Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Five has always prided himself on self-control.

It's a pillar of who he is, who he’s had to be. There was no room for breakdowns in the apocalypse, no space for softness or doubt if he wanted to survive. And in his old line of work—his years of contracts and corrections—control was everything. It was the difference between success and failure. Life and death. Stagnation and going home. But here, now, as he stands in the middle of Elliott’s dimly lit apartment, his siblings arguing around him like it’s any other Tuesday, he feels the last threads of that control slipping through his fingers.

Two weeks. Two weeks of running on fumes, of chasing his only lead and meeting dead ends, of calculating every possible variable in his head until it feels like his brain is bleeding. Two weeks of failing. Failing to stop Vanya in 2019, failing to save the world, failing to save his family. Then, failing again, dragging them here in his last ditch effort to ensure they live, and landing in 1963, only to discover another apocalypse waiting for them.

He’s wrung out. Bone-tired. His breath feels like it’s catching on something sharp in his chest. He thinks it might be because of the aching shrapnel wound in his side. It’s never gotten a chance to heal. But the stitches have held, and that’s his saving grace, even if the pain of it is a constant, searing reminder that his body is breaking down on him. His hands won’t stop shaking. He’s trying to keep them steady, but they tremble, twitch, like they have a mind of their own.

He stuffs them into his pockets so no one notices.

But he’s also exhausted. That is a problem.

He’s not stupid enough to think that what he’s doing is sustainable, but he has no other choice. He counts the seconds, forcing himself to keep his eyes open with each blink, because he fears he’ll fall asleep if they’re closed for a moment too long. He cannot pass out now. If he passes out, then they’re all screwed. Who’s going to figure this out?

Who’s going to keep his family alive?

It wouldn’t be Klaus, who looks too tipsy to pay much attention to the latest fight beyond being amused. Not Diego either, who is pacing with a restlessness that earned him being thrown in an asylum, pitching half-baked arguments about ‘saving the president’ that everyone promptly shoots down. It won’t be Allison, whose attention flickers between her siblings like she’s watching a particularly bad television show. Vanya certainly won’t be, not slumped in her seat with all her memories missing. He knows it won’t be Luther, who had so clearly telegraphed his lack of care when Five first approached him. (It won’t even be Ben, who Five had seen fighting on that rooftop in a timeline that Hazel whisked him away from, but Klaus claimed was not here. Five hadn’t the energy to call him on his bullshit.)

So it’s left to Five.

It’s always left to him.

“Guys, I saw you all die,” he says, loud enough to cut through the bickering, and hating the way his voice threatens to break over the words. “I watched as Russian nukes wipe out the world and all of you with it.” He’s pleading now, and just wants them to understand that he wants them alive. That’s all he’s wanted for decades. His voice cracks slightly at the end, and he bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood. He can feel his siblings as their eyes turn upon him, and he goes to meet each of their gazes, trying to make them grasp how serious this is. “I don’t know if any of this is connected. I don’t know if there’s a reason for everything you’ve gone through, but Dad will. We need to talk to him before everyone is dead.”

Hardly a moment has passed when Luther stands.

“Okay, I’m out.”

His brother’s words hit him like a physical blow.

“Did you even hear me, Luther?” Five demands, because his mind refuses to comprehend the immediate, careless dismissal. He can feel that rejection vibrating in his chest, sharp and raw, but Luther just shrugs, broad shoulders shifting with a careless indifference that makes Five’s hands ache with the need to punch something—or someone.

“Yeah, I did,” Luther says, his tone infuriatingly calm, and he turns back to Five with an expression of annoyance, like being informed about their impending deaths is a mild inconvenience that he’d rather not bother with. Like the doomsday that is coming for them in less than a week isn’t a terror that has haunted Five since he found their corpses when he was thirteen in actuality. “I heard a fifty-eight-year-old man who still wants his daddy to come fix everything. Well, you can count me out, Five. I’m done being dragged into your messes.”

His family breaks into another bout of arguments.

Luther turns towards the stairs to leave. Five is left staring as he departs, his mind stumbling over his brother’s words, uncomprehending.

His messes.

It’s a worse gut punch than the last one, and for a moment, Five can’t breathe. His brain stumbles over the sheer unfairness of it. He’s been breaking himself apart, shoving every piece of himself into this monster designed for one singular purpose: saving them. Saving all of them. He’s bled, burned, and clawed his way through an apocalypse for them, endured decades of solitude, a lifetime of violence—all to bring them back to the safety they’ve never even noticed he’s trying to create.

And Luther has to gall to call this his mess?

“You’re unbelievable,” Five snaps, his voice shaking with barely controlled rage. “Do you think I want to be here? Do you think I wanted to get stuck in this time period, chasing yet another apocalypse while you all treat me like some kid screaming at the wind?” His hands clench at his sides, nails digging into his palms hard enough to sting. “I don’t want this. I never wanted this.”

His breath hitches, a bitter, burning lump forming in his throat. He bites it back, swallows the rising bile, trying to will away the pressure building behind his eyes. He can’t afford this. Not here. Not now. But it turns out it doesn’t even matter because Luther doesn’t even acknowledge him, already heading towards the staircase. His siblings have gone back to arguing, voices overlapping, the room filling with the static of their dysfunction.

He saw them die.

They’re going to die, and Five hates the helpless feeling that’s been building in his chest and threatening to spill over. He doesn’t have the strength to hold onto that sharp edge of anger at their refusal to take him seriously. He just feels raw. He’s held his heart out in his hands for them to see, and all they’ve done is step on it, like his efforts are nothing.

Five can’t help the laughter that spills out of his mouth.

They’d be right. It has been for nothing. Stop the apocalypse, save the world, keep his family alive—those are his goals, but what has he accomplished? Nothing! He’s stood in the wreckage of his hubris at thirteen, burying the only people in the world who mattered, and he’s about to do it again, in the same body as the first time no less.

Isn’t that ironic? Isn’t that hilarious?

Five laughs harder. He laughs so hard it hurts.

“Oh shit—”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Jesus…”

“Hey Five? Buddy?”

He can’t breathe. He’s still laughing.

Five curls in on himself, arms wrapping around like he could keep the pieces of himself together if he just grasps them tightly enough. You’re cracking, Cinque, Delores says, except she’s not here, because he brought her back to the department store, because he abandoned her in the apocalypse, because he’s failed her, just like he’s failed his family, and the fire that’s kept him going for so long has burned out.

There’s shadows of people in his peripheral, and overlapping voices that speak so, so gently. Five gasps for air. He can’t see who is around him. He blinks, once, twice, and cannot afford to fall asleep, so he keeps his eyes open but his vision doesn’t clear.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the first tear slips down his cheek, hot and humiliating. His breath hitches, and suddenly he’s sobbing, ugly and raw, and he hates it. Hates it with everything in him. He tries to stop, but the more he fights it, the worse it gets. He’s unraveling, his chest heaving, and his vision is truly beyond clearing.

“Five?” someone says.

He’s not in any state of mind to recognize who.

He doesn’t look at them. At any of them. He can’t.

“Five, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” he chokes out, his voice hoarse. “What’s wrong? Are you kidding me? You all—the apocalypse is what’s wrong! The end of the goddamn world is what’s wrong! Everyone dies! You all die.” He gestures wildly, his hands shaking worse than ever. Because that’s the important part: it’s them. It’s always been about them. “And you’re just—you don’t—none of you care!”

Of course not. They don’t know what it’s like. They couldn’t. They haven’t spent decades dragging themselves through hell just to find a way back to people who barely recognize him, who see him as a physical memory of a brother that they’ve lost, a boy he no longer is. They haven’t stood in the wreckage of their own failure, watching the people they love turned into ash and bone. They haven’t failed as completely, as thoroughly, as he has.

He wipes at his face furiously, but the tears keep coming.

Stupid, teenage hormones. Stupid, weak thirteen-year-old body. He’s fifty-eight, damn it, but no one looking at him would believe it. He feels like a child in every way that matters, and it burns. He looks up at his siblings with big, wild eyes and tears on his sleeves. They’re all wide-eyed and silent, and Five hates it. Hates their pity, their worry, the way they’re only taking him seriously now that he’s falling apart.

He wanted them to listen.

He doesn’t want them to see him like this.

Five turns away, like hiding it from view would make them forget what they’ve already seen. It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. His siblings would never, ever let this kind of thing go. He flinches at the light touch on his shoulder, the steady hand that forces him to turn around, to face them again. It’s Allison that he sees first, crouched in front of him with eyes that are so bare and so concerned. He wants to scream.

Where was this concern ten minutes ago?

Why wasn’t his warning something that matters?

But he already knows the answer. It’s because he looks pathetic right now, and Allison is imprinting her motherly instincts on the closest replacement in the absence of her daughter. Five takes note of his siblings crowding around, hovering at a brief distance, as though Five is an animal that might be spooked if they get too close.

He hates it. He hates it.

He’s not a child. He’s older than all of them.

Forty-five years of survival, and one fucking decimal has wiped away every inch of proof of that. Years upon years of clawing his way through the apocalypse, of learning to outsmart death at every turn, and now he’s stuck in this fragile, ill-equipped twip of a body that betrays him at every possible moment. It’s like the universe itself is mocking him, taking everything he built—all his resilience, his skill, his control—and reducing it to this. A boy with shaking hands and tear-streaked cheeks, barely able to hold himself together in the face of his family’s infuriating, pitying stares.

He wipes his face again, harder this time, like he can erase the evidence of his breakdown. He can feel their eyes on him, heavy and unrelenting, and it’s unbearable. They’re looking at him like he’s someone to be cared for. Someone to be worried about. It twists something deep in his chest, something he doesn’t want to name.

“Stop,” he says hoarsely, the word breaking as it leaves his mouth. He clenches his fists, but his hands refuse to stop shaking. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” Luther asks. His voice is soft, hesitant, but the kindness in it only makes it worse. Wasn’t he just telling Five that he didn’t care? That he didn’t give a shit? That Five could ‘count him out’ because the end of the world wasn’t something that he would bother with? What a joke. What an insult. Five wants to laugh again. He thinks if he does, a sob will spill out instead.

“Like I’m some fragile little kid who needs protecting!” he snaps, but the anger drains out of him as quickly as he can muster it. “I’m not…I’m not that.”

He’s not. He wants them to understand that.

He’s had to take care of himself for so long. No siblings to lean on, no family to pick him up when he fell. Just him, surviving. Just him, making every brutal, necessary choice to stay alive, just for the chance to return to them. And then, the Commission. Years of being stripped down to his barest instincts, turned into a weapon with one singular purpose: destruction. He’d killed so many people he’d stopped counting. Their faces didn’t haunt him because there wasn’t room in his mind for ghosts. Not when there were already six ghosts that weighed on him. Not when the job demanded so much from him. Not when survival required him to be more monster than man.

And now here he is, standing in front of the only people who’ve ever mattered, a method of destruction wrapped in the body of a boy. Blood on his hands, a shattered conscience in his chest, and they’re looking at him like he’s something worth caring for.

“You don’t get to act like you care now just because I’m—” He cuts himself off, swallowing the lump rising in his throat. Just because he’s crying. Just because he’s small. Just because he’s weak enough for them to finally notice. He can see the hurt in their eyes, the confusion, the sadness. He doesn’t deserve it. “There’s six days until the apocalypse,” he says finally.

Klaus laughs. There’s no humor in it. “That’s a hell of a deflection there, Fivey.”

Five is shaking. Deflection? Deflection?

Can’t they see that stopping the apocalypse is the only thing that matters?

Guys, the world ends in six days.

I watched as Russian nukes wipe out the world and all of you with it.

I saw you all die. You all die. You all die—

But they don’t seem to pick up on the importance.

“We don’t have time for this,” Five mutters.

His voice trembles.

His siblings notice that, because of course they do.

Because they never pay attention to what’s actually relevant.

And those damned tears start to fall again.

Chapter Text

Luther hadn’t expected this to happen.

He hadn’t expected Five to show up, not after a year of settling into the 1960s. He’d gone back to that alleyway he’d landed in a couple of times, just to see if he’d find any of his other siblings, but he never did. He was alone—like in the Academy when everyone left, like on the moon when Dad sent him away, like in the aftermath of being rejected by the Reginald Hargreeves of this time after spending the only coins he’d scrounged up to find him—and there was nothing to do but keep going. So, that’s what he’d done, and it had led him to a place working for Jack Ruby.

It wasn’t much—some lousy fights, a dingy room to sleep in, basic jobs that were only given to him for his size—but it was his. It was simple. Straightforward. It was a little life that he’d carved out for himself, even if it was in the wrong decade. It was nice, almost. He wasn’t living under the weight of someone else’s expectations. He wasn’t Number One. He wasn’t Reginald Hargreeves’ obedient soldier, or the leader of the Umbrella Academy, or even someone of childhood notoriety. He was just Luther, a guy getting by in a world that didn’t demand so much from him.

Just Luther—he’d never gotten to be that.

He kind of liked it. It gave him the chance to put distance—mental and physical—between himself and the suffocating weight of everything that Dad wanted him to be. It gave him the space to move on, in a way that he couldn’t even fathom back in 2019, when Reginald Hargreeves was the force upon which he’d orbited around. It gave him the opportunity to process the guilt of his part in the apocalypse, the actions that he had taken under the belief he’d been doing good, and how they’d blown up in his face so badly that it had blown up the rest of the world too.

And then Five had shown up, just like Luther had given up hoping he would.

It had been so easy to dismiss him then, back at the club. He didn’t want to consider the chaos and catastrophe that his brother was warning him of. He didn’t want to hear of the newest impending end of the world. He still doesn’t. He’s spent too many months attempting to rebuild himself to let Five pull him back into that horrible spiral of responsibility and failure, standing in anticipation of a doomsday and floundering for a solution while making things worse. He’d gotten distance from all that in the 60s, and Luther wasn’t ready to let it go.

He still wasn’t ready, several days later, surrounded by the rest of his siblings, as Five warned them all that there were only six days left now. He didn’t want to be part of this, and quashed his self-doubt and regret and fear—what if he made things worse again—with anger. He knew, on some level, that ignoring wouldn’t make it go away, but he did not want to face Dad and his mind games when he’d gotten away, he did not want to deal with the apocalypse when he’d made himself a life, he did not want to be part of this again, and Luther was firm when he said so.

“I’m done being dragged into your messes,” he’d told Five, and he had meant it, in that moment. He’d meant every word. He was done. But the way Five had looked at him when he said it—the usual sharpness in his eyes shifting into something confused and disbelieving and desperate—almost makes him falter. Luther turns away, tuning his siblings out as he starts for the stairs and pretends he isn’t running away.

“Seriously, Luther?” Diego demands. “You’re just going to walk out?”

“Yes,” Luther says shortly, jaw tight. He doesn’t look back. “Because this isn’t my problem anymore.”

“Since when?” Diego snaps, grabbing Luther’s arm to stop him.

“Since I stopped letting it be my life!” Luther yanks his arm free, glaring at Diego.

Diego doesn’t back down. “Dad’s involved with the Kennedy assassination, and—what? You’re just letting him? Sit it out and do nothing?”

“I am stepping away because I’m not letting Dad run my life anymore.”

Diego’s mouth opens like he’s about to fire something back, but before he can, a sharp, bitter laugh echoes from the living room. It’s high and strained and completely out of place, and both of them freeze mid-argument, turning back toward the sound. Honestly, Luther figures it to be Klaus. He half-expects for his attention to be drawn to whatever caused it, just to make sure that it wasn’t something wrong, before he heads back to his room that Jack Ruby’s been letting him board in and leaves this mess behind.

But it’s not Klaus.

It’s Five.

Around him, his siblings burst into various exclamations of concern that Five doesn’t even seem to notice. Luther doesn’t know what to make of it. How to feel about it. Uncomfortable, for one. Regretful, maybe. His stomach twists as Five—his brother who doesn’t back down, who never falters, who fell out of a temporal vortex after missing for seventeen years and took charge the moment he got up—continues to stand there, laughter spilling out of him in short, jagged bursts. It’s not real laughter, though. It’s the kind of sound that scrapes against his ears, full of bitterness and exhaustion and something so frayed it unsettles him.

“God,” Five says, his voice shaking between the laughter. “You don’t get it, do you? None of you do. You’re all so—so stupidly blind.” He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, his shoulders trembling, and then the laughter cuts off abruptly.

And then Five is crying.

His world tilts on its axis. Five doesn’t cry. He’s always been this headstrong, impossible force, a sharp-edged blade that cuts through everything in his path, arrogant and intelligent in equal measures, holding himself like he’s better than the rest of them. But now, Five standing there, choking on sobs, his hands trembling as he tries—and fails—to stop himself from breaking apart in front of them, looking every bit of the little kid that he’s trapped as.

Luther doesn’t know what to do.

He glances at Diego, whose anger at Luther has been replaced with wide, startled eyes. Across the room, Allison is frozen, her hand half-raised like she wants to reach out but doesn’t know how. Vanya looks lost, her arms folded tight over her chest like she’s trying to make herself smaller. Klaus shifts uncomfortably, glancing at the rest of them. They all share a look, the kind of wordless exchange that says: Do you know what to do? Because I sure as hell don’t.

It feels wrong. Everything about this feels wrong.

“Five,” Allison says gently. “What’s wrong?”

Five explodes. “What’s wrong?” he snaps, his voice raw and broken as he drags a sleeve across his face. His hands are still shaking. “What’s wrong? Are you kidding me? You all—the apocalypse is what’s wrong! The end of the goddamn world is what’s wrong! Everyone dies!”

Luther takes a step forward without thinking, shifting awkwardly as he tries to piece together what he’s supposed to say. His mouth is dry, and his heart is pounding, and Five is just…falling apart in front of them.

He swallows hard. “Five—”

Five doesn’t even acknowledge his name.

“You all die!” he shrieks, and it’s a sound that cuts through the room like a knife. His voice is high, raw, and teetering on the edge of something Luther can’t quite define—panic, maybe. Or desperation. He’s waving his arms emphatically, his movements jerky and wild, as if he’s trying to physically shake the words into them.

His eyes are wide, frantic, far too intense, but there’s something else there too—something hollow and empty, only masked by his fury. There’s an odd vacantness in his brother’s gaze, a detached sort of frenzy that sends a shiver down his spine. It’s like Five is standing on a cliff’s edge, dangerously close to falling, and quickly reaching a point where no one can pull him back.

Luther tries, in vain, to brush it off, to tell himself that this is fine, that this is just a demanding, over-the-top attempt to get everyone to listen, and the moment they recant, Five will be back to himself, that he’ll go back to acting like the Five they’re all used to. But he can’t. Because he knows that this isn’t just something he can ignore in the hopes that it resolves itself on its own.

“And you don’t—” Five struggles around his words. “None of you care!”

Luther can feel his brother’s fury rising back to the surface, lashing at them all. But it’s not the anger that bothers him; Luther’s seen plenty of that from Five before. It’s the way it doesn’t seem to fit. Five’s fury is always sharp and controlled, directed like a weapon, but this—this is something else entirely. His movements are frantic, uncoordinated, almost too big for his body, and his voice wavers with something Luther can’t name but feels in his stomach like a weight pressing down on him.

He watches Five pace, watches him gesture, watches his chest heave with shallow, uneven breaths, and for the first time, Luther notices just how small he looks. Not in the literal sense—Luther’s used to towering over everyone—but in the way Five’s hysteric energy seems to eat away at him, leaving nothing but edges and bones and a kind of emptiness in his expression.

Five’s eyes dart between them, unfocused, like he’s not entirely here, like he’s talking to ghosts only he can see. There’s a detached kind of desperation to it, and Luther is struck with the realization that he’s the ghost, they all are, because Five said he found their bodies when he jumped forward, and Luther isn’t sure if he ever stopped seeing them as the corpses he buried. Luther’s throat feels tight as he watches his brother, his mind stumbling over the sheer wrongness of the scene. Five looks…lost. He’s drowning right in front of them, and none of them know how to throw him a rope.

Luther doesn’t know how to throw him a rope.

He doesn’t even know where to start, because Five has always been the force of nature, calculating and unrelenting, a storm that barrels forward with a singular purpose. Since the moment he’s returned, Five has been the one with the plan, the one who thrives under pressure, the one who holds it all together and drags out a solution as the world is literally falling apart.

Five has never been…this.

This unhinged.

This scared.

Five isn’t just yelling at them. He’s breaking.

Five turns away from them, his shoulders hunched and small, his entire frame trembling like a fragile wire strung too tight, and the raw vulnerability in his posture feels like an accusation. Allison moves first, approaching cautiously with measured steps, crouching down to his level and hesitantly reaching out. Five flinches the moment her hand settles on his shoulder, but he doesn’t jerk away as she gently turns him back around. He looks terrible, like he’s about to burst into another round of tears before this one has even ended. Luther thinks he might cry, too.

“Stop,” Five says, and his voice is so small. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” Luther asks softly, his voice low, almost afraid to push too hard, as he wonders: looking at Five like what? With concern? Was he that terrible of a brother that Five couldn’t comprehend the prospect of Luther being worried about him? Again, his mind replays his interactions with Five—rejections and dismissals.

Guilt sits heavy in his stomach.

Five turns his head slightly, just enough for Luther to catch the sharpness in his gaze. “Like I’m some fragile little kid who needs protecting!” Five snaps, and the heat in his voice feels almost like a relief, grounding them all in something familiar. But it doesn’t last; the anger drains from him as quickly as it came. “I’m not…I’m not that.”

His eyes go distant again, red-rimmed and impossibly tired. He’s never seen Five like this. Even as kids, he was always so composed, so collected. He was the brother who always knew the plan, who never faltered no matter what their father threw at them, and butted heads with anyone he thought was wrong, regardless of authority. Seeing him like this—open, vulnerable, human—feels like a violation, like he’s trampling over Five’s privacy and looking into a part of himself that Five wasn’t ready to reveal, maybe that he never planned to reveal.

Luther opens his mouth to say something, anything, but Five speaks first, his voice breaking into gasping fragments that turn flat. “I’ve had to take care of myself for so long,” he says, and his voice is even now, in a hollow, detached kind of way. “I buried you. All of you. In makeshift graves because there was nothing else I could do. You died. And it was just—it was just me. Just me, staying alive. Just me, surviving. For decades. Just for the chance to come back to you…”

Luther feels like he’s been struck in the chest. He thinks back to what Five had said earlier, about finding their corpses. You all died trying to fight the apocalypse. I found you. Together. The implications had slid past him at the time, buried under the weight of everything else Five was throwing at them. But now, the horror of it settles in with suffocating clarity. Five had found them, he found their lifeless bodies, as a thirteen-year-old.

He remembers his own terror at the possibility of losing Allison, seeing that gash on her neck and all that blood, and thinks about how he might handle it if she had died. If all of them had died. If he was the only one left out of seven. He can’t even finish the imagined, nightmarish scenario. He looks back at Five, takes in his expression; it all screams of someone who’s been pushed too far, stretched too thin, and is now barely holding on by a thread. Maybe that thread has already snapped. And beneath it all, Luther sees a kid. A scared, desperate kid who’s carrying more weight than anyone should ever have to bear.

And suddenly, Luther feels like the worst person in the world.

He’s the one who dismissed Five earlier, who brushed off his warnings like they were nothing. He told himself it was because he was tired of being dragged into the chaos, tired of letting his brother’s plans dictate what he did. But now, looking at Five—really looking at him—he thinks, fuck, he’s botched this one up too, hasn’t he? He’s the one that pushed Vanya to her breaking point, and now he’s done it again.

Good job, Number One. Well done.

“And then—” Five’s voice cracks as he continues. “And then the Commission…”

This, Luther realizes suddenly, is not an outburst.

This is Five laying himself bare in a way that none of them have ever seen before.

Luther wonders if Five even realizes he’s still speaking. He doesn’t think so.

“I was good. I was the best. But they wanted me to stay, so they tore me apart and remade me into a weapon, stripped me down to my barest instincts, altered my DNA until I was only a killer. That’s all they needed me to be: a being of destruction, brought to heel.”

Luther feels like he’s going to be sick. His mind flashes back to Five’s earlier words: They turned me into the perfect instrument for corrections. At the time, it had sounded like a bitter hyperbole, the kind of dramatic language Five always used to make a point. But now, seeing Five like this, hearing the tremor in his voice, Luther realizes with growing horror just how literal Five might have been. They didn’t just train him. They changed him. Remade him into—

“I’m a monster,” Five says, his voice so soft it barely registers, but it feels deafening in the silence that’s settled over the room. It’s made worse by how plainly it was spoken; like it was a fact, like it was a certainty. “And I’m selfish enough to still hope you’d want me anyway.”

His throat tightens as the words sink in, and he sees the same stunned horror mirrored in his siblings’ faces. None of them know what to say. Luther swallows hard, his chest aching as he takes another step closer to Five. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to fix this, but he knows one thing with absolute certainty: Five isn’t a monster. He’s their brother. And Luther has spent far too long ignoring just how much Five has sacrificed for them.

“Five, I’m—”

I’m sorry, he wants to say.

Five cuts him off before he can finish.

He seems to come back to lucidity, shaking his head and swiping at his face with his sleeve. “You don’t get to act like you care now just because I’m—” There’s a long, heavy pause before Five swallows hard and finally looks up to meet their eyes. “There’s six days until the apocalypse.”

Klaus lets out a humourless laugh. “That’s a hell of a deflection there, Fivey.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Five insists, but his voice breaks on it, and damn it all, Luther is ready to tell the apocalypse to make time because he can’t just leave this be.

Then, Five is crying again, the sound of it raw and unrestrained, aching like a wound that’s been torn open, and Luther—well. Luther is going through it all at once. He’s been angry with Five so many times since he’s returned—at the way he barrelled forward without asking for input, the way he kept secrets, the way he dragged them into chaos again and again. When Five had found him in the 60s, with the same warnings as 2019, Luther thought that anger was justified. He thought it meant he was finally standing up for himself after spending his whole life following orders, first from Reginald, then from Five. But seeing Five like this, all that anger feels so small and insignificant.

Because the truth is, Five isn’t just a whirlwind of demands and impossible plans. He’s their brother. He’s always been their brother, and Luther knows now—knows in a way he can’t ignore—that Five has been holding himself together for their sake, and theirs alone, for longer than any of them can imagine. He’s carried the weight of the world, quite literally, and Luther dismissed him, and dismissed all his efforts with it. Luther takes a shaky breath, heart twisting in his chest, and gaze lingering on Five’s hunched form.

He doesn’t think; he just moves, and pulls Five into a hug.

Five freezes under his hold, his entire body going rigid like he doesn’t know how to respond. For a terrifying moment, Luther thinks Five might push him away, might lash out the way he’s always done when someone gets too close. But then he feels it—a slight shift, a barely-there motion as Five presses his face into Luther’s chest.

It’s such a small thing, but it’s enough to make Luther’s chest ache. Five feels so fragile in his arms, so much smaller than he remembers. His hair smells faintly of smoke and something sharp, and Luther wonders how long it’s been since Five has allowed himself even a moment of peace. How long it’s been for him, period. Luther’s had a year here. And Five—has he had any time at all?

“I’m sorry,” Luther says quietly, his voice thick with guilt. He tightens his arms around Five, holding him like he’s trying to shield him from the weight of the world. “I’m so sorry, Five.” I’m sorry for all that you had to go through alone. I’m sorry I wasn’t there then. I’m sorry I still wasn’t here for you when you came to me. But that’s going to change. He will be here now.

Before, he’d said he didn’t care about the apocalypse, that he was done being dragged into Five’s messes. It had been easy to say it then, easy to dismiss the end of the world as some nebulous, far-off concept—something he didn’t have to think about until it was right in front of him. He thinks this is it. The apocalypse isn’t just the world ending. It’s not just cities reduced to rubble or empty skies or the distant threat of Russian nukes. It’s this. It’s the wreckage in front of him. It’s Five, trembling and broken, his voice hoarse with the weight of all the things he’s carried for them. It’s Five burying them—his siblings, his family—in shoddy graves with his own hands, because there was no one else to do it.

Because there was no one else left.

Luther’s stomach twists painfully at the thought. He remembers what it felt like, landing in the 60s alone, with no sign of his siblings and no way of knowing if they were alive. He remembers the hollow ache in his chest, the gnawing fear that they were gone and that he’d never see them again. But that was just fear. Just uncertainty. It wasn’t unshakable proof. It wasn’t the unrelenting reality of finding their bodies, one by one, and knowing that he couldn’t save them.

But Five had. Five had lived it.

He’d been forced to face that nightmare head-on, to survive in the aftermath for longer than Luther’s been alive, to scrape by with nothing but the hope of finding his way back to them. Luther feels sick when he thinks about what that must have been like—not just surviving alone in an apocalypse, but carrying the memory of their deaths, the weight of their absence. He feels even sicker when he realizes that some version of himself, some broken, lifeless version of Number One, is buried in a grave somewhere in a ruined future, thanks to a thirteen-year-old Five who had painstakingly made it with hands that were too small for the task.

It makes Luther’s rejection feel petty, letting his own grievances get in the way of what Five had been trying to say—what Five had been trying to do. Save them. Protect them. Bring them together. And now, standing here with Five shaking in his arms, Luther feels something else. A realization so sharp and breathtaking that it steals the air from his lungs: the intensity of Five’s love for them.

It’s overwhelming to think about, the way Five has been driven by nothing but love for his family. He’s sacrificed everything—his safety, his sanity, his humanity—all for them. He’s been torn apart and remade, turned into something brutal, but even with Five claiming he’s a monster, Luther can’t believe that to be true, because Five loves them.

Because not even the Commission could strip away the part of him that loves them so fiercely, so completely, that he was willing to destroy himself for the chance to save them. It’s humbling. It’s devastating. And yet, somehow, it’s also warming. Like a light breaking through the cracks of everything Luther has tried to build around himself, melting the bitterness and resentment he’s held onto for far too long. It’s a comforting certainty.

Five loves them.

“I love you too,” Luther says.

It’s not just an apology—it’s a promise. A declaration. He doesn’t care if it’s too late, or if he should have said it sooner. He says it now, and he means it. Five’s breath hitches audibly, and Luther feels the tremor that runs through him.

Luther hears the others moving closer, their hesitance palpable.

It’s Allison who steps in first, her hand finding Five’s back before she wraps her arms around both him and Luther. Klaus follows, pressing in on Five’s other side with a murmured, “Group hug? Alright, sure, I’ll bite,” as Diego steps in behind him, his grip firm and steady. Vanya joins, slipping her arms in cautiously, like she’s afraid she doesn’t belong but can’t stay away either. It’s a clumsy, uneven thing, this family hug. Arms tangle awkwardly, elbows jab sides, and Klaus mutters something about being crushed, but no one lets go.

And then—“Ben says he missed you guys,” and with a soft blue glow, there’s one more joining the embrace.

Luther can’t even muster up the annoyance that Klaus lied earlier because Five is lifting his head, eyes darting around to see all of them, and there’s a steady sort of clarity and relief filling his expression. He feels, more than sees, the hesitation Five is facing, but tentatively, ever so slowly, Five lifts his arms and wraps them around Luther, tightening his grip until Luther can feel the fabric of his coat bunching in Five’s small hands. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Around him, his siblings are pressing in from every side.

“We’ve got you,” Allison says.

“Whether you like it or not,” adds Diego.

“I’m not leaving, either,” Vanya chips in.

“Very stubborn of us, I know,” Klaus says, and shifts around so that he can press a kiss to the top of Five’s head. “It’s a Hargreeves family specialty.”

Five huffs. “You’re all idiots.”

Ben laughs; it’s a rich, clear sound that Luther hasn’t heard in years. “I’ve been waiting to hug someone for ages, so you’ll just have to deal with it.”

“Idiots,” Five repeats.

Luther thinks it sounds very much like I love you.

Chapter Text

Five scrambles for some semblance of control.

His newest round of tears refuses to yield to his will. His face is hot and wet, his shoulders trembling as sobs force their way out of his chest, ragged and painful. He can only think of what might happen if he was attacked, right now, in this state. It would be ruinous. His hands curl into fists at his sides, nails biting into his palms as though the pain fight anchor him, might drag him back into any measure of his prior composure. But it doesn’t. It isn’t working.

He’s grabbed around his middle.

He tenses, muscles going rigid out of habit, as his body prepares to twist away, anticipating an impact, a strike, a grip too tight around his wrist, a knife pressed against his throat. It’s instinctual—flinch first, fight second. His body has learned to expect violence before anything else. Physical contact is rarely just contact. It is a means to an end. A fight, a warning, a leash tightening around his throat. But the hit never comes, the knife never falls, the pressure is firm, but there’s no force behind it. No intent to harm.

His breath hitches against Luther’s chest and—oh.

Oh.

It’s Luther.

Five is being hugged.

It’s been so long since he’s been held that he almost doesn’t recognize the action of steady arms around him, drawing him closer, holding him. He’s not being pinned down. He doesn’t need to brace for an upcoming blow. He can just…let it be. His mind stumbles over the realization, delayed in understanding because there is no precedent for it anymore. Not in his adult life. Not in the decades since he was torn away from everything soft, everything safe.

He doesn’t know when the last time was.

It certainly wasn’t in the apocalypse—there had been no one left to hold him then. He had been thirteen, picking his way through wreckage and ruin, whispering apologies to the bodies of his siblings as he buried them in the dirt with his bare hands. No touch there, except the cold press of their lifeless fingers when he had traced them one last time, committing them to memory before they were gone forever. No touch except his own against Delores, who could be held, but could not hold him back despite her verbal comforts.

It hadn’t been in the Commission either—not that first handshake had sealed him into a contract of corrections nor the mockery of affection that followed. The Handler’s too-gentle brushes against his cheek, the light tap on his nose like anything about their dynamic could be considered friendly, the smug press of her fingers beneath his chin when she wanted him to look at her. He’d learned not to react and push though. Touch was a weapon like any other, and Five could not afford to fall to it.

But this—this isn’t that.

His brother is warm and steady and gentle in the kind of way that Five knows Luther has to be mindfully careful about given his enhanced strength. He bites down hard on the instinct to struggle, to shove his brother away. It’s been so long. Decades going without. He’d been starved of it, stranded in that empty wasteland, and he’d forgotten about the desperate longing that had plagued his first few years. It comes rushing back all at once.

Five squeezes his eyes shut because it’s too much.

He never thought he liked touch as a kid—always dodging casual affection, rolling his eyes when Luther got too handsy, swatting Diego away when he got too close, leaning away from Allison reaching over to ruffle his hair, ducking out of the way Klaus would drape himself over any sibling within reach, hesitating over Ben reaching over to still his shaking hands, taking a moment too long to relax into Vanya offering an embrace. He had thought it was just who he was, that he had no interest in it, that it didn’t matter.

But then Five had been left all alone.

He had realized how wrong he was.

It was in the little things—elbows jostling at the dinner table because he’s left-handed, light shoves in exasperation or annoyance, bumping shoulders in passing, a tap on his arm to get his attention, legs pressing together in the backseat of a car on the way to a mission, the unconscious pull toward each other that had existed between them all. He had had it. He just hadn’t known it. Hadn’t known how much he needed it until it was gone. Until he was alone. So achingly, devastatingly alone.

And now, after forty-five years, he’s back.

And he’s in his brother’s arms.

And he’s missed this.

It feels like something in him has cracked wide open with the realization, and Five rationalizes it in that way. That’s why he doesn’t pull away. That’s why he lets Luther hold him, lets his face press harder against his brother’s chest, lets himself take in the steady rhythm of Luther’s breathing. Creature comforts. It’s because it’s been so long, and the absence of touch has clawed its way into his very bones. It’s a lingering part of being human. It’s not weakness, it’s necessity, and the monster he’d been made into can let him have this—can let him want it, can let him appreciate it.

“I’m sorry,” says Luther. “I’m so sorry, Five.”

Sorry for what?

Five isn’t sure. There’s a list of things that Luther could be apologizing for. Brushing him off when he warned them—again—about the apocalypse? For not believing him? For the way he had held on so tightly to their father’s approval that it had made him blind to everything else? Maybe, impossibly, it’s even for the first time Five disappeared, for not being able to stop him, for not being there when Five was all alone, for not being the brother Five needed him to be back then. There’s plenty of times to assign blame, justified or not. It doesn’t matter, in any case, because Five doesn’t need Luther’s apologies, whatever they might be for.

He doesn’t need any of them to be sorry, for anything.

He would do it all again, regardless.

Because none of what Five has done has ever been about getting anything from his family in return, other than that they would get to live their fullest lives without an apocalypse coming to tear it all away. It is not about fairness or justice or some kind of cosmic balancing act where he suffers and they compensate for it. It’s never been a trade, never been a calculation of risk versus reward.

Five loves them. It’s as simple as that.

He loves them so much he thinks sometimes it might kill him, thinks sometimes it already has, in more ways he could ever count. It means that he would burn the world down for them. Would kill for them. Would claw his way back from hell itself, over and over and over again, just for the chance to see them alive. They don’t need to earn it. They don’t need to apologize. That is what love is. It is unfair and merciless and entirely one-sided when it has to be. It shouldn’t matter if they love him back. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t lessen the responsibility he carries.

It doesn’t mean he will stop trying.

Love is his cost and reason both.

And every brutal, unforgivable thing Five has done—

It wasn’t for this.

He hadn’t fought and bled and survived just so he could be held in his brother’s arms like a child with apologies ruffling his hair. That was never the goal. It wasn’t about comfort or recognition or having his sacrifices acknowledged. But if it is being offered to him anyway, if he can let it be his, then Five can be selfish enough to accept it. To take it in, to breathe in the security of someone else keeping him upright for once, to stay and pretend that, despite the blame his siblings heap onto him, that maybe—

“I love you too.”

Oh.

His throat tightens.

He wants to scream in protest. He wants to shout that Luther doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that he doesn’t know what Five is, what he’s been made into. Luther doesn’t understand the blood on his hands, the weight of the things he’s done. He doesn’t understand that Five isn’t someone to love, isn’t someone who deserves this. He’s just the brother who gets the job done, the one who calculates, who fixes, who fights. He is not the boy that left them seventeen and forty-five years ago.

But Luther’s words are spoken with sincerity—to him. Luther speaks to the assassin and the monster, to the old man that doesn’t remember how to be part of a family. Luther says it like it is not a profound revelation, like it is barely a thought at all. Five blinks tears against the fabric of Luther’s coat and lets the warmth of his brother’s words settle into his chest, against all his raw edges. He has built his entire existence around his family. He didn’t do it to be loved back. He didn’t do it expecting them to still want him knowing what he’s become to return to them.

But Luther does.

And Five dares to consider: Maybe they all do.

He lets out a shaky exhale. His body is wound so tight that he thinks he might shake apart if he lets himself feel it too much, if he lets himself acknowledge how much he wants this, how much he has always wanted this, even after convincing himself he didn’t need it. His throat is too tight to speak, his breath uneven, his heartbeat pounding loud in his ears.

But not loud enough to miss the approaching footsteps.

Allison’s hand finds his back first, with Klaus quick to join on his other side. Diego follows from behind, and Vanya slips into the mess of tangled limbs right after. His family closes in around him, but Five keeps his arms stiff at his sides because he doesn’t know what to do with them. He’s spent his entire life loving them and doesn’t remember how to be loved in return. But he wants to be.

He wants it so badly.

Then, there is a familiar blue glow, the one sight from the fight at the Icarus that Five had tried to hold onto, and then—

Ben is there, too.

Ben, who had been his best friend alongside Vanya, who he used to huddle together with in the quiet dark of his room when they were meant to be in bed, their little trio, talking about what they might like to do once they got out of that household, out of Reginald’s control. Ben, who Five never got to bury. Ben, who he should have been able to save.

Five lifts his head, blinking rapidly, and looks.

His family. His siblings.

All of them, here.

And, slowly, haltingly, he reaches out.

His arms tremble just the slightest bit as they lift, fingers brushing against Luther’s coat first, then pressing in, his hands curling into the fabric, the sensation of being held so raw and overwhelming that it makes him ache, makes him want to pull back, to shield himself from this softness that feels almost dangerous, as if letting himself be this vulnerable would shatter him. But the desire to stay—to truly stay the way he foolishly hadn’t all those years ago—is stronger now.

So, Five holds on tight to the family he’s done it all for.

He has no intention of letting them go.