncing and he considers for a second going to the address alone–but that is the kind of shit that got them in this situation, if Five had just called him, then maybe–
Diego glares at the note with Five’s stupid neat handwriting.
Infections of a different kind
(Which is already posted, but I'm having trouble with) (In this one Five returns earlier too, but commits the mistake of telling his siblings and Reginald about the apocalypse)
Diego wasn’t close to Five, most of them weren’t, not really, that doesn’t mean that his absence didn’t hit them all. It was in the holes in their and plates of food Mom kept putting for him before Pogo told (programed) her not to.
But he returned and they haven't been allowed to see him for a week.
It’s bullshit, it’s what it is.
“Mom,” he says when she’s putting the covers over him.
Some of his siblings don’t want Mom to tuck them goodnight anymore, but fuck them.
“Yes, dear?”
“Why can’t we see Five?”
She stops for a few seconds, before smiling in “He’s in a very delicate state, it’s important that he gets to rest undisturbed.”
Diego thinks about that for a second, “we can be quiet.”
“I know you can, sweetheart, but your Father prefers that he heals alone. You know he likes to be cautious.”
He scowls, that’s a way to put it, but something about this smells bad.
Diego doesn't know why he pictured him drinking with his father and talking about how bothersome kids are.
He looked rather pathetic the last time they saw him. Really fucked up, he wasn’t even aware a person could be that thin and sickly and still resemble his smug brother, that is less smug and more sad.
And that’s it: Five looks really sad.
Mom cut some of his beard and washed him, so he looks less like a homeless person, but he’s still hard to look at. and he will never be able to forget his scream, even if he was several rooms apart.
He wants to hit and rip apart something, what the fuck happened to him? He said something about the end of the world and called out for someone called Delores, did someone have him captive or something?
And what are they supposed to do about it when it all happens in the future?
Five isn’t supposed to look like that, he’s supposed to be smug and insufferable. He was his asshol-ish self that first day and okay, the crying and laughing were creepy, but he was getting there again the more time he spended in the infirmary.
But now they moved him out and they haven’t been allowed to see him. Which is utter bull-shit and if Dad thinks he’s going to obey that, he’s got another thing coming for him.
He’s in a room nobody uses, which doesn’t tell him much, considering they use just about a third of them, that’s his intel from the spyed conversations between Pogo and Mom.
“Where are we going?”
Diego doesn’t jump, but he hits his shoulder on the wall anyway.
He glares at Klaus, “you are not going anywhere.”
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