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.