Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

So, there’s something Five once read in the Apocalypse, between rubble and ashes and the delightful smile Delores got when he did things for her. There’s something about the moon and there’s something about a child and it doesn’t make sense until he rereads it for a third time. Eyes straining to read over the burnt pages and the last part entirely intelligible. 

The first strophe goes like this: 

The moon came to the forge

with her skirt of white, fragrant flowers.

The young boy watches her, watches.

The boy is watching her.

Five recalls the biography at the end of the book, of a writer that lived a hundred years ago and died too young. Of a tragic romance and a life of creativity.  

He made poems for a painter and the painter reflected him into his works and the poet was killed at the beginning of a Civil War*. And then they called it friendship and platonic love and Delores laughed about it for so long that if she were human her cheeks would hurt.  

And it’s meaningless, in face of everything around them. Five really doesn't have time for it, not between equations that seem to go nowhere and looking for shelter and barely edible food. 

But Dolores liked the poems and there’s not a lot of things he can deny her. So in his searches he made sure to have an open eye for books that he normally wouldn’t have looked at twice or pulled at his memory and told her the ones they learned at the Academy, the ones that made Diego roll his eyes and Luther smile into his sleeve. The ones Ben shared with them and then stopped out of shame. 

Delores liked those, even letting out a small laugh at the anecdotes that went with them, but she’s always been obvious about her favorite, about the one that always makes her smile even in the darkest moods, even* if they don’t know the ending. 

"Can you tell me the one about luna again, mi amor ?" She would ask, when the world around them was dark, dark, dark, years after the fire extinguished and they couldn't see each other. 

He would crack a smile, pulling the wounds in chapped lips that he barely registered anymore and turn his head at the sound of her voice.  

"You always want that one." He would answer, throat closing* and tightening his hold on her hand, so she would know he's not mad. 

"It 's about us!" 

"Is it?" He would ask, barely a whisper before pulling her into his arms and begin to recite the poem he memorized a long time ago. 

The walls of his childhood room are covered in probabilities, his hands are dripping blood and the world around him is covered in ash.

Those three are and aren’t true at the same time, but who’s to say?

Five doesn’t have the time for that, not when the clock is ticking and he’s running out of grains. The world is in balance and the only person that can stop it from becoming a wasteland is him, but the numbers in front of him don’t make sense and they weren’t the ones he was writing a second ago.  

Luther is also here, in the doorway looking spooked and Five’s not sure when he arrived. Time’s slipping from his fingers and this has already happened; his eyes scan the room, looking for Delores, but she’s not there and Luther is still staring at him. 

“The world,” he starts to say, but something is wrong, a piece not sliding into place and he frowns at his chalk covered hands. 

His brother looks like someone kicked his puppy, eyebrows downturn, sagged posture and almost glassy eyes. 

“The world it’s fine,” he says softly, like he’s soothing a child and Five bristles. “We stopped the Apocalypse, remember?” 

Five scowls, something like panic rising into his chest and he turns to look at the calculations scrabbled in the walls. They’re not right, these are not the probability maps he was turning over and over in his head, it’s something else he’s having trouble putting together. He turns to Luther again.   

“Today is the fifth of june 2019.” He says, earnest eyes locking with his own, it makes him want to tear his skin open, it makes him want to dive for cover. “We’re at the Academy.”  

He shakes his head and turns to the calculations written in chalk and sharpie that must be his, that has no memory of. Delores is not here, she was on the chair a moment ago, wasn’t she? Telling him to look for another solution besides killing innocent people, but he was trying not to listen. Killing innocents it’s what he does. She knows that.    

Luther walks inside the room, looking hesitant only for a second before lowering his hand on Five’s shoulder. It’s the touch that does it; he gasps, feeling like his head is full of bees trying to assert dominance and the piece slaps into place by force alone.   

It’s the math for turning time to the beginning of the week. A preventive measure. 

“Fifth of june.” Five echoes, looking at the calendar he keeps on his nightstand and the five there stares back at him mockingly. 

It’s the math he works through every week since they stopped the Apocalypse two months ago. Equation figured out in Dallas, changing only in account of the new variables, it takes him less time than it should for all the work he put into it. For all the decades he spent scrabbling in burnt books and collapsed walls.   

He’s been living in the Academy ever since. 

He sits down in his bed and lowers his face to hide in his hands. He’s sweating through his clothes and he wants nothing more than to take a shower and pass out for a little while.    

But nothing is ever that easy for him and there’s a weight that dips his cushion almost comically where Luther sits down. He feels so fucking small next to him. Luther places his hand on his arm again after a few seconds, so gently it rounds all the way to painful, but Five stays right where he is and lets it burn him. 

“A nightmare?” Luther asks. 

Five lowers his hands and stares at the hand resting on his arm. “Something like that.” 

Chapter Text

They came up with a schedule and a program to train with Viktor, well, Five mostly came up with it with Viktor input, reading dad’s old journals and dealing with his skin crawling each time he described them as something less than humans, you know, the usual. 

It’s going alright, he thinks, there have been a total of two rooms at the Academy beyond salvation, numerous fields destroyed, an alarming raise of everyone’s blood pressure and zero deaths, but the violin remains untouched. 

Viktor left it at the Academy and they all can see how miserable that makes him, but he’s determined to not take it again until he learns some modicum of control. Five can appreciate the dedication. 

“It was me.” He says to Five after the first session, when he blinks back into the room and sees the broken furniture and cracked walls. “I know all of you believe it was my power, something I couldn’t control. But it was me.” 

It wasn’t a good idea to do it at the Academy, Viktor can’t do small, not yet and they both overestimated his control over it. But–It’s good news, as Five sees it, the Academy is still standing and the moon is still somewhere above them. 

Five turns to look at him, putting on hold his analisis over the room and focusing on his brother. His face is not that glowing white, there’s nothing of that in him, not now and he looks sad, resigned, almost.  

“I was so angry,” he says, almost whispering. Nothing from the person he was that day on his demeanor. “I still am, sometimes.” 

But it’s there, inside him, has been there all this time, maybe, hidden behind a barricade of drugs and manipulation, but that’s gone and what remains is the gaping ugliness of what lies in there, the accumulated rage and it’s a disservice to pretend it isn’t. [He knows something about that.]

Five looks at him in something resembling fondness, even if it’s far too sharp in the corners. “I know.” 

Viktor glances at him, a frown in his face. He’s always looking for condemnation and then taking it back, he’s always looking for forgiveness and then rejecting it.  

“So, you have a battle inside you. With your anger and all the emotions you weren’t allowed to feel.” He says, softly, because he has always had a weak spot for seven and that doesn’t change even if he has powers that can end the world, that has ended the world. “It was you, losing that battle, giving in, leaning into it because you were never taught how not to.” 

The old anger at Reginald sparks again and is almost nostalgic, in a sick way, how his insides twist and his hands itch for something to grab; how he has to redirect it, because snapping back was a balancing act and now he’s dead.         

His brother looks like he’s going to protest and Five raises a hand.  

“You did it.” He says before Viktor can interrupt him. “You hurt Allison and killed Pogo, no one can deny it, that’s something that happened and something that we corrected. Welcome to the family.”

“That’s fucked up, Five.” 

“In case you haven’t noticed, we are fucked up, Viktor.” He says, flashing him a smile that feels like glass, but he’s not sure how to make another one.   

In any case, his brother doesn’t look satisfied with his answer, which, tough for him, but it’s the truth. It happened, they dealt with the fallout traveling back in time and it never happened at all, but is not enough for Viktor, who on a good day is torn between crippling guilt and self-righteousness.     

He sighs and puts his hands in his pockets. “Look, are you going to do it again?” 

“I don’t think so?” Viktor says, mostly lost in thought, eyes fixed on a broken bookcase. 

Five raises his eyebrows and keeps staring at him, leaning in for good measure until Viktor looks back at him.   

“I need something better than that.” 

He blinks, getting out of his head and stands straight, eyes sharpening. “No, no. I’m not going to, that’s why we’re practicing.” 

“Exactly.” 

 “...that’s it?” 

“For me that 's it.” He can’t talk for Allison or for Pogo or the rest, who are still a bit wary around him, but trying their best.  

It’s not forgiveness because Viktor won’t accept it and it’s not for Five to give anyway. It’s not condemnation, either, because he’s not that much of a hypocrite and has no intentions of giving up another member of his family. 

“Okay.” Viktor nods, new-found steel in his eyes, “let’s keep practicing.”

Chapter Text

The first day after The Apocalypse That Wasn’t, Five counts his siblings, makes reasonably sure they are not going to kill themselves or each other, blinks to his room and passes out in the bed. 

He wakes up disoriented, legs tangled on his sheets and a grumbling stomach. The first thing on his mind is a reproach for falling asleep, before he remembers it’s fine, actually. They stopped the Apocalypse, his siblings are alive, life goes on. 

He goes back to sleep. 

The clock reads ten in the morning when he wakes up again. He blinks out the remains of slumber and jumps into the kitchen in his rumpled uniform, torn between hoping it’s empty and wanting some company. 

His desire is met in the middle when he’s greeted with a mopping Luther sitting on the table, a cup held between his hands and a deep frown on his face. He looks up at Five’s appearance.   

“Five,” Luther says, expression softening in something that he thinks is relief. “How are you?” 

He, still riding the high from averting the apocalypse and a good night of sleep, doesn’t immediately shut off the concern and actually thinks about it. 

“Better,” he answers, softer than he would have liked, but decides he doesn’t actually care. His siblings are alive, today is the fourth of April and the world isn’t on flames. 

His brother smiles, a little thing that seems to lift some weight from his shoulder. “That 's good.” 

“Sure.” Five says, already distracted by his mission of preparing himself a cup of coffee. 

He scrunches up his nose at the shitty instant coffee he finds in the cupboard. He’s going to rectify that, at some point, but for now he swallows down the prickle of irritation and starts with the preparation process.  

“There’s some leftovers in the fridge.” Luther says after a while, still soft and awkward. “I made meatballs yesterday.”  

Five pauses, cup mid-air and turns to look at him. 

“ You cooked.” 

Luther frowns at him, still wearing that kicked puppy expression. “That distrust is rude and undeserved.“

“We will see.” 

Five gets the food from the fridge, heats the stove, drops the meat in one of the pans and waits, wondering if it’s really wise to eat all that. He’s hungry, but– 

“You could have used the microwave.” 

Ah. Right. 

He says nothing and Luther goes back to staring at his full cup like it contains the answers of the universe. It must be cold by now. Five takes a sip of his shitty coffee and stares; it doesn’t look like he has slept since yesterday. After the yells and accusations thrown around.   

He stirs the meat, considers it ready, turns off the stove and returns the food to the container it was in, not really willing to go through the ordeal of standing in a chair to be able to reach the plates.  

“Where are the rest?” He asks once he’s sitting at the table. 

“Allison and Viktor have been out all day.” Luther says, cheek resting on his fist. “Diego went with them, too.” 

They don’t want me there, he doesn’t say, but Five hears it well enough. His moping in the kitchen makes more sense now. He cuts the meatballs into small pieces and takes a bite of one. Five blinks at it; It’s not that bad. Not bad at all, actually.  

“Klaus is doing Klaus things.” 

So, locking Viktor up wasn’t a good call, they all can agree on that, there’s still some unresolved anger, some everything . And Five can understand where he was coming from. One for the collective, pragmatic in a way Luther’s always trying to be. Believing he’s the one who has to make the hard calls, as the leader he should have never been. 

“So, you cook.” He says in between bites, feeling generous enough to distract him.  

“Yeah. I used to help Mom cook sometimes, so…” Luther gestures nonsensically, giving up half-way. 

“It’s good. “ Five compliments when he doesn’t continue and Luther smiles at him. 

They fall in silence again and even though it must be awkward for Luther he stays, alternating between looking at his cup and at Five. He was alone for four years on the moon and before that he was alone at the academy. Five can understand wanting company. 

He’s older, more experienced, more tired, too and his siblings are too young. It's almost painful. 

“They will come around,” he says, looking at Luther. “You just have to keep trying.”  

Luther looks back, exhaustion pulling in his expression, dragging him down, so maybe not more tired.

“And you?” 

Five shrugs. “I can understand. You were trying to protect the family, it just got lost somewhere in that brainwashed brain of yours that Viktor is family, too.” 

Luther rubs his face with his gloved hands and something in Five twists at the sight of them. Dad really fucked them all in new and creative ways. 

“You were also in no state to make any decisions,” he adds, having caught some context for his breakdown in yesterday’s discussion. “I don’t think it’s unrepairable, we have all fucked up in different ways. We already stopped an Apocalypse, these bridges shouldn’t be impossible to cross.”  

“Have you always been this optimistic?” 

Five smiles, “try surviving forty-five years in a wasteland without an ounce of optimism.” 

“Fair point.”  

The silence is comfortable after that. 

Surprisingly, his problems didn’t end when they managed to prevent the apocalypse, who knew? 

The first nightmare happened three days after the apocalypse that wasn’t, it was nonsensical, filled with absurd details 

He woke up gasping for air, searching for his good scarf, the one he puts on when the ash is particularly bad,  but he couldn’t find it, he couldn’t find it and– 

Five drags one breath after another, chest tight, trembling hands grasping his clothes and he doesn’t know if he’s trying to cover his face or trying to get it away. 

Not there, Delores says, gentle, always so gentle even when he didn’t deserve it, you’re not there anymore, remember?

“You’re not here anymore, either,” he says outloud, the habit clinging to him. He didn't sleep that night. 

Chapter Text

In the Apocalypse, sometimes and only sometimes he would get lost inside his head, wondering if there was ever a life before the smoke and the ashes, the starvation and the loneliness, that’s why he would cling desperately to any Academy merchandise he could find. An anchor for a before that tasted more and more like fantasy as time went on . Four decades is a really long time to be alone. 

Not alone, alone. He had Delores and she had him, but it’s still a long time. 

He wrote and wandered and searched and–

And in between he would read everything he could get his hands into. At some point he stopped reading out loud for Delores and tucked her into his side, so they could read together. He still did, if she asked, but she only ever asked for a few poems. 

He wrote part of her poem in a corner of one of his childhood bedroom walls, between probability maps that become less and less necessary and equations, glittering green in an imitation of Delores favorite pen. He doesn’t remember doing it, but that’s his handwriting and no one else writes on the walls (Klaus did, he thinks, or does?) and even if they did, they wouldn’t do it on his, so it must have been him. 

It was one of her favorite parts, not the one she liked best, but it was high enough in her list. He doesn’t have the heart to erase it. Flee, moon, moon, moon, it says in a disparity of letters, If the gitanos were to come, they would make with your heart white necklaces and rings.

The next time he wakes up with bottles around him and a horrifying hangover it’s gone. Not just–erased, but covered with bold black numbers for a half-done equation he forgot what was meant to represent. Maybe it didn’t mean anything, just his inebriated brain deciding it didn’t want to see those letters anymore. 

So, Five writes the equation of the week into the walls, makes sure there are non-perishables in the kitchen and his room (and in one of the unused rooms too, you can’t never be too precautious), practices with Viktor, tries to talk to his siblings once in a while, stunted and awkward, but he tries and is generally having an okay-ish time, leagues better than…ever, actually. 

His brain also decided that now is the time to attack him with nightmares, asleep or not. Five didn’t have to deal with them to this extent before, not even in the apocalypse, no, then he was more worried about the hallucinations. Not even at the Commission, when he slept with an eye open and a gun under his pillow.

He wakes up from memories of debris and fire and jumps into one of the unused rooms, trying to breathe into the dust. 

"Do you like poetry, Five?" The Handler asked a few weeks after she pulled him out of the apocalypse, red, red, red lips curved into a smile. 

"Not particularly." He answered, slow and deliberately. He still didn’t have the correct tone and speed, sometimes he would talk too fast or too loud, sometimes he wouldn’t talk at all and think he did. 

Delores didn’t mind, but it was a weakness, there. 

“That’s a shame.” She said, in between inhales of that cigarette of hers. “Have you read Lorca?” 

The smoke made him dizzy, now that it’s not all he can smell. He suspects she knew it, by the way she smiled when he tried to turn his face away from her.   

“Yes.” 

She sighed, draping herself over the couch, “what a tragedy, don’t you think? A waste of a brilliant mind.”  

Five didn’t answer. He usually didn't. That never stopped her.  

“I like this one, do you know the name?

En el aire conmovido, mueve la luna sus brazos y enseña, lúbrica y pura …” She recited and he didn’t flinch, but she laughs, delighted anyway. 

They are practicing again when Viktor ambushes him with a feelings talk. Five’s feelings, to be more precise. 

“Is it so bad if we acknowledge you’re struggling?” Viktor asks after he refuses to answer his questions, quietly and looking at him with his doe-brown eyes. “Is it so bad you acknowledge it?” 

And the thing is: Five is not stupid. He knows he’s not doing well. That does not stop the sharp spike of rage that surges into him or the creeping of something colder and more fragile. 

So he does what he does best. 

“Since when, do the lot of you, bumbling fools, notice anything?”  

“Well,” Viktor smiles something soft and five knows he’s done, he can’t keep deflecting with insults without feeling like he kicked a puppy, “we’re trying to do better this time, aren’t we?”  

“That we are.” He says and Viktor looks relieved for about two seconds, before Five smiles, the mean one that makes everyone squint their eyes in suspicion. “That last shoot was shit by the way, take it from the top.” 

Viktor sends him a look , to let him know that he knows what he’s doing, but gets into position anyway, because he is nice like that. Sometimes.

Sometimes, when he still worked at the commission, Five would sit down and watch people go about their days. Watching was an important part of his job, after all. Watching, learning and waiting, but this was not about that. This, he would do when the job was complete, a bullet between the eyes, a twisted neck, a pillow over the face, an unfortunate step, a knife to the jugular. 

He would watch and watch and watch, how they move, how they talk, how they emote, he would see and ask himself if he was once like them or if he was born twisted, grown sideways. Those days he seemed to be doing everything people think is basic wrong; his voice didn’t work quite alright, breathing was painful, even with the improvements the Commission deemed necessary; his lungs didn’t heal all the way, his movements were too erratic. Everything about him is off putting, he knows. He didn't mind, not really, he quite enjoyed the fearful looks others at the Commision sent him, but there, around ordinary people it was hard not to notice.

Now, his body is as it was when he was thirteen; his lungs don’t contract painfully when he breathes, his eyesight is perfect; it’s useful, a white canvas. It’s inconvenient to be talked down to, yes and not be able to go on his own without someone asking about his parents, but, well, he lost something more than his autonomy, isn’t it? 

That damaged body was his , the proof of his survival, of fighting tooth and nail for a chance, of all the years he can’t get back. And now he’s this, the remains of a foolish boy. A ghost. 

(A reminder)

So– sometimes, when he still worked at the commission, Five would sit down and watch people go about their days. 

Now, he watches his siblings, his breathing and lively siblings. He watches and categorizes the differences with his hallucinations; the way they never quite captured movement well, too erratic, static figures that came out in the middle of the night, with wrong proportions and decayed skin. Those hallucinations were easy; easy to know they weren’t real, easy to close his eyes and turn his back. 

The other ones though–

They weren’t so easy to discern. So, he watches his siblings and keeps a calendar on one of the walls of his room. And in the kitchen and in the living room and the daily paper he always carries. So. 

Six of april. 

Seventh of april. 

Chapter Text

If there’s one thing that Five avoids more than physical contact is mirrors.  

There's something in his eyes, a desperate glint that doesn’t leave, even now, when it's supposed to be over. A smile too sharp, unhinged, even when he's not trying to be. 

Sometimes, he rubs a hand over his face and startles when he finds smooth skin instead of wrinkles and a mustache. And then there’s the matter of his too-young body; all awkward limbs and baby fat and too-big eyes staring back at him. It’s a ghost, a shadow of what he used to be and never will be again, a walking reminder of what they all lost. 

He knows he was never innocent, he couldn’t have been, not if he wanted to survive in a house like this, but even that kind of hell didn’t compare with the soul-crushing solitude he had to endure for the next four decades. 

So, Five is a different kind of haunted than the rest of his siblings, a chasm and a barrier between him and the rest that he’s not sure if he can break and cross, not sure if he ever wants to. He thinks, that maybe it’s better if no one else understands what he had to go through, they know, it’s not like he wasn’t screaming it into their faces that week, starving for any kind of acknowledgement, they know, they just don’t think about what that entails, which is pretty on brand for them actually, not a single brain cell in that lot. 

So, they don’t understand him and he doesn’t understand them, which is fine, considering most of them don’t get each other, either. Except– Luther and Allison read each other just fine, a little rusty for the lack of practice, but it’s there, in their private smiles and jokes the rest of them are not into. Luther doesn’t get anyone else, not really, but his clumsy efforts to reach them, to listen are being met with less and less resistance. Klaus and Diego have this back and forth, cultivated from years of struggle, kind-of understanding underneath it all.      

Maybe Viktor and him got each other, once upon a time, in the times Five would jump into his room after his individual training and pretend, pretend, pretend they could get out of there if he just played his cards right, the times he looked to the side while Viktor played his violin and pretended not to notice his red-rimmed eyes. The times he would go into Five’s room with stars in his eyes, violin in hand and launch into whatever piece was giving him trouble before, the times he would shut him up with a witty remark when he was so, so quiet around everyone else. The ‘he was my closest confidant’ held close to his chest at the end of times. Words that he would read and reread until his eyes blurred and he had to stop, because he couldn’t afford the risks of dehydration. 

He watched people while working at the Commission, trying to learn how to be human again, now he watches his siblings. 

It’s about a child that is about to die. 

The poem, that is. 

So, it’s about a child that is about to die and reaches out for the moon for comfort, for her to help him. 

“ Pensi di essere la mia luna? ” He asks Delores.

The only answer is her smile at the back of his mind. 

He still doesn’t know how it ends, but he has an inkling anyway. 

He is fine.

The world is not burning around him, the air doesn’t taste like ashes, he’s not working against a countdown, he doesn’t have a scalpel inside him, there’s no hands tracing his face. He. Is. Fine.   

He just has to make his stupid brain believe that. 

And he's here, he's hereherehere . Not the child that left forty-five –and seventeen– years ago, definitely not the brother his family was waiting for, if they ever did, but he is here and trying to put a foot in front of the other each day that passes. 

He is fine, struggling, yes, who isn’t? But–

Look.

Here is the thing– the key to understanding this whole mess. The total of what is Five. 

So, here's the thing. The math. Common Sense that is so lacking nowadays: 

Five wasn't meant to survive stopping the apocalypse. 

It wasn’t a conscious decision, of course it wasn’t, but the future past the first of April was just a black wall, the end of the road. Something too far away and unfathomable for him to picture, he couldn’t, not if he wanted to remain sane enough to survive. Not if he wanted them to survive. 

He wasn’t meant to survive and now he’s here, in the aftermath. 

Time tickles and tickles and embraces him as usual. Minutes into hours, hours into days and days into weeks where nothing much happens and his siblings and the world breathe around him. It’s all he’s ever wanted, it’s all he’s ever needed.  

Except that now there’s something under his skin, something that didn’t start as much as never left and Five was just too exhausted to notice it. The itch that turns lead, the weight dragging him down that turns incapacity to stop moving. Both of them, circling each other in an exhausting dance that only subsides when he has alcohol on his system or he’s entranced doing something with his siblings.     

So, he alternates between constant movement, manic energy; repairing this and that at the academy, tracking his siblings just because he can and because there’s a nagging on his chest when he hasn’t seen them in a bit, fighting with Viktor under the pretense of honing his powers –it doesn’t do either of them any harm– and an absolute inability to drag himself up. Frozen and suspended in time. Frozen and decomposing while still alive. 

Some days, the ones he despises the most, he just stays in his bed and stares, stares and stares at the ceiling, numb from the tips of his toes to the parts of his mind that never seem to stop working. He stares and counts the stains, he stares and the thing inside him becomes bigger and bigger, devouring every bit of feeling he still had until it leaves with a piece of himself. 

He stares and can see numbers from the corner of his eye, he can see numbers and they still don’t tell him the solution to this particular problem. So he closes his eyes, feeling like the days where he was close to finishing all his rations and no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find anything, like the days where he thought he hit a dead end with his calculations, which makes no sense at all. He’s as safe as he’s ever been.  

So, he closes his eyes and listens to the sounds from outside. Klaus yelling something about a movie he doesn’t understand, Luther putting on a song he can’t recognize, he doesn’t recognize a lot of things, these days. 

Five closes his eyes and sleeps.