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sissytobitch10seconds · 1 year

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October 1, 1989

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: He doesn't know where he is, but at least he knows that he's not being chased by that man anymore. Even the thought of that happening sends chills from his fingertips down to his toes. Now he just has to figure out what's going on. Warnings: Canon-typical violence and mentioned child abuse Word Count: 10,442 Ship(s): Viktor Hargreeves & Everyone

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A/N: So I've been reading the Miss Peregrine's series again and I thought that this AU was just too good to pass up. This is more of an introductory fic so not a lot happens plot wise. I have a whole world for how the two universes intersect, so if anyone likes this I'll probably write a little bit more! It's not necessary to have read the books to understand what's happening here, so just read and enjoy! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

He was breathing harder than he thought physically possible as he tore down street after street to find some shop that was open or someone that was out in the street that could help him. The cellphone in his pocket was basically dead weight at this point, nothing but a plastic brick that might not ever turn back on again. His jacket had a huge tear in the back from where it had caught on a bramble thicket back when he was still in the woods. He had begun running towards The City in the desperate hope that someone would be there to help him, but the hope was fading from him faster and faster the longer that he encountered no one but birds and mice.

He paused for just a moment, his back pressed up against a huge lamppost as his chest heaved to try and bring in all the air that he’d need to survive. Outside of just being out of breathe from the adrenaline and running as long as he had, the binder that he had around his chest was preventing his rib cage from opening up as much as it needed to. His mind was telling him that he was going to die, and now his body was too.

Viktor couldn’t think about that for long though, not when he could hear the sound of that damned man and monkey duo hurrying after him. He flung himself out towards the street once more and continued to run as fast as his already exhausted muscles would let him. His eyes were darting around for any establishment that he could hide in, even if there wasn’t a person in there to help him. He knew that the adrenaline from originally being found was going to be wearing off pretty soon and he wouldn’t be able to keep running like this. He needed even just ten minutes where he was able to rest and catch his breath.

His prayers were answered when he encountered a huge mansion comprised of miss-matched town houses and old storefronts, pressed together in such a way that they made what seemed to be an impenetrable fortress. It would have been a lot scarier had all of the paint not worn of decades ago and the windows not all been broken. They were gaping and exposed to the open air of The City, no one had even bothered to board them up to try and send the old building to a calm death.

He had happened upon the back side of the mansion, so he was able to dart into the alleyway where the trash cans and old dumpsters were nestled away from the prying eyes of the general public. He knew that if he wasn’t able to find an open or easily breakable window then they were going to catch him, so he just had to hope for the best. He wasn’t going to be able to keep going for very long so this was very quickly becoming his only option.

He skidded to a stop next to a huge dumpster that was overflowing with poorly packed black bags. Viktor couldn’t imagine that the garbage truck came by the house very often given the state of disrepair that it was in. He tried his best to ignore the smell as he grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder and then desperately tried to pull himself up.

It was early in the morning so dew was still clinging to everything, but it had also begun to steadily drizzle while he had been running through the outskirts of The City to get away from the duo that was chasing him. It made it harder to hear how close they were, but it also added a layer of difficulty to his escape. His fingers tried to grasp tightly to the rungs of the ladder so that he could heft himself upwards but the metal was too cold and too wet, so almost as soon as he had lifted both feet from the ground his hand released.

Viktor tumbled down onto the ground with a soft ‘thump’ and a grunt of pain. He could feel a bruise blooming on his side already, but he counted it as a win because he hadn’t hit his head when he fell. He didn’t really have time to think about it because a hand grabbed his wrist and hauled him to his feet. Viktor had always been the smallest person in his class, and even though he was barreling towards adulthood the man that had captured him still made him feel like he was a child on their size difference alone. The fact that his captor was able to reach down, grab hold of his wrist, and then drag him onto his feet was enough to make anger begin to boil in his stomach. He didn’t care much for being treated like a child.

“Let go of me,” he objected as he tried to wrench his arm away.

“I think not. Do you know how hard you’ve made this entire process?” the man asked, his bushy gray eyebrows knitting together so that his monocle was pulled closer to his nose.

Viktor could feel something in his chest beginning to rumble. It was like an engine had turned over underneath his heart. The pounding of the rain got louder and louder in his ears as the anger frothed in his stomach. He could barely even hear the man speaking as the rumbling increased in volume. Something burst forth from his chest and scattered everything away from him in a perfectly formed circle around him all at once.

He didn’t have time pay attention to what had just happened or even take in the fact that there was now an indent to the bricks and cement on the walls from where whatever happened had hit it. The only thing that he could focus on was that his captor was no longer holding onto him. He also noticed that the ape at the end of the alleyway was no longer standing there, but had rather been thrown down to the ground by the sweep of energy.

He took off as quickly as he could to the exit of the alleyway. A voice in the back of his mind told him that it was a bad idea to have gone into it in the first place, and that his luck was going to run out when it came to evading his captors. He was going to get tired and stupid and then they were going to get to him. He wished that he had just stayed with his parents in Russia, even if they were never home and he hated it with them. He wished that he had just stayed where it was safe instead of deciding that coming to America was going to be the best plan of action.

Viktor didn’t realize that he was crying until a sob wracked its way out of his lungs and into the open air. The rain was beating down on his face so hard that the warmth of his tears was freezing by the time that it got to the bottom of his cheek.

“Shit,” he whispered as he dragged one muddy sleeve over his eyes. His vision was blurring just a little bit as he continued to throw himself down street after street. Whoever that man nad his ape were, they were smart when it came to chasing him down. They had found his camp in the woods and then made sure that they kept him in the least populated places in The City that they could. It reduced Viktor’s ability to find help so that it was basically impossible.

He paused like he had before, trying to catch his breath as he looked for his newest place to hide. Despite the fact that the last several buildings that he had tried hadn’t worked, the run down donut shop he saw out of the corner of his eye spoke to him like no other place had.

Like almost everything else was around his location, it had been closed down for years. The windows were scratched and brown in several places and the paint was chipping off of the sign that hung above the door. The huge neon sign that was on the top of the building had been worn down by the weather so that the colors were so faded that they were basically unrecognizable. The side of the brick building was absolutely covered in graffiti and posters, most of which had been torn apart by the wind that was constantly blowing through. The parking lot itself was in a state of total disrepair as plants grew through the cracks so tall that they almost reached Viktor’s waist.

When Viktor got inside of the store he saw that it wasn’t much better. It may have been a cute cafe back in the day, but now most of the tiles had come off of the walls so that they were laying in heaps on the ground. The counter was caked with dirt and the floor was covered in leaves and debris that had blown in through a couple of the open windows. Everything that may have been of any value in the back, so most of the physical equipment, had already been snagged and sold for money.

Viktor knew that this was the perfect place for him to hide out in. The chances of local teenagers hanging out in a place like this were high, so there was always a chance that if the man chasing him had seen movement in the establishment he would assume that it was a civilian and not the one that he was looking for. He didn’t want to take too many chances and he knew that he couldn’t keep running at the moment. He quickly made his way over to a closet and then slipped inside. The two by two room was vacant of any objects and was just big enough for Viktor to stand in without touching the walls on either side.

He slipped inside and then closed the door surely behind him. He pressed his forehead to the cool wood while he clung to the metal knob as tightly as he could to reassure himself that he could hold the already locked door closed should his pursuer find him.

The teenager took several deep, steadying breaths to try and calm his heart down. He was reminded them how much his ribs absolutely ached in his chest from where his binder was pressing in all the wrong places. Carefully, he pried his fingers off of the doorknob and then took a small step back. He carefully maneuvered his shirt off and then let it drop down to the floor. Dust and possible mouse droppings were the least that the shirt had seen in the last couple of weeks since he had run away from his most recent foster home.

His binder was the next thing to come off. He grasped the bottom of it and then carefully shimmied it up and off of his chest. He paused there to take several deep breaths, taking in the kind of air that he hadn’t been able to get with it on despite how much better he felt about himself when he was wearing it. Viktor finished removing his binder and then carefully folded the garment before he tucked it away in the left front pocket of his jeans. That specific item of clothing was his most treasured possession, especially since he had left the violin that he had grown up learning on back in Russia.

He stooped down and picked his shirt up off of the ground. It took a bit of grunting and a little bit of difficulty for him to wiggle it on properly, but once it was on he felt more comfortable. Being naked, even in a space where he was sure no one would see him and he couldn’t even seen himself, made him feel so uncomfortable that he could barely even register it as an emotion.

Viktor waited for as long as he could inside of the small closet, giving plenty of time for the man and his ape to come snooping. He didn’t want to stay in there forever, and his stomach rumbled loudly to remind him that he couldn’t remember the last time that he had eaten. He had a stash of food inside of his tent in the woods for when he got like this, but he hadn’t been able to grab anything in his hurry to desert and get to safety.

He grasped the handle again and then undid the lock before he pushed it open. When he got the door properly open, he felt his heart jump into his throat. For a moment he was worried that he had passed out in the closet from exhaustion and now he was in a very vivid dream.

The donut shop, which had been decrepit and completely abandoned only moments prior, was now bustling with life and very cheerful looking. The tile was a shiny white as if it had been mopped that morning and it actually carried up the walls where it was supposed to. The plaster itself was perfectly smooth and painted a pleasant pink color where the tile stopped. The kitchen had two occupants that were working around the pristine metal counter and about three or so sizzling fryers all loaded with donuts in the making. There was banter and chatter coming from the dining room down the opposite side of the small hallway that he was in. It sounded like the patrons out there were having a wonderful time, and there was a distinct absence of the pounding rain from not half an hour prior.

That in an of itself was completely baffling. He new that the entire establishment had been wrecked when he had come in to find a place to hide. If it hadn’t and all of these people were around then he definitely would have been stopped before he got to the closet.

He stepped out of it fully, as if doing so would make the vivid hallucination that he was having vanish. He closed the door as quietly as he could, but he still managed to get the attention of one of the workers.

She was a kind looking woman with graying blond hair tied up in a bun. She was wearing one of the uniforms that the rest of the workers were, a pink dress with white piping and a white apron. She had on one of the little hats too, which kept her hair pinned back perfectly. “What were you doing in there?” she tutted, placing her hands on her hips.

Viktor opened his mouth to answer, but once he had he found that he didn’t have any words to say. Every single possible answer that he had for why he was hiding out in the closet of the donut shop would end up getting the police called and he’d have to either go back to his parents in Russia or back to the foster family he had been assigned in the states. Either that or she wouldn’t believe him, because ‘there was no one in here and the place was trashed when I got in there’ didn’t exactly inspire trust.

She tutted twice and then wiped her hands off on her apron. “You’re one of Grace’s new charges, aren’t you?” she asked softly. “I know that sometimes the others use this place as a kind of hazing location. I’m sorry that they did it to you, we’ll get you back up to the house in no time.”

“Right,” Viktor nodded. He had never been in a situation where he could have been hazed, but he was familiar with it. These kids probably blindfolded their victims and then locked them in the closet for an indeterminate amount of time as their form of a test. He didn’t know why they would do that or what the point of it was, but at least he had an excuse. He just had to wait until he could shake the waitress and make his next great escape.

“Luckily for you, I’m about to go on break! Just give me a moment to tell my boyfriend that I’m not going to be able to make it to our lunch date and then I can walk you up there,” she smiled comfortingly.

There it was, Viktor noted immediately. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I can find my way back by myself, I promise,” he reassured her. He knew that he was laying the good-kid act on a little bit thick but he really needed to get back to his camp. He had to eat something and desperately wanted to make sure all of his things were still there.

“Nonsense! We see each other every day and I don’t work this afternoon. It’s not that big of a deal for me to help you out,” she soothed. “Why don’t you go sit at the bar and I’ll get you something to eat while you wait,” she suggested kindly.

“N-no, I don’t have any money to pay you with,” Viktor shook his head. He may have been a desperate kid living in a world that hated him but he knew better than to take food from someone that was offering it. That almost always came with some sort of caveat. Whether they wanted something in return or were doing it to lure him into a situation where he would be taken by the police, there was always strings attached with food.

The woman, Viktor glanced down to her nametag and learned that her name was Agnes, gave her head a little shake. “I promise that it’s not a big deal! Grace and I are good friends so if you try to eat the dinner out of business then I can just ask her to spare a penny or two. But I don’t think that a single donut is going to be that much of a problem.”

Viktor gave a shaky nod. He forgot that he was supposed to be posing as a ward for whoever this Grace woman was. Hopefully if he was dragged all the way to her house she would be understanding of where he came from and let him go back to his camp instead of trying to get him back with his old foster family. He loathed the idea of having to live with someone that treated him like he was something that he wasn’t, especially when that was the entire reason that he had left his parents in Russia in the first place.

The first step that Viktor took towards the front of the dinner, he was reminded of what he looked like and suddenly it made more sense about why Agnes had decided that he had been hazed before he was locked in the closet. He was soaked to the bone with rainwater, which matted his already poorly cut hair to his forehead. His shirt was fraying and ripped down at the bottom from where he had nearly gotten caught on a bramble while running in the woods. His converse were worn down and also caked in so much mud that the color was indistinguishable, though the same could be said for the cuffs of his pants. The only item of clothing that he had that wasn’t in a huge state of disrepair was the binder carefully tucked in the pocket opposite his phone.

He tried not to feel embarrassed as he stepped forward and into the view of the other patrons. It must have been a fairly often occurrence, for Agnes to find rather raggled looking children somewhere in the dinner, because everyone only glanced at Viktor for a moment. “What did you say that your name was, honey?” Agnes asked as she sat him down at the counter next to a man reading a newspaper with a jelly filled donut on a small plate.

“Uh, Viktor,” he replied after a moment. It still felt weird to give that name instead of the one that he was born with. He had to live so long with the title and name that he didn’t feel like suited him, and when he was finally living as who he wanted to be he wasn’t around a lot of people.

“Well, Viktor, what’s your favorite kind of donut?” she asked, gesturing to the cases where they kept all of their stock behind the counter. When Viktor had first entered into the shop, those cupboards had been smashed to bits so that they were never going to hold anything ever again.

He looked over the array for a moment before the man next to him said, “I’m partial to raspberry filled. But I wouldn’t get anything with that chocolate glaze, they let the other cooks make it and it’s not nearly as good as what Agnes can make.”

He felt like he jumped completely out of his skin upon hearing another being near him speak. It was something that he had gotten very unused to when he stopped going to school, but he was still very good at being able to train his features so that they did what he wanted. He dropped the timid look that he knew his eyebrows held and then gave the man a small, pleasant smile. “I’ll take that into account, thank you.”

“That’s my boyfriend, Hazel,” Agnes explained, he already painted cheeks turning a slightly darker shade of red.

For a moment he wondered if Hazel was like him because it was such an untraditional name for a boy to have. He quickly brushed it off and the nodded as he listened to the two interact for a moment. Once Agnes remembered what she had been doing beforehand she turned back to Viktor, “So what’ll it be, sweetie?”

“Just a plain glazed please,” he replied easily. Viktor wasn’t sure that he was up to trying any of the filled ones because of the texture issues that foods like that often gave him.

She gave a nod and then turned around. She grabbed a small plate and a pair of tongs from next to the cabinet, using them to grab a single glazed donut that she then placed on the plate. She handed it back to Viktor, who gave her a small ‘thank you’ in return. After that she disappeared into the back.

Viktor carefully picked up the food item that he had been given and took a bite out of it. The second that the donut hit his stomach he realized just how famished he was. He thought that the majority of the pain in his lower abdomen had been caused by the nerves in his upper abdomen protesting against the bindings that he had on during his chase. Instead, he found that he had been far, far hungrier than anticipated.

He tried his very best to contain himself and eat it in normal-people sized bites instead of ravished-teenager bites but he knew that he only did a half decent job. The thing that he really was able to control was wiping the crumbs and glaze residue from the ceramic to give himself even a little bit more sustenance. He was glad that he had chosen something with a very small amount of sugar because he knew that his body would have been in for a wild ride had he chosen one of the filled ones.

“Alright,” Agnes called once she came back out, this time on the same side of the counter as the rest of the patrons. She was wearing a nice blue coat over the top of her uniform but she was sans the hat and apron. “Sorry that I can’t stay for lunch today, dear, but I really should be getting him back to the Academy.”

Viktor wanted to ask what she meant by that, but he knew that if he did then he would be outed as a stranger in this world that he had ended up in. He didn’t want to deal with the police today, especially not when Agnes had been so kind to him up until this point. He was tired of having the memories of people he genuinely cared about sullied because of the things that their moral compasses forced them to do for his own benefit.

He slipped off of the stool and stood awkwardly next to the counter while he waited for the two to finish their exchange. Once they had, Agnes motioned for Viktor to follow her out of the door. He noted as they passed by it, that all of the glass was still in tact and the paint spelling out the logo was bright and cheery. The front of the building looked like it had been painted recently with how vibrant the colors were in the late afternoon sun.

He wasn’t sure that he was even on the same planet anymore when he began to take in what the city looked like. It might have just been because of the downpour, but there were far more people out in the streets than there had been when Viktor was trying to evade capture. They were walking down the street and a huge crowd of them were waiting for the bus, something Viktor was almost certain that he would have been able to identify when he ran by it before. The storefronts also appeared to be brighter and more vibrant, but he was able to blame that on the fact that the sun was now out.

He couldn’t help but stare a little at the people that they were passing by. It felt almost like a betrayal, for them to all be walking around and going about their days now that he didn’t need their help. He then remembered that he had to be on the lookout for his pursuer. There was a chance that the man and his ape were going to be able to find him even though he had hidden for as long as he could bear and so many things had changed.

Viktor tried to keep his focus about himself despite how tired he was. His stomach ached for more food since the only thing that he had had in about twenty four hours was a donut after doing more physical activity than he had since he was in swim at age fourteen. He was trying to ignore the way that his ribs ached and the dysphoria that was emerging underneath his heart since he could feel his shirt resting differently over his chest since he wasn’t wearing his binder.

All of his attention was being used up on being aware of who was around him and where he was in space and time, so he had completely forgotten about trying to break away from Agnes before she brought him all the way to the house and the woman that she had been speaking about before.

He only remembered when she stopped and then he did too. He turned his head and noticed that they were standing outside of the huge mansion that he had tried to break into before he almost got caught. It too looked much better than it had the first time that Viktor had found it. The paint on all of the buildings was perfect and looked like it had been done just yesterday. Each of the windows had a sturdy piece of glass in it, and even the ones that didn’t were open with curtains flowing out of them and into the street. He could even hear the sound of voices emitting from a couple of them and joining the noise on the street.

Something was wrong, and now he was sure of it. There was no way for both of the places he encountered to have changed so drastically in such a short amount of time, it was physically impossible. He was also aware that now he was going to be handed over to the woman that Agnes had mentioned when they were in the cafe and there was nothing that he could do about it.

The aforementioned elderly woman opened the wrought iron gate and then led him through it. She then carried up the steps to the building that had to serve as the entrance to the entire house. She rang the doorbell and then turned back to Viktor with a reassuring smile. “Grace only moved into the neighborhood a year ago but she and all of her other wards come down to the donut shop quite often. I expect I’ll be seeing you around.”

“I’ll try to come visit. Hopefully it won’t be like this time,” Viktor forced a smile onto his face. He was trying to go along with the reasoning that she had for why he had been in that closet even if he had no idea what was happening.

The door opened and revealed a teenager around the same age as Viktor. He had a scar on his right cheekbone that stood stark against the black stubble already growing on his face. He was wearing a black turtleneck and black jeans, though the weird thing about his appearance was the vest that he had on. It was made out of leather and stretched over his chest and stomach with glinting silver metal poking out of it in a couple of places.

As soon as the red door had opened, he looked over Agnes and then his eyes became stuck to Viktor like the other teenager had personally offended him. “Can I help you?” he asked, his voice nearly seething with rage.

“I’ve found one of your mother’s new wards. He was stuck in that closet that you kids are always playing around with. I don’t know why you would do such a thing, you all seem like such sweet kids, but I thought that I would bring him back since he’s new to The City,” Agnes explained sweetly.

Viktor felt his heart jump into his throat and begin to beat at a mile a minute. He knew that this is where something had would happen. If it had been the woman, Grace, that Agnes kept mentioning then he might have been able to charm her into understanding what had happened and letting him go so that he could run back to his camp in the woods. He was beginning to doubt that it would even exist since he had stepped out of the rainy misery that The City had been before to a sunny day where everything was different.

The teen folded his arms and leaned on the door frame as he looked over Viktor again. “So you got out,” his voice was level and held absolutely no emotion.

“I guess so,” Viktor nodded in reply. His heart was beating against his ribcage harder and faster than it had been when he was on the run. He had no idea what the kids of this woman would be like and what they would do to him once they realized that he didn’t belong with them. He also didn’t want Agnes to feel like he had betrayed her because she had been so kind to him.

“Come on in then,” he said as he moved out of the doorway and motioned for Viktor to step through.

The next three steps forward felt like they went on forever. Viktor was very aware of everything that was going on around him. He payed attention to the way that he had to hunch his shoulders forward so that he could reduce the impression of his shirt as much as possible. He was aware of the way that dried mud was flaking off of his shoes and pants and down onto the carefully mopped tile floor. He was even more aware of the way that the teenager next to him moved. He wasn’t going to let anything take him by surprise.

“Thanks for bringing him back, Agnes. I’ll talk to the others and Mom to let her know what happened so that it won’t happen again,” he promised before he shut the door.

Viktor knew that he was in it now. He had no way of escaping and he wasn’t even sure that he was going to be able to do that before he ended up here. He put his hands into his pockets, balling them up in fists around his most treasured items as he slowly turned around so that he was facing the other teenager.

Just like he had suspected, things immediately went downhill from there. The teenager reached out and grabbed Viktor’s wrist before he twisted it almost entirely behind him and pinned him up against the very door that he had just walked through. He was much taller than Viktor, so he was able to push his entire body up against the other. “I don’t know who you are or how you found our loop but I’m not going to let you hurt anyone.”

“What?” Viktor whimpered. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, and I don’t know what a loop is! I was just trying to find somewhere to hide.”

“Yeah, I don’t believe that for a fucking minute,” he seethed. His breath felt hot on the back of Viktor’s head and against his ear. He wanted to start sobbing as he remembered the half dozen foster homes he had where this had happened, either because of older foster kids or because of abusive foster parents.

He was dragged away from the wall and turned around so that he was facing towards the majority of the house. The teenager kept one hand tightly wrapped around his wrist so that Viktor would have been completely unable to do anything to get away from him without breaking it. If there was still some way that he could get out of this without injury then he was going to take it, even if it meant going wherever this stranger wanted him to.

The aforementioned boy shoved him forward so that they were both walking through the house. The building that they were in had dark wood along the ceiling and over half of the walls. There was beautiful crown molding against the ceiling and on the lower half of the wall. The floor was blue and white tile in elaborate, old-style designs. Viktor would have appreciated the house a lot more had he not been being dragged through it towards his doom. At this point he was so afraid that he would have accepted the man and his ape finding him to do whatever it was they wanted to do to him.

They passed by several rooms before they got to a stairwell. There had been one by the front door that was ornate and led in two different directions, the middle holding a wall with several huge stained glass windows. The hallway itself had several doors that led to studies and a couple of practice rooms. Viktor had noticed one that had a piano and a cello, as well as something that might have been a violin. The stairwell that they found themselves in was much smaller than the grand one in the front of the building. It was painted teal and white instead of the dark wood and blue-green.

Viktor tried his best to make his way up the stairs with the other boy holding so tightly to his arm that he could barely move. He was focusing so much on where he had to put his feet while trying to keep his chest hunched forward so that his cleavage wasn’t visible that he didn’t notice another person coming towards them. “Diego? What’s going on?”

He whipped his head up to see who had spoken, peaking through his long brown bangs to take in their face. It was a young teenager about the same age as the boy holding Viktor, who was apparently named Diego. She had long tightly curled hair and dark skin with even darker eyes. She was wearing something classy yet comfortable, a pair of soft looking gray pants and a yellow shirt that she had tied around her waist so that just a bit of her stomach was poking out.

Diego, from where he was standing behind Viktor, puffed out his chest. “I found a wight!”

“You found a wight?” the girl replied.

“Yes, Allison. I know that your hearing isn’t damaged like Alphonso. You can hear me,” he growled. Viktor wondered, just for a moment, what the relationship between the two of them was because it seemed on the edge of hostile.

She growled. “You can’t have foud a wight because Grace has worked long and hard to make sure that our loop entrance is hidden. There’s probably been an accident or something and now you’re traumatizing some poor norm-y.”

“I’m not traumatizing n-nobody!” Diego shouted. “This-this is a wight.”

He shook Viktor slightly so that the smaller teenager was shoved back and forth a few times. He groaned as that twisted his arm painfully in a direction that it wasn’t supposed to go in.

The other teenager, Allison, quickly hurried down the stairs. “Diego, there was a better way to do this! What happens if this is actually just some person that Agnes accidentally mistook for one of us and now you’re totally damaging them?”

“Does it even matter if I am?” he asked, raising a brow at her. “Everyone gets reset when the loop does. It’s not like any of the people around here know what tomorrow is going to be because that’s not how this works. You should know that, Allison.”

Anger burned through the girl in front of them and she pursed her lips. “You don’t have to talk to me like I’m stupid. I’ve spent more time in loops than you have anyway.”

“Then why did you forget that normal people can’t get through loops so there’s no way that he’s not a wight?” he asked. “We’ve never had Agnes bring someone to the door before because there’s never been another peculiar in the loop that came through the entrance.”

She waved her hand, almost in his face, to make him shut up. “Whatever! You still could have come to me and I could have used my ability on him to make him come with instead of almost breaking his arm.”

“Fine, then do it,” Diego replied. He released Viktor’s arm and the smaller teenager stumbled forward. He didn’t realize how much he had been relying on the hold to keep him upright. His legs felt like they were made of jelly because despite the fact that he was scared, the adrenaline from running away earlier had worn off and now he was exhausted.

The girl grabbed him before he had the chance to collapse on the stairs. For a moment, Viktor wondered how painful it would be to topple down the staircase to his death. The thought surprised him, he hadn’t had something like that cross his mind in a long time. Not since he had gotten free from all of the authority figures that were making his life miserable. Even when he was on the run through he woods away from people that desperately wanted to hurt him, he hadn’t had a thought like that. Maybe something about the place he was in and everything that he had been through in such a concentrated time was making him feel off.

Allison tilted him upright and then spoke directly to his face. “I heard a rumor that you came with us willingly to the bird’s office.”

Viktor felt something wash over his entire body when she said the first couple of words. The feeling was almost indescribable, like someone had stepped into his body and shoved his soul to the background. He was no longer the one that was driving his body as she finished speaking. His legs moved on their own, advancing forward to a place that he didn’t know of.

Diego and Allison fell in line behind him. Vaguely, around the strange sensations rushing through his body, he could hear them continuing to argue. He once had foster siblings that interacted very similarly to how they did. It made him a little bit nostalgic for a time that he hadn’t even really liked.

He stopped outside of two huge oak doors that were tightly shut. He hadn’t even realized that he was out of the stairwell and into a hallway by the time that he came back into himself. He gasped like he was finally allowed to breath after too long underwater, trying to get as much air back into his lungs. His heart was beating quickly against his chest, not like when he had been running away but still faster than it should have been.

“See? I told you that would be way easier than trying to drag him all the way up here,” Allison hissed.

Diego stuck his tongue out at her and then stepped around Viktor towards the doors. He knocked twice before he called, “Mom? I have something really important to talk to you about.”

The woman that opened the door wasn’t who Viktor was expecting. He had been picturing a woman that looked like Diego, with thick dark hair and warm brown eyes. Instead he was met with a woman that had very fair skin and long blond hair that fell in perfect ringlets around her head. She was wearing a blue dress with a white apron tied around her waist and a pair of white heels. She looked every bit the fifties housewife that Viktor had grown up seeing in pop culture.

“Who do we have here?” she asked, her voice kind and patient as she looked Viktor over.

“Agnes brought him from the donut shop. Apparently he found the entrance to the loop and thought that she would be the fastest way to get to us,” Diego explained. “I thought that it would be best to bring him right to you. Allison found me in the stairwell and used her rumor to get him up here.”

“I don’t think that he’s a wight, my dear,” the woman said softly. She reached up and brushed her hand over the side of his face in the way that Viktor’s mother used to when he was very young. Everything about the woman in front of him screamed maternal and comforting. It made Viktor feel safe despite every experience that he had in this house up to this point.

She turned to the other two teenagers, “Thank you very much for escorting our guest up here but I do not require your services any longer. Please return back to your chores.”

“Of course, Ms. H,” Allison nodded. She grabbed Diego’s arm and dragged him back in the direction of the stairwell that they had all come from.

Viktor turned his head so that he was watching them go the entire time. Despite this Ms. H being an adult, of whom he had been very distrustful of in the past, he was still more comfortable with her being in his blindspot rather than the two teenagers who had just done whatever it was that they had done to him. She let out a small sigh once the door to the stairwell finally clicked shut, “Please come into my office.”

She walked into the room with several clear clicks from her heels. Viktor stood there for a moment as he tried to get his mind back to where it should be. He then advanced just as he had been instructed to and slid the door shut behind him.

“I apologize for anything that my wards may have done to you. We’ve been on the lookout for suspicious activity because of things that have happened in other loops. Though based on your clothing and demeanor I think that you’re rather familiar with that,” she chuckled. She motioned for him to sit in one of the chairs across from her desk.

Despite what the rest of the house had looked like, the room that Viktor found himself in was quiet cheery. The walls were painted a pleasant shade of yellow and the bookshelves were all bright white. She had stacks of books in every shade neatly organized behind her as well as several nicknacks from all over the world. The desk itself was neatly organized, with a single book and a stack of papers in front of her. She had a fresh plant on the corner of her desk, yellow shasta daisies.

He nearly collapsed down into the chair when he was able to reach it. He hadn’t realized how badly his legs ached and how exhausted he was until he was finally stagnant. “What… what are you talking about?” he finally asked.

Her face softened slightly as she looked over him. “Oh dear,” she clicked her tongue. “I’ll explain everything in due time, alright? First let’s started with introductions. My name is Grace Hummingbird and I’m the bird for this loop. What’s your name, dear?”

She removed a book from a drawer on her side of the desk and then reached for a beautiful fountain pen. She was flicking through the pages as she waited for Viktor’s answer. “Uh, Viktor Hargreeves,” he finally responded. He shifted nervously around in his chair as he waited for her to find whatever it was that she was looking for. Once she had reached it, she wrote down his name with an almost robotic level of accuracy. Viktor had never seen handwriting that was so neat and tidy.

“Birthday?”

He gave her the date after a moment of thinking. He hadn’t had a lot of time to think about birthdays when he was younger because of how busy his parents were so it wasn’t something that he remembered all that easily. “And how old are you?” she asked next.

Viktor stopped, all of his thoughts immediately halting. “What? I- uh, I was born in 2002, so I’m seventeen,” he answered nervously.

She gave a small laugh, polite and not at all mocking. “Silly me, I forgot that you were unaware of our loop date. Today is October 1, 1989 and it will be until I close this loop. You came all the way from 2019 then, did you, dear?”

“Yes?” he answered, the feeling of confusion settling over him more than it had in his entire life. He had moved to another country where he only had a visitor’s understanding of a language and yet what she was saying was far more baffling than that.

Grace wrote down a bit more of the information that he had given her and then set her pen down next to it. “Alright, dear, I want you to tell me how much you know about peculiars.”

“Uh,” Viktor glanced towards the door and then the window. “I know that it’s a word to describe someone out of the ordinary. I-I really don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m sorry. I was being chased by this man and he had a monkey which was really weird because the monkey could talk and was wearing a suit. I just wanted somewhere to hide, I didn’t mean to be-become a wight or whatever that boy was calling me. I just wanted to get back to my camp and not be chased anymore.”

He didn’t realize that he was crying until Grace leaned over the desk to hand him a tissue. He carefully took it from her and then began to mop the tears off of his face. His head was hung down slightly so that she couldn’t see the way that his eyes were turning red. He was so tired and scared, he just wanted this all to stop.

“I can assure you that there is nowhere safer in this world than right here. You don’t have to worry about Sir Reginald or Dr. Pogo finding you while you’re staying with me,” Grace assured him. She got up from behind her desk and then walked over to the other side so that she was kneeling beside the chair that he was sitting in. She brushed her fingers over the side of his forehead to remove some of the stray hairs that were still sticking there after his race through the rain.

He had been waiting for someone to tell him that for almost as long as he could remember. It was almost soul-crushing to finally hear it now. He hadn’t realized how scared he had been and for how long until someone finally reassured him that he was going to be okay. He felt like he was breaking apart into a thousand tiny pieces only for the kind woman next to him to put him back together with nothing more than the solid warmth of her hand on his back.

“I’m sorry for breaking down like this,” Viktor apologized when he was finally able to contain his sobs.

“You don’t have to apologize for crying, my dear,” she immediately placated. “I understand that the introduction to this can be very overwhelming and you’ve already had a very long day. Would you like to go and lay down for a while or would you prefer that I explain some things to you?”

“I-I don’t think that I’m going to be able to sleep with everything going on in my head right now,” he answered.

She gave him a nod of understanding. “An explanation is due then,” she stood up from where she had been kneeling beside him. She moved back behind her desk and removed a huge book from the bookshelves there. She brought it and her chair around the desk so that she was sitting beside Viktor. She opened it and revealed several very old photographs. “A peculiar is someone that is different than the usual people of society. Sometimes they have abilities, like what Allison did to you where she was able to mind-control you with her trigger phrase. Sometimes they’re like this man here, who could contort himself into any shape.”

“Isn’t that just hyper-extendible joints?” Viktor asked as he looked from the picture to Grace and then back down.

“I suppose that it is. But they are still considered peculiar. There is a range of peculiars, which is what we with these abnormalities call ourselves. There are those who can blend in with a normal society and those who cannot. Invisible men, for example, have to reside with other peculiars because there is no way that they could fit in with the majority of society. Some peculiars also find it more comfortable to be with their kind because they know that they will not get hurt or ostracized.”

“Right,” Viktor nodded. Grace was slowly flipping through the huge album to show him more photos of peculiar people, and Viktor realized that it was something she was using to soften the blow of what he was being told. It made it easier for his brain to focus on what she was saying while he was looking at something that held half of his attention.

“Another thing that makes a peculiar the way that they are instead of just a normal person with some sort of birth defect is their ability to pass through loops. This one is going to take a bit of time to explain,” she cleared her throat. “There is a special peculiar called a ymbryne. They are most often women and have to be born female to possess these powers. They have the ability to transform into birds and they have some control over time, which allows them to create something called loops. I am a ymbryne, which is why you will hear my wards calling me ‘the bird’.”

“So a loop is a time loop?” Viktor asked. “That’s… complicated.”

“It is, yes,” she nodded. “You’re doing very well in taking all of this in. Some of my other wards were not as gracious when I tried to explain it to them. A loop is a day that repeats over and over again to try and keep the peculiars inside safe. It means that the normal people inside of the loop go about their day over and over again while the peculiars do not age. The rest of the world continues outside of the loop, and if a peculiar were to get a certain distance away from the ymbryne and loop entrance then they would be able to live from that point in time forward.”

“The loops have an entrance?” Viktor asked. He didn’t want Reginald to be able to find him and he had been hoping, when he heard Grace explain about how normal people couldn’t pass through loops then he would have to be safe. He hadn’t realized the implications of what she had been telling him quite yet, though.

“Yes, that’s where you came through. Most people pick somewhere a little harder to get to, like a cave or a tunnel. I heard about someone having one in a cairn somewhere in Wales. But I have all of my wards in this big house in the city, so I had to improvise. Before I chose today to be the day that I used as my loop I decided that it was going to be in that closet in Griddy’s Diner because of how my wards loved it. That was how you found it, I assume?”

“I hid there in the modern day. It’s… um, it’s not running in 2019. The whole thing is all smashed up and broken so I thought that it would be a good place to hide and then when I opened the door again it was like it was in its heyday. Which was kind of confusing.”

“I can only imagine,” Grace commiserated. “I think that’s all you need to know for today when it comes to loops and peculiars. Did you have any other questions?”

“You mentioned something about Sir Reginald and Dr. Pogo. Were those the two that were chasing me? And what’s a wight?” Viktor asked. Diego seemed pretty set on the fact that he had to be one, so he wanted to know what that was to know how offended he should be the next time he saw the other boy.

“Right, yes,” Grace sighed. “I don’t want to get too in depth to it, but wights are individuals who used to be peculiars and went through something awful. They are now on a warpath that would result in all peculiars dying so that they can rule as gods. They are identifiable through their eyes which have no iris or pupil.”

“Okay,” Viktor nodded. He was grateful that she wasn’t unloading everything on him at the same time and was being clear about that. It made him feel more sure that it would get explained to him eventually and helped him understand everything he was being told now.

“Reginald is one such creature. Dr. Pogo is a peculiar animal that he has managed to persuade to help him on his case. Reginald wants to capture as many peculiars as possible so that he can experiment on them. That happened to one of my own, actually,” Grace glanced towards the door. A smile flickered over her face and she called, “Five, you can’t just sit behind there and eavesdrop if you’re going to be so loud!”

There was a pop and then a crackle that sounded awfully close to electricity before a teenager around the age of thirteen popped into the room. He looked a little disgruntled that he had gotten caught but his chest was still puffed out in unearned pride. He had his hair cut in such a way that it only covered about half of his forehead and a few of the strands hung over his eye. His jawbone and cheeks were just beginning to lose their baby fat but his eyes were so much older than anyone who was actually thirteen would have.

“Would you please show our new guest to the bathroom so that he can wash up? Viktor is going to be staying with us for some time,” Grace explained. She turned back to the aforementioned teenager and then said, “I know that you most likely have a life to get back to, so we’ll discuss what we’re going to do to get you back to that safely if at all possible once you’ve had some time to rest. Five will get you some clothes to change into and then show you where you can stay.”

Viktor nodded. He got up from the chair and then turned to the other boy. Five gave him a once over before he jerked his head towards the door and said, “Come on then.”

They both left Grace’s office and headed back down the intimidating hallways of the house she had for her peculiar wards. “Your name is Five?” Viktor asked before he could stop himself.

The boy smirked as he turned back slightly so that he was looking at Viktor again. “A lot of peculiars have strange names. This one fit me best so I stuck with it. What’s yours?”

“Viktor,” he replied immediately. He knew, logically, that no one here was going to be able to figure out what his deadname was and torment him with it like they had back when he was in foster care but the idea of it scared him.

The duo traveled in silence the rest of the way through the house. Five stopped short outside of a small room. The door was open to reveal a cozy looking space. It had white walls with a single bed that was made up with soft looking blue sheets and two pillows. It had a dresser in the corner and a nightstand next to the bed. Viktor could just barely see a similarly sparse looking bathroom through the bedroom. “This is where you can stay while you’re with us until you decide to stay here permanently. I have to go get some clothes that will fit you from the attic but I’ll leave them on the bed. You can find anything you’d need to shower in the bathroom, extra towels are always kept under the sink. It was nice meeting you, Viktor.”

Before he could say anything, Five blinked away with the same pop and then crackle of electricity.

Viktor turned his head back to the room and rolled his shoulders. This whole situation was very weird, but something about it just felt right. He supposed that if they decided to murder him while he was in the bed that they had provided him then it would be a good way to go. He shut the door behind him, though he didn’t lock it because he knew Five would be returning. He then crossed through the bedroom and into the bathroom. He had been tracking flecks of dark mud through the entire house, which he felt slightly guilty for.

Once he was in the bathroom, he sat down on the closed toilet and pried his shoes off. He sat them down on the floor next to the toilet before he worked on undoing his jeans. He pulled out his phone and set it on the counter next to the toilet before he carefully laid his binder down on top of the device so that he didn’t have to risk it getting wet.

He turned on the shower while he collected the items that he would need. The soaps that he found were all non-scented so he didn’t have to worry about them being more feminine smells that might trigger his dysphoria. He pulled two towels out from underneath the sink and placed them on top of the toilet.

Once the water was hot enough, he got in and showered as quickly as he could. He was eager to get clean and to stop being naked because the feeling was so uncomfortable for him. It was harder to do than normal because of the huge bruises that were growing along a few of his ribs from wearing his binder for too long and that fall he had taken. He knew that this meant he wasn’t going to be able to wear one for a few days and that was not what he wanted to be thinking about.

He tried to put it as far out of his mind as he could while he finished up. He dried off and then wrapped a towel around himself as he peaked out into the bedroom. Just as Five had promised, there was a folded collection of clothes on the bed and the door was still shut. Viktor crossed the space between them and then picked through what had been provided for him. There was a pair of comfortable looking gray sweatpants, a pair of black boxers, and a purple shirt that was about a size too big for him.

He changed into them quickly before he gathered up his phone and binder from the sink. He deposited both of them into the bedside drawer of the nightstand and then returned to the bathroom. He placed his converse into the tub and ran the water again so that he could remove all of the mud from the fabric. It worked well because of the nature of the shoes and he was able to leave them in the tub to dry. He flaked off as much of the mud from the bottom of his pants as he could before he dumped the towels and his clothes into the hamper on the back of the door into the bathroom.

The last thing that he did in the bathroom was brush his teeth.

Viktor hadn’t felt as clean and safe as he did in that moment in a long time. He wasn’t sure that he had felt like this ever before in his life and he didn’t want this feeling to go away. He knew that the world he had stumbled into was strange and probably held more secrets than he could imagine, but he was already enjoying it immensely. He had a soft, warm bed to sleep in for at least a few hours and he knew that Grace would be amicable to giving him something to eat when he woke up. He was going to enjoy it here, he knew that.

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