Archive of Our Own ^beta

Viktor was so proud of himself as he stumbled through the halls to try and find his caregiver. 

Each of the siblings had worked out who their primary caregiver was going to be when they all tumbled back into each other's lives after the death of their father. Since he had been Vanya back then, the obvious assignment for him had been Allison as she was the only other woman in the Umbrella Academy which bonded them together. Throughout all of their time travel shenanigans they had grown even closer, to the point where she probably knew Viktor best out of all their siblings including Five. Allison was far better at taking care of him than any of the babysitters or daycare workers that had taken care him in the past (though it helped that he was no longer on that stupid medication and could properly regress). Things had been a little bit tumultuous between them since they had arrived in their third timeline, but Allison had come and apologized to him about twenty minutes prior. When he was big, his brain had some impulse not to trust her completely, but now that he had tumbled headfirst into his littlespace all of that doubt had been forgotten.

He swung around the side of the door so that he was peeking in on the caregiver and then giggled. She glanced up towards the door that he was standing near before her head lolled back down to stare at her hands again like she had been before. He quickly moved so that he was standing all the way in the doorway while holding the frame with both hands. The little bounced on the balls of his feet as he began to talk, "Allie, I’m li-"

He was cut off when her head whipped up to look at him. "Viktor, I don't want to deal with you right now," she snapped. Her voice was tight and filled with a kind of anger that no caregiver should have been able to feel towards a little actively in headspace.

"But, you're my caregiver," he whined, shrinking into himself. He had gained so much confidence since getting his abilities and having a family that actually loved him, and then another huge boost after he had come out and started living as himself. He hadn't felt this scared and insecure since that day when Harold had come to get violin lessons. Despite himself, he still took a step out of the door.

"Are you kidding me?" she snapped as she looked up. "You're really going to bring up anything related to kids when I just found out that my daughter doesn't even exist in this world? God, sometimes I really fucking hate you. Just get out of my face."

Viktor did what was asked of him as he turned on his heel and sprinted out of the room as quickly as he could. Tears had been welling up in his eyes while the caregiver spoke to him, so it only took the tiniest bit of movement for them to start streaming in little rivulets down his face. He let his legs carry him through the hotel despite not knowing where he was really going. There were only eleven people left in the entire place, so it wasn't like there was anyone around to notice the distressed little and get him back to his family. He tried to open several of the doors, getting no luck because the people that had been in them had taken their keys with them when they got 'blitzed.

He ended up stumbling into the men's restroom, where he then slipped and immediately fell onto his face. He let out a broken sob as pain radiated through his face from his nose and forehead. He pushed himself up slightly and began to rub at those spots, as if that would somehow trick the electrified nerves. His shoulders began to shake with the force of his cries, causing his entire body to quiver a little bit. His body brought forth more water than he thought could have been inside of him even if he was taking care of himself, which he very much wasn't. His nose was beginning to run, which caused a burning sensation to flush all the way through his sinuses because of the aching pain that was echoing through his face. The burning from his nose running and the pain every time he tried to touch it to get rid of the snot on his top lip only caused him to cry harder.

When he heard the steps of someone coming closer to him, he scrambled to one of the shower stalls. He was too far into his headspace to have a proper flashback like he would have if he was big, but instead he just knew that he was feeling unsteady and scared. He didn't want anyone to find him, especially since Allison had basically told him that he was in trouble for being little. He didn't want to find somewhere quiet, but he did want to find somewhere where he could see everything around him to make sure no one could hurt him. The regressed man moved himself around so that he was pressed to the corner of the shower stall closest to the wall and furthest from the entrance. He wrapped his arms around his legs to bring them closer to his chest and began to rub the spots of his face that were hurting once more. He wasn't able to stop the sobs from forcing their way out of his throat no matter how badly he wanted to be quiet. 

The footsteps that he heard earlier only got closer to him as he tried to muffle the sounds of his cries. He was slipping even more than he had before, getting smaller and smaller so that he was struggling to have any cohesive thoughts. Viktor had his hands clasped over his mouth and nose to try and muffle the sounds coming from him. He buried his face into his knees as he squished himself so that he was as small as possible.

Whoever was walking into the bathroom stopped. There was the sound of one of the shower curtains being pulled away before Five's voice rang through the tiled room, "Hello, Viktor."

"No," he whimpered as he tried to push himself into an even smaller ball. He hated how small his voice sounded as he desperately tried to push his headspace away. Too much had happened in too little time, losing Sissy and Harlan also meant that he no longer had his time to be in his headspace like he had gotten used to so it was being more volatile than it had been since he as a teenager. "No," he forced his voice to be deeper as he shook his head.

"Oh, buddy," Five practically cooed. He was a flip and had been very deeply down in littlespace yesterday after the wedding when he was drunk, but it was clear that being in front of Viktor shot him aggressively into caregiver mode. "Come here, please," he asked as he kneeled down just outside of the shower stall.

"No!" he almost shrieked as he turned so that he was sideways in the shower.

Five clicked his tongue. He glanced to the side of the bathroom where the entrance was and then back to his brother. "Viktor, I'm not going to ask again. You have to come here."

He whined and then slowly unraveled himself so that he could make his way to the other superpowered man. He paused once he got to the raised part of the linoleum floor that separated the shower stall from the floor. Five reached out so that he was bringing the other man closer to him with a gentle hand on Viktor's shoulder. "There we go, little one, here you are," he murmured. He got the little turned sideways so that Viktor's shoulder was tucked against his left arm and his legs were thrown over his lap towards the right. Five began to rub soothing circles over the shorter man's back while rocking them both back and forth. "Let it all out, lovely, let it all out. I've got you, you're safe."

Viktor tucked his face into Five's neck as he reached his arms up and held as tightly to his brother as he possibly could. Something must have happened while they were time traveling because Five was now taller than him, closer to their height difference before he had disappeared. 

The caregiver turned to the side and then motioned for the siblings hovering in the doorway to walk over. Sloane and Luther carefully approached the duo, the former hanging back while the latter kneeled down next to them. "Hey bubby," he murmured as he placed a careful hand on Viktor's shoulder. "Can you look at me? It looks like you hurt your face a little bit."

"Nose hurts," he sniffled as he turned and revealed the blossoming purple bruise on his forehead and the crackled red of blood mixing with his snot.

Five's mouth pursed in a scowl but he didn't say anything.

"Oh lovely, how did this happen?" Sloane asked softly as she kneeled down beside her husband.

Viktor glanced at his brothers before he looked back towards her. Five nodded in reassurance so that the little could know she was a safe person to talk to. "I falled down," he replied, his mouth flickering into a frown. New tears began to form in his eyes.

"I'll get some tissues," Luther said as he got up and walked over to where the sinks were so that he could retrieve paper towels from the dispensers. Viktor was now a lot more vocal with his crying than he had been even when he was wandering alone through the hotel. The caregivers were immediately distressed upon hearing how upset the little was, but they were all doing as much as they could to try and help him already.

When Luther came back, he handed a few of them to Five. The oldest of the brothers used them to mop up all of the tears that were coming from the little before he very carefully cleaned up his nose. "Did you really fall, Viktor?" Five asked once he had finished.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Over there," he pointed. The longer that he spoke the more his words were beginning to sound like that of a little kid, signifying he wasn't fighting his headspace anymore.

"Why did you fall?" Luther asked carefully.

Viktor squirmed for a moment, shying away from them by hiding his face in Five's neck. The caregiver sighed as he turned to face the other two, "I don't think we're going to get a lot of answers from him. Why don't we go downstairs and talk with the others? They might know something."

Sloane nodded as she carefully stood up and went to throw away the gross napkins they had used to clean Viktor's face. Luther reached out so that he had his hands on Viktor's hips and was lifting the little away from Five. "Come here, big boy," he cooed as he got the smallest of his siblings situated easily on his hip like a toddler. That was the one good thing about his body being what it was because it allowed him to carry the littles in a way that kept them down in their headspace. "Let's go see the others! Doesn't that sound like fun? You might even get to play with Klaus or Lila."

The caregivers all knew that the rest of their siblings would be in their adult headspaces since a few of them had taken last night as an opportunity to get it over with before the end of the world instead of getting wasted like most of the siblings had. After all, they were just taking a break before they decided if they were going to save the world or not. Viktor's headspace had always been a bit harder to control than a normal regressors would be due to his neglect-related trauma and the medication preventing him from truly dropping for most of his adult life.

The trio left the bathroom and began to travel through the halls to find where the others were. Five was on Luther's left side so that he could protect his brother from whatever had made him cry, seething at the memory of Viktor sobbing and making himself so small. Sloane was on her husband's right side while cooing at Viktor, keeping him from crying again like it looked like he wanted to. The little gave her shy little smiles but mostly just hid his face away in Luther's neck. "Should I go get Allison? You said that she primarily took care of Viktor, so maybe she'll be able to figure out what's wrong."

The aforementioned man gave a mournful little whimper. "No," he sniffled as more tears began to course down his face.

"No? You don't want us to get Allison? Buddy, you love spending time with her," Luther said, worry heavy with every word.

"No, Allison!"

If it had been any other little, especially the ones in their family, the phrase would have been accompanied by a tantrum. Complete with flailing limbs, screaming sobs, tears, and even more shouting. However, since it was Viktor, his voice had barely raised up to above a speaking level and he looked more afraid than upset. His wet brown eyes had widened almost comically as he shook his head. Instead of trying to push away from Luther so that he could dramatically throw himself onto the floor as Klaus and Lila often did when throwing tantrums, he wrapped himself tighter around the other man. To the point where Luther wasn't sure he'd be able to detach him even if he wanted to.

The caregivers shared a look before they made their way down the rest of the hall. "She did something, I know she did. I've had a bad feeling about her since before the wedding," Five clicked his tongue and shook his head. He was protective over everyone in his family, but his caregiver instincts mixed with the part of him that was still feral from growing up in the apocalypse. He had never gotten the chance to take classes or medication until he learned how to deal with the urge to cover everyone in bubble wrap and lock them away in a closet where nothing could ever hurt them. This meant that even though his family was full of mostly caregivers and flipes, he still had a hard time trusting them with each other- especially when someone was in headspace.

"Five, this is Allison. She's the only one of us that actually raised a kid. I'm sure that she knows better than to hurt a little when they're in headspace. Especially a little with Viktor's trauma and age range," Luther shook his head. Despite everything that his adoptive sister had done to him in the last couple of days, he was trying to forgive her. He knew how hard it was to be cut off from the people that you loved, after all.

The conversation died out so that the shortest of the caregivers could stew in his rage. The group had already begun to form again in the foyer of the hotel, which made it easier for them to find everyone. Diego and Lila were sitting over by the bar, though neither of them had a drink, as they argued in low voices. Ben was pacing back and forth in front of the revolving doors while staring out at the red and orange sky. Klaus was sitting a few yards away from him, watching silently.

Viktor let out a small hiccup as he stopped crying again. He hadn't realized where they were since he had tired himself out from crying enough that he didn't untuck his head from Luther's neck despite feeling them stop walking.

Diego was the first out of the siblings to notice that something was going on. He got up and walked over to where Luther was trying to find a place to set the little down. "V?" he asked as he raised his hand up to rub his brother's back affectionately.

"Dee?" he asked as he carefully turned to look at him. "Hold?"

"He's really little, huh?" Diego asked. He motioned for his brother to follow him, and Luther complied. The family had all turned and noticed the extremely distressed little at this point. By the time that Diego and Luther had sat down on the couches and gotten Viktor transfered over to the smaller flip, Lila and Klaus had already moved to see what was happening with the other little. Even Ben, who had acted indifferent towards them since the wedding, moved over to where they were. He wrapped his arm around Sloane's as he tucked himself up against her. Normally she would have yelled at her brother for being a dick to her and then acting like it had never happened, but she could practically smell that he was between headspaces so let it be.

"I've never seen him this small," Five pursed his lips with worry.

"I didn't think that his hyper-classification put him this young," Sloane said gently so that the little didn't think that she was upset with him.

The siblings glanced at each other and then winced. "Well, you know, he didn't get hyper-classified in our original timeline because none of us did, and then when he finally took the test it was in the sixties," Luther explained. She winced, wrinkling her nose at the thought of having to take one of those primitive tests and regressing down with the help of painful injections, which was the standard at the time.

Viktor sniffled and shifted around so that he was sitting with his head on Diego's shoulder and was watching everyone around him. "In trouble?" he asked, growing to about two instead of closer to eighteen months.

"There's the face of our handsome man," Lila said. Despite being a little herself, she was still rather good with regressed littles (though nowhere near as good as a caregiver). The rest of the siblings winced when they saw how bad the new bruises he had acquired were already. She knelt down in front of him, taking his hands into her own reassuringly, "Hi puppy."

Viktor grinned and giggled at her words. "Hi Lila," he replied, slurring the words together just a little bit.

His attention was taken away from the little in front of him and directed towards his tallest brother. "V, can you tell us why you tripped and fell?" Luther asked carefully.

"Was crying," he replied, sniffling at even the memory of that.

"Why were you crying, niñito ?" Diego asked, rocking them slowly to try and keep Viktor from bursting into tears again.

"I, uh, I wen'a see Allison," he replied, kicking his legs uncomfortably. He whined before he continued, "She said I'm bad…"

The postures of each of the caregivers immediately changed to one of protectiveness. Even Sloane, who had barely spent any time with any of the Umbrellas other than her husband, immediately seemed pissed and defensive. "Allison made you cry?" Five asked, seething with thinly veiled rage.

"Uh huh," he nodded as he brought his hand up to his mouth to chew on his fingers. 

Diego caught the hand before it made it past his lips. "Nuh uh, yucky." Viktor responded by whining but didn't fight his brother on the matter. "Pup, I need you to give me a little bit more about what Allison did. I thought that you said she apologized to you and said that she loved you."

He nodded. "Was proud of myself, knew I was little before I was," he tried to explain. His headspace was fluctuating between so many different ages that it was hard for him to focus on his thoughts. It was clear that he was distressed and needed some calm playtime, but they might not have the chance seeing as the world was ending around them. "An' I wanted tell her, but then she yelled at me. Said that I was annoying an' she didn' wanna deal with me. Said bad naughty words too. An’ that she hate me."

As Viktor spoke, the hard noises were slurred or missing, which served to calm the caregivers down a little bit since their instincts to protect and calm the little in front of them overrode their righteous anger. Diego was the one to get the least angry because his lap was full of once again crying little. Five made a move to lunge forward so that he could jump up to the room where Allison was and give her what-for, but Sloane's hand on his shoulder prevented him from moving. She gave him a subtle shake of her head that kept him from snapping at her like a feral cat.

"What the Hell?" Luther finally asked when the words had settled all the way in.

"I thought that you guys said she was the best caregiver out of all of you," Lila said, brows furrowed together in confusion. She gathered up a couple of tissues from the table next to the couch Diego and Viktor were cuddling on, handing them to her caregiver. Diego focused on trying to keep the snot and tears streaming down Viktor's face from sticking there and making a mess. The little was crying absolutely silently despite his clear distress, which only served to piss the caregivers off more.

Klaus shook his head in disbelief. "She is. She has a kid of her own."

"I'm guessing that's the problem," Five snapped. "She hasn't shut up about Claire since we got back here. I'm guessing that's why she snapped at Viktor."

"So the apology was either fake or only for him when he was big," Lila nodded in understanding. Her own adoptive mother had served as her caregiver when she had worked back at the commission despite being a neutral, and often apologies were only for one headspace and the other was still expected to know she was in trouble.

"What I don't understand is how she managed to make a little, nevermind one that she was supposed to be taking care of, cry and hurt himself," Ben said as he folded his arms defensively over his chest. Sloane and Klaus, the two siblings that had spent the most time with either version of him, were able to recognize the rippling of The Horror becoming restless under his shirt.

Viktor whimpered at that, "Hurt self on accident, not on purpose."

Sloane, Ben, and Lila froze at that. They knew that the Umbrellas had a hard childhood with a lot of abuse, lies, and neglect, but the idea of a little being so distressed that they had hurt themselves even when in headspace was so upsetting to them that they could barely process it.

"We know, niñito ," Diego murmured as he pressed a soothing kiss to Viktor's crown. "Who do you want to take care of you right now?"

"Five," he replied immediately. His eyes lit up when he saw his brother flash that soft smile that he reserved only for him. "Five!" he squealed as he let himself slip back down to the very edge of toddlerhood like he had in the elevator on the way to the lobby.

"You good with that?" Diego asked as he began to remove the little from his lap so that the rest of them could go and confront Allison.

He slipped onto the spot on the couch that Luther had just vacated as he took the little into his arms. "Hands out of your mouth, Viktor Hargreeves," he said warningly before he turned his attention back towards the rest of his siblings. Viktor let out an angry little noise about having to remove his soother and being displaced from the warm lap he had been in. He settled as soon as Five had him placed in his lap instead, giving a happy giggle. Five said, "As much as I would love to go and give Allison a piece of my mind and maybe hand her ass to her, I'd most likely be better off taking care of our little boy. I think we can all agree that I'm going to be his new assigned caregiver from this point on."

There was a murmur of agreement that rippled between the group. None of them really trusted Allison in her haggard grieving state, especially not after everything that she had done directly and indirectly to Viktor. The group turned and began to walk away from the duo, all talking about the way that they were going to handle Allison. Five focused on keeping Viktor down in his headspace and giggling so that he could be properly big when they voted later in the day.

By the time that they all found Allison, they were fuming with rage again. Diego was the only one that had managed to get through to her, other than Viktor, the entire time that they had been in this timeline, so he was the one to finally take the lead. He walked up to the doorframe, knocking with two fingers on his non-dominant hand since his injury still ached every time he brushed it against something. "Hey, can we talk?"

She looked up, forcing the smile that she had always done for the press when they were kids and when she was an actress onto her face. "Of course, what do you want to talk about?"

"Viktor," he replied with a small clearing of his throat as he walked over to her. He sat down on the floor about a foot or two away from her. Sloane and Luther moved so that they were standing in the doorway, watching the interaction.

Allison glanced towards them and then back to Diego. The false smile was still hanging on her features but there was fear, like that of a caged animal, sticking to her eyes. "What about him?"

"So he didn't get little time like the rest of the regressors did last night. According to him, he came to you and you told him that you hated him, that he was bad, and that he was annoying," Diego explained. His voice dropped so that it was a register lower than normal, full of danger and aggression. "The little that we trusted and assigned to you. The little that has the most trauma out of all of our siblings. Was so proud that he had managed to catch himself in headspace before he was fully little. And then came to you, his caregiver, to get affection and comfort like he deserves, and you yelled at him and told him he was stupid."

"I didn't realize he was in headspace," Allison shook her head with a small snort. "I'm allowed to have feelings and feel things towards my brother, especially after he lost me two different families and then lied to my face."

"You also lied to him. You apologized to him," Lila butted her way into the room so that she was standing behind her boyfriend. "Apologies that don't really mean anything can royally fuck up a little, especially one like us that already has difficulty trusting people with our headspace. You were supposed to take care of him, Allison.”

The caregiver was up in a flash, advancing threateningly towards the other woman. "You don't now anything. You're just some skank that our brother got attached to and so now you think that you can just parade in here and-"

"Allison, that's enough!" Diego put himself between the two. "I thought that this shit was fine when we were taking our anger out on racists in that bar but this has gone too far. You're taking out your anger and resentment about our situation on the family and that's not okay."

The confrontation from the caregiver and the interaction with a very little Viktor had sent Lila down into her own regressed state. "Daddy," she whimpered.

"Come here, monkey," he immediately calmed down. He protectively raised his little up onto his hip as he walked her from the room and let the rest of the family take care of their sister.

Something about seeing two littles reduced to tears due to a caregiver that she had seen bits of herself in had sent Sloane into a mother-hen mode. She stormed into the room, getting up into Allison's face as she pointed one finger towards the other woman. "I may not be a part of this family or have known any of you for very long, but I know a bad caregiver when I see one. I got to be with Viktor when he was in headspace for all of twenty minutes and I would never, ever, tell him the kinds of things that you did. How could you look at that face and tell him that you hate him? You even apologized to him! He was so upset that Five, Luther, and I found him trying to hide in the bathroom so that no one would even know he was in headspace. You have completely fucked him over and for what, a problem that the rest of us are facing too?"

"None of you know what this feels like," she seethed.

"We do! I lost five siblings in the last week," she shrieked, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. "Klaus lost the spirit that was his constant companion for thirteen years on top of losing the man he was in love with twice! Viktor, the little that you fucking terrorized, lost his son figure twice and his girlfriend. Ben has lost just as much as I have. The only one that hasn't lost a fuck ton of people is Luther, and that doesn't give you the right to treat him like shit and do something like sexually assault him!"

Allison broke down. She bowed her head as she slowly began to cry. Her arm moved in front of her so that she was holding her upper arm and blocking herself off from the other woman. "I-I'm sorry, alright? He reminds me too much of my daughter when he's in headspace. All littles do."

"Then you should have calmly told him to go and find Five, who's downstairs taking care of him right now. He was crying so hard that he smacked his head on the linoleum of the bathroom and possibly broke his nose. You made him cry, Allison," Sloane said. The more she spoke the lower her voice became so that she was speaking to the other caregiver as if she was a little, but in a way that was comforting and not at all condescending. Luther's chest swelled with pride as he saw his wife being so compassionate to someone she didn't even know. Sloane took a deep breath before she continued, "The only reason that I'm not kicking your ass right now is because we might have to go fight some awful guardian to try and save what's left of the universe. If we do get out of this whole mess and you hurt a little ever, ever again, I will make sure they never find your body. Got it?"

Allison's eyes flickered up towards the other woman before she gave a curt nod. "Got it."