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sissytobitch10seconds · 6 months

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Long Lost

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: They realize after a while that Five took Seven with him when he left. Now both of them are gone, and soon so is Six. But two out of three returning isn't bad, right? Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, pseudo-incest, mentions of pedophilia/child trafficking, and accidental misgendering Word Count: 10,371 Ship(s): Viktor Hargreeves/Five Hargreeves

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A/N: So if you're noticing that this fic isn't the kind of thing I write anymore, you would be correct. This was actually written almost an entire year ago and has gone through several different stages. I went between making it a chaptered fic and writing the whole first season with this AU and just making it this oneshot. I totally burned myself out writing my fiktorla fanfiction series and don't want to write canon rewrites anymore, so I'm leaving this as a oneshot. I tried to edit it as much as I could but there might be issues or typos that I missed since I was kind of skimming it. I also think it's funny that this has been on my 'to upload' list longer than I've actively interacted with some of my TUA mutuals. Have fun reading! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Funerals were something that they attended more often than most people would think. Many of their adoring fans had speculated that the few publicized funerals, which had been for make-a-wish kids, were the only ones that they had to attend. However, the Umbrella Academy superheros were often forced to attend the funerals of those that they had failed to save as a way of punishing them. Reginald would spend the entire car trip informing them of what a piss-poor job they had been doing by not showing up right as the crime had been committed or beforehand to save absolutely everyone. It was only when they got older did they realize he was doing it to keep them in their place and stop them from lashing out.

The funerals that were hardest to attend were the ones that they had actually failed to save. It didn't happen often, but there had been a couple missions that went wrong. Those missions usually resulted with them being bedridden with injuries and attending the funerals of everyone that they had failed to save. Allison had been instructed to rumor anyone who recognized them at the smaller funerals. They were never allowed to apologize to the family of those that they had lost.

The worst funeral that any of the children had ever had to attend was Ben's. He died when they were seventeen after a mission that had gone worse than any of the others that they did at the beginning of their careers. It was somehow so much more grueling and traumatizing than the actual mission, or having to attend the funeral of the woman he had killed in the accident. It was already harrowing and difficult to have lost their brother, but the new portrait inside the house over the mantel seemed to make it even worse. Five and Seven had already been gone for almost five years by the time that Ben died, and yet Five was the one that hung in eternal remembrance over their fireplace. Ben got a statue in the backyard and ignored after the funeral had been used to control the children even more.

It was most likely the reason that so many of them had run. Klaus was the first to leave, just a couple months after Ben had passed away. They had no idea where he had gone. One day they woke up and found his bedroom window open and half of his possessions gone. They had done some searching around The City, but every time they got word of someone that looked vaguely like their missing brother, they ended up losing the trail.

Diego left on their seventeenth birthday with the promise that he was going to join the police force. He was sent to an apartment that their father had already paid for after packing up all of his things. Both of the others knew that the only reason he wasn't completely out in the world is that he was still doing what Dad wanted him to, even if he was doing it indirectly now.

Allison left next. She waited until she was nineteen when she finally left. It was the dead of night after a rather harsh fight with Luther. They were arguing more and more now that it was just the two of them trying to keep the foolish superhero business alive. Luther was always desperate for their father's attention and Allison wanted them both to grow into their own people. He would refuse to go out with her into town to see a movie or eat at a diner like they used to when they were kids, back when there were seven of them instead of two. They got into it, arguing about everything under the sun and a few stranded in space. She had packed up her things and said goodbye to her mother and Pogo, leaving only a note for the two men in the house. She then charmed her way onto a plane to Los Angeles where she could live out her dreams as an actress.

Luther technically never left. He stayed by their father all throughout his teenage years and then deep into his twenties. The only reason that he ever left residence in the house was to go on the mission to the Moon, and even then he was still only going where his father wanted him to.

It had been four years since any of the children had occupied the house when they all returned to it.

They had decided to forgo a funeral with the general public because of Klaus' condition and Allison's newfound fame. Instead, they all returned back to their childhood home so that they could hold a familial memorial service and then return to their lives. None of them had stayed in contact with each other since they had left the dreaded house anyway.

Despite their haste at getting away from the abuse of their father to live their own lives, all four siblings ended up returning. Diego was the first to arrive since he had kept tabs on the house while doing vigilante work around The City after failing the police academy. Klaus was next, since he was still bumming around the town he had grown up in while trying to look for the next hit that would keep his demons at bay. Allison had the shortest trip out of the last two siblings so arrived next, and the last to come home was Luther.

The interactions were inevitable, but they still somehow put it off.

Diego was helping Grace with something in the kitchen, purposefully ignoring all of the signs of wear and tear in her code that caused her to act a little off. He loved his mother unlike he had loved anyone or anything else in his entire life. She was his constant source of endless comfort and encouragement when he had been struggling through his stutter and learning disorders as a child, so he was a little blind to the faults that she might have.

The door clicked behind Allison as she finally got back to her childhood home. "Hello? Is anyone else here?" she called through the still air. It was like walking back in time the second she passed through that door. She was no longer the famous actress, mother, and wife that she had been before she got on the plane. She was nineteen, fresh off a sort-of break up with her sort-of brother.

Diego took his mother's arm, guiding her away from the rice that she had been rinsing to cook on the stove for that night's dinner. "Allison, welcome home," Grace chirped as soon as she caught sight of her daughter.

"Mom," the woman's gaze softened from that defensive, wary look they all took on when they were back in their childhood home. She rushed over to her mother, wrapping her arms around the robot to bring her into a hug. "It's great to see you again. Sorry I never visited."

"It's alright dear. I was programmed to take care of you as children, and you're no longer a child. I was aware that you were all going to grow up and leave the nest eventually," she chuckled. "Diego told me that you made your dream to be an actress."

"Oh, yeah," she nodded. "I got married and had a kid too."

"Didn't know that," Diego commented, moving his head to the side as he looked over his sister. She wasn't that different than when they were kids, other than the outfits that she was allowed to wear now that she had some bodily autonomy. She had also changed the color and style of her hair.

She turned away from their mother to look over him as well. Diego had barely changed from when they were teenagers, other than the hardened look in his eyes. He had a couple new scars marring the lower parts of his neck, no doubt also streaking across his abdomen and shoulders. "Well, the wedding got a little bit of publicity but Patrick and I made sure that Claire wasn't ever in the spotlight. I never get to go out with her in public, but it's for her safety," Allison explained.

"I didn't know that I would be a grandmother after all this time," Grace said lovingly. While she had originally been programmed to be nothing more than a nanny to them all, when they started to call her mom, her program had seemingly adjusted itself to fit the more human nature they had given her. "Do you have any pictures of her?" the android asked, bringing both of her children back towards the kitchen.

"I do, actually," Allison replied. She dug her wallet out of her backpocket after depositing her bags near the door for retrieval later. She flipped it open and then revealed a picture of a little girl around four years old sitting on Allison's lap while laughing at something her mother had just said. "This is my daughter, Claire."

"She looks just like you, my dear," Grace praised. She sat both of her children down at the non-formal dining room table where they would take their breakfasts. Lunch was something that they got to eat wherever they wanted, and then dinner was taken in the formal dining room with their father. She placed more snacks than either of them could ever eat down on the table in front of them before she went back to her work.

The silence was stifling before Diego managed to find the words to ask more about her life. He already knew most of what she could tell him about the actress part, since it was well publicized, but he enjoyed hearing the stories of her daughter and husband that she was willing to share. He was willing to give her a little bit about his life as well. He told her about his vigilante work, though he dodged the questions about the girl she had heard he was dating back when she left for LA.

The conversation got a lot easier when their brother stumbled into the room. He was babbling at someone behind him, either a figment of his imagination or one of the ghosts he swore roamed the halls when he was a child. He turned on his heel and then stopped dead in his tracks when he noticed that it wasn't just his robotic caretaker, but two of his siblings. "Allison! Diego!" he crowed as he saw them. He removed the cigarette or blunt or whatever he was smoking from between his lips as he moved to hug them, ignoring how they were leaning away from him. "What a surprise!"

"Surprise? It's our father's memorial," Allison objected, giving him a firm pat on the back to make him detach from her.

He did, flopping down at the head of the table that had remained unoccupied since Seven and Five had disappeared almost seventeen years ago. "So how've the two of you been?"

"We've been living lives," Diego replied. He had his arms defensively crossed over his chest and was examining his brother like he was a criminal (which, knowing Klaus, he probably was). "What have you been doing, Klaus?"

"Seeing the universe, running away from demons, mooching off poor old schmucks too scared to come out to their wives. Same old, same old," he shrugged.

"It's good to know that you're not dead," Allison, glancing over to her other brother and their mother. It had been a serious concern for the remaining heroes when Klaus had left and never come back. They had all known about the alcoholism and the drugs, especially when they found ecstasy in his stuffed animals while searching his room for clues. It had only led them further down the path to believing that he had overdosed in an alley somewhere after getting a bad batch of his newest poison and they were never going to see him again.

"Mm, thought about it a couple times but decided that life was so much more fun!" Klaus gave them a near-demented smile. His eyes were rimmed with two different types of black, one eyeliner and the other bruises from lack of sleep, and they were sunk back into his face. Around the facial hair he had somehow managed to keep well-maintained they could see the way that his skin stretched across the bones of his skull. Underneath the huge feathered coat he was wearing, it was also apparent that he had been doing more substances than eating in the last thirteen years. "After all, if I had told the EMTs to go fuck themselves the last time I OD'd then I never would have been able to attend Dad's lovely memorial service."

Allison felt her heart melt a little in her chest despite herself. She might not have been as emotional as a sober Klaus or Ben had been, but she still loved her family. Seeing Klaus alive had been a huge relief for her, as was hearing (in his own odd, roundabout way) that he had wanted to keep living so that he could see them again.

Diego, on the other hand, was less moved by his ramblings. He leaned towards the other man menacingly, "You came back here to steal shit to pawn, didn't you? You did the same thing when he left to go to Mexico with Luther and Allison. Sold a bunch of shit and then did meth in the attic."

"Meth doesn't settle well with me," Klaus shuddered. He had been awake for a solid seventy hours, which meant that the nightmares when his body actually shut down and got some sleep were so much worse. He had stayed away from anything close to an upper since then, preferring things like ketamine and weed. Things that sedated him into a comforting dozing state where he could avoid the ghosts in both his waking and sleeping mind.

Both of the sober siblings glanced at each other, having a conversation that their brother didn't care to be privy to. This was going to be a tense couple of days while they waited for Luther to return from his moon mission.

---

Their interaction with their remaining brother had gone about as well as they had been expecting it to. After so long being by himself and only sending voice recordings back to their father as his proof that life still existed, he was a little manic about the man. He had spent most of his first day back, after giving them all a curt greeting, rummaging through their father's bedroom and study despite the proof of death and how he had been killed being provided to him in the coroner's report.

The next day they had actually been able to persuade him to attend the memorial they wanted to do now that they were all together.

All four siblings walked solemnly out into the courtyard, the urn containing the ashes of their father's body tucked carefully under Luther's arm. Pogo was the only one that wanted to speak to remember their father. Despite everything that he had done for Reginald and his obvious loyalty, Luther had remained silent when the old ape had asked if anyone wanted to speak. The eulogy had resulted in Diego and Luther getting in a fight, and Allison storming back inside. The last thing that happened in the courtyard, until later that night, was Klaus stubbing his cigarette out on the ashes.

They were all pretending to get along with each other for the sake of their robotic mother. At this point, all of the siblings could tell that something was up with her. She had been acting erratic and had even made an error with dinner the night before. If she was human this wouldn't have been at all alarming considering the fact that their father had just died, but she was a robot programmed to be the perfect housekeeper and mother. She had never once in their entire lives made a mistake when it came to cooking or cleaning.

"What's that?" Klaus asked suddenly. They ignored him until he got up, wandering towards the window. Something was swirling outside like a storm, right in the backyard where they had held the terrible memorial earlier that day. It was shedding black and blue lights onto the tile floor despite the yellow light fixtures hanging every three feet in the room.

Diego shot up out of his seat as soon as he caught sight of whatever was happening outside. Luther and Allison hurried after their brother, Klaus only turning to follow after a good five minutes. The siblings stumbled out into the pouring rain to look up at the vortex that was causing the ashes from earlier, along with a lot of the fall leaves, to swirl through the air in a mad jumble.

"What is that?" Allison called, holding a hand up to her face to try and block out the aggressive wind.

"Get behind me! It could be dangerous," Luther shouted over the blistering noise that was emitting from the swirling energy in front of them. It looked vaguely familiar in a way that Allison couldn't quite put her finger on, and less familiar to the other three ex-superheroes.

"Yeah, get behind us!" Diego shouted as he moved so that he was at the same level of closeness to the vortex as their much bigger brother. No one was trying to move closer to it, but Luther and Diego didn’t actually care about that. They just wanted to act like they could fight whatever it was.

Allison rolled her eyes but didn't try to argue with them, just brought all of her attention back to trying to figure out the fuzzy shapes that were beginning to lean closer to the other side of the vortex. She let out a screech when she was pushed back by Klaus. A stream of fluffy white foam rained down on them before they all realized that he had stolen one of the numerous fire extinguishers stocked around the house. The irony of it was that they had one in almost every room exactly for the purpose of putting out Klaus-related fires. When he had run out of the extinguisher fluid, he just chucked it through the vortex.

"What was that supposed to do?" Diego snarked, turning to look at their drugged brother. Allison was the only one to notice that it hadn't fallen through the other side like it would have had this been a cloud like she had suspected.

They all backed up in a panic as the vortex began to swirl louder and louder. Two figures were pushing through the center that had turned more beige and green than the swirling white and blue on the outside. Before any of the four ex-heroes could react, two people tumbled down onto the ground in front of them.

"Is it just me or is that little Number Five that I see?" Klaus asked, moving so that his chest was pressed up against Allison's arm.

The two figures that were lying on the ground were about the size of teenagers, but it was a little hard to tell since they were hunched over like they were in pain. They were both wearing neatly pressed black and white suits, though one of the figures looked as if his clothing had all been enlarged on a scale his body hadn’t followed. The shirt and jacket cuffs pooled around his hands as he tried to push himself off the ground, and the pant legs were like huge bags around his stick legs. They both had ruffled brown hair from pushing themselves through the portal. The man that fit better into his suit seemed to have a smattering of scars over the exposed parts of his skin as well.

When Klaus’ words really sunk in and they had more than a few seconds to look at the new arrivals, the other siblings nodded in agreement, but were too shocked to do much else. So much grief piled back onto them as they looked at the form of the brother that they had lost far too early in life.

Five had always been closest with Seven, who had been ostracized from the rest of them by their father. The only reason that Five got away with hanging around her as often as he did was because of how willing he was to go along with their father's experiments. They had all bonded with him, however, as well as a bit with Seven. They had all been learning in the same classrooms, and they had to take care of Five when they were on their way back from missions but too far away from home to let Seven take over like she was wont to do. Something that had made the disappearance of their siblings even more heartbreaking was that their last interaction they ended up having with them both. It had been all of them refusing to stick up for either of their now-missing siblings while their father berated them for speaking out of turn, Seven, and having delusions of grandeur, Five. The last time they ever saw either of their siblings they had both been inconsolably upset. Five had stormed out of the room and Seven had sat at the end of the table while sobbing until she was finally told to go to her room. After that, neither of them were ever seen again.

Five at least had a portrait hanging in the living room to remember him by, but it was as if Seven had never existed. They could still sometimes hear the phantom playing of her violin, though. She had picked up the instrument when they were young, around the time they started going on longer missions, and played it near constantly. The violin was resting somewhere in the storage space along with the rest of her things. Her room had been packed up shortly after she and Five had disappeared. The grief increased exponentially as they realized that they had some form of their missing brother back, but no sign of their sister.

“Five?” the man that wasn’t their brother called out. He turned around, his eyes wide as he searched for the aforementioned superhero.

Five lurched forward despite having difficulty moving in his baggy clothes. He reached out so that he grasped the other man’s arm and pulled them slightly closer together. “I’m here, I’m here,” he soothed. His hand came up to the cup the back of the stranger’s head so that their foreheads were pressed together. The stranger reached forward so that he was grasping the front of Five’s baggy suit jacket so tight that his knuckles turned white. They stayed pressed together like that for a couple of breaths before Five detached from him and properly got to his feet. The stranger sunk back down so that he was sitting hunched over with his head in his hands.

Five looked around them, mostly up towards the Academy, before his eyes fell on the gathering of siblings that had been dutifully watching from a few feet away. "It worked!" he crowed, a maniacal grin forming on his face. “My dear, it worked,” he turned back to the man that he had come through the portal with, though his smile faltered just a little bit as he began to realize something.

"Sort of.” The stranger slowly began to raise himself up to his feet. He was still holding his head with one hand, like it ached so bad that it might explode if he let go. He looked down at his body, and then swore loudly, "Shit! Five, I told you that you had done something wrong. Look at me!"

A hungry look took over their brother’s eyes for a moment and he licked his lips. He moved forward, grasping the sides of the strangers lapels, "Look at you?”

“Five,” the man growled out before his eyes went wide. He looked up and down the body of the other man a couple of times, like he couldn’t really believe what he was saying. “You might want to take a look at yourself, my dear.”

The teenager looked a bit taken aback about that. He looked down at his body and then back towards his companion, face filled with fury. “Viktor, Look at me! I'm fucking thirteen again!"

The older man, apparently named Viktor, shot him a look that could kill. His attitude seemed to be the perfect mix of humor and anger. His voice was light and teasing but it was clear he was panicked and uncomfortable by his body posture and expression. "So we have the same levels of testosterone, that's great for the both of us," he snarked.

"Well when we've finished saving the world from doomsday you can go harass the Commision to take you back for medical care, alright?" he sniped. They were snapping back and forth like they were an old married couple, like they had known each other forever. "Maybe they'll even give you that stupid old man body again. You should be grateful that I gave you another chance to be young."

"Maybe you should be grateful you get another chance to go through puberty. Now you know what it was like for me," Viktor replied. The two looked like they were just going to keep going until it ended in an all out brawl. They already had blue and white energy spirals forming around them, similar to what the vortex had been made out of.

Allison stepped around her brothers. She placed her hand over Diego's clenched fist so that he wouldn't be able to chuck a knife at their long-lost brother and his friend. "Okay! How about we all calm down and explain this situation? Who are you and why are you in our backyard?" she directed the question towards Five.

"We're your brothers," he replied, giving them that same smile he had seventeen years ago. He hadn't changed at all, despite talking a little bit differently and wearing clothes that definitely did not fit him.

Luther seemed to snap out of his shock and into the mode of a leader like he did every time they were on a mission. "Not possible. We had one brother that went missing when we were little. The other one is dead," he began to walk closer to the duo. "So tell us who you really are."

Viktor walked so that he was standing so close to Five that their shoulders were almost glued together. Their hands naturally reached down and threaded together. The man standing next to the photocopy of their brother grimaced and then asked, "Who died?" His eyes were flitting over each of the sibling, as if trying to place who they were despite them never having met before.

"Excuse me?" Allison asked, placing a hand on her hip.

"You said that you lost two brothers, one of them died. Which one was it?"

"Ben," Klaus spoke up for the first time since the new arrivals landed in their backyard. "Ben died."

"Shit," Five swore, dragging a hand over the side of his face.

"Explains it though," Viktor commented, shaking his head as well. He turned back to the group of siblings who were eagerly awaiting answers. He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders to try and give himself the confidence to speak. Five responded to the action by breaking apart their hands and weaving his arm around Viktor’s waist. They were brought even closer together after that, if it was even possible. "Do you remember back when we were all thirteen, how there was a little girl running around the house, who didn't have any powers?" VIktor asked. His dark brown eyes seemed to become more familiar as memories of their missing sister were returned to the four ex-heroes.

They all glanced at each other. Diego spoke for them, "Number Seven, yeah. What's your point?"

"Turns out Number Seven had powers and wasn't a girl. I'm him. Though I prefer to go by Viktor now," he introduced, holding his spare hand out in front of him towards them after removing it from the pocket of his slacks.

Klaus pushed past his siblings so that he was grasping the other man's hand. "Wonderful to re-meet you, dear brother. Now I finally have someone who understands the constraints of gender norms," he gasped as he slung an arm around Viktor's shoulders.

Five actually growled at the action as Viktor was jostled away from him. He bit the edges of his tongue to stop himself when Viktor gave him a gentle look to tell him that it was okay. "We don't have time for this," Five hissed.

He turned towards the house, but just before he had the chance to summon the energy to jump, Viktor detached Klaus from his shoulders and grabbed a hold of him. "If we don't have time to talk to our siblings then we don't have time for you to go all limp and comatose because you overused your power. We're walking," he almost commanded. It was a bit humorous, watching an adult shorter than the teenager dragging him around by his tie.

They pushed past the siblings into the backroom that they had all piled out of, leaving the others behind in their wake. Something was off about this entire situation, which added to the feeling of static electricity that hung heavily in the courtyard from the vortex. The four ex-superheroes glanced at each other before they followed after the duo. The information that they had been given was not enough to really draw any conclusions, but served to make them nervous.

"Wait, wait, wait," Diego called after them when they finally reached the downstairs kitchen where the two had disappeared. It was late and Grace was already charging in her chair upstairs, leaving them to have the space all to themselves. The rest of the siblings were sticking close to their knife-wielding brother as they also followed after the duo.

Viktor and Five had very easily made themselves at home. They moved around each other in perfect synchronicity, which caused the siblings to stutter for a moment. Viktor was rifling through a cupboard while standing on his tiptoes to be able to see the second shelf properly. Five moved behind him, placing one hand on his hip so that he could alert the other to his presence. He reached above Viktor so that his chest was pressed flush to the other man's back as he got the item that the shorter man had been struggling to reach. "Hate you," Viktor mumbled, though there was no heat or venom behind it.

"Love you," Five replied, his voice so soft that Allison was the only one able to pick up on it as she had learned to listen for tiny noises during her time with Claire. He pressed a kiss to the side of Viktor's head, his hand moving up from the other man's waist to hold the side of his head. Viktor's eyes fluttered shut for just a moment as the action was completed.

The siblings thought that they'd stop touching after that had finished, but it just kept happening. Slowly, the four of them filtered into the space so that they were sitting around the table. Allison and Luther were sitting on either side of the table, the last setting, while Klaus took up residence in the middle. Diego stood behind Luther, his arms folded over his chest while he ran a knife over his knuckles over and over again.

Viktor turned around so that his front was pressed to Five's and then took the bag of marshmallows from his hand. "Get the peanut butter for me if you're going to rub your height in my face so much," he ducked underneath Five's arm so that he was standing at the very end of the table.

"You're just upset because I'm still taller than you even though I'm stuck as a thirteen-year-old," he teased with a bright, soft smile. They had never seen him look anything like that when they were all kids, before they had disappeared. He had smiled before, but it had always been cocky and full of venom. This was something that felt a little too intimate to be watching, and yet none of the siblings could bear the thought of looking away from their siblings lest they disappear again.

"Maybe I shouldn't be mad at you for still being taller than me," Viktor hummed thoughtfully. Five rearranged himself so that he had his arms wrapped around the other man's waist and his head tucked on Viktor's shoulder. He turned to press a kiss there as the physically older man continued, "Because your error made us stuck in these bodies, you're not going to be getting any-"

"Okay!" Allison shouted over the top of him before the man had a chance to continue. "So are you going to explain what's going on here or do we just have to follow you two around until the secret reveals itself?"

They both sighed. "I guess we do have to tell them," Five muttered.

"Go get the peanut butter," Viktor said, instead of giving them any information relevant to the situation at hand. He nodded with his head and Five followed every single little motion that he made like he was trying to commit it all to memory.

"No, don't wanna let you go," Five muttered as he buried his nose in Viktor's neck.

Viktor dropped the bread that he had been getting out and let out a little giggle. He reached down so that his hands were on top of Five's, rocking them from left to right. "Do you want to eat so we can save the world or not?" he asked after he had sobered up from the rush of happy chemicals the cuddling caused.

Five let out a huffy noise and then immediately popped to the other side of the kitchen with a flash of blue. "I hate that you're always right," he groused as he reached for the peanut butter.

Luther jumped when his brother was no longer where he had been moments prior. "I haven't missed that," he grumbled under his breath.

"I thought we agreed that you were going to be jumping anymore," Viktor shot towards the other, though he held his hand out to the side for the peanut butter despite Five being on the other side of the kitchen.

"I did nothing of the sort," Five snapped shortly as he placed his hand in Viktor's hand instead of the requested item.

"You're an ass," he snapped, though he made no move to drop the hand that he had been offered. Instead he just used it to tug Five closer to him, the teenager-shaped man wrapping both of his arms around Viktor's hips as they had been before.

"Yes, but I'm yours," Five gave another one of those smiles to the shorter man as he pressed a kiss to the spot where Viktor's half-soft jawline met his neck. The aforementioned man let his eyes flutter shut as he leaned back into the touch for just a second.

The siblings on the table had been watching the entire interaction like it was a train wreck, something that no one ever wanted to see but couldn't look away from. It was as if the duo had no idea that there were people around them and that what they were doing looked far too intimate to share with their siblings. "So… you never answered my question from earlier."

"Right. Sorry, I'm not exactly used to having to explain myself," Viktor cleared his throat as a small flush formed over his cheeks. "What's your question?"

"Why didn't you come back until now?" Allison asked.

"What were you saying about the end of the world?" Luther asked.

"Are the two of you a couple?" Klaus asked.

"What have you been doing since you left?" Diego asked.

Each of the questions had been asked on top of each other so that they came out in a confusing jumble. The siblings turned and looked at Klaus while he just stared at the two beings trying their best to become one. "Why would you ask that?" Allison hissed. She couldn't keep the burning feeling of shame and embarrassment as she remembered the flirting she and Luther had when they were teenagers and yesterday when they had seen each other for the first time.

Klaus huffed at her. "We were all thinking it!" he said as he gestured vaguely at the duo. "I mean, they're practically hanging off of each other. That's not normal sibling behavior."

"What does our family know about normal sibling behavior?" Diego asked, raising a brow at Klaus.

Five cleared his throat to get the attention back to him and Viktor. "For your information, we are together. Viktor is my husband."

"We're not legally married," the other man supplied. He had finished spreading peanut butter over four pieces of whitebread and was now placing marshmallows over two in even spaces.

"We have a marriage license!" Five squawked.

Viktor laughed and leaned back into the touch of his husband once more. He turned his head to the side and gave Five a gentle kiss on the cheek to try and soothe him, like it was something he had learned to do a long time ago. "Yeah, one that doesn't have my legal name on it and is from before we were even born," he cackled, which earned him an eye roll from the taller man. He then turned back to his siblings and the food he was making. "The last time that you saw Five and I was… seventeen years ago?"

"What's the date? The exact date," Five said, interrupting his lover's explanation.

"We're the ones that are supposed to be asking the questions," Luther tried to challenge. He moved forward in his chair like he was going to stand up and try to intimidate them, but he barely even got a blink from either of the others. He was a little bit put out by that, confused about how they had changed so much in their time away from the family. When they were younger, before the two of them had left, Seven would cower away from him whenever he got anywhere close. Now, Viktor seemed completely unimpressed by any intimidation that he was able to scrounge up.

Allison looked towards Luther, extending her hand to rest on top of his own around Klaus. She then turned back to the duo, "It's March 24, 2019."

"Good, we still have time," Five nodded.

"Only seven days," Viktor objected.

"We've gotten a job done in less time than that."

"We had the briefcase back then. We don't have it anymore. And the Commission is going to be trying to come after us."

"They'd be stupid to try that with our powers," Five reached his hand up and got a few strands of Viktor's hair out of his eyes. Now that they were closer, the other siblings were able to see that his hair hung awkwardly in front of his eyes like it had been cut with a knife and without the use of a mirror.

"That's another thing that we wanted to ask about. Earlier you mentioned that Se-Viktor had powers. Dad told us almost constantly that he didn't, though," Luther spoke up. Diego perked up a bit at that as well. Much like Allison, he had been trying to both listen in on the duo and ignore them as much as possible. Relationships were sensitive for almost all of them, outside of the normal social urge to not want to watch two people make out.

They snapped back to watching their siblings. Viktor placed the sandwiches together so he had made two of the sugary monstrosities that he and Five had been obsessed with when they were little. He handed one to the taller man behind him. Five sat down in the chair closest to that end of the table so that they could still be facing the rest of the family. He reached forward so that his open hand was placed on Viktor's hip and was able to easily pull the shorter man back so that Viktor was situated on his lap. They ate a few bits of the sandwich like it had been years since they had eaten anything at all. Just watching them devour the odd meal gave Allison heartburn.

When he had finally had enough of the sandwich to actually focus, Viktor finally answered the question Luther had asked most recently. "He was lying. Do you remember the medication that I used to take before every meal?" Five let out a near-feral growl from where he was hidden behind Viktor's body. One of his arms was still wrapped tightly around the other man's wait, holding him in place so that they were almost flush to each other. His face was hidden behind Viktor's shoulder as he used his other hand to eat. "Shush, you. Well it turns out that the medication was actually being used to keep me sedated because my powers are half-linked to my emotions. From what we were able to study while we were away, I have the ability to change sound into energy. It means that I can do a lot of things as long as I have sound to manipulate."

"Telekinesis, weather control, energy manipulation, giving life," Five sounded off behind him. "My husband is very talented."

Viktor's cheeks turned a cute shade of pink as he ducked his head. "You're not allowed to call us that when we're in public from here on out. Not until you get a body that fits mine."

"What, you don't want to be married to a thirteen-year-old? What happened to 'til death do us part'?" Five asked, the joking smile dripping from his words.

Viktor just rolled his eyes and finished his sandwich. "To answer your earlier questions," he began.

"Wait, we're just supposed to believe that you suddenly have powers? How are we supposed to trust you over everything that our father told us?" Allison asked nervously. She didn't love their father and she didn't admire him the way that Luther did, but she was still a little bit suspicious of the two newcomers.

The shorter of the two men pulled himself off of his husband. He grabbed a glass from the cupboard and then a fork from the side of the drawer next to the stove. He placed the glass down on the table and knocked into the side of it with the fork. The four siblings watched with rapt attention as Viktor's eyes flickered so that the iris flipped from hazel to pure white. It wasn't the same color white as sclera, this one glowed eerily. There was also a thrumming white-blue glow coming from his chest just below his collar bones. The glass raised and then shattered so that thousands of tiny pieces rained down on the counter.

Klaus let out a shriek and scrambled backwards so fast that he tumbled off the end of the table. Diego snickered but moved to help his brother up anyway. Since Ben had died, the two of them had been interacting every now and again, though it was mostly just Diego taking care of his brother since Klaus was a bit helpless, which resulted in them being closer.

"Wow, okay," Allison leaned back. Her brows furrowed together like she was trying to figure something out. She then gasped and clasped a hand over mouth, "You weren't sick… he made me…"

"What?" Viktor asked as he turned to face her. The glow had completely gone away now that he was no longer trying to use his power. He glanced back towards Five, who he had to move away from when he was planning for the demonstration. There was a wild, panicked expression resting on his features. Five was up in an instant, tangling their hands together.

Allison removed her hands from her face as she explained in a rush, "When we were little, maybe four-ish? Dad told us all that you were sick. He brought you somewhere else, I think it was somewhere down in the basement. He made me go down there and I rumored you. I don't even remember what he made me say but you stopped acting like yourself after that. We all assumed that something you had caught had made you kind of weak and that's why Dad never let us play with you anymore but it must have been something to do with the medication."

"You're the reason that he felt like that all those years?" Five nearly screamed as he whirled around. He was approaching his sister with a predatory stance. For once, he was the one to break contact with Viktor without being told to do so beforehand. "You're the reason that I had to hold him every night while he sobbed his eyes out because he just wanted to be included but couldn't? You're the reason that he went through literal fucking decades of pain because he couldn't control the goddamn star living in his chest?"

"Five, that's enough!" Luther called.

The man rounded on his brother instead. "You're part of the problem too! None of you were ever there for him the way that I was, to see how badly this stupid project of Dad's destroyed him. None of you know how hard it was to try and get him enough confidence in himself to believe that he was worthy of love even though it was only us. Do you know what that kind of abuse does to someone's psyche?" He turned back to Allison.

"It's not that big of a deal, Five," Viktor called out from where he was still standing at the end of the table. He had recovered from his shock of realizing why his entire life felt like a lie, why every single thing that he had done was nothing more than mediocre. It hadn't been because he was actually just lesser than his siblings, but because his brain and every single thing he did had been manipulated by something out of his control.

"No! We promised that if we ever saw the old man that we would kill him because of what he did to us. He turned us into walking experiments, Viktor. Now he's gone before we got the chance to give him what-for and we find out that Allison is the one that made you feel like this," he was seething with rage at this point. He turned back to the woman, taking another predatory step closer to her. "I should kill you and put you out of your misery."

"FIVE! That is enough," the lights above them flickered, and when the siblings looked back to Viktor they saw that his veins held a bright white glow to them, signifying that his power was activated.

Something about the way that his lover had shouted at him caused Five to snap out of the overprotective stance. He blinked once and then slinked back over to Viktor. As soon as they were close enough to do so, Viktor powered down and grabbed Five's hand. He brought it up to his lips and kissed the middle knuckle. "These are our siblings. They've been through more of Dad's torment than we have, we got out early. They don't deserve to be punished for what he made them do. Do you understand me?"

"Of course, my love. I'm sorry," Five whispered in reply.

Viktor lifted his other hand up and cupped the side of Five's face. He pressed his lips to his lover's for a split second before they separated and pressed their foreheads together. Five tilted his head to the side so that he was leaning further into the touch that Viktor was giving him. "Come on. We have a world that we need to save," he whispered softly, as if it were supposed to be an intimate secret between the two.

Despite the fact that they had answered almost none of the questions asked by their siblings, Five grasped his lover and teleported them both out of the Academy. Klaus, Allison, Diego, and Luther were left blinking at each other and rather shaken. What their siblings had said was frightening, to say the least, and they had no way of trying to figure out what it actually meant.

Viktor groaned when they finally popped back into the correct plane of existence. He hated teleporting with Five, no matter how many times they had done it together. When they were in the apocalypse, they had realized just how well fit their bodies were for the powers that were assigned to them. Anyone else that had to handle their powers faced unexpected consequences, like the nausea that came with teleporting. "I hate that, I hate it," he hissed.

"I know, my love. It was the fastest way to get us out of there, though. You looked uncomfortable," Five reached a hand up so that he was holding the bottom of Viktor's chin. He tilted the other man's face to the left, right, and then upward to inspect his face in as great detail as he could. Once he was satisfied that all signs of emotional distress had all faded, he leaned forward and kissed the tip of his nose adoringly.

Viktor giggled and then had to break them apart. The parking lot that they were in was most deserted, but he didn't want to risk someone seeing them and getting upset. Especially now that they were stranded at this time with no way of getting to another. They had bigger priorities that Viktor being arrested because of inappropriate conduct with what they saw was a minor.

He looked around to figure out where they had been transported to. When he saw the large neon donut next to the yellow and pink sign his face went soft. "You brought us here?" he asked as he reached out and took Five's hand. They really couldn't resist being apart from each other for too long, even if 'apart' was standing just a few inches from the other.

"Of course I did. It was the first place I thought of. Wasn't too big of a jump either, just down the street. How do you say we get some coffee and talk, husband of mine?" Five asked, smiling towards his lover.

"Sounds wonderful," Viktor replied. He dropped their hands as soon as they were inside the restaurant, which caused Five to pout cutely. His sadness dissipated when he felt what could be seen as a fatherly hand on the small of his back.

They walked up to the counter and waited for the lone waitress still attending to the restaurant at this hour to notice that they were there. Once she did, she gave them both a warm smile. "Hi, what can I get for you?" she asked, looking directly at Viktor for the information.

"Raspberry filled," he said, tapping the menu in front of him. Neither of them were very good with pleasantries anymore. Saying things in a polite way wasn't necessary when you knew exactly what every twitch and tick from your partner meant. "And a black coffee."

"Right. And for your son, ma'am?" she asked, pointing with the end of her pen towards Five.

"It's sir," Five immediately corrected. "And his son will have a black coffee."

"Right, I'm sorry. It's late," she waved her hand in front of her face, but Viktor could see her embarrassment at her mistake. Despite that, the dysphoria that had been creeping up behind him finally smacked him down. He let Five dig the change from their last mission with the Commission out of his pocket before he fisted it over to the waitress. They moved to sit in one of the booths as soon as she had given them the things that they had ordered.

“You know that you don’t have to do stuff like that, right?” Viktor asked awkwardly. He hadn’t been anticipating his husband becoming that overly protective of him now that he didn’t pass as well as he had before they had come back to the new timeline.

“I do, actually,” Five huffed out. He had already drained about half of the black coffee that they had gotten for him. It was something that he had done every time they had snuck away to Griddy’s when they were younger. Viktor smiled affectionately at him as he felt his heart swell with adoration in his chest. They were sitting across from each other, the furthest apart they had been in a very long time, but their legs were still tangled around the center pole of the table.

Viktor nibbled on the edge of his donut. “What do you think they’re going to do once they’ve discovered that we’ve deserted?”

The other man’s face fell so that it was deadly serious. Had Viktor not been trapped with him in the wasteland when they were both actually thirteen, it would have looked a little silly for someone so visibly young to look so mentally old. “I’ve heard that they do a myriad of things to people that desert their missions or the Commission altogether. I don’t think they’ve ever had someone as powerful as either one of us, independent and certainly not together, do so, however.”

“We can handle anything that they throw at us, I know we can,” Viktor murmured. He reached across the table and took the other man’s hand into his own so that he could thread their fingers together. He was glad that the cafe was mostly empty and the few patrons that were scattered along the bar couldn’t care less about the duo in the corner. Both he and Five knew who they really were and what they really looked like, but Viktor wasn’t looking to be accused of child trafficking or otherwise endangering the man that was his husband.

Five brought the other’s hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “With you by my side I think that I could take down the whole board. You are the most amazing person that I have ever met,” Five smiled. His eyes were shining with a kind of happy-romantic emotion that had been and always would be reserved for Viktor.

Sometimes, despite the fact that they had been together since they were thirteen and married since they were twenty, it still felt like they were love sick teenagers that had just discovered what real love felt like. Viktor hoped that they could keep that feeling alive and burning inside of them once they finally got the chance to save their siblings. Viktor had spent so long with his husband right by his side that it was nearly impossible for him to so much as imagine a world in which Five wasn’t right there with him.

They lapsed into silence for a little bit as they processed everything that had happened. Portaling through space and time wasn’t something that they were unused to, but so much had changed in the world that they had left decades ago. Something was still burning in the back of Viktor’s brain, a loose thread that neither of them had ever had the time to talk about before they had decided that they needed to execute their plan.

“Five?” he asked after a moment. He had already finished eating the jelly-filled donut that they had purchased and was using the pointer finger of his free hand to pick up the powdered sugar that had escaped him.

“Yes, beloved?” the other assassin asked as he set his cup of coffee down.

“Are we sure that the apocalypse starts on April first?”

The question had been plaguing Viktor since they began the process of getting back to the time where they could stop it. When he noticed, over his husband’s shoulder when they were still struggling through the wastelands, that Five was computing for almost seventeen years after the time where they had left. Viktor had figured out that the other man meant to stop the apocalypse instead of putting them back in the time where they belonged. That wasn’t really what disturbed him, but the date that his husband had chosen to revolve his computations around did.

“What other time would it be?” Five asked, his brows furrowing together like he didn’t understand why it was being questioned.

“You can get so wrapped up in your own head sometimes,” Viktor whispered. He adored his husband so much that his heart ached obnoxiously in his chest, but he could still be frustrated by him quicker than almost anyone else. “Five, how do we know for sure that the paper was printed on the day that that apocalypse started? It’s not like the headlines were about the moon exploding or the sky raining down on the world. It was about standard news headlines and the sports for the day. Nothing in that paper would imply that day specifically is when the apocalypse is starting.”

“I…” he paused. “I guess that we have to assume that whatever starts the apocalypse happens on that day because otherwise the headlines would have been talking about it.”

“I think that we should just be wary about the dates being wrong, is all. It’s been bothering me for a while and I wanted to talk to you about it before we really got going on looking for the owner of the glass eye,” Viktor explained. Sometimes when he got nervous he still overexplained himself like he was the timid twelve-year-old that he had been when they ran as far away from the Umbrella Academy as they could.

His husband was adoring and compassionate so didn’t judge him for it, even for a moment. “We’re going to figure this out, Viktor. I promise you that.”

They sat in silence for a moment longer before the doors into the cafe burst open so hard that the glass in the left door shattered down onto the floor. The sounds of shards hitting linoleum wasn’t something that was unfamiliar to either of them, and neither was what happened next. They heard the sound of gunshots, three shots flying through the the air and into the wall behind them as they ducked underneath the table with perfect synchronicity.

“I didn’t think that they would be able to find us that quickly,” Viktor muttered under his breath. He glanced towards the other assassin to make sure that he was still in one piece, and once he was reassured of that, focused back to the task at hand. He summoned up as much of his power as he could with how hungry he was after only a single donut and fluffernutter sandwich. He didn’t know where his body was in the recovery process that he had to go through after they were tugged out of the wasteland by their manager, so he didn’t want to overdo it just in case.

He translated the sound of the gunshots, pumping it through his body until it had turned into wieldable energy. He could feel it pulsing out from the bright white-blue light that was glowing just underneath his heart. He wrapped it around his hands and then pushed it out around them so that it was making a convex shield towards the enemies still shooting at them. The bullets hit the wall of energy and immediately condensed down into a coin before they dropped harmlessly down to the ground. The force that they were propelled with only served to push them a few steps back every time one of the bullets hit the shield.

Five walked behind Viktor, calculating every single possibility that might happen during the fight before he jumped into action. While the agents that had been sent to kill them focused on Viktor, he teleported behind them without a single one of the agents noticing. He jumped up so that he could wrap his arms around the closest agent’s neck and then jerked it to the side so that the spine held inside snapped. By that point, the others had noticed and turned towards him instead of Viktor.

He had just teleported away by the time that his husband released a burst of energy, removing the shield from where it was taking his energy, so that it knocked them all over. He grabbed one of the guns that had tumbled down to the ground and then fired it at the closest man next to him. He tossed it to the side when Five reappeared then and shot the shield back up where it needed to be as some of the other agents began to wake up.

The other patrons and the cafe worker were completely hidden from where the agents were, so they didn’t have to worry about being stopped by them or having to protect civilians. They systematically took out each of the Commission workers until none of them were left. He didn’t usually do his kills like that when he was working alone, which was something he had only done a handful of times since he worked so much better with Viktor. Usually he was a lot more creative in his kills since he had the ability to surprise people with his teleporting anyway. With his husband by his side, however, he just wanted to get it done and over with as quickly as he could so that they could move on.

Five tossed the gun down onto the body closest to him and then grabbed a knife that was laying, forgotten, on the table closest to the door. Viktor threaded their bloody, sticky fingers together immediately after he lowered the shield of energy that he had created. They then walked out into the cold night, already discussing where they thought the trackers might be.

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #ao3 #archive of our own #tua #the umbrella academy #oneshot #fiktor #viktor hargreeves #five hargreeves #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #kaz hargreeves #grace hargreeves #long lost fic

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oceanspray5 · 3 years

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End of the Line, Last of the Fuse

So I already posted this on Ao3 a month and a half ago but decided there's no harm cross posting here too.

Summary: S3 Speculation fic based on the idea that Five could cause the apocalypse. Served with an abundance of sibling family fluff between Five, Vanya and Ben.

NO Harcest. Just good ol family fluff.

Vanya was having an out of body experience. Not literally, but she'd had two of those already and was getting quite good at recognizing what they looked like. They weren't the most pleasant to experience. This was almost the same thing but this time it was like she was watching herself through someone else's eyes.

It was stupid to hope that just because they were back in 2019 (and not even their own fucking timeline) they had left the apocalypse behind. Vanya had caused two different ones already. Never let it be said that she was a well-adjusted individual. (None of the Hargreeves were). Her family had destroyed one timeline and stopped her in another. Vanya didn't realize how terrifying it actually was to be on the outside of the situation. She had always been the bomb before. But witnessing the bomb, go off? The only one who had been able to stop her the last time was Ben, and he had already been dead so the reality had never hit her as hard as the others.

Ben…

Vanya swallowed hard. She missed her brother. The Sparrow that walked around with his face wasn't him. He housed the same horrors and he spoke with the same voice, but his eyes were steely and his tone cut like glass. Nothing like the soothing tone her Ben had employed when talking her down from the LSD induced panic… when asking for a hug before he'd disappeared.

Ben would know what to do. Vanya wished he were here to avert another apocalypse because right now, in the middle of all the chaos, stood Vanya's favorite brother: His eyes glowed a sinister blue just like the power that surged from his fingers affecting the world around them. His uniform, bearing the Sparrow's crest rather than its usual Umbrella, was bloodied in different places.

(Vanya noticed with resounding horror that the blood was still dripping as the uniform's deep red turned almost black).

He was out of control.

Buildings crumbled as time wore away foundations and debris flew suctioned from the magnetic charge that flowed due to the heavily distorted space surrounding them.

Vanya ducked as a piece of debris flew through the air towards her. She fell to the ground and when she clutched at the grass beneath her it had turned a husky brown within seconds. Beneath her fingers it crumbled to dust and mixed with the soil underneath it. Trees and shrubs on the nearby horizon had started to rot and crumble in the same way the grass had. Vanya watched in horror as the little critters in them writhed, collapsed, then died. Birds attempting to take flight fell to the ground and moved no more quickly joining the compost pile with nothing but bones left in the dust.

The cacophony of screeches caused by the pain of the time morph wasn't limited to the animals though. Cries of pain rung through the air as civilians in the nearby vicinity felt their arms and limbs give out due to the sheer force of time.

Vanya looked to her right and saw Klaus had gone ghost white. People were dying. Everything was dying. Caught in a temporal cycle of sped up time.

She looked down at her own hands. The blue veins had become prominent and the skin sagged. Allison and Klaus' hair was already stark white. Diego's normally fluid movements had become jerky and Luther's domineering physique hunched with age.

This was bad.

Another crackle of power left behind the smell of ozone and reality around them flickered as if transitioning through eras. The ground beneath switched from concrete to cobblestones to dirt to field within an instance.

A vortex opened up in the sky and Vanya watched mesmerized at the images that flickered through it.

The Sparrow Academy, the battle with the Commission, the 60s, the meeting with Reginald, Pogo, the moment before they time traveled from 2019, Harold Jenkins, Five blowing up a room filled with briefcases, Dad's death, Allison's divorce, Vanya's book, their siblings moving out of the house one by one, Ben's death, the day Five ran away, their thirteenth birthday, seven strollers in front of the mansion.

Then the illusions sped up.

20th Century. Kennedy, Vietnam, World War II and then World War I.

19th Century. The Civil War, the Declaration of Independence.

18th Century. The Industrial Revolution.

17th Century-

"HE'S TURNING BACK TIME!" Diego shouted in panic. The flickering around them made sense now. All of time was occurring simultaneously. It was no longer linear.

"Is that really such a bad thing?" Klaus said, a half-hearted joke covering his fear. "I, personally, don't mind not being born at all."

"How far can he even go back?" Allison asked. Her voice was an octave higher than usual and her eyes fearfully shifted between Five and their surroundings

It was silent for a moment then: "The Big Bang," Luther whispered horrified.

"But that's before anything ever existed!"

"Exactly!" Luther replied. "And if we go back then it means nothing will ever exist. We'll be lost in a pocket of space time forever."

"Quite the unconventional way to cause an apocalypse," Klaus said nervously. "But when has our dear old Fivey been conventional."

“We need to get to him! Fast!” Diego shouted.

They all got in position to attack and Vanya felt a churning in her gut that this wasn’t right. She didn’t have time to ponder why though because time was literally running out. They had a few minutes at most before Five got to the point of no return. Before they could make a move, the Sparrows appeared. Vanya felt a hot spike of fury fill her.

‘So the cowards appeared,’ her thoughts whispered. ‘After getting him to this point they still have no mercy.’

They made to attack Five who had no problem incapacitating them.

Vanya watched in horror yet sardonic pleasure as Five trapped them each in a pocket of slowed down time. He didn’t even flinch, as if he was expecting the attack, or more scarily: he didn’t even realize they were there. By the time the Sparrows fought their way through, their energy was exhausted and Five's smile was feral as they made their retreat. The whole battle couldn’t have taken more than five minutes. Five against Seven.

They took cover behind a chunk of concrete a few feet away from the Hargreeves and Vanya couldn't fault Diego when he snarled at them.

"If it isn't the birdbrains who are the cause of all of this. What, taking our brother away wasn't enough for you? You had to make him cause the apocalypse and now you're going to kill him too?"

The Sparrows looked at them and, despite their exhausted appearances, let out a chorus of mocking laughs. It grated on Vanya’s ears and she didn’t try too hard to stop the surge that flew threw her fingers. It must have had some affect because the Sparrows stopped laughing although their mocking expressions remained unchanged.

"Is that really what you think?" The one with the hoodie asked. Her face was hidden beneath her hood but the sharp glint of her teeth was visible.

"Not us... who caused... this," their Number Four, Alphonso, hacked out through labored breaths. "Can't say the same about you though."

Then the Sparrow's Number Five stepped forward. She looked at Vanya and her siblings with her lip curled in disdain and disgust. She was so different than their Five. Their Five who was currently causing the world to end. Vanya’s resentment towards her cut off as she spoke.

"At least I had a reason to stay with my family. At least I had a family who love me. I envied him at first, how easily he seemed to have run away from you all but even I'm better off. He wasted so much trying to save you selfish, lost causes. It would have been better if he hadn't. Pity his heart isn't like yours. His love is wasted on you."

"N-no!" Allison yelled. Her voice held fury but stuttered with doubt. "We love him. He's our brother!"

"Oh honey," Her counterpart (Fei? Vanya thought she remembered her name as Fei) mocked. Her eyes held both pity and amusement. "We may both confuddle others but at least I've never done it to myself."

Allison was rendered mute.

Then Ben stepped forward and the ache in Vanya’s chest increased tenfold. Vanya wanted her Ben. Her brother. She wished he'd stop this imposter family's accusations. She wished he’d help Five the way he’d helped her.

This Ben wasn’t her Ben. His words ripped the cruelest of all.

"Look at you all. Pathetic.” He laughed then. “No wonder I died with you as my team. Who could live when you're all so selfish. All at your own tables with your own pity parties no one attends."

Vanya was taken back to the courtyard on the day Reginald cruelly blamed her siblings for her brother’s death. They all looked ill. Klaus looked like he'd been punched in the gut and Vanya knew he felt guilty about keeping Ben to himself after death. This wasn’t their Ben. Their Ben would never blame his siblings for what happened and this Ben had gone too far. Vanya had had enough. She let the fury take over and her power sparked through finger tips, ready to blast the Sparrows away, back to Five’s domain of terror where she knew they wouldn’t survive a second blast, but before it could reach the Sparrows that goddamn cube floated in front of her face and Vanya was gone.

---

Number Seven was 8 years old. Father had refused to allow her to even enter the training room today and every day this week. It was lonely without her siblings.

A crack beside her alerted her to her brother's presence. He’d snuck out to check on her.

"Are you okay, Seven?" he asked kindly. He only ever used that tone with her.

"I’m lonely," she admitted with a sniffle.

"Do you want me to ask Dad to let you train with us?"

Seven looked up fearfully. Five had already gotten into trouble this morning for distracting their father so he couldn't experiment on Number Six and twice before this week for speaking out of turn; Two's stutter was having a bad week and Reginald got impatient. Five had also gotten a cold for going into the mausoleum at night to keep Four company. Their father hadn’t found out yet but every night was a close risk. He had even risked getting caught by their father by going out to get Number Three's favorite hot chocolate when she'd lost her voice the previous week because of her training.

"You'll get in trouble," She worried. Dad hated it if any of her siblings bothered to pay attention to her especially during training.

Seven didn't want to get Five in more trouble than he was already in.

He did it anyway.

---

Five was muttering furiously as he wrote equations on his walls. They were 13 and Reginald had once again refused to let him time-travel. Vanya was fidgeting on the bed, keeping him company and listening to his bursts of angry ramblings.

"Five, why do you think I don't have powers?" Vanya blurted out. She didn’t know where the question had come from. She hadn’t meant to voice it out loud.

Five stopped short. It was a question he'd pondered on a lot as well and always came up blank. If 43 children were born at the exact same time on the exact same day under the exact same circumstances and had powers, then it made no sense for one child to be an anomaly. The fact that 43 children were even born in that way was already one.

"I really don't know, Van," Five admitted honestly.

Vanya tried not to let her disappointment show. She already knew even her smartest brother didn't know the answer, how could he if even their father didn’t know, but it still hurt nonetheless. For a few moments it was silent except for Five's chalk hitting and scraping against the wall as he wrote.

"If you think you have powers though, I believe you," Five said thoughtfully. Vanya thought his statement made no sense since she very much knew she was normal. Her noise of disapproval must have indicated as such cuz Five immediately plopped down next to her.

"If you think you have powers, then you do have powers." He said seriously. "Dad doesn't know everything. You'd probably know better than anyone. So even if we can't see them…"

He trailed off and then stood up and started writing again. Vanya almost cried. For Five to believe something without empirical evidence was unheard of, but he trusted her enough to believe her even though she knew she didn't have powers.

He trusted her enough to believe in her even when she couldn't believe in herself.

"I'll always believe in you too, Five."

---

"But you didn't, did you? " A cold voice hissed. "He needed you and you only thought of yourself."

Vanya grew pale as she remembered all the instances she dismissed her brother.

"Dad always said time travel could mess up your mind."

"Maybe you should see someone. I could always give you my therapist's number. She's really good at what she does."

"New timeline, New me."

“I can’t help you, Five. I don’t even know who I am.”

"Why should you get to decide when you're the reason we're stuck here in the first place."

She broke her promise. He never broke his.

The other Number One, Marcus, looked down at where she’d fallen as Christopher floated away. Unlike his siblings his eyes held no mockery, just pity, as he looked to their broken family.

"Too much pressure means even Rome's walls will fall one day. It self-destructs before the enemy can bring it down."

And a child shunned by the village will burn it down to feel it's warmth.

Vanya knew this better than anyone. In the muddle of her mind, a half-baked thought questioned why and how she was mixing random proverbs together but she ignored it for now.

She blinked back tears as she looked past her family and the Sparrows at Five who was still in the middle of the din. Her bones creaked as she stood up; a reminder of what Five's power was doing to them all. Even the Sparrows weren't spared; the changes of time washing over them too.

She knew what she had to do. She knew how Five felt.

And she didn't need her powers to do it.

Five was tired.

So so tired.

An innocent mistake he'd made as a child of 13 had cost him everything. His home, his sanity, his dreams, his siblings. 45 years of struggle and pain and misery and defeat.

(Oh how he wished he'd listened to his father that day, how he wished he'd conceded to Vanya when she shook her head).

He had the blood of innocents on his hands, his humanity dug out of him with a scalpel in a barter for a way home. Five loathed how much his hands were stained. He preferred when the red on his clothes seeped from his own veins rather than anyone else's.

(He couldn't bear anyone else's. He couldn’t. He couldn’t).

When he'd finally made it home, he told himself he hadn't been expecting a warm welcome back. He hadn't.

Didn't you? His traitorous heart whispered. Or is that what you told yourself after you didn't get it?

His siblings had been almost emotionless as they sat across from him. They'd interrogated him; asking for answers Five knew they'd never understand and yet he answered them anyway. No "how are you?"s. No "are you okay?"s.

Their faces were blank. No worry. Just curiosity, confusion and apprehension. Vanya had written in her book that Five leaving had led to them all slowly drifting then eventually falling apart.

(Then why don't they seem happier to see you?)

There were no tears cried over his arrival and no hugs exchanged and Five buried the hurt with his goal to prevent the apocalypse. There would be time for reunions after. Right?

The Apocalypse…

He'd often questioned if going back was worth it. If saving his family was worth it. Would they even want to be saved?

He'd never tell anyone but he almost ended it once.

---

He'd been somewhere in his 20s. Time was a blur with nothing to keep track of it. He'd wondered why going back even mattered. His siblings were all at rest. He'd dug their graves himself. Would it matter if he dropped down too? Reunite with them in the afterlife or whatever. It's not like they were in any pain. They were six feet under rubble. Dying seemed the faster way to get to them.

That day was the first time he had dropped the handle of the creaking wagon with no intention of picking it up again. He almost said goodbye to Delores before admitting to himself that she was just a delusion of his mind. He gave into his aching feet and malnourished limbs and collapsed. A sandstorm was coming; he could tell by the way the wind was bowling. If he fell asleep before it, maybe he'd wake up to something that wasn't a barren, broken landscape. Maybe he'd wake up to nothing at all. He'd even smiled as he'd lowered the makeshift mask he'd made of his scarf not caring about the ash and dust entering his lungs.

When he'd opened his eyes, the sandstorm was above him. He'd fallen into a ditch and the Rocky terrain had somehow shielded him. His wagon had fallen across from him, possibly pushed in by the wind. Delores stared at him reproachfully from where she was lying upside-down. Even the blood loss hadn’t been enough to kill him.

Five had sobbed.

---

Stopping the first apocalypse had been a bust but he'd stranded his siblings across time. When he'd found them again, none of them wanted to help, too focused on their newfound lives in the 60s. Their easy dismissal of him left a bitter taste in his mouth and their blame on his messy control of his powers was even worse. They saw him and his warning of the apocalypse as a nuisance.

(If they cared so much then why did they have no problem living without him? How was it that his appearance only ever aggravated them?)

They all had their own lives, their own agendas. They were content even if they were out of their own time. Five’s desire to get them home meant nothing to them.

When he met Reginald again for the first time in over 40 years, Five questioned how right he had truly been all those years ago. His memory of why he'd been so confident as a teen was dulled. For the first time in his life, he felt guilty towards the man who called himself his father. He hadn’t been an easy child had he? Was his insolence ever justified even if Reginald had messed them up?

Maybe if he had listened? Maybe if he hadn't thought so much of himself.

(Maybe the suffering of an arrogant thirteen-year-old was deserved.)

No matter, Five figured out how to get them home. Sure, he'd seen his siblings die for the third time before they made it but all things considered, Five was getting pretty used to seeing the people he loved die.

(my fault, my fault, my fault)

Except it wasn't their timeline or their home either. A bunch of other kids had taken their place and his siblings had turned on him. Claire didn't exist. Their Ben was gone. They had no home. They had nowhere to go and they were out of their own time.

His siblings had told him as much battering him with blame and Five had no way to answer. Allison’s sobs as she realized Claire didn’t exist echoed in his ears and Klaus’ haunted look at the way the new Ben had treated them wouldn’t leave him alone. Mom hadn’t recognized Diego either, proving once and for all, they didn’t cross paths with Reginald as children. No, he’d chosen others to replace them.

(My Fault, My Fault, My Fault)

Five needed to fix this. Needed to get them home. When Reginald offered him a place at his new academy, he'd accepted. He didn’t recognize himself in the new uniform and even accepting the deal felt like betrayal but he masked it with his usual indifference. He needed info on the Sparrows. He needed to know what had changed the timeline.

He didn't think about how Reginald's adoption of the Sparrows meant that somewhere in the world, his alternate self was probably with his real parents. A version of himself that Reginald had never bought.

(Did this timeline's version of him have siblings who actually loved him? Did he have people who'd worry if he made the mistake of running headfirst into an apocalypse? Did he have people who would care about how much he was doing to keep them safe?)

He allowed Reginald to experiment on him again even though it made his skin crawl and nausea to well up. He allowed himself to be trapped in the mansion he’d loathed but missed for the majority of his life. He submitted to the man who made him feel 13 again even though he was 58. He did it for his family.

(Five was tired)

(So tired)

His family hated him. The mess they were in was his fault. If only he was more intuitive. If only he had figured out Vanya was the bomb the first time. If only he hadn't overshot when he sent his family to the past and forced the timeline to change. If only he wasn't a failure. If only he had more time.

(MY FAULT, MY FAULT, MY FAULT)

Oh how little he had of it. He never had time. Nearly 60 years of it still wasn't enough. But if he could solve everything, maybe he could even give in to the ever-present desire to rest and rest and rest forever. No more counting minutes.

(No more counting minutes til he could leave Reginald and the oppressive Academy.

No more counting minutes til he would be allowed to time travel.

No more counting minutes til he was free of the apocalypse.

No more counting minutes til he was free of the Commission.

No more counting minutes til he could see his family again.

No more counting minutes til the world was safe.

No more counting minutes til he could rest forever.)

His only consolation was that Vanya was safe. She was unhappy and betrayed but she was safe. She wouldn't cause an apocalypse and that was a relief. Her fuse wasn't lit and although that was a small consolation, Five could work with that. He could. He would. He'd change everything back to the way it was supposed to be. Back to before he'd messed up everything. Back to before the apocalypse nonsense started. Because Vanya always caused the apocalypse when she was upset. Maybe she wouldn’t have if he’d never left. Vanya had been the reason he’d spent his life in hell but he couldn’t blame her. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He’d left her first. Even if she didn’t need him to do more than keep her emotions in check.

(None of his family needed him)

In his hysteria, he didn't recognize as time flew past him, long past the moment he wanted to prevent. He didn't see space curl into magnetic whirlpools and multiple realities branch back into the same root. He didn't even see his siblings in front of him, trying to get his attention, weakened by his powers.

He didn't notice his own breaking point; that in his effort to fix everything, he was the cause of it this time.

He didn’t see what the world was becoming. Didn’t feel the power flowing through him, bending space and time to his will.

What he did recognize was his sister's warm embrace. One he hadn't felt in 43 years, but had missed every single day. And what he did see was the tears on her face as she wiped his away.

"Five… Hey, hey… Five. Can you hear me?" She whispered. Her voice was as gentle and soothing as it had always been as she held onto his shoulders firmly but not in a way that hurt.

"Vanya…" He mumbled back.

"You're alright, Five. I've got you. You can stop now."

"You're okay?" Five asked and Vanya had to swallow the lump in her throat because even in distress her brother was thinking only of her. He only ever thought of his family, never of himself. How had none of them noticed this? How could they have blamed him for everything?

"I'm fine, Five."

A shadow of relief crossed Five's face. It’s what he’d needed to hear and a half smile formed before it dropped. His eyes were still electric blue. He seemed to become more aware of his surroundings but not entirely. Vanya knew how that felt.

"It's happening again isn't it? The apocalypse?" Five sounded so tired and Vanya almost cried at the exhaustion in his voice and the tears that filled his eyes. Vanya had never seen Five cry.

"Yes. But you can stop it, Five. I know you can." She gripped his hands that were fisted up by his sides, the source of all the warped energy, (ignoring the sudden pain that shot through her as if it was trying to rip her cells apart and regrow them anew) as if trying to show him it was that simple to make it stop, to cease the apocalypse.

And to Vanya's horror, Five's tears spilled over and his mouth twisted into a trembling smile barely containing his sobs.

"I can't. I tried. I'm a failure. I couldn't save you. I couldn't stop it. I can't stop it."

Vanya looked behind her to see her siblings approaching, gearing up to attack at a moments notice but she shook her head to make sure they knew to keep their distance. She knew what she was doing. She'd been on the other side of the coin twice already. This situation didn’t need aggression.

"Yes, you can. You've stopped it before." Her voice was firm as she tried not to cry, herself.

"I messed up everything. I always do."

"No! No you don't, Five."

"I missed you," Five whispered. The power still surged from his hands but the tendrils weakened slightly. "I thought you all did too."

A tremor laced Vanya's voice as she spoke next but she held firm.

"We did, Five. O-of course we missed you so much. I-I missed you so much. I'm sorry we didn't show it. I'm sorry."

"I always mess it up. I should have stayed there." Five's voice trembled. "In the apocalypse. You'd all be happier."

Vanya felt the echo of her own words in the timeline past. (I'm a monster. I can't control it).

"We wouldn't have. You saved me. You came back after 45 years and you saved me." Vanya looked Five directly in the eye. She wasn't sure if he could see her but he could hear her. That was enough. And she felt her eyes tear harder as she remembered the words her Ben said to her before he died for the second time. "Let me help you. You're my brother. You're not supposed to do this by yourself. You're not alone in the apocalypse anymore, Five."

Five's tears only fell faster and Vanya hugged him. It's what Ben had wanted in his last moments. It's what Vanya had wanted too even though Ben had asked first. Vanya belatedly realized that Five hadn't had a hug in much longer than Ben. Even though he'd been alive the whole time.

And it seemed that's all he really needed because Five crumpled against her and sobbed. The power surge stopped completely and the time vortexes closed and, finally, Vanya allowed herself to cry too.

She mumbled apologies to rival Five's who still believed it was his fault, who was crying so hard she wondered if he could even breathe. And then Klaus was there with his arms around them both, then Allison, then Diego and then Luther. They were all crying.

Because at the end of the day, Vanya wasn't the bomb. All of them were. It just so happened Vanya was the most volatile the first time around. And it just so happened that Five was just as volatile as her but too caught up in stopping the inevitable to acknowledge it.

So the Hargreeves held their oldest brother in his tiny body that still carried the remnants of the years he'd spent malnourished and weak in literal hell. Their little brother who'd sacrificed so much in return for so little and still got nothing in return. And maybe it was too little, too late, as always seemed to be the case with them. But it was a start.

So... That was that. My first TUA fic.

Please leave a comment if you liked anything about this fic and reblog if you can cuz that's the only way tumblr algorithm picks it up and views it in the tag. The concept of the this fic is obviously purely speculation but I love the idea of Five causing the apocalypse and the relationship between the last three numbers really intrigues me too.

#Tua #The Umbrella academy #Five hargreeves #Vanya Hargreeves #Ben Hargreeves #umbrella academy #the sparrow academy #tua fic #tua oneshot #Christopher the Cube #hargreeves siblings #tua s3 speculation #567 #Number five

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