Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’m afraid,” Allison said, in a voice that very much sounds like she might be quoting her therapist, “That you don’t have a sense of permanence.”

Five blinked up at her from where he was writing down an equation with one of those golden sharpies that he’d grabbed from - somewhere.

“What?” He asked to be polite, but it came out as biting. Honestly his social skills left so much to be desired, and even though that thought was a pain he very dearly wanted to dive into that rather than whatever Allison’s newest issue with him was.

Allison gestured down to his work, and Five looked down with a critical eye. While he had assumed Allison had no idea about the kind of complex equations and knowledge of quantum physics needed to understand his work, clearly she was trying to point out something about it. Perhaps he had underestimated his sister? He had, after all, been absent from their lives for seventeen years on their parts. Though Vanya’s book hadn’t mentioned the interest when it had discussed Allison (though it had talked about her quite a lot).

He wished Dolores was here, she was always an expert at spotting where he’d managed to drop integers.

But from what he could see, his numbers were correct and nothing had been dropped?

He looked up at his sister inquisitively, only to find her looking back at him in complete exasperation. This time his ”What?” was actually supposed to sound just as biting as it came out.

“Five,” Allison’s voice was probably supposed to sound very patient, but instead it ended up grating against Five’s ears and making his metaphorical hackles raise as she pulled out the chair across from him at the table to sit down, “What are you writing down?”

“None of your business.” Five dismissed her readily. He’d jump away, but then he’d have to either restart the equation from scratch or wait until the coast was clear. And he’d been here first, even if that was a somewhat childish reason to remain.

“The apocalypse is over, Five.” Allison stated firmly, “I know the equations were related to that, but it’s over now and you’re still writing them. Therefore, I am concerned about your sense of permanence here.”

“Did you swallow a self help book?” Five deadpanned, still scribbling away and doing his level best to ignore his sister as well as he could.

Allison reached out across the table and put her hand on Five’s, stopping the frantic writing. Five, for his part, was marvelling at the fact that he’d managed not to simply decapitate his sister with the pen and retreat across the room.

See? He was absolutely making positive steps towards healing, or whatever nonsense his siblings went on about on a daily basis.

“It’s over, Five.” She turned big doe eyes on him, “Are you planning on leaving us, again?”

It was a manipulation tactic. Allison knew it. He knew it. Allison knew he knew it. But damn if it didn’t work. His hand clenched tightly around the pen and he jerked his hand away from her grasp with a snarl, “I never planned on leaving the first time.”

He’d spend so many years hanging onto his own sanity by a thread, attempting to claw his way back to his siblings and save them from their own deaths for so many years that sometimes it was difficult to remember the period before that.

He’d seen Allison as she looked now, with blood in her hair and ash on her skin and no life behind those warm eyes. It was almost unfair, jumping as he did so close to when they should have died.

Sometimes he looked at them and all he could see were their corpses, cold and afraid in their last moments.

And people said it was only Klaus that saw dead people.

Five didn’t realize he’d shut his eyes until he felt Allison’s warm (alive) hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently with an even gentler, “Then what are the equations for, Five?”

An insurance policy. A just in case. He redid the equations at the end of every week to try and narrow them down further so that if something ever happened he could just - undo it. Could jump back and save them again, just in case.

Ben was dead already, he couldn’t change that. But if any of his other siblings croaked on him, he was fully prepared to jump back and pull them right out of whatever idiot situation they’d gotten into to begin with.

But he certainly wasn’t going to tell Allison that, wasn’t going to show the vulnerable soft parts of him that cared too much (even though a tiny voice in the back of his head said that maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all, letting people know that he cared).

So instead, he just shrugged.

Allison gave him a look and he just gestured vaguely with his pen, “You know, stuff.”

He felt like the fullbody sigh he got at that was frankly undeserved. If he was irritating Allison she could always just leave, that was an option. Even if there was a tiny part of him that wanted all of his siblings in sight at all times to make sure they didn’t end up killing themselves with their own stupidity or something.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t have a sense of permanence. For all they knew the Commission would still come and try and set Vanya off to trigger the apocalypse no matter how late it was. Worrying about his siblings who couldn’t even focus on one thing when that thing was the god damn apocalypse wasn’t unjustified, thank you.

“Five.” Allison said, putting aside the patient tone in favor of an annoyed one, “You’re writing on the kitchen table.”

“What a brilliant observation, Allison. Do another.” Five shot back, studying his equations again. The golden sharpie really did stand out magnificently against the dark wood. Plus it glittered, which was very pretty and something he clearly hadn’t appreciated enough before his ill-advised jump through time.

Dolores had the right idea with the sequins.

“Do you really see nothing wrong with this?” Allison asked, frustrated, gesturing at the writing and actually getting Five to pause for a moment. He was still pretty sure she wasn’t talking about the actual equations themselves, but what if?

Clearly Allison could read the misinterpretation of her words on his face, because she jabbed a finger at one of the numbers on the table, “The table, Five. It’s not for writing on! Shit, sometimes it really is like talking to Claire. She likes to draw on the walls unsupervised as well.”

That was absolutely the wrong thing to say. Five could forgive and forget a lot, but Allison tended to irk him almost the most out of all of his siblings because she kept treating him like a child.

“If you want to parent a child,” Five said frostily, iron in his voice, “Then why don’t you go parent your own? Oh, that’s right. You’re an unfit mother. So I don’t think I’ll be taking any advice from you, thanks.”

“Five!” Allison snapped, clearly Five had hit a sore spot because she looked absolutely furious.

It actually made something inside him wilt under her gaze, as if he was actually thirteen instead of just physically.

“You just want everyone to be as miserable as you are,” She hissed at him, getting up from the table sharply. Five didn’t dare look at her, it felt like something with jagged edges with cutting into his chest, “We keep trying to help you and you just keep pushing us away. It’s like you don’t even want to be a part of this family.

A furious gesture at the marks on the table, “Maybe you would be better off just leaving again.”

With that said, she turned on her heel and marched out of the room, not looking back.

The sharpie dropped onto the table with a clatter. Five’s hands were shaking too much to hold onto it. His eyes prickled wetly, and he jumped to his room before anyone could see him, the equations left unfinished.

He curled up on his bed, hugging his knees to his chest and gulping desperate gasps of air as he tried to convince his idiot thirteen year old body it was overreacting. He hadn’t meant to make Allison angry, he’d just wanted her to go away and stop treating him like a child.

He’d spent so long trying to get back to his family he hadn’t considered a very important question -

What if they were better off without him?

Chapter Text

Hours later, Five stopped shaking and wiped the tear tracks from his cheeks with the back of his hand. A shuddery breath in had him standing, though his legs felt more akin to a newborn colt’s than anything that should be attached to his body.

But he was used to it, the feeling of general wrongness about his body. The missing aches and pains and scars. He could push through this, as well.

Carefully, shakily, he went to the closet and pulled out the duffel bag he had liberated from Diego’s room weeks ago. With careful hands, he folded up some of the uniforms hanging in the closet and one pair of pajamas (they had yet to go shopping for him, though Allison threatened to do so at least once a week - but the thought of Allison was painful so he stopped thinking about that) and placed them in the bag.

Then, with slightly steadier hands, he picked out food from his stash to put in as well. But - he hesitated to take too much. What if his siblings needed it? They were all bigger than him, so they needed the food more right? He wavered over the goods for a moment before telling himself firmly that they had more food in the kitchen.

He still only took a small portion of the hoard though. Just in case.

With that done he took a look around the room but - there was nothing else for him to pack. Clothes and food and that was it. No mementos (left behind in the apocalypse save for a glass eye smashed against a wall), no keepsakes (he’d left Vanya’s book behind somewhere as well and wasn’t sure where it had ended up), no Dolores to keep him company or tell him he should go make up with his sister before resorting to drastic measures.

He pulled out a pen and pressed the tip to the wall before freezing. This was exactly what the argument had been about, after all.

He studied the pen in his hand. It was just - second nature to scribble on whatever surface was most readily available. Of course, after the Commission picked him up he’d limited his time equation to Vanya’s book (always keeping secrets) but anything else he’d just written wherever with no concern. Why bother scrounging around for paper when there was a perfectly good canvas wherever you looked?

But Allison had made it sound like a childish thing to do. Something bad.

If he searched back through his memories, way back to the fuzziness of before his jump, he thinks he might actually remember something about that. They’d been so tiny, probably four or five years old? Younger? Number Four (Klaus) had taken a crayon to the wall, clenched in fists still chubby with baby fat as Five and Six (Ben, they had names, he couldn’t forget their names) right next to him watching as he drew their family in shaky stick figures.

They’d been punished for it, all of them. Even though it had been Klaus wielding the crayon, Ben and Five had been accessories. He thinks - he thinks Dad might have hurt them for it? He remembers sitting on the kitchen table, all of them crying their eyes out as Grace tutted and looked at their hands. She’d been new back then, they hadn’t quite trusted her to kiss their boo-boos better, but she’d held them all in turn and dried their tears.

Had Allison wanted to hit him? He’d forgotten all about the childhood incident, forgotten how dangerous parents could be.

(Five had never gotten out from under Reginald Hargreeves’s thumb the same way as most of his siblings, the only experience with parents he’d ever known was still Reginald and Grace. He’d never made friends on the outside, experienced life on the outside - and Dad had never stood for Five’s rebellion.)

Allison was a mother, and Five had thought that made her soft (like Grace, kind smiles and gentle touches), but what if he was wrong? What if Allison was more like Dad?

But a good part of him denied the accusation vehemently. Allison was his sister, and he loved her. She was good and kind like Mom, not like Dad. She’d stood up for Vanya even when she didn’t have a voice to give shape to the words. But if she was like Mom, then that meant she had to be right about him, right?

Five drew away from the wall and instead shuffled through his desk for some loose papers. He could do this the right way, he would, even if his head still felt like it was stuffed full of cotton and his hands still shook under the weight of his own thoughts.

He put pen to paper and started writing, even though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was writing in the first place. His vision was blurry and his face still felt hot (wetness tracked down his cheeks, but he ignored that willingly).

There was an apology in there, to Allison. He hadn’t meant it about being an unfit mother. Allison was going to therapy so she could see Claire again. Five was pretty sure Dad wouldn’t have gone through the same amount of effort for any of them - or at least not out of love. There was a mission statement as well, saying he was better off leaving and they could go back to life before he dropped back in with news of the end of the world.

They didn’t need his issues, and he was self-aware enough to admit he had more than just the ones that he himself knew about.

After all, he hadn’t known the writing was an issue before today. So, logically, there must be more things wrong with him.

Finished, he signed the paper with a messy ‘5’ and left it on his bed in plain view. His siblings were suitably wary about entering his room without permission (except perhaps for Klaus, who had the self preservation instincts of a lemming) so it probably wouldn’t be found for a few more days.

With that done, Five shouldered the duffel bag and slid open the window. He could just jump out of the house, but frankly the fact that he felt like garbage combined with the fact that he’d already jumped more than he should have earlier in the day meant that it was probably better safe than sorry.

(And if there was a part of him terrified to jump when he was so tired, just in case he traveled in time again, well. The less said about that the better.)

Down the fire escape next to the dumpster. No Klaus rooting around this time to catch him.

He couldn’t take a car this time. After realizing the van he’d used for his stakeout was ‘stolen,’ the family had been sure to inform him that this was apparently ‘illegal’ and could get him ‘in a lot of trouble.’

The Commission had never taken issue with it when he’d hotwired or stolen cars to get to places. Then again, that wasn’t exactly the most glowing recommendation for the legality of an action.

Regardless, no car this time so he’d just have to set out on foot.

He hadn’t been walking for too long when the already gloomy day decided to get even worse as the grey clouds started spitting down rain. Not a lot, but enough to herald the soon to be arrival of a downpour.

Five needed shelter. Somewhere to go - but he couldn’t think of anywhere that his siblings wouldn’t think to look for him at. He couldn’t go squat at Diego’s place, he couldn’t go to the library, he couldn’t go find Vanya’s apartment or even go to the department store to talk to Dolores.

It needed to be a clean break.

Then his scanning eyes set upon the one place where none of his siblings would ever think to look for him, knowing that he would rather chew off a limb than willingly spend time in a place like it. A children’s park. One of the ones with the big plastic structures that looked like it would offer at least some protection from the rain.

No one would bat an eye at a child in a playground, but his siblings would never think to look for him there.

The playground was deserted thanks to the weather, so there was no one around to witness Five shoving the duffel bag ahead of him and climbing inside one of the tunnels with its clear plastic windows next to the slide.

He slumped against the wall, cradling the bag in his arms. His eyelids felt so heavy and he was just so tired and empty from his fit of - of emotion earlier.

Closing his eyes to the sound of the soft pit pattering of rain against plastic and letting sleep take him was perhaps the easiest thing in the world.

Chapter Text

Klaus and Diego had gone to grab some things from Diego’s place. Well, Diego had gone to grab some things and Klaus had graciously volunteered to go and assist out of the goodness of his own heart.

Okay, that was a lie, but being cooped up in the house was doing exactly nothing for their collective mental health and Klaus was pretty sure Vanya was going to stab her violin box through Luther’s eye if he brought up the moon one more time, and honestly Klaus didn’t want to be around for the fallout of that.

Maybe they should redecorate? Make the mansion their own. Paint the walls or something. Klaus was thinking maybe purple and green walls in his room? It would give the old man a conniption that was to be sure.

They could finally pull down Five’s creepy portrait!

“We should stop by like, Home Depot.” Klaus tapped on Ben’s shoulder to get his ghostly sibling’s attention, “They have like, paint and shit there don’t they? Or is that Hobby Lobby?”

“Lowe’s?” Ben offered with a shrug.

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Diego growled from the driver’s seat, “But we are going straight back to the mansion.”

Just because Klaus had accidentally dropped and broken something didn’t give Diego a reason to be so snappy! Klaus pulled a face at his brother’s back, making Ben snort in amusement. At least someone around here appreciated his genius!

Still, the redecorating thing was definitely something to bring up during their next family meeting. They could make it a project! Family bonding time! Was it Allison who was always going on about doing things together as a family? Actually, that might be Luther. Both of them? Sometimes it seemed like Allison and Luther might share a brain, and other times they couldn’t be more different. Gave Klaus whiplash.

“Mark that down, Ben,” Klaus whispered. He knew he’d forget about the idea by the time he could bring it up, but Ben totally wouldn’t. “Redecorating. Lowe’s. Family bonding.”

Ben gave Klaus the patented family ‘I am mainly agreeing just to humor you’ look but loyally repeated the words back. Ben was the best brother, really.

Diego pulled up just as Vanya was coming down the street to the house, having just finished a lesson at her apartment with a student, her violin tucked under her arm. Vanya had considered halting her lessons, but the rest of them had encouraged her to stay on with both being first chair as well as teaching. Vanya needed something outside of the family to escape to when they were all being ill-adjusted assholes. They all needed something, really.

Klaus waved enthusiastically at his sister, getting a fleeting smile and a small wave in return.

They all entered together, Klaus bounding ahead with all the energy of an enthusiastic puppy. He should find Allison! Allison would like his decorating idea. She liked that kind of thing, he thought.

But when he bounded into the living room, Allison was draped on the couch staring at the ceiling like it had personally shredded her new shoes. It made him draw up with a blink, “Uh, Allison?”

Diego and Vanya entered behind him in time to hear Allison bite out, ”Don’t ask.”

Klaus, never one to listen to his siblings advice nor orders, offered a quick, “Hey where are Luther and Five?”

“Luther’s where he always is, brooding in his room about Dad or the moon or whatever else he’s being a baby about now.” Allison gritted out, clearly channeling Five’s patented murder face. Vanya, bless her heart, reentered the room with a glass of water and some aspirin. Klaus hadn’t even noticed her leaving the room actually, whoops.

Allison quietly thanked her sister and took the offering.

“And Five?” Klaus asked, tossing his own body on one of the couches, gangly legs hooking over the arm.

Allison’s face immediately darkened into a scowl, which made something inside of Klaus sit up in attention even as Diego shoved his legs off the couch to flop down as well.

“Five’s sulking in his room and if he knows what’s good for him he’ll stay up there.” Allison practically growled. Klaus was surprised, he hadn’t thought his sister had it in her to be so furious at their littlest sibling, after all she’d been almost nothing but gentle to Vanya since the incident. Five must’ve really pissed her off.

“We should go check on him,” Ben said, looking towards the stairs, “I doubt Five would’ve been happy with being sent to his room.”

If that’s even what happened. What was more likely was Five had locked himself in his room after whatever occurred went down in order to avoid Allison and everyone else in the house.

“Why don’t you go check on him?” Klaus said, flapping a hand at Ben as though to shoo him away, “You can’t die twice.”

Even without looking, Klaus could tell that Ben was giving him the disappointed ‘you have to make an effort for family’ look.

Klaus groaned, “Fine, but I’m taking Diego with me as a human shield.”

Diego sputtered at that, but didn’t protest when Klaus dragged him up alongside him. Vanya seemed to have Allison well in hand, with Allison gesturing angrily as she recounted probably whatever Five did, but Klaus wasn’t concerned with that because he was already headed for the stairs.

Ben is hovering by the door already as Klaus strides up, Diego still grumbling behind him. Klaus knocks a tune on the door that to a discerning ear might sound something like an MCR song, singing out - “Five! My most dearest and darling brother! Will you let us in or do we have to break the door down?”

No answer, not even swearing and growling at him to get lost or go fuck himself.

Klaus frowned and knocked more insistently, “Five? Buddy? You in there? We’re coming in.”

He pushed open the door, only to find a complete absence of his smallest brother. Klaus’s eyes immediately went to the open closet and he trotted over, squatting down to peer inside. There was still food in it, that was a good sign, right? But it looked like it had been rooted through, the cans weren’t in the perfect stacks he’d watched Five fuss over before.

“We have a problem. Fuck!” Diego’s voice came from over by the bed, he was studying a - piece of paper?

Klaus straightened up to walk over. Ben was peering over Diego’s shoulder to read what Klaus assumed was a letter, blue light glitching through him as the ghost was unconcerned towards Diego’s shifts unlike the way he usually avoided cutting through his siblings.

Diego met Klaus’s eyes and there was actual fear in them.

“Five ran away!” Ben blurted out, making Klaus gasp.

“Shit we have to find him!” Klaus spat out, already making for the door. Diego must have assumed that Ben had given him the info, because he was close at Klaus’s heels as they stampeded down the stairs.

“Family meeting! Family meeting!” Klaus was bleating at the top of his lungs, which made Luther peek his head out of his room at least and head towards the stairs.

The duo (trio, sorry Ben) skidded into the living room where Vanya was looking at them with alarm and Allison with irritation.

“Five is gone!” Diego yelled out, flailing the piece of paper in his hand, “He’s fucking run away, he left a note.”

At that, Allison’s irritation transformed into alarm. “What?” She squawked, grabbing the paper from Diego’s hands. Klaus only saw a scrawled ‘I’m sorry’ written by an unsteady hand before Allison had whisked it away to scan it for herself.

That’s around the time Luther made it fully down the stairs and Allison burst into tears. Of course, Luther went straight for Allison taking her into his arms as if they didn’t have better things to be doing like, oh, finding their physically thirteen-year-old brother.

“We - we h-had a fight!” Allison cried, handing the note to Vanya. Klaus really wanted to read it now if it had that reaction, “I told h-him we’d be better - we’d be better off without him.”

She’d done what?

“You did what?”

Klaus almost thought that had been him for a second but it was Diego looking incredulous.

As much as Klaus loathed being the voice of reason here, he had to diffuse this asap if he wanted them to actually focus on getting Five back. God, had this been what the kid had felt like herding them during the apocalypse week? If so, Klaus took back everything he’d even thought about how sour the kid could be.

“What did Five say to her?” Ben demanded, and Klaus agreed with that line of questioning so he asked it out loud for the visibility-impaired among them.

“Just stuff,” Allison hiccuped, “‘Bout Claire - ” Oof, even Klaus could tell you to leave Claire out of an argument with Allison and he was actually the worst at making appropriate conversation.

“ - and I know he was just lashing out and he didn’t mean it - ” Allison continued, which Klaus thought was very generous of her, honestly, because Five could actually be a genuine pain. His intelligence meant that he could hone in on someone’s sorest most vulnerable spot and claw it open when he was in a mood.

Allison was still talking, “ - I didn’t think he’d run away!”

“Okay when was the argument?” Ben asked. Sensible sensible Ben. “How long has it been since she’s seen him?”

Klaus relayed the questions faithfully.

“Just after you guys left,” Allison sniffled, “He was writing on the table and I walked out on him. I heard him rustling around in his room though so I thought he’d just gone up there to - to decompress I don’t know!”

“Okay,” Diego cut in, taking charge since Luther seemed more focused on making hushing noises at Allison and trying to dry her tears than actually stepping up, “Okay game plan, we’re splitting up to go look for Five.”

He pointed at Luther and Allison, “Allison, you can drive so get your car and head North with Vanya. Luther, you stay here at the mansion in case he comes back. Me and Klaus’ll take South. I’m going to call some people I know so they’ll keep an eye out for him as well. Everybody have your phones on you and call if you have something.”

Diego was already striding towards the door, his phone pulled out and already at his ear even as the rest of the sibling squad scrambled to nod and get their own assignments in order.

“Don’t forget Ben!” Klaus piped up, hurrying after his brother, “Ben’s with us as well!”

And before Klaus could say another word he was buckled into the backseat of Diego’s car and told to keep an eye out for the Umbrella Academy uniform. Diego peeled out onto the street like a man possessed, giving whoever was on the other end of the phone a description of Five (Klaus assumed they were more police buddies of his, after he’d been cleared of Detective Patch’s murder they’d been more apologetic and helpful than ever).

A thought occurred to Klaus, and he tapped on Diego’s shoulder insistently, “Diego?”

“In a moment, Klaus!” Diego snapped before rattling off his phone number to the officer on the other end before hanging up. “Alright, what did you want?”

“D’you think Five has his phone with him? Could we track him with that?”

The car came to a very sudden stop, the only thing preventing Klaus from flying forward being the very helpful seatbelt.

“Klaus you’re a goddamn genius.” Diego said, something almost like wonder in his face.

Well, it was nice to get some recognition around here.

Chapter Text

Contrary to popular belief, the ‘find your phone’ app thing was not an exact science. They had it narrowed down to a few blocks at least, and had parked the car to search on foot, despite the fact that it was still spitting rain in the last hours of the storm. Better than the downpour that had been going on for hours though.

Diego, after spending a solid twenty minutes figuring everything out and getting there, wasn’t nearly as hopeful as Klaus about actually finding their brother. “He probably ditched the phone somewhere,” Diego had sighed, “I mean, he was tracked by Cha-Cha and Hazel, right? So he’s gotta know like, anti-detection measures.”

Now, Klaus loved Five a whole lot but in general he had faith in his brother’s stupidity. Not that Five was dumb, far from it! It’s just, he was missing for a long time and had missed out on an awful lot of technology in the meantime.

Hell, when they’d first gotten phones Five hadn’t had a clue how to use it. And after making Five recount the time he’d gotten (and hidden) a gunshot wound they’d learned that the Commission used typewriters so frankly Klaus was not putting much hope on them teaching his babiest brother how to work things, no matter how technologically advanced the time traveling briefcases were.

Weapons? Oh, Five was great with all kinds of weapons. Vehicles? As concerning as it looked to have a thirteen-year-old behind the wheel, Five was actually a good driver. Five was scary competent at a lot of things, and it made people assume that he wasn’t bad at anything.

An unwise assumption.

Because despite the fact that Five could rattle off equations and dismantle guns and come up with plans on the fly, Five was really bad with people. He jumped straight into threats when a little kindness or a polite interaction would work just fine. He was abrasive and arrogant and just plain didn’t know how to communicate with others.

It had taken them until a few days before the apocalypse to pry details out of him and the world had been literally ending.

But even though Klaus had been on the pointed end of that sharp tongue and knew exactly how cutting it could be, standing here now he could forgive his brother for it. After all, Klaus wasn’t exactly the shining embodiment of communication himself (he had a tendency to just blurt out whatever he was thinking) and it wasn’t like he’d spent a lifetime in complete isolation.

Klaus eyed the buildings and wondered if Five might have broken into one of them.

But then something caught Klaus’s eye. The playground across the street. The bright plastic colors obvious against the gloomy background of the day.

Ben, noticing his inattention, followed his gaze. “I don’t think he took the time to go play on the slide, Klaus.”

Klaus gestured around, “We’ve already checked the dumpster, he’s not in the bus stop, if he was hanging out in any of the doorways we would see him, and it’s raining.”

Klaus was a recovering addict. He was well acquainted with homelessness and seeking shelter from the weather conditions. He wasn’t exactly proud of it, but he knew more than the others about finding a place on the street to crash. He knew about running away.

Five looked thirteen. It wasn’t like he’d be able to just sleep on the street without concerned citizens and cops stopping him. He looked like a privileged white teen in his schoolboy shorts, people would be tripping over themselves to try and help him.

So he’d have to go somewhere out of sight. Or he’d have to go somewhere his age would help him blend in, not stick out.

Even with all those assumptions filtering through his brain, Klaus was still taken aback when he spotted a small foot in the tunnel. By Ben’s intake of breath, he could pretty safely assume that Ben saw it, too.

“Klaus!” Ben hissed, jogging closer and peering into the tunnel even though Klaus felt frozen in place. “It’s him!”

Well at least he had Ben to confirm that for him, even if Klaus had already been pretty damn sure. What other kid would be hunkering down for shelter in a playground tunnel? So Klaus did the only thing he could think of doing in that second, he whipped around and hollered, “Diego!”

Thankfully the urgency in his voice had Diego snapping around and running towards them all.

The cry however, had the foot shifting as if the owner of it was coming into awareness. Klaus threw out a hand to stop Diego from barrelling forward and lifted a finger to his lips. Thankfully Diego didn’t question the order coming from Klaus and froze as well.

A small noise, and then a duffel bag was shoved out of the tunnel. Was that Diego’s bag? Klaus waved a hand behind him to signal Diego to keep quiet, accidentally smacking his brother in the face and earning himself a glare.

Legs next, and finally the whole body as Five levered himself out of the tunnel. His back was to them as he scooped the duffel up and shouldered it before scooting back to climb down the ladder.

As soon as Five’s feet his the dirt, Klaus couldn’t contain himself anymore. “Five?” He whispered, watching his brother stiffen in shock and whirl around but before Five could do anything Klaus was already enveloping his shorter sibling in a fierce hug.

He pulled back, holding Five at arms length and scanning him to make sure the kid wasn’t hiding another bullet wound or something equally terrible.

“We were so worried about you!” Klaus explained, Five staring up at his with wide eyes, “Don’t you ever scare us like that again!”

He pulled Five into another hug, honestly surprised that Five hadn’t snarled at him and pushed him away yet. Five was more tolerant of Klaus touching him than the other siblings (which probably had something to do with the half-remembered drunken conversation they’d had where Klaus had revealed he was often so touchy feel-y with his siblings in order to prove to himself they weren’t ghosts, because sometimes he couldn’t tell the difference until he was walking through someone), but even then there was a limit.

Klaus drew back, more worried now.

Diego stepped forward and cleared his throat, “Alright, let’s go home. I’ll text the others.”

As if by magic, Five decided to have an actual reaction to their words and completely stiffened up - making Klaus snap his head back around to peer at the smallest Hargreeves in concern.

“I can’t go back - ” Five’s voice broke on ‘back,’ “ - I did, I just - Allison’s angry with me.”

To Klaus’s horror, Five’s entire face just crumpled and he could see the tears gathering in Five’s eyes as the physically thirteen-year-old started hiccupping sobs, “She doesn’t want to - to see me. ‘M just a b-burden.”

“No!” Klaus denied instantly wrapping his arms around Five for the third time. Five buried his face in his brother’s shirt, hands coming up to grasp at the fabric near his shoulders, “No! She’s worried, too! She’s out there right now looking for you! We all are! Well, except Luther he’s at the house but only in case you went home! We didn’t want there to be no one waiting for you if you went back and everything.”

Ben cleared his throat. Klaus was rambling and he hadn’t even gotten to the other very concerning point that Five had brought up, “And - and you’re not a burden! You’re family! You’re our littlest oldest brother and we love you.”

Five’s sob at that was heartwrenching, and his knees buckled. Contrary to some of his siblings seeming belief, Klaus was not the strongest cookie of the bunch and wasn’t exactly capable of holding up an entire thirteen-year-old. But instead of dropping him, Klaus just sank down with him, ending up cradling a sobbing-his-heart-out kid against him in the middle of a children’s park.

“I don’t do things right,” Five sobbed. Diego was crouching down next to them, reaching out a tentative hand to rub Five’s back with, looking just about as lost on what to do as Klaus himself was. “I wr- I write on stuff and I don’t sl-sleep and I say things - ”

Klaus reached up a hand to cradle his little brother’s head, shushing him as gently as he could managed. Clearly this was something that had been coming down the line for a while, and his argument with Allison had only been the straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak.

“It doesn’t matter.” Klaus said firmly, making Five cut off his babbling confession in confusion, “You are my brother and it doesn’t matter. You could have cut up all my skirts to make confetti, and I would still love you. You could write on every inch of the house and I would still love you. You could burn the place down and the first thing I’d do is make sure you were okay. So all of that stuff? I don’t care.”

It was the kind of stuff Klaus wished someone would have said to him, back when he was screaming every night with nightmares of ghosts clawing at his face and screaming his name after harrowing trips to the mausoleum. Or when he was out on the streets doing whatever he could to score his next hit. None of them had ever been much good at admitting they cared or had feelings - not when anything they admitted they loved was used against them by Dad. But Dad was dead now, and Klaus could speak as freely as he wanted.

He clutched Five closer to him, “The only thing that matters, the only thing that matters, is that you’re here. And we might get irritated with you and fight or yell and say things we don’t mean, but don’t you ever think even for a second that we don’t want you with us. You were gone for seventeen years, Five. We don’t want to ever let you go again, you hear?”

“‘M sorry,” Five cried, clutching back against Klaus with equal urgency, but his cries were getting weaker as they reduced to sniffles and then to deep breathing as he actually fell asleep right there in Klaus’s arms with Diego rubbing his back and Ben crouching protectively over them.

Klaus brushed a soft hand against Five’s hair, but the kid didn’t stir. He must’ve been exhausted. Pretty much done with being the responsible adult for the day, Klaus looked to Diego. “Uh, now what?”

“We go home.” Diego said firmly. His phone was in the hand not still placed on Five’s back, though Klaus didn’t recall seeing him pull it out. “I already texted the others, they’re gonna meet us there.”

Klaus couldn’t help the almost hysterical giggle, “I meant like, right now. Like, I don’t know about you but I don’t think I could carry him to the car. And I don’t think you can carry him to the car without waking him.”

Diego had managed to fuck up his hand three days ago stopping a robbers. His pinkie and ring fingers on his right hand were taped together. Were they broken? Sprained? Klaus had not been paying attention. However the fact remained that while Klaus trusted the fact that Diego could carry Five over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes in a fireman’s carry or whatever (he was pretty sure that it hadn’t been Allison dragging Mr. ‘I have a bullet wound I didn’t tell anyone about’ back to the house), Five looked really really tired, and Klaus was loathe to wake him after such a big bout of emotion.

Diego shrugged, looking just as displeased by the idea as Klaus but resigned to their collective fate, “We’re going to have to do something, Klaus. It’s cold and wet and miserable, we can’t just stay out here until he wakes up on his own.”

But Ben was waving a hand in front of Klaus’s face furiously, “Klaus! Klaus!”

“What? Get your hand out of my face man, I’m paying attention.”

“Make me solid. I can carry Five to the car without waking him.”

Klaus raised an eyebrow, “Pretty sure Diego is more buff that you, brother mine. Plus you’ve been dead for literal years, what, were you hitting up the ghost gym in the afterlife those times you leave me?”

Ben scowled, “I can literally summon eldritch horrors from my body, Klaus. Do you know how fuckin’ heavy those tentacles are? I have the strength and goddamn equilibrium of a fucking titan.”

Huh. Klaus hadn’t thought about that. Ben had always managed to keep his feet whenever he’d used his powers, and judging from the time Klaus had gotten high at the aquarium and attempted to fight an octopus (not his finest moment he will admit), that shit had to be heavy. “Okay, okay point taken. We can try that.”

“Klaus,” Diego hissed, “What’s Ben saying? We can’t all speak ghost.”

Oops. Left poor Number Two out of the loop there a bit. But why explain when you could show? Klaus loosened his grip on their babiest brother reluctantly before flexing his fingers and marvelling at the blue glow playing across his knuckles. And then, from Diego’s sudden intake of breath, Ben had shown up to those less capable of chatting with the deceased.

Without another word, Ben scooped Five up into his arms. The kid still had a grip on Klaus’s shirt, so up came Klaus as well since he was unwilling to pry his hands off when the kid already had enough issues with reaching out in the first place.

“Ben,” Diego gasped. This wasn’t the first time Klaus had managed to make Ben solid for the siblings, but it was seriously draining to do it for long periods of time. He was practicing though!

Ben, on the other hand, looking unimpressed as he jerked his head towards the street, “The car?”

That was their ghostly brother for them. Always completely unwilling to put up with their nonsense. Klaus supposed that calling him out on his bullshit unheard for over a decade did things to a man.

Together the shuffled the slumbering thirteen-year-old into the back of the car, sandwiched between Ben and Klaus as Diego hauled himself into the driver’s seat. Klaus thought with only a little bit of hysteria that they better not have been spotted doing so since it very much like they were kidnapping an unconscious child. Whoops.

Klaus smoothed a hand through Five’s hair again thoughtfully. “Hey, they have that like, chalkboard paint shit, right?”

Ben looked over at the seemingly random question with his patented ‘what the fuck, Klaus’ face on.

“Like, you paint a wall and then you can write on it? And erase it again? Like a real chalkboard?”

Understanding was dawning on both of his brother’s faces, but Klaus kept his eyes trained on his smallest brother’s face. He looked even younger when he was asleep, god.

“We’ll look into it.” Diego vowed softly, “That’s a good idea, Klaus.”

“He’s still grounded though.” Klaus told the car, allowing his face to be pulled into a frown. Even though he’d only been gone for like, a few hours at most, Five had still scared the absolute shit out of them with that note.

That cut through the remaining tension in the car as Diego choked on a snort and Ben’s face split into a wicked grin.

At the end of the day they were all heading home. They were all together. They were safe. And that’s all that really mattered.