Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He awoke alone.

Five’s eyes were blurry, his surroundings fuzzy, and his fingers full of static. All symptoms of a healthy nap, yet Five had never experienced such a thing in his sixty three years of living, so it was safe to say he had been drugged.

He attempted to rub the sleep from his eyes with his clumsy, ineffective hands, struggling to his feet and slamming into a cold, wet wall, his body shivering with… pain? Bruises along his body from the fights he had won in the sixties, a large red bump on his forehead from Lyla’s wicked frying pan, the unhealed shrapnel wound from the original timeline, scratches on his back from the bricks-

Finally, his gaze began to sharpen after an undetermined length of time, his body finally bowing to his needs. The room he was in was dark, yet clearly some sort of prison. Iron bars were wrought into the stone ground before him, and a small, barred window behind revealed some sort of vast city line.

“Let’s cut the bullshit,” Five lazily glanced up at the camera hidden in the corner of the room. It was nearly perfectly nestled within a cracked crevice, but Five had had many years of silent, perfect assassination attempts. He wasn’t about to be felled by some hotshot thinking they were tough shit. Five already knew he wasn’t captured by the Commission. As much as Five loathed to admit it, the Commission was intelligent. Five could already spot multiple ways to escape the room he was trapped in and his vision had returned mere seconds ago. “Tell me why I’m in this room, or I murder you all.”

A voice crackled from the ceiling. Smooth. Lilting. British accent that managed to sound somewhat empty. Fake. “You’re here under suspicion of illegal planetary travel, and potential city-wide destruction. I’m afraid nothing more can be shared until Sir returns.”

“Illegal planetary travel…” Did they mean the Commission? There was no way Five was incorrect, he wasn't held by the Commission. But perhaps his kidnappers were somehow affiliated with the time-traveling organization, and they were simultaneously referencing the apocalypse? “What exactly do you mean by that…”

“I’m afraid nothing more can be shared till-”

“Yeah yeah, I got that, I’m not deaf.” Five grumbled. He was beginning to suspect this strange voice was some sort of robot. Five had grown up with a robotic mother, and he could certainly relate the distinct note of dissonance in this ‘man’s’ voice to his mother’s calm, yet clearly fake lilt.

Five sat back on his haunches and gazed bored at the meaningless city-line below. He could’ve escaped at any point. There was a loose chunk of stone towards the bars that could be pried loose if Five tried hard enough, then used to slam through the window and out into the world below. Five had obviously attempted to use his powers only to be greeted by unexpected failure, which was likely something to do with the room he was in. That plan was a risky bet - considering his powers could just be malfunctioning due to being drugged - but it was a calculated risk and the odds were in his favor. He could also figure out a way to tamper with the camera in the corner of the room and create some sort of electronic pulse to deactivate whatever may be fucking with his powers and slip out of the building. But again, that strategy relied on the fact that there was something hindering his abilities within the cell. Or, Five could go for the simplest route and dislocate his shoulders in order to slip through the bars, which would be annoying, but doable…

The voice came through the loudspeaker once more, this time sounding far more real and human. Five narrowed his eyes. “Hello there, extraterrestrial, how’s it going?”

“Great,” Five deadpanned. He offered the smile he knew unsettled anyone who witnessed it towards the blinking camera. It was probably because the quirk of his lips belonged on the face of a much older man, who had seen wars and ended hundreds of lives. “I’m having an absolute blast.”

“No need to be salty about it, just precautions.” The man sounded smug, and Five itched to silence his annoying voice.

“Precautions for what, exactly?”

“Well, the resident Norse God of Stark Tower sensed death when you landed on planet, and spent three weeks finding you before shoving you in here and demanding we never let you see the light of day, so how about you tell us?”

“Norse... God?” Five was momentarily thrown by the seemingly random reference to viking mythology.

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me, everyone knows who Thor is, off planet and on.” The voice was definitely growing bored now, great. Five could use that to his advantage. “Now, you’re going to tell me what exactly your purpose is here on Midgard, and why you look like a kid who just graduated elementary school.”

“Did you never leave elementary school?” Five spat, growing slightly annoyed. That was probably what the mysterious voice wanted; an influx in Five’s emotions so he could manipulate him for personal gain, but Five had languished this dance before, and wasn’t at all worried about this interrogator's sublime skills. “Or are you just screwed in the skull?”

“Ouch,” That was a different voice, coming from farther away, higher pitched and snooty. So there were multiple people watching him. “You gonna take that Stark?”

Stark. Five didn’t know anyone capable of kidnapping him named Stark. An uneasy feeling began crawling underneath Five’s skin, as he came to the haunting realization that he didn’t know if his siblings had been captured alongside him.

“-and you can suck a dick too, Widow, don't laugh at my sufferi-”

“Do you have my siblings.” It wasn’t a question, really.

“Siblings?” The voice paused. “No… Thor didn’t mention anything about siblings, did he Barton?”

“Nope.” The other man - Barton - responded. “Though you probably should’ve said yes.”

“He’s right,” Five nodded sagely. “Trust me when I say that was possibly the only thing you could’ve held over me at this point. If I wasn’t curious about your peculiar insistence on fantastical terms and your odd robot Ai, I would’ve been long gone by this point.”

“Way to go Stark.” A third voice entered the conversation.

“Hey, fuck off! How was I supposed to know the creepy alien had attachment issues!” Stark complained, and Five bristled, ready to retort- “Hey wait, how did you know that Jarvis was an Ai?”

He deflated, somewhat pleased his calculated shot in the dark was correct. “A solid guess.”

“Great job Stark.”

“Okay, actually screw you Natty.”

“Language.”

“What, is screw an inherently bad word now? You’re dirty minded individual, Stevey, I didn’t know you had that in you-”

“Your prisoner is escaping.”

“-truly, I am absolutely flabbergas- what?”

Five had opted for the safest route. He wasn’t keen on dying just yet, and tampering with the camera would take time and brainpower he didn’t currently have. So, with a quick jerk of his arms and two identical loud popping noises, Five was out the door, grinning when the thrum of his power churned beneath his wrists, begging to be set free. Quickly he reset his shoulders, ignoring the twinges of fiery pain before blinking out of the room, only to be greeted by another world.

Tall, arching ceilings, wide glass windows, gorgeous intricate decor, what the fuck had happened with that stony, escapable, mockery of a prison Five was in seconds earlier?

“OI! You are NOT supposed to be out of that prison! Get back in!”

A short, well dressed man with a truly appalling goatee and a mess of scraggly brown hair was approaching, finger pointing accusingly and mouth set in something almost resembling a pout. Five instantly clocked him as ‘Stark’.

“What are you going to do about it?” Five cocked his head. “Kill me? Torture me? Shoot me? All been done before and here I am.”

“Wha- what the hell are you?” Stark didn’t make any move to approach, and in turn, Five didn’t make his tactical retreat just yet. “Dislocating both your arms isn’t an easy feat ki- extraterrestrial, and you didn’t even flinch. Does your kind, just, not feel pain?”

“I mean, do you feel pain?”

“Oh, you have no idea, honey.”

“Then yeah, I guess I can.” Five pondered the question for a moment more, acutely aware of the armed forces ‘subtly’ gathering behind Stark. “Although, I’d say I’ve become accustomed to the phenomenon over my years, so it would take a lot more for me to experience such a thing compared to the base-line human.” Like a frying pan to the face, punches from Commission trained individuals, and bricks to the back.

“Wait- hold on, let me unpack that, I haven’t had coffee yet.” Stark’s nose scrunched. “Are you implying you’re human?”

“No shit Sherlock,” Five deadpanned. “Now if you don’t mind me, I’ll be taking my leave before your very subtle reinforcements finish arriving.”

“No, wait!!!”

Five didn’t need this right now. He needed to figure out why the hell everyone thought he was some sort of alien, the weird Norse mythology references, the creepy way that… ‘Thor’ had apparently traced him based on a ‘sense’ alone, (could be bad, would be bad, especially in long term scenarios with his siblings-) and where the hell he was, period. The last thing he could recall was the sixties, the barn, Lila, the Handler, traveling back in time-

“What?”

Stark flinched back. “Look, I think there has been a major misunderstanding here. I know you don’t trust me - frankly, I don’t trust you - but clearly we’re both missing pieces of the puzzle. How about I call off the guns, and you agree to one conversation?”

Suspicious. Every instinct in Five’s body wanted to pull on the threads of time, create a sliver in the fabric of reality and escape this tortuous conversation. But Five wasn’t stupid. He knew something was wrong with this place, something severely odd. He needed to find his siblings fast, but he supposed he could entertain a few moments of conversation. Besides, Five could handle himself if things got sticky.

“Fine.” Five made sure to glare, putting his untempered anger into his stare, delighted when Stark shivered slightly, muttering “god you are creepy kid” underneath his breath.

Stark led him through extravagant hallways, and Five refused to allow any awe cross his face. He wasn’t going to lie to himself and pretend like he didn’t grow up in a luxurious household. Sure, Sir Reginald Hargreeves may have been a piece of shit, but he had seen finery of the highest caliber before, and wherever the hell he was currently trumped all of that tenfold.

They arrived in a lounge-room, and Five bristled at the three strangers displayed in various states of preparation on the large, lavish couch in the center of the room. He turned accusatory eyes towards Stark, who ignored him and strutted into the room with almost as much sway as Klaus, which was certainly saying something. “I have arrived with the cargo who claims he is not an alien sent from hell to destroy us all! He has agreed to one conversation before he dips, so let's go, questions.”

Credit where credit was due, the three strangers wasted no time standing up with a motley of weapons held. Five narrowed his eyes. A lithe redhead with twin knives, a sandy-haired man with his fists raised, and a blond with a red, white, and blue shield, raised star in the center-

“Your patriotism is disgusting.” Five noted, turning up his nose at the gaudy colors. His opposition faltered.

“See! He knows things aliens wouldn’t know!”

“Trap. He could’ve been observing us for a long time and learned our mannerisms.” The redhead had a point. If Five were in her shoes, he would be asking the same damn questions.

“She’s right.” Five nodded. “Though if I were, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to compromise my guaranteed escape for a stupid, meaningless conversation that will likely get me nowhere.”

“..I like this kid,” That was Barton, wasn’t it? “Where did Thor find him?”

“Not a kid.” Five crossed his arms petulantly, edging towards the corner of the room while Stark flopped next to the shield-wielding blond. “Now ask what you want to ask and give me my answers so I can leave.”

“Tetchy!” Barton grinned. “Alright, twenty questions, let’s go, what’s your name?”

“Five, have any of you ever heard of the Commission and-”

“Wow, calm down.” Stark held up a hand. “Slower- did you just say your name is Five?”

“And?” Five hissed. Damnit, this was a waste of time. He wasn’t going to learn anything useful from this pack of imbeciles.

“...How was your childhood, very normal human boy?”

“Answer my question first.” Five demanded.

Surprisingly, it was the redhead who spoke up. “We’ve never heard of any organization called the Commission.”

Five felt relief flood his body. He entertained the idea that the redhead was lying momentarily, but dismissed it almost instantly. What usage would these incompetent kidnappers get by lying to him? Besides, none of them had any recollection dawn upon their faces when he gave his name, and anyone even slightly associated with the Commission knew his name. Five hadn’t realized he was ignoring the unwanted company, which had - for some inane reason - prompted one very brave individual to approach him and gently poke his cheek. Words were being said, but Five couldn’t think over every assassin instinct in his body going haywire, his hands moving on autopilot.

In seconds, the sandy blond was on the floor, breath leaving him in a woosh as his eyes blew wide in surprise. “What the fuck kid?”

“I’m done playing games,” Five snarled, shaking the man. He registered his enemies in his peripherals, offering them a sharp smirk while increasing the pressure on Barton’s neck. They were falling still in seconds. “How about we make a new deal? You answer my questions, and if you cooperate, I'll think about responding to yours?”

“Bring the demonic thirteen year-old potential alien to the lounge,” The shield-man spoke up, pinching his brow. “It’ll be a great idea, he said.”

“Oh shove it Steve.” Stark glared. Shield man was Steve. More names, more things he needed to catalog.

“Shut up.” Five snatched one of the knives he always kept on him, pressing the blade firmly against Barton’s throat. The amusement in the posse’s expressions vanished. Good, they finally realized Five was willing to murder them all. “What year is it?”

“In earthen terms, or wherever the hell you’re from-”

His knife dug further into Barton’s chin, and the man yelped. “Give the bastard an answer Stark, there is no way I’m dying to a child!”

“Not a child,” Five grumbled. “One last chance, what year is it?”

“2015.” The redhead said, her eyes sharp. She seemed to be watching him more closely compared to her companions, yet poised to attack just like Stark and Steve. However, there was something about the way her body curved like a weapon, her hands gracefully splayed over the hilt of her dagger with pure confidence, because she knew she was too good to miss, to mess up-

She was an assassin. It was obvious. Five blamed his slow reaction time on the drugs and whatever the hell he had done to get to this place. That was interesting. The redhead was sizing Five up just as effectively as he was to her. She had claimed to not know the Commission, and Five believed her. Her poise wasn’t the effectiveness the Handler forced you to become. She was graceful, like a ballerina. Not sharp, like the cut of a blade.

“Why do you want to know?”

2015. Five paused his assassin musings. He was in 2015, which meant he had somehow traveled forwards in time. How though, how had he come back from the sixties? His mind tried to grasp for details, but the flickering beginnings of remembrance faded just as quickly as they had arrived.

“None of your concern.” Five spat. “Now who are you guys?”

All four paused. Even Barton stopped writhing beneath Five’s steady hands to gawk.

“I’m telling you, off planet!” Steve jabbed his fingers towards Five. “He doesn’t know about the Avengers!”

Avengers. What the fuck was an Avenger? Five was in the apocalypse during 2015, but he had access to the Infinite Switchboard after being ‘rescued’ by the Handler, and he had never heard anything about ‘Avengers’ whatever the hell that meant. Five was trained to keep his emotions at bay, but it was clear some of his confusion still shined through.

“I’m not from another planet,” Five began, irritated. “I’m from Oklahoma. Besides, you’re not making sense. Just earlier you claimed I had been lurking among you humans for years to gather intel to impersonate the homo-sapien race, but I obviously have no idea what an ‘Avenger’ is, which means your earlier point is null and therefore I am very obviously a human. Now, answer my question. What the hell is the Avengers?”

Steve’s mouth gaped open. Stark let out a surprised laugh, and the redhead stood still, her eyes roving his body- assessing his capabilities as a fellow assassin. If she were any good at her job, she would know Five had fighting proficiency, and was likely a massive threat to her and whoever the hell these incompetent a-holes were. So, he dug the knife in deeper at the resounding silence that greeted his declaration and sneered.

“I do not have all day for this, tell me what I need to know or I slice your friend's neck.”

“You wouldn’t.” Steve said boldly, and Five grit his teeth. God, it was ironic how Five’s power revolved around time, yet he never seemed to have enough of it. “If what you say is true, you’re, what, a twelve year old? Do you even know how to use that?”

Anger. Five knew his body was a critical miscalculation on his part, but god, it stung deep every time someone underestimated him because of his stupid baby-face.

“First of all,” Five began, taking measured breaths so he didn’t kill his hostage without anything in return. “You’ve called me thirteen and twelve in the span of minutes, and I am neither, but the least you could do is pick a lane and stick to it. Second of all, I am very confident I can wield ‘that’ better than everyone in this room and outside of it, and I really, really would advise against testing that theory. Now-”

“Really,” Stark laughed, interrupting Five. Barton was silent beneath his grasp, privy to the roiling anger on Five’s face. At least someone knew how to shut up. “You think you can wield a knife better than Natasha-”

Natasha. Names for everyone in the room. Damn, they were so horrendously awful at this. “What, you mean the assassin?”

The room paused. Five offered a lazy grin.

“How did you know that.” It was Barton who spoke, anger coloring his tone. “Do you work for Shield?”

“Shield?” Information, but useless tidbits, because what on earth was Shield? Did it have something to do with Steve, who clutched his painstakingly patriotic shield to his chest? “No. It’s just stupidly obvious.”

“You’re one too,” Natasha finally spoke, her voice honeyed. Five suspected that was how she caught her prey, with a sweet seductive purr and a flash of skin. It was honestly too easy. “I can see it in your stance. No one stands quite like we do, Five.”

“No way Natasha, he’s not even a teenager-”

“I’m done with this.” Five strengthened his grip on Barton, dagger pressing deeper, blood dripping from the wound in steady rivulets, careening down the scarred flesh of the man’s throat. Five took only a moment to prepare for multiple things, his escape when this man’s friends retaliated, the distance and location he needed for his jump, the blood that would be dripping off of his face again- no more killing-

“You’re from an alternate reality, aren’t you?”

Pause. Five swiveled his head towards Stark, who was staring at him in a new light. Natasha was two feet away from him, ready to stab his back once he finished off Barton. She wouldn’t be expecting his jumps though.

“What?”

“Either that or you time-traveled,” Stark said. Maybe Five had underestimated the man’s cognitive thinking skills, because how the hell had he achieved an answer that was, quite literally, the truth? “It’s obvious. You were right, there’s no way you’re from another planet, I can tell. You know nothing about the Avengers, but you know simple things, like the American flag and what Oklahoma is. So why don’t we put the knife down and talk like civilized humans, so we can explain our side of the story, and you could explain yours?”

Trap. Natasha was still behind him, Barton breathing heavily below him. It would be so easy to slash the man’s throat and blink, taking out the frozen Steve and the lumbering, clueless Stark. He could do it and figure out how the hell to get his siblings on his own, like he always had. He could do it. It was so simple.

Five sighed.

“Try anything and I gut you all.” Five slipped off of Barton, instantly marching towards the other corner of the room and sitting down, raising an eyebrow. “Talk.”

“Hold it, this is a mutual exchange,” Stark chided. “I want to ask first.”

“I don’t hav-”

“Why are you named Five?”

Fine. It was an easy question anyways. “Because daddy dearest isn’t the most creative of people. My turn. What the hell is an Avenger?”

“We’re superheroes.” Natasha said. She was back on the couch, cradling a whiny Barton on her lap. Pathetic. Five wouldn’t even be flinching over a small nick to the throat like that. Then, he fully registered what Natasha had responded with and laughed, a cold, harsh thing that had his throat aching. God he was thirsty.

“Superheroes. That always ends well.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Is that your question?”

Why hadn’t he just murdered them and been done with it? Why was he reclining against this stupidly expensive wall and actually responding to his prey? Why was he turning goddamn soft when his siblings needed him to be their silent protector, someone who was willing to do shit for them no one else would?

“Yes.” Stark said decidedly, after a silent conversation with Steve and Natasha.

“Fine.” He supposed this would prove the alternate reality hypothesis. “Have you ever heard of the Umbrella Academy?”

Blank stares.

“Is that some sort of hippie band?”

Okay, it would take talent these four individuals did not have to replicate the earnest confusion currently dancing across every expression. Fuck, the creation of the Umbrella Academy was publicly announced to the entire world in the late 1900’s, there was no way these people wouldn’t have heard of its existence-

“I’m in an alternate reality,” Five mumbled to himself, the true gravity of his situation hitting him like a sack of bricks. Trust him, he knew what those felt like. “Oh shit.”

“Five? You good-”

“You’ve never heard of the Umbrella Academy. You’ve really never heard of us.”

“No…” Tony said slowly, eyes flickering between him and Natasha. “Should we have?”

“Okay.” Five could not have a mental breakdown in front of four strangers, one of which he had tried to murder less than a minute ago. How had he even managed to end up in this alternate reality? There was no way it was an extension of his powers, he can’t have another finicky, math based ability. It was likely the Commission's fault, because in the end, everything always boils down to the Commission. “It appears I actually am in an alternate reality.”

“...what.”

“The Umbrella Academy was a group of six super-powered individuals, who used their abilities to stop crime and ‘save the day’,” Five narrowed his eyes. “The children debuted in 1997, the event publicized to the entire world. If you really have no idea of its existence - considering we are in 2015 - I have somehow managed to find myself in another reality, which-” Five cut himself off.

He needed to leave. He needed to find a permanent place to stay so he could begin calculating how to get back home to his siblings. Home was sort of a subjective word, but Five digressed. He would need notebooks, whiteboards, and room, loads of room to figure this out. The numbers were already pouring through his head, calculations and equations dancing through his skull as he silently pondered.

“...Five?”

“Thank you for your answers,” Five replied blandly, shoving hands in his schoolboy shorts and turning to blink away. “You have provided me with necessary information, so I won’t end your lives just yet.”

“Hold on-” Steve started to race forwards, but Five was already gripping his frenzied ability, barely grazing the bursting vault of energy before tumbling out in a cramped storage closet, his bruised back hitting the wall painfully.

“Shit,” He grumbled. His side was aching again, like it had been for the last busy week. He needed time to rest and heal his wounds, time, always more time, never enough of it-

“Jesus, what the hell was that?” Barton. Why was Barton speaking-

Ai. Ai in the walls. Five had miscalculated, and a feeling of shame burned deep in his stomach. “A ripple or distortion of time and space.”

“...Say what now?”

“Fuck the simple minded,” Five groaned, allowing himself one brief moment of agonizing pain before shutting down, face turning into a cold, blank slate. “I fucking teleported, dipshit.”

A very faint language came from somewhere in the room, and suddenly Stark was speaking. “Look Five, I may be an emotionally stunted asshole with daddy issues, but I’m smart. You clearly don’t belong here, and obviously want to get back home to your siblings. So, I’ll offer you a deal. You can stay here, in the tower, and in turn be granted all the resources necessary for your research, and will be provided with a comfortable room and the obvious essentials. All I ask in return is to study your ability, and you in general. You see, I’m a scientist, and the idea of alternate realities is really fucking cool, and I-”

Flashes of masked faces, stainless steel scissors, cold metal cylinders, pain, the Handler, the Handler all rose to mind, and Five fought the urge to puke. It was a great deal, something so astronomically unbalanced that Five was instantly poking Stark’s ramblings for holes, things the man specifically left unsaid to exploit him. It was clear what Stark was sugarcoating when he said ‘study your ability’. Five had heard that excuse plenty of times, and had only experienced what that meant once. He had handled himself on the Commission's cold surgical table, and he could handle whatever this strange universe had to offer. Studying him in general could mean many things, but it was likely relentless questioning about his reality, which was fine, because not much nefarious could be done with that information, since none of them knew how to transcend dimensions.

“...fine.” Five mumbled, certain the stupid Ai picked up on his quiet acceptance. “Clarify obvious essentials.”

“What? Yes? Wait, okay, umm…” Why did Stark sound awkward? This was a simple business transaction, not an adoption for Pete's sake. “Food, water, toothbrush, clothes, Natty! Anything I’m missing?”

“Recreational activities.”

“Right! Entertainment can be provided if you ever get bored and-”

“Stop blathering like an idiot,” Five grumbled, pushing himself to his feet. Pain was a construct that he didn’t need to feel. His side was not screaming in pain, and his body was not aching with a passionate desire for sleep. Thinking was believing, and Five had had many lonely years to practice the art of disappearing within one's skull. The closet's ceiling was low, which made it all that more depressing when Five’s head didn’t even scrape the top, and he was forced to witness his short stature in full stop-motion. Five had never been the tallest old-man due to his stunted apocalypse growth, but he had at least been taller than what, negative four inches? “Prepare yourself.”

“Prepare? Prepare for wha-”

His fingers clenched, and everything was blue, his vision, his fingers, his body, his eyes-

“Where’s my room?” Five glared at Stark, who turned around comically, mouth dropping open and eyes shining with fever Five had only seen on foolish people’s faces.

“Huh?”

“Room,” Five replied blandly, as if he were speaking to a two year old. “My chambers, my quarters, my accommodations, my lodgings-”

“Alright, we get it smartass,” Stark groaned. They were in the lounge again, the room just as refined and beautifully modern yet still artistic as the last time he had seen it. However, it was just him and Stark in the vast space this time. “Just head to the right and into the elevator, Jarvis should do the rest.”

“Who?”

“The Ai.”

It had a name? That was awfully sentimental of the billionaire, but Five supposed Reginald had named his ‘wife’, so he didn't really have a leg to stand on.

“Fine.” Five mumbled, already ticking through his to-do list. He didn’t trust this deal as far as he could throw it, which was not very far at all, since it was an exchange of words. He would need to de-activate his room for cameras, and sweep all of the annoying locations, like underneath his bed, and behind paintings. He would need to check the room to make sure nothing was going to kill him, there were no easy hiding spots for an assassin to lurk in and murder him while he slumbered, that he wouldn’t-

“Well that’s great! Glad we could come to an agreement, I’ll be-”

“Stark.”

He turned.

Five was right behind him, whispering cruelly into his ear. “You try and fuck with me in my sleep and I castrate you then give you the satisfaction of watching everyone you love die, while slowly suffering the same ending yourself.

“I would do it slowly. Rip you apart limb from limb and have you screaming.” Five’s eyes glinted dark in the light. “And that would be the kindest option, the easiest path you would walk, understood?”

Stark did nothing but turn once more and raise a brow. Walls. Five was well-versed in the subtle art of emotion, and the front Stark put up was good, but not good enough for him. Stark was annoyed, not at Five, but at himself for being spooked at Five’s gruesome declaration, which was almost the intent, but Five would take what he could get at this point.

Offering a creepy smile, Five Hargreeves blinked out of existence, wisps of blue sparks following his departure.

Behind him, Anthony Edward Stark could only blink. Once. Twice. Thrice. He would’ve broken the barrier and blinked four times if he could think of the damned word for it. “So, is he a fucked up likely abused teenager or what?”

“What were we expecting?” Clint Barton materialized out of the kitchen, Hello Kitty band-aid placed haphazardly underneath his chin. “You collect the fucked up children of our generation like pokemon.”

“I do not!” Tony said with all of the dramatic oomph in the world. “Natty, tell me this isn’t true.”

“You do have a type Tony.” Natasha appeared behind Clint, cradling a steaming mug and letting loose a soft smile.

“Okay, don’t word it like that.” Tony grumbled petulantly. “It’s just- there’s something… off about that kid. He’s smart, whip-smart, I can already tell. And his eyes are just so cold, and his threats,” Tony shivered. “I may be a wuss when watching horror movies, but I can tell you that boy will follow up on every word he spoke.”

He was greeted by silence.

“Guys?”

“We should get the adoption papers ready,” Clint mused, snatching Natasha’s mug and downing half of it. Natasha did nothing more than roll her eyes and sigh, which was truly the epitome of friendship. Natasha would’ve kicked him in the balls if he tried to steal her tea. “He’s already psychoanalyzing the traumatized boy.”

“The audacity-”

“Agreed,” Natasha blew over Tony, responding to Clint. “Would a receipt from the grocery store with the smudged pen words ‘child yes/no’ with two boxes suffice?”

“You are perfect.”

“Umm, hello, another person in the room?” Tony scoffed, moving towards the couch and flopping down on it, rubbing a weary hand on his forehead. “This has been an eventful day.”

Tony had been shell-shocked when Thor barged through his glass window, spraying shards everywhere and demanding they shove the young boy flung over his shoulders in the dark power-suspending prison Tony had created for powerful criminals a while back. They had all argued, but Thor had explained that this boy was bad news, and refused to elaborate. Hearing Jarvis’ notification that the boy had woken up was startling - considering he had been unconscious for weeks - but the speed and intelligence and dangerous attitude the boy exuded was even more strange. Tony had deduced there was no possible way this boy was human, no child wears such an expression, but Tony had been proven wrong effectively.

The boy was silver-tongued and deadly.

He had flipped Clint in seconds, and had marked Natasha as an assassin within moments of observing her fighting stance.

And his name, god, who the hell would name their child Five?

His thoughts were interrupted by Steve, who had returned to the lounge. “I don’t trust him.”

“Get in line,” Barton muttered sourly, rubbing at his throat.

“Oh come on, he’s a child-”

“Tony, we all know your insistence on adopting traumatized teens to make up for your own childhood, but you need to look at the bigger picture right now,” Natasha spoke, her words calm. Tony gasped.

“Wow, you know how to hit where it hurts sweetie-”

“That boy is an assassin. I know you didn’t believe me originally, but I can promise you, he is just as talented, if not better than me, and that is not good, considering he can also teleport,” Natasha wrinkled her nose, blazing past Tony’s complaints. “I don’t like the idea of him in the tower, but ultimately, it was your choice, since it’s your home. So if you’re going to keep a deranged psychopath in the attic, make sure you know what you’re getting into, and be prepared in case things turn for the worse.”

Tony… was confused. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the right word for it, but he was feeling very mixed emotions. The urge to defend Five was strong, but Tony attempted to look at the situation logically. Natasha was right, as per usual. The child was deadly. Five was likely going to be stuck with them for a long time, since traversing different realities was something thought impossible up until ten minutes ago, so Tony would need to take precautions.

“Yeah, got it Natty,” Tony smirked, knowing damn well it didn’t reach his eyes. “Trust me, I got this. Just… don’t tell Thor I let his murder baby free.”

“...That’s a horrible nickname.”

“I know, it’s perfect, isn’t it?”

And just like that, Anthony Edward Stark had inexplicably gained a new child.

Chapter Text

The room was the pinnacle of sumptuousness.

Windows spanning half of the available room space, a massive four poster bed standing stately in the center of the back wall, drapes made out of melted silk that felt like butter underneath Five's curious fingertips, a metal chandelier enveloped in gorgeous, twinkling lights that hung from the tall ceiling, paired with elegantly crafted wooden dressers, each knob a shimmery crystal that - if Five had to hedge his bets - were certainly real.

If Five didn't have the composure of an assassin, his jaw would be on the floor, because what the fuck?

He was virtually a slightly upgraded prisoner, what the hell were these people thinking, giving him a master suite in a five star luxury hotel?

Was this world just swimming in riches, or did Five happen across someone with insurmountable amounts of money?

Five snapped his fingers against his head roughly. He didn't have time to ponder the outlandish quirks that came with different realities, he had to figure out some sort of base equation for traveling to different worlds. See, Five's power was all about math. It would be a severe downside, a potentially debilitating weakness if this ability had been given to anyone but Five, whose mathematical prowess was higher than most genius' the world- his world had to offer. Each blink Five made, calculations ran through his head. The height he would have to land at, the amount of energy it would take, the density of the area, the atomic composure of whatever he was landing on-

Case in point, every one of Five's powers somehow correlated back to math. Technically, Five could blink without his equations, but it was very probable he would end up inside of a wall or the floor and instantly be killed, since he wouldn't be controlling where he was landing. On the math related spectrum, time travel was absolutely the worst offender. Hundreds of equations had to be composed, then memorized in order to limit the pool of years to a century. You want to travel to a highly specific point in time, like the birth of Abraham Lincoln or the signing of the Declaration of Independence? You would have to calculate the exact hour, the exact minute, the exact second these events transpired, then throw in all of the prior formulas, as well as hundreds of different finicky external variables and then boom, a one-way express trip to the 1700's, because in order to get back, you would have to do that, all over again!

When Five had brought his siblings back in time to evade Vanya's apocalypse, he didn't exactly inform them of how goddamn risky it was. For fucks sake, they could've ended up in the Cretaceous period, or even a point in time before earth existed. Without his calculations, time travel was one immense, unnecessary, perilous gamble. It was the biggest gift lady luck had ever bestowed upon Five, when he opened his eyes not to the endless bounds of space, but a dark alleyway in the 1960's.

And about the barn?

Five... didn't know, which was not something he admitted to often. He thought it was theoretically possible to turn back time on a level that precise, but figured he'd be dead before he could discern how exactly one may achieve such an impossible feat. And yet, staring down the Handler's silver shining pistol, watching his sibling's bleed beside him, Five's brain had gone quiet, even as the Handler fell dead, shot in the back from a Swede. The next thing Five knew he was being spat out in a tidal-wave of blue sparks, slamming against the barn doors as Diego professed his undying love for the bitch who had broken his skull with a cast-iron. 

Seconds, not decades-

Shut up old man.

...Five didn't find any cameras on his cursory run through of the room.

Suspicious.

So. Damn. Suspicious.

These strangers give him a grandiose, brilliant penthouse, without any sort of repercussions for his violent actions and technical escape, and then keep the room entirely clear of bugs?

Nope. Five refused to believe it.

He blinked.

The marble counter-top was cool beneath his thin uniform, the surprised shouts of his kidnappers(?) music to his ears.

"Hello acquaintances," Five appeared to have crashed some sort of communal dinner, and his eyes instantly locked onto someone new, a tall, lanky, bespectacled man, wearing a white lab coat and eating pasta, which wasn't the best of combinations. "Stop lying to my face."

Dead silence. Barton was silently asphyxiating, Stark was wide-eyed and clenching a plastic fork, Natasha was cool and collected, Steve was trying to save Barton from death to pasta, and the stranger was slowly turning the maroon color of the tablecloth.

"F-F-Five?" Stark managed to choke out, sounding somewhat constipated. "Wha-wha-was there something you needed?"

"Shut up," Five snarled, blinking once more and landing on the table, standing two inches from Stark's face. He glared. "Where the hell are the cameras?" Okay, maybe not the most intelligent nor coherent of plans, but Five wasn't exactly thinking straight in the current moment, so he digressed.

"...huh?"

"The cameras, dipshit," Five's foot was pushing against a bowl of pasta, so he knocked it over for dramatic effect. "You know, the little metal things you attach in hard to find places in order to listen in on private conversations? Where the fuck are they?"

Five was expecting a smooth slip in Stark's expression. Maybe a conniving little smirk and a wink for good measure. What Five wasn't expecting was the way Stark's face went all funny, like he had swallowed a lemon. "Well, Jarvis can technically listen and watch the entire tower, but I told him to keep his Ai eyes away from your room, so there's no need to worry-"

Oh. 

Damnit, Five knew the Ai was watching him already! Did reality-crossing mess with your brain, or was Five just being a major fucking idiot?

...He decided on the former, for his own tiny bit of remaining sanity.

Wait, fuck, he couldn't get rid of the Ai. It would be easy to dismantle the thing, but not worth risking the wrath of his benefactors, which meant getting rid of the eyes watching him at every corner was something Five couldn't do if he cared about getting back to his siblings any time in the next decade.

Growing up, Five had always known Reginald was monitoring them. He selfishly hoped his siblings were unaware of this, hoped they didn't toss and turn in bed for hours, desperately pretending to be asleep, but never actually falling into unconsciousness. It was creepy and annoying, but certainly not the worst thing Reginald had thrown at his 'precious' Umbrella Academy, so Five could do nothing more than take it in stride. The Commission was a bit different. The Handler didn't even try to pretend like she wasn't watching Five at every moment, waiting desperately for him to mess up so she could enact her odd torture upon him. In conclusion, Five and cameras didn't have the greatest of relationships, but that checks for a Hargreeves.

"Oh."

Steady. Keep your voice steady. Don't let them know how much this unnerves you, don't let them use this idiotic weakness against you.

"Fine." Five managed to say, stepping back. "Enjoy your meal-"

"Wait!" Steve cut in, and Five swung his head around, delighted when the man flinched backwards. It was good he still was able to terrify in this puny, pathetic body. "Do... do you want to eat with us?"

Silence.

Five raised a brow, annoyance flaring. "I am a sixty-three year old temporal assassin, I'm not going to sit down and have a meal with my enemies."

Several things happened at once.

Barton shot to his feet, "Sixty-three?"

Stark also rose sharply. "Enemies?"

The stranger nearly fell over. "Temporal assassin?"

Screw annoyance, Five was genuinely pissed off. "Goodbye."

"No, wait-"

Five didn't pause this time. He blinked back to the tranquility of his- the room, the quiet bustle of natural city clamor and the occasional loud shout coming from the kitchen below cathartic in an unexplainable way.

Five didn't bother to try and understand or question the idiocy of his new 'roomates'. He didn't have time for it. Instead, Five cracked his knuckles, picking up the pencil he had swiped on his excursion downstairs and turning to the wall behind the bed. The paint was smooth, perfect for scribbling when one needed to make haste. 

So, without any sort of trepidation, Five stepped onto the bed and began the first step towards returning to his siblings.

...he wondered if they even realized he was gone.

___

Not once had there ever been a normal Friday night dinner. The first time Steve had demanded they all eat together for one day out of the week, Tony had arrived with his hair mussed up, grease splotches across his entire face, and a robot in his hands, which proceeded to destroy every box of Chinese takeout Steve had graciously bought with Tony's own money. The second, Bruce had nearly broken the poor table after Clint had made one too many insensitive jokes. The third was shockingly Natasha's fault, when she threw a knife at Tony for being twenty minutes late. On and on the tradition held stable. There had never been a normal Friday night dinner.

So, when the mysterious numbered teen had shown up on a counter-top behind the Avengers and scared the ever-loving shit out of them, Tony couldn't even say he was that surprised.

They were actually having quite a lovely conversation before the infamous boy in question had shown up. Tony was about to broach the, 'hey Brucie bear, what would you say if I accidentally sort of invited a child assassin to stay in our house, after he broke out of prison and tried to kill Feathers over there' conversation, when there had been a soft whooshing sound and a sneering, condescending voice, "Hello acquaintances."

Tony's grip turned painful on the cheap fork he was using to eat, (deep in his heart he was that same MIT college kid who survived off of instant ramen because of his personal vendetta against daddy dearest) and Tony vaguely heard Barton choking over the panicked fog of his brain.

"F-F-Five?" Tony managed to stammer out, someone pleased his words were coherent. "Wha-wha-was there something you needed?"

"Shut up," Oh shit, the teleporting traumatized teen was suddenly right in front of Tony, his eyes narrowed into slits and lips curled in rage. Some part of Tony's hyperactive mind registered the nicks and small scars all over Five's face - some of which were clearly intentional - but the more, 'in the zone' part of Tony could only let out a muffled yelp of surprise. "Where the hell are the cameras?"

Cameras.

Cameras?

What cameras? Tony shot a panicked look over the kid's shoulder at Clint, who held up his hands as if to say 'you're on your own bud'.

...Thanks Barton. Could always count on you.

"Huh?" That was a safe thing to say, right? Questioning, but not mocking. Inquisitive, but not pushy. God, Tony was so good at conversations.

"The cameras, dipshit," Five's foot accidentally(?) knocked over Tony's penne vodka, and he silently mourned the delicious noodles while Five continued to not make any sort of sense. "You know, the little metal things you attach in hard to find places in order to listen in on private conversations? Where the fuck are they?"

...shit.

The room Tony had provided Five was completely bare of any sort of camera. He knew this because every room in the tower was completely bare of any sort of camera. Tony didn't often 'peek' on his tenants. Even him - someone with very little concept of personal space - knew it would be weird to watch people in the privacy of their own room. The only times Tony had ever asked Jarvis to spy on his friends were for silly things, like preparations for an epic retaliatory prank, or to ask someone a question about technology they had requested. However, the way Five was speaking made it somewhat clearer what was running through his skull.

Five was an assassin, Tony needed to remember that. He had been trained in the art of stealth, the practice of moving in silence, your footfalls becoming light as air. If Tony had to hazard a guess, the boy had probably searched his room for mechanical bugs, only to grow suspicious when he found none. Then, in a bout of confusion, he had teleported down to forcefully inquire answers from the Avengers.

Doesn't he already know about Jarvis?

"Well, Jarvis can technically listen and watch the entire tower, but I told him to keep his Ai eyes away from your room, so there's no need to worry about it Fivey-Five, you got it?"

Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Nicknames were a step towards familiarity, and Tony couldn't have Natasha give him her signature 'told you so' look one more gosh darn time! Bad attachment issues, be gone!

Five's eyes shifted in response to Tony. His posture turned rigid, and a brief silence engulfed the room, filled only by the harsh pants and little - likely subconscious - taps against the table Five was making.

"Oh."

Such a small word. Simple. One syllable. Two letters. Tony could tell the kid was making his tone as emotionless as possible, as unfeeling as he could. He didn't know whether or not Five was upset, or angry, or frustrated, but Tony could tell the kid was masking his true emotions, and that stung some deep part of Tony, still yearning for his pops approval.

"Fine, enjoy your meal." 

"Wait!" Steve interjected, and it was sorta maybe slightly funny the way Steve's entire body flinched when Five swung his head around to grant Captain America the full force of his ire. "Do... do you want to eat with us?"

Oh shit, Tony thought he knew what uncomfortable quiet felt like, but damn Five managed to make the tension filling the room impossible thicker, as he raised a brow condescendingly. "I am a sixty-three year old temporal assassin, I'm not going to sit down and have a meal with my enemies."

Pause.

Rewind.

The fuck?!

There were many things wrong with that sentence in particular, but strangely, enemies caught Tony's attention and had his brain tossing in thought. Tony knew formulating a relationship with the kid would be tough - considering there first meeting Five had been locked away in prison and Tony was calling him an alien over the intercoms - but in his defense, Thor had deemed the teen a 'terrifying threat' and a 'menace to society', so naturally, Tony had been terrified when Jarvis alerted him the hell-spawn was awake. Tony had made an attempt to rectify his earlier mistakes by providing the kid with someplace to stay, but honestly, enemies was a strong word. "Enemies?"

"Goodbye." The kid said blandly, and Tony was already recognizing the slight clench to his fists and the drifting of his eyes, meaning he was about to-

"No wait-"

And the boy was gone.

The Avengers sat in a stunned stupor for approximately two minutes before Bruce was slamming his hands onto the table, rattling the surviving bowls. "What the fuck was that Tony?"

"Hear hear." Clint mumbled.

"Wha- Brucie Bear, how is this my fault?" Tony held a scandalous hand to his heart, throwing his head back and whining in disbelief. 

Bruce raised a finger and pointed towards the bowl flipped over on the floor, his arms crossing. "Everything is usually somewhat your fault Tony, and whoever that was seemed to have a pretty passionate hatred for you in particular- wait, did you call him Five earlier?"

"It's his name!" Tony defended. "Tell him Clint!"

"I hate to agree with Tony," The vent-dwelling archer ignored Tony's offended yelp of indignation. "But that kid's fucked. It might be a code-name or something, but I'm betting his parents looked at him, looked at each other, said fuck it, and rolled a goddamn dice."

Bruce hesitated - clearly taking in the influx of information - before saying, "...so Tony adopted another one?"

"I resent all of you," Tony snarled, glaring down at the table and tossing the middle finger towards Bruce, and his other at Clint for good measure. "I'm not going to adopt Five, I'm just housing him until he figures out how to travel back to his home... timeline? Reality? Wherever the hell he actually belongs!"

Bruce froze. "Original... reality?"

"ohohoho," Clint jumped on the back of Steve's chair, the blond in question squawking and nearly dragging both of them down. "Someone fucked up!"

"Tony!"

"In my defense-"

"What defense!?" Bruce threw his hands up, dragging fingers through his hair. "You're allowing an entity from another universe to stay in the tower, one that is apparently a goddamn assassin with just a tad bit of emotional baggage? Anthony Edward Stark, you are literally on your hands and knees begging for someone to die, I cannot believe this-"

"C'mon, he's thirteen at most, what's a little guy like him going to do-"

"I could kill a man when I was ten," Natasha supplied helpfully. "And I couldn't teleport."

"Okay, fuck you Natashalie-"

"See! My point is-"  

"Are we going to ignore the fact that 'the kid' just straight out said he was sixty three?" Steve's voice cut through the beginnings of another BPST (Bruce's passionate speech time™,) like butter, and Tony was coughing in surprise before spinning around, retorts and retaliations dying on his lips.

"What? When the fuck did he say that-"

"I believe it was, 'I am a sixty-three year old temporal assassin, I'm not going to sit down and have a meal with my enemies?'" Natasha kicked her legs up on the ruined table, offering a questioning look towards Clint, who supplied a shit-eating grin.

"I believe it was, Natty Nat."

"Tony!" Bruce was rounding on him once more.

The man in question didn't respond, which was a very valid reaction in his humble opinion, considering the kid living under his roof who looked like he was on the wrong side of ten had apparently claimed he was older than Tony. "...bullshit."

"I mean, what reasons does he have to lie?" Steve said rationally.

"...Ummm... he's terrified and trying to seem like the bigger person?" Clint tried, which was truly not the epitome of an explanation.

"I-"

"Nope." Bruce appeared to be over it. "I was in my lab for five hours. Five hours! Honestly, how did you guys manage to screw everything up that fast? Wasn't the plan to dispose of the alien after interrogating him and informing Thor of his awakening, how the hell did that little shit convince you guys to open the prison doors-"

"To be fair, he didn't convince us of anything," Clint cut in. "It was honestly wicked. He just popped his shoulders out of their sockets, waltzed through the gap, and strutted away. If I wasn't fearing for my life, I would have applauded his audacity."

Bruce took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. "He popped out his fucking shoulders-"

It was safe to say BPST was not thwarted that night, and everyone but Natasha - because she was Natasha - was forced to listen to Bruce belittling them for being idiots, which in retrospect was fair, considering Five had curb-stomped Clint and then Tony had proceeded to offer him a place to stay. In the end everyone was more than slightly annoyed at Bruce, who was a wearing a 'cat caught the canary' type of smug grin.

"Have we learned anything, gentleman?" Natasha was certainly not making the situation any better, lounging like a lioness in front of the fireplace, warm cup of tea clutched in her hands and eyes lidded with challenge.

"That Bruce never shuts up?" Tony mumbled, and when Bruce swung his head around to stare, he was instantly scrambling. "That Bruce is always correct! Bruce has never been wrong once in his life, and we-"

"Tony, shut up." When Steve pulled out the 'shut up' instead of the 'please be quiet', you knew he was two seconds away from snapping and killing everyone in the room and then himself in a very patriotic jamboree. So, Tony glared mutinously and shut up, eyeing goody-two-shoes Clint, who had been nodding off for the past half an hour.

"Mr. Banner, I think your student is napping!" Tony tattled, and Clint was instantly shooting his head up, betrayal and panic warring in his gaze.

"I'm up, I'm up, I swear on my mother's ransacked grave I am alive please don't change that status, please-"

Bruce sighed and pinched his brow. "Can someone go check in on the kid... or old man... or whatever the hell it is? We don't need the tower blowing up again-"

"Those angry Russians were not my fault." Tony said automatically, as he did every time the subject was brought up.

"Of course not." Clint sniped snidely, still salty over the accusation of his unconsciousness.

"Oh, you did not just say that you motherfucking cu-"

"Tony! Kid! Now!"

"What? Why me-"

"Because I'm not the one who's going to be adopting him, sixty-three year old assassin or not! So go and make sure... Five isn't scheming to murder us all with his amazing teleportation skills before I blow a gasket!"

"Fine!" Tony hissed, standing up and making for the hallway, refusing to give any of his enemies the pleasure of his grimace. "Ciao, assholes!"

The trek to Five's room was less of a trek, and more like a thirty second elevator ride to the top floor of the tower while death metal played in the background because Tony Stark was not your average corporate business owner. Despite the short travel time, Tony still managed to overthink the entire situation with his fantastic genius. If you gave Tony a dime for every time he created a new alternate response for the many, many universes in which his intrusion went very, very wrong, Tony would've been richer then he was at the current moment, if such a thing was even possible.

The room Tony had - cough, shoved the kid into, cough - was one of the few spaces on that floor, the two alternate doors leading to another guest bedroom and a storage closet respectively. The distance between the elevator exit and Five's room gave Tony precious seconds to prepare, but, sooner rather later, Tony found himself hesitating in front of the perfect white door, the brass knob mocking Tony in its sheen.

"Sir?"

"Got it J."

Tony raised his fist in one steady arc, knocking against Five's door twice before leaping backwards, bracing himself for Five's retaliatory wrath, perhaps a dagger to come flying for his head, maybe an insult.

...Maybe both.

And yet, when Tony hesitantly cracked open his eye - prepared to witness the kid's frankly adorable angry face - he instead found himself facing a perfect white door, with a perfect brass knob.

Silence.

Confused and fearing for his life, Tony knocked just a bit more forcefully on the door, only to receive...

Nothing.

Growing slightly annoyed at that point, Tony's hand reached for the door handle, genuinely surprised when the smooth metal twisted underneath his grasp. Tony took only a microsecond to prepare before he was stepping forwards in one fell swoop, body taut as he braved the rage of Five.

Tony's.

Mouth.

Dropped.

The room was absolutely trashed. The incredibly expensive paintings that had previously adorned the walls were strewn across the floor, alongside the decor covering the dressers and nightstands. Five was currently standing on top of the bed, but even as Tony's mouth fell further in complete and utter shock, the teen was flitting towards the precariously balanced dresser, his hands straining as he quickly jotted something down on the wall, a bright flash of yellow pencil curving in his hands before the boy was gone in a flash of blue sparks, reappearing in the corner of the room and kneeling down to read a set of geometric formulas, complicated even by Tony's standards. In fact - as Tony took a closer look at the hundreds of equations lining the walls- there were formulas Tony didn't recognize hastily etched into the wallpaper.

To put it frank, Tony's intellect was almost unmatched on good 'ol earth. Perhaps there were one or two Wakandans who had him beat in the speed department, but Tony's mind was still equipped with every mathematical equation in existence, just like every other prodigious kid. It shouldn't be possible that this small child, (sixty-three years old, the demons inside his head whispered,) knew more about arithmetic formulas and calculus and trigonometry than Tony, yet somehow, here was that impossible truth, coming from a misplaced boy.

"...Five?"

The boy was spinning around, something close to maniacal desperation in his gaze, and Tony only had a second to regret every single one of his life choices before there was a knife against his throat and a crooning voice in his ear, "Don't. Move."

Chapter Text

The hallways were dark, windowless, and petrifying, the shadows on the walls writhing like beasts from old tales. The entire predicament Five was in would've been simply solved with the usage of blinks, but father's training had taken all of his reserves, and as a result, pulling on the space time continuum would have almost certain devastating repercussions. A small snick of a door startled Five out of his laments, and he instantly ducked into a gloomy closet, breathing a sigh of relief when he only spotted Allison, frantically looking to and fro before darting towards Luther's room. Five's sister really thought she was being subtle.

"Five?"

Perfect.

Five took a cursory glance around before tiptoeing into Ben's room, the small sliver of light guiding Five like a moth to a flame.

"Five, what are you doing here, it's past curfew-"

"I figured it out."

"What?"

"Time travel." Five knew his eyes were feverish, his breaths quick and his posture slumped. But he couldn't bring himself to care about his appearance in the wake of such an important revelation. "I figured it out. Our original equations were almost there, but we had to switch around some of the integers and throw away other concepts. I think I have the perfect formula to travel to the future."

Ben didn't look as pleased as Five hoped he would. "Five-"

"No, listen!" Five would've slammed his hands down on the table if he wasn't fearing Reginald could intrude at any given moment. "Don't you understand? We can escape! All we would need to do is travel back or forwards in time with our siblings to a point in which Reginald didn't exist, and then boom, no need to worry about our asshole father anymore! It's a foolproof- why are you shaking your head Ben?"

"Five, everything in those equations is theoretical," Ben stressed, his fingers reaching out to brush against Five's sleeve. He jerked his arm back, ignoring the hurt flickering in Ben's warm gaze. "We have no idea if it would work with you alone, excluding the six other people you would have to lug around. And besides, how are we going to convince all of them to go? Luther is father's number one fan, Diego has a critical mommy's boy weakness, Allison goes wherever Luther does, Klaus is too high to do much of anything, and Vanya is stuck underneath father's thumb. It. Wouldn't. Work."

Five felt like he had been stabbed.

"I would want to go with you, but Five, we can't abandon our siblings-"

"Why the hell not?" Five's instinctive reaction to pushback was anger. He would never abandon his siblings, he would never, but in the disturbing heat of betrayal, and the stinging pain of rejection, Five was relegated to grasping for threads. "If they're not smart enough to grasp the concepts at hand, then let them live out the rest of their lives as emotionally stunted man-children! Stop being so damn selfless for once in your life Ben, and do something for yourself!"

Ben was quiet for a long time. Five felt his 'righteous' anger begin to fade, even as Ben's eyes lowered and his face began to collapse. "...Ben?"

"How- how could you say that?" Were those... were those tears running down Ben's face? "Those- those are our siblings Five, not cattle that could be thrown away when their usefulness runs out! It's not a matter of being selfless or selfish, it's a matter of loving your goddamn siblings!"

Five actually took a step back, hand drifting to the beating heart beneath his schoolboy uniform, kneading at his skin in an effort to restrain his panic. 

"Ben-"

"Five, look me dead in the eyes and tell me you would leave our siblings here with Da-Father. Tell me you would travel into a better world with only yourself, throwing the others in the dirt for your own benefits. Tell. Me."

"Yes." Five was always the best liar in the Umbrella Academy. It was somewhat of an art-form necessary to perfect when you coexisted with a monster.

"You liar," Ben scoffed, throwing himself onto his chair and grinning, a sharp, jagged thing that didn't match the faint tear tracks shining in the light. "You really are so damn good at that Five. You pretend to not care, but really, it's the opposite, isn't it?"

"I didn't come here to be psycho-analyzed Number Six," Five said coldly, itching to escape the conversation - terrified of what may happen if he lingered in Ben's room any longer. "I just need-"

"Yesterday you took the blame for Diego's screw up. A week ago you stood up for Vanya in front of Luther. Last month, you took the attention off of Allison when she couldn't speak. You care Five, and you need to stop pretending like you don't, because it's not fair for the rest of us, to love you without ever feeling any of the reciprocation! You know our siblings aren't the brightest bulbs in the box, and I know you enjoy your little 'subtle' shows of affection, but the least you could do is admit you would never leave the academy without us!" Ben was panting, his eyes alight with fury as he jabbed a wild finger at Five's chest, the boy in question too shell-shocked to even formulate a proper sentence. Ben - despite having arguably the most grotesque ability - had always been the sweetest of the Umbrella Academy. He was kind, had your back, and always there to offer a smile and a hug alongside an amusing quip to lighten the mood. Ben didn't do 'emotional blow ups' like Klaus and Allison. He was laid back.

This? This was something new."Wha- Ben, we are the Umbrella Academy, created specifically to save the world from criminals and filth alike. It isn't necessary to form close bonds of camaraderie, we are supposed to be silent machines, efficient and effective."

Ben was silent for a moment. "Are those Reginald's words, or yours?"

Five's mouth dropped. His breath hitched and his vitriol shuddered, his eyes widening as his hands began to shake. Ben - always the intuitive sibling - noticed Five's eraticness, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. "Five? Are you okay, I didn't-"

Five's power sprung forth from its cage, overtaking his mind and dragging him back to his room. It was painful, but nothing compared to the conversation Five had just had.

What had Ben been about to say, before Five blinked in a panic-induced frenzy?

'I didn't mean it?'

'I didn't realize?'

'I didn't know you were this weak?'

It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Because the next day Five was slamming a knife into Reginald's wooden table, resolute and ready as he marched away from the Umbrella Academy.

He never returned.

___

"Don't. Move." Damnit, Five had been so absorbed in his work he somehow managed to miss the bumbling idiot entering the room. Five quickly assessed the situation. Knife against Stark's throat, calculations evident along the walls, everything in some form of dissaray-

"I don't mean any harm," Stark began, wincing when the sharp blade cut against his throat. "I just came here to check on you."

Five nearly laughed. Check on him? "I'm not a child, you don't need to be-"

"So you keep saying," Stark cut in, and Five would be lying if he said his blade hadn't pressed deeper against Stark's throat at the interruption. "What was that by the way, the whole 'I'm sixty-three thing'? Because - no offense - you look like a little kid-"

"Irrelevant time travel misshap." Five mumbled. "It doesn't matter, you shouldn't feel the need to check on me like I'm some blubbering puppy."

"That's not what- hold on, time travel? You can time travel?" Since when?" Five traced his memories. Had he really not informed the 'Avengers' of his second ability? No, Stark had only alluded to the idea that Five could've possibly time-traveled to this strange new world, even though Five knew that was completely inaccurate. It wasn't really a blunder persay, just information Five could've kept quieter for a longer period of time to receive potential beneficial gain.

"Since forever." Five hissed. "Now, you're going to step out of this room and-"

That's when everything started to go awry. Stark - being a naturally fidgety man - had accidentally shot his elbow back, ramming the bone straight into Five's gut, directly where the haphazardly stitched shrapnel wound from the original timeline lay. It hurt. It hurt bad. Unable to restrain a whine, Five was backing off of Stark, fingers instinctively drifting towards the wound, probing to see if any more damage had been inflicted upon the bloody tear-

"Five? Are you okay, what's wrong-"

Hands. There were hands reaching for his face and logically Five knew they were the calloused, tanned extremities belonging to Stark, logically- but even as Five reasoned with himself, Stark's fingers were morphing to red painted talons, delicate feminine hands stained with unspeakable atrocities and genocides, clawing for his eyes, reaching for his face-

"Get the hell away from me." Five snarled animalistically, resisting the urge to stab Stark in the throat and be done with the entire debacle. Your siblings, he reminded himself. Do it for them-

"Okay." And shockingly, Stark backed off, backpedaling for a moment before flopping onto the floor, stretching like he lay upon a bed of luxury instead of the cold, hard ground.

Five glared. "Stop patronizing me."

"I'm not patronizing you," Stark said calmly, eyes flickering towards the ceiling- perhaps for the Ai in the walls? "I'm just doing what you wanted me to do."

They were at a standstill. Five couldn't force Stark to leave when he himself was curled into a pathetic little defensive ball, desperately praying for the white spots at the edge of his vision to fade, and Stark clearly wasn't going to leave unless forced, read: threataned. The man appeared to be waiting for Five to begin a conversation, but jokes on him, Five had spent forty-five quiet years in the apocalypse with no one to talk to but his beloved Dolores. He wasn't about to be felled by an idiotic man-child wearing a band T-shirt and ragged jeans. 

The minutes ticked by. Five's face was a blank slate, and in a juxtaposition, Stark's was clearly portraying his frustration.

Finally, he caved, as expected. "Hello. Let's start over. I'm Anthony Stark, but I prefer to be called Tony. What's your name?"

Name. He'd gotten an actual name, but why? What had prompted this individual to grant him more information alongside a 'clean slate'?

"I'm not going to do anything malicious," Stark - well, he supposed Tony - had misread his inquisitive silence as fear. "I honestly don't think there is anything malicious I could do with just a name, considering you don't exist in this universe-"

"It's Five," Five raised a brow. "Don't you already know that?"

Tony's face fell. Why? Was he somehow annoyed at Five's response? "But like- isn't that like- like a codename or something, or maybe you have a different name you use-"

"My name is Five Hargreeves," Five deadpanned. "I don't have a different name, and I don't want a different name. You can choose to refer to me as such, or don't refer to me at all." Grace had actually offered Five a name all those years ago - when his siblings were still baby-faced and naive - some stupid name Five didn't feel like trying to recall. Some part of Five had wanted that name bad, wanted something that proved him human and not a detached superhero with a duty to a city he didn't care for. But, as Five observed his siblings sparkling eyes and Seven's jaded smile, her eyes brimming with tears, Five had had no choice but to pluck at the obvious loophole in his idiotic father's words, 'Name six of them'. And so, Five became Five, and Seven became Vanya, and there wasn't anything else to it.

"Okay... Five, it's just... around here it's not... well... normal for children to be named after numbers-"

"Oh, it's not normal on my earth either, Stark." Five said pleasantly, testing his ability to stand. He wobbled like a newborn fawn and hastily gripped a dresser to keep his balance, only offering a surreptitious glare when Stark raised an impeccable brow. "Like I said, the Umbrella Academy didn't have the greatest father."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh." Five mocked. Finally, the pain in his side subsided to an acceptable level, and Five was able to stand up - successfully this time - and tersely march towards his equations, brushing past Tony without a care in the world. 

"Wait- what- why, what's all this math for?" Tony probed the elephant in the room, clearly observing the countless of useless equations in rapture.

"Nothing your puny brain would be able to comprehend." Five shot back, bending over slowly to grip the yellow pencil that had fallen from his grasp after Tony's rude intrusion.

"Try me." Tony seemed perfectly content to cock his fingers in a 'come hither' gesture while smirking. Five resisted the urge to eye-roll, because - despite his appearance - he was in fact a sixty-three year old man and above petty gestures.

"Fine." It wouldn't hurt to ramble while Five worked through complex formulas, all of which would likely fly right over this idiot's head. Besides, Tony couldn't exactly do anything with the information unwittingly gained, considering he didn't have Five's 'amazing' time traveling and apparently reality crossing abilities. "Does this count as observing my 'powers'?" It also wouldn't hurt to postpone the actual experimentation Tony would be inflicting upon Five. He may be in the hardier body of a child, but Five knew from personal experience anybody would take days to bounce back after the mutations and poking and prodding, which would mean precious time Five couldn't afford to waste slipping through his fingers.

"Huh? Oh yeah, sure." Tony didn't seem to be paying too much attention, so Five took his words with a grain of salt and tried his best to pretend like there wasn't a set of eyes watching him meticulously rifle through different components of formulas while he talked.

"My abilities revolve around math, so I can safely presume whatever it is that brought me here also has some sort of mathematical elements," Careful Five. Explain enough that Tony is sated, but don't reveal the finer, complex, inner-workings of your thought process. "So I took the base equations from time travel and began to add hypothetical ideas, things the Co- things I didn't think were possible. I also had to entertain some more... ludicrous prospects, like the chance of wormholes or alternate planes of dimensions. Basically, this math is giving me steady ground to plant my feet into while I craft the enigmatic branches and leaves of the tree."

Tony was silent for a moment. Good, hopefully Five had shut him up. Turning back to the wall, he finished the simple division section he was working on and blinked over to the bed, wincing slightly as his body twinged in pain. It was never a good idea to use so many jumps for menial tasks, but every single second Five spent away from his siblings was another second they could be lying dead - The Handler's mocking voice, his sibling's glass eyes - so he could and would sacrifice his meaningless comfort for their safety.

"You're really smart, aren't you."

"I have to be." Five barely registered himself responding, too busy dragging variables through his head. Divide the decimals, multiply the factors-

"...What if you switch those numbers around?" Five's fingers stuttered on his pencil.

"Excuse me?" 

"Here," Tony was approaching, his hands held up to show he meant no harm, grasping Five's finger and gently pointing towards hastily-scrawled, unintelligible numbers. "These polynomials are off."

Five squinted. Glanced back at Tony, then at the stretch of wall before them.

Fuck, he was right.

A hapless mistake, one that wouldn't affect the results of Five's pondering all that much, but a problem to be taken into consideration nonetheless. Five was slipping, and he was annoyed to feel a hot rush of shame flood his cheeks. God, being in such a puny body was having its tolls. "How did you spot that?"

Sure, the incorrect problem Tony had pointed at wasn't exactly the most complicated of equations, but Tony had spotted the inconsistency within the tornado of jagged numbers, and then proceeded to inform Five of his mistakes. It wasn't much, but the bar was in hell, and Five had assumed Tony was dancing with the devil.

"It's just math." Tony smirked, white teeth flashing. Arrogance. Five didn't appreciate arrogant people. Oh sure, he wasn't going to delude himself and pretend like he personally wasn't just the slightest bit boastful. But, the main difference between him and Stark were the years Five had spent precisely cutting one's throat in that perfect parallel line to minimize blood spill and pain, the years spent with Reginald, learning how to hone his ability into a well-crafted weapon, fighting against dozens of commission agents while the Handler stood with a cigarette braced in her curved fingers, lips arching in a smug smile as Five's clothes splashed red with blood, blood, more blood-

See, the difference between Five Hargreeves and Tony Stark was Five's ability to follow through on his conceited nature. Tony was all bark until proven otherwise. 

"And hypotheticals." Five pointed out mildly, scratching away at the wallpaper with the metal part of his pencil. It almost looked like someone had chewed the eraser off, and honestly, Five was a bit morbidly curious. 

"Stop, that's expensive paint." Tony whined, fingers encircling Five's wrist. Five's mind went silent.

Breathe.

"Get your hand off of me, Stark." Five was calm. He was so calm. 

Tony yanked his hand away as if he'd been burnt, staring curiously at Five, as if he were an unopened puzzle just begging to be solved. Five didn't like that. Oh, he didn't like that at all. Baring his teeth in a grim imitation of a sneer, Five turned back to his equations and blinked onto the dresser, wobbling slightly before finishing off a line of broken problems, now intersecting with the numbers above his bed.

"...Are you okay?"

Hah. "Define okay, Stark."

"Your side, when I elbowed you-"

"A trivial flesh wound, nothing to worry about, I can assure you," Five squinted, realizing belatedly this man was likely more worried about the blood spilling on his pristine white bed-sheets. "I'll make sure none of the blood gets on your goose-feather cashmere blankets-"

"Hold on, blood?" Tony definitely looked angry now, and Five's hackles were instantly rising in defense. He wasn't about to take the Avenger's albeit, double-sided hospitality for granted, did they seriously think there was any world in which Five stained thousand dollar blankets? "I thought you said it was a surface wound-"

"There are spectrums to words," Five mono-toned, focus slipping back to his equations. Tony would be even dumber then predicted if he tried anything. Mutiply the exponents, combine the sequences- "To me, a flesh wound is just a stab in the back. I bet for you though, the definition is more along the lines of a scrape you receive after meeting an unfortunate end to the business side of a misplaced pebble-"

"You were stabbed in the back?"

"No, why would you think that?"

"Because you just said being stabbed in the back is a 'mere flesh wound'." Tony imitated Five's unfortunate squeaky pre-pubescent voice, and it took every bit of muscle control Five had as an excellent assassin to resist strangling Stark then and there. 

"Use that idiotic lump floating around your skull, you didn't exactly smack me in the back earlier." Five grumbled irritably, blinking back to the floor and crouching down. Without any warning, a hand was tapping his shoulder, and Five was spinning around, anger roaring in his green gaze-

Only to be halted by an almost horrified look from Tony. "You- you have an untreated stab wound right now?"

Suspicion lurked like an unwanted vice in the back of Five's mind. Why was Tony so curious about his injuries? He was certainly aware Five could lay him flat in negative seconds even with the slight strain on his body, right? "No."

Tony's shoulders visibly relaxed. "Oh thank god, you scared me ki-"

"It's a shrapnel wound first of all, and second of all, it was treated." Five wrinkled his nose. "At one point in time."

Here comes the tension. "Five..." Tony said, painstakingly slowly. "Would you mind taking off your shirt?"

"Awfully perverted of you, Mr. Stark." Tony was distracting Five from his variables. He needed this man out of his - fuck - the room and fast. 

Tony surprisingly flushed, his mouth dropping to gape. "What? What? No, no, you know I didn't- what the fuck- kid- old man- Five... whatever just, just let me help you, okay?"

Five wasn't the type of person to rely on other people. It wasn't that he was physically incapable of trust, no, not at all. In fact, if Five thought back to his Pre-Apocalypse days, he recalled placing his fragile trust in his siblings 'capable' hands more than once. Like, allowing Diego to guard his back in a particularly tough fight, when he was running low on jumps. Or, that one time Five had been beaten so bad he couldn't even crawl back to the house, and Luther was forced to carry him home. Five had been punished bad for that one. He had the scars to prove it on his old body. Anyways, Five could trust people, but it was public knowledge that anyone in the Commission would stab their partners in the back for a promotion and a nice, steaming cup of coffee. In their defense, Five would've done it for the coffee alone. And his siblings in the sixties weren't exactly the most reliable people, considering Allison was off playing housewife, Vanya was an amnesiac, and Klaus was running a cult for fucks sake.

"I'm fine."

"No your not," Tony retaliated. Five reared, readying a volley of insults to combat his opponent, prepared to mark every weak point in Stark's defenses and watch the walls come crumbling down, before Tony continued. "Your movements and bouts of teleportation are sluggish. Just a few hours ago, you woke up in a jail cell, dislocated both of your arms to get out, and are now in an unfamiliar house with unfamiliar people you can't trust. I know you want to get home - believe me, if I was in your boat, I would do the same - but running on low energy and wounds isn't the way to go. You aren't going to achieve anything by running yourself ragged. So just, let me clean up the wound, and we can go our merry way, m'kay?"

Five deflated. Your siblings, he reminded himself once more, are the only thing that matters. Running quick calculations, Five figured it would be easier to re-stitch the goddamn pesky ass shrapnel wound and then rest for an hour - no, that was too long - thirty minutes, enough to keep Stark off of his back and allow him to replenish his rapidly draining energy.

Although, Five would shoot everybody in this goddamn tower and then himself if Tony tried to reach out one more time.

"Fine. But I'm doing it myself."

Tony recoiled. "Kid-"

"I. Am. Not. A. Kid." Five sneered, punctuating his every word with a heavy pause. "Just because I have the appearance of an adolescent, doesn't mean my consciousness is of one. I will permit you to stay and watch so you can make sure I'm not tampering with the equipment, stealing anything to use as a weapon, or messing up your flooring with my blood, but try and touch me again and unfortunately, you will find your person lacking hands, understood?"

Tony wanted to argue. It was clear in the set line of his mouth, the stiffness of his jaw, and the clenching of his fists. But surprisingly, all the man did was nod, before exiting the room to presumably acquire a needle and thread.  

In the silence that followed Tony's departure, Five heavily debated leaving. Not the odd birdcage he was trapped in, but the room himself. His stomach was reminding him that Five does in fact, require sustenance to survive, and he itched to down a classic mug of piping hot espresso. If every blink Five made didn't feel like walking through quicksand, he honestly would've risked popping down to the kitchen to hopefully sneak some food into his body.

Tony reappeared rather quickly, a surgical sewing kit clutched in his hands as he raised a brow dubiously. "Do you even know what you're doing, kid?"

Five narrowed his eyes at the nickname, but kept quiet. "Yes."

It was annoying getting scraped in the apocalypse, where medical supplies had turned to illustrious gold. Infection and tetanus ran rampant in the destroyed corners of the world, and more often than not Five found himself with a needle in hand, shirt in his mouth as he used up his precious supplies stitching wounds he had received from being a fool. The Commission was a bit different, only in the sense that a medical wing was provided for those injured on missions. Five hardly visited the blinding white room, however, too suspicious of the Handler's intentions with him to ever step foot near anesthesia and weapons.

Tony's eyes scrunched, and Five racked his brain for something he said wrong. He was honestly doing his best to placate these belligerent morons, and yet they took issue with every word he said. "Alright, umm... just..."

Five gritted his teeth and grabbed the kit, threading the needle before yanking his shirt up, tsking at the blood plastered across his abdomen, paired with the torn stitches. It would be an easy fix, but a painful one, considering he would have to remove the ruined stitches before re-sewing the wound.

"Hey, I can- what the actual fuck kid!?"

Five paused. He glanced up, only to see Tony two inches away from him. "Back off, we had a deal, Stark."

"Yeah, we had a fucking deal," Stark laughed, high pitched and crazy. "What the fuck happened to you kid? At least take the goddamn painkillers, that must hurt like bitch-"

Water. There was water and two inconspicuous white pills on the floor. The water could be poisoned, but underneath Five's trained eye, the water looked un-tampered. The pills though... those were another story. "I don't need painkillers."

"Then what the hell are you planning on doing?" Stark looked incredulous, and Five flashed a shark grin.

In one smooth move, he yanked out the ruined remnants of his stitches, wincing slightly at the instant fiery pain that had his body freezing. But just as quickly he recovered, placing the bloodied string on top of the white medical kit and refocusing on his stomach wound. Vaguely, he heard Tony swearing in front of him - Five honestly didn't clock the man as squeamish - but he ignored the useless white noise and methodically closed the wound, wiping the remaining blood on his ruined Umbrella Academy uniform before standing on wobbly feet, chugging the glass of water (while praying Tony didn't actually drug it,) before crossing his arms imperiously. His side was aching something fierce, and there was blood all over his hands, but Five was just happy it was his own and not his family's.

"There. Done. Now can you stop bothering me and vacate the premises, permanently." Five hissed in annoyance. Tony's mouth was gaping, and Five felt the urge to punch him in the jaw. A good 'ol right hook ought to shut him up, in Five's personal, very unbiased opinion.

"You jus- why- we could've you know, put you under or something, there was no need for you to do that yourself!"

"I don't trust you." Five said blankly. Why did Tony need a better answer than that? Five didn't trust him not to tamper with his body while in the vulnerable throes of unconsciousness, and would take the pain any day over the possibility of waking up more of a genetically modified monster than he already was. 

"But- Five, it's not about trust, it's about not ripping out your stitches while completely depressingly sober!"

"Well, what did you want me to do?"

"Take the goddamn painkillers!"

"I don't trust you." Five repeated. "And if I don't trust you, that means I can't trust a word you said. You say these are painkillers, but truly, those could be any drug on the market, as I'm sure a man of your stature can acquire such luxuries. It wasn't worth the risk."

"Wasnt- wasn't worth the risk-"

___

Natasha Romonoff was an excellent assassin. Her record was nearly perfect, her shots the quintessence of flawless, only beaten by Clint himself. Even then, her combat skills were legendary, and her intuition was a scary thing.

Yet, she couldn't shake the feeling of inferiority, while watching the boy flip Clint with speed a child shouldn't possess, watching him teleport across the room with the barest flick of his wrist, watching him crash Friday night dinner without a care in the world.

It was obvious he was a talented assassin. Perhaps, she begrudgingly admitted, even better than herself. So, when Tony came down from Five's room looking like he had seen a ghost and sporting a split lip, Natasha was feeling a bit more than slightly concerned.

"Holy shit, what the hell happened?" Clint swore, lounging across the couch and wincing when Tony rubbed at his sluggishly bleeding lip.

"Do you need me to beat up an elderly man?" Natasha said calmly. Unlike the others, she fully believed the boy was as old as he said. It was the specific way he walked through the world, with unfaltering steps and a certain glint in his eye that promised countless horror-torn stories.

"No- it was, I guess, my fault." Tony mumbled, and Natasha felt uncharacteristic worry flood her system. She had once thought Tony to be an arrogant, vindictive man, and he still was, in a sense. But the real Tony was kind, offering to bake cookies with herself and supply Steve with every art supply under the sun. So, when Tony was admitting to something being his fault... well... she needed to hear the full story before she ran in guns blazing. "Where's Brucie?"

"Went down to his lab to cool off." Steve supplied, looking concerned. "You okay, Stark?"

"I mean fuck, it's just that kid is so messed up." Tony whined, collapsing onto the couch and throwing an arm over his eyes. "Like, so fucked up."

"Well-"

"I mean seriously," Clint shot Natasha a surprised look, and she returned it with increased amounts of subtlety. Natasha was not one to be interrupted, and Tony was very abiding by the unspoken rule. For him to ramble over her clear beginnings of her sentence?

This situation was getting to Tony far more than he was letting it show. And believe her, he was letting it show. "He's wounded apparently, a big bloody tear right through his stomach. I tried to get him to accept my help, and I had thought I was finally getting through his stupid head, before he grabbed the sewing supplies and just stitched himself up, no biggie!"

"Tony..."

"And he was talking about ruining my stupid bed-sheets instead of being concerned that he was bleeding out, and he was so smart guys, like, maybe even smarter than me, and he flat out admitted that his parents were shitty to my face, and I know he's a grumpy old man but I really wanted to give him a hug-"

"Tony."

"-but he flinched every single time I tried to touch him! I brushed his shoulder and his entire body stiffened. I try to calm him down? He threatened to chop of my hands! Someone's hurt him, and I swear to God when I find out who-"

"Tony!"

"What?!" Tony snapped, whirling to face Natasha instead of the wall. Clint and Steve were audibly gaping behind him, either from the word vomit, or getting on record that Tony had called someone smarter than him. "What Natasha?"

"You need to calm down," Natasha strode over to her friend, placing a gentle hand on top of his head. "You're compromised Tony, we still haven't cleared him as a major threat. I know he looks like a child, but you've known him for less than a day, that's not enough time to make proper judgement on one's character because he what, trauma-dumped?"

"He didn't-"

"This has got to go in Guinness." Clint stage-whispered towards Steve. "Fastest time to adopt a dimension traveling psychotic baby yet not so baby murder assassin."

"Shut up Clint," Tony and Natasha said in absolutely terrifying unison, before going back to their mumbled 'hush-hush' conversation.

"Anyone else feel a distinct chill in the air? No, just me?" Clint faux shivered, giving his patented version of the Steve-Puppy-Dog-Eyes on the creator himself. It was safe to say the blond was less than impressed at the lackluster replication.

"Let's go to bed, they're going to whisper fighting till dawn." Steve grabbed Clint's elbow and tugged him away from the two, who were still arguing furiously in a mash of different languages, as they always did when things started to get heated.

Up in his room, Five Hargreeves toiled away. There was no time to waste.

Chapter Text

Coffee.

Five had ironically five thoughts on the brain, the first being his math, the next four being the elixir of life itself.

It was his abilities fault. Reginald had discerned that before Five was even consciously aware of his existence.

The sun was yellow, the grass was green, and Five Hargreeves needed coffee to function. His ability was constantly using up all of the reserved energy in his body in order to power his blinks, which led to Five gaining quite the sweet-tooth in his earlier days of existence, despite his affinity for char-black coffee. Of course, any preference for food was wiped out in the apocalypse, but he digressed. In all fairness, Five could take sugar shots and burn brighter than a campfire introduced to gasoline, but as a result, he would fall into a comatose state too quickly to be beneficial, his systems needing to catch up after he essentially kick-started them into mach-12. So, as Reginald had forcibly stated it, coffee was the best solution to Five's peculiar calorie sized problem, and although unfortunate, Five had become - in the loosest form of it - addicted to the glorious substance.

On his ranking of women:

Dolores.

Coffee.

Vanya.

Everyone else. 

Handler.

To summarize, that was exactly why Five was cradling a piping cup of dark black, blowing at the steam and reveling in the warmth each sip provided at three in the morning, the city lights twinkling in his peripherals. Through Five's superb math abilities, he deduced taking a ten minute break to blink into the deserted kitchen and snag a cup of coffee would eventually be a beneficial task, considering the boost to his stamina and head clearing provided.

"Hargreeves."

Five didn't bother to fake being surprised at the casual announcement of his previously thought to be unknown last name. "Stark?"

"Stark," Natasha agreed amicably, padding over to the lavish fridge and flash-banging Five with the fluorescent lights. "What are you doing here?"

"Hypocrite." Five smirked lazily, leaning back on his chair and taking a sip.

"Answer," Natasha grabbed a nearly empty jug of orange juice and kicked the door shut with her foot in one graceful movement. "And I will do the same."

"Can't a guy grab a... 'cup'a'joe'?" Natasha snorted at Five's fake accent, perching herself atop one of the high quality leather chairs.

"For a regular child, perhaps. But the venn diagram doesn't exactly align here, time-traveler."

"Stark." Damn. Stark really was a snitch. Five had obviously presumed Stark would spill every juicy drop of information Five begrudgingly gave during that odd confrontation in his bedroom, but hey, it didn't hurt to believe in the .0000125% chance that Stark actually shut his trap and let Five mind his damn business.

"Stark." Natasha nodded shortly.

"...Replenishing my blinks." Five kicked his legs up, raising a brow. "You?"

Natasha didn't falter at the terminology. She was too smart for that. "Nightmares."

"Ah," Five took another probing sip from his mug. In his correct body, Five had had one too many nights of chugging freshly brewed coffee to even feel the heat, but the unfortunate mistake he now adorned like an ugly plaid jacket didn't have that sort of tolerance. "The Red Room?"

Natasha imperceptibly stiffened. To the untrained human eye, all the Black Widow did in response to the name drop was uptick her mouth and tilt her head in appraisal. But Five was a masterclass assassin, and he knew the tells better than anyone else. That mouth twitch was practically a jaw-to-the-ground gasp in an assassins world, the head tilt a demonstration of pure confusion. "...Stark?"

"Not directly," Five sipped demurely. "More like the poorly hidden records stashed neatly on the tablet the man in question accidentally left on my desktop."

Natasha took a breath, and let it out in a hiss. Wow, she really wasn't bothering to hide her annoyance anymore. "I swear, I shall rip that disgusting man's head off and watch as the blood pours out of his gaping wounds-"

Five wasn't surprised at the Russian expletives leaving his fellow assassin's mouth. From what he gleaned from the nearly empty files, the Red Room was sort of like the Commission, but specialized in seduction rather than stealth, all of which Five had predicted earlier from Natasha's manerasims. Assassins needed to know all types of languages in order to broaden the range of targets, whether it be sultry stares, or ragged Russian. "Calm down."

The woman's eyes snapped up, and Five was ashamed to admit a trickle of fear flooded his veins at the calculating look in her heavy gaze. "You know my mother tongue." It wasn't a question.

"I know many languages." Five shrugged, swirling his mug. "I presume you do as well, Agent Natasha Romanoff, or shall I say, Natalia Alianovna Romanova?"

Natasha full on stumbled. Five resisted the urge to critique her subpar poker-face. "How?"

"Not important." In truth? An educated guess. No assassin uses their real name on the field, unless they were a fresh-faced newbie. Although he personally was known to the Commission as Agent Five, he didn't exactly get a choice in the matter, and Five never ever opted to use his true name on longer missions, when he was forced to stay for weeks in different time periods while subtly getting closer to his targets before striking. So, Five had known Natasha was using a false name, and judging from the errors she had made earlier, the Russian had a bit of a sentimental streak, so it was likely the false name she wore was somewhat close to her true identity. So, with a quick guess and a confession from Natasha, he had his answers. 

"What do you want?"

"Nothing." Five grinned, testing the warmth to his coffee once more before downing the entire mug in a single gulp. He wiped some of the liquid off of his cheek before standing up, carelessly tossing the mug into the basin of the sink.

It shattered on impact.

"Nothing?"

"No." Five prepared to blink. "Absolutely nothing at all."

"Wait-"

Five slammed into the untouched bed's posts, entire body undulating with undesirable agony as he grit his teeth and shoved himself upwards. Surreptitiously, Five checked his fresh stitches, surprised to find the wound still neatly sewn closed. Considering the fragility of his stupid body, Five had presumed the wound would've opened at a jerky movement, but he supposed his prediction had room for error. 

Five turned back to the wall, covered head to toe in formulas, ideas, thoughts and an occasional angry scribble. He had work to do.

___

Bruce Banner had genuinely no idea what to do.

Now, as an incredible physicist and genius in his own right, Bruce liked to think he was generally considered a person someone could come to when issues arose. However, Bruce had truly nothing to say as he observed Natasha and Tony entering his lab, hackles raised. Pointed words were being flung like daggers across a battleground read: lab, and Bruce decided cowering in the corner with his lab goggles was a suitable response to the unwelcome interruption.

"-The tablet was encrypted with thousands of firewalls! Shuri would've taken more than an hour to hack that thing! How on earth was I supposed to know Five would-"

"идиот," Natasha glared, and Bruce was surprised to see such a visceral expression on the unflappable woman. " Я не могу с твоей глупостью!"

"Don't insult me in Russian you bitc-"

"Alright," Bruce sighed, giving up hope. It was clear the argument would only fester without intervention. "What's wrong?"

Both paused, turning to look at Bruce with mirroring confusion. "...Why are you in my lab, Brucie-boo?"

Bruce restrained the urge to fling a screwdriver at Stark's humongous forehead like an arrow to a target. "This is my lab Anthony. The one you commissioned for me on the fortieth floor?"

"Oh."

"Это твоя вина! Если бы ты обратил внимание на твои окружение, Брюс бы не беспокоился."

"Oh fuck off, you just don't want to admit you were also not paying attention!"

"Напыщенный, отвратительный, мудак!"

"Right back 'atcha, sweetheart."

"Убей себя-"

"Alright, alright, enough!" Bruce pinched his brow. God, could he go one day without a raging migraine? "Stop fighting! Natasha stop instigating and Tony stop responding! Jesus, I expected this bullshit from you Stark, but Natasha?"

Natasha flinched while Tony glanced down, seemingly chastised.

"...someone care to tell me why we're bickering like toddlers?" Wrong words, apparently. Natasha and Tony took one look at each other before exploding in a barrage of words.

"Stark was being an idiot-"

"It's not my fault you cankerous old whore-"

"Stark left his files for the монстр to read-"

"Don't call him a monster-"

"Natasha, please." Bruce groaned. Sure, he didn't necessarily oppose Natasha calling the dimension-hopping time-traveling 'child' a monster, but Tony - whose adoption instincts had clearly hit him like a sledgehammer - wouldn't let the conversation continue if Natasha kept using her... pleasant nicknames.

The redhead sighed. "Stark left his files for the... thing to read and form accurate predictions about my... history."

"The..." Bruce didn't dare say the dreaded words aloud. 

"Yes." Natasha cut him off shortly, and it was only then Bruce registered the pale pallor to her normally rosy cheeks, the slight tremble to her fingers, and the blown out quality to her pupils. Oh. Oh, Natasha was scared. Probably petrified, considering the visible emotions she was displaying.

"Tony."

"I left my encrypted tablet in the kids room after freaking out because he was bleeding out! Sue me, but I didn't think an inexperienced cross-dimensional kid could hack into my Stark industries tablet! And besides, there was practically nothing on it, since I could barely find any information about the Red Room anyways!" Tony ranted, crossing his arms petulantly.

Bruce breathed. "Okay. Fine. You underestimated the kid, and Natasha paid the price. In the end, it was still your fault for being emotionally compromised-"

"Emotionally compromised-"

"Emotionally compromised," Bruce interrupted Tony's outraged squawk. "So why don't you apologize to Natasha, and we can all go our separate ways?"

"Fine." Tony said shortly, and Bruce got the feeling the argument wasn't exactly over. "Sorry, Widow."

"Accepted." Natasha's smirk held no fondness. "Stark."

"Great," Bruce didn't even attempt a smile. "Now, if you could kindly get out of my lab-"

"Wait-"

"Oh my god, what now-"

"No, seriously, wait." Tony furrowed his brow. "Did you hear that?"

Bruce paused.

In the silence that followed, there was a very loud, very child-like voice, groaning, "Fuck!"

"The монстр," Natasha was darting out of the lab faster than Bruce could blink, red hair a streak against the white walls of the lab.

"He's not a monster!" Oh great, now Tony was following Natasha out of the lab, leaving Bruce with unsettled silence.

"Okay. I'm going to sit here and not intervene." Bruce lied to himself, sitting down on his chair and staring unseeingly at the holographic periodic table Tony had made him. "I'm not going to intervene between the hotheaded assassin, the other hotheaded assassin, and an asshole."

He lasted three seconds.

"Fuck it, I'm going to intervene."

The scene that greeted Bruce after he had bee-lined to the kitchen was... unexpected, to say the least. Bruce was unsure what exactly he was expecting, but he could confirm it wasn't a hissing, feral child cornered on top of the refrigerator with Natasha and Tony pointing fingers in a parallel to that one stupid spiderman meme. 

"You tell him-"

"No you tell him-"

"No you-"

"I'm living in a tower of toddlers." Bruce groaned. He had been doing a lot of that lately. Maybe he should see a doctor. Dealing with the Avenger's bickering should be a worthy enough case, right? Right?

"Brucie-bear! The light of my life! The sun to my stars! Tell Natasha she's being an idiot and scaring Five-"

"It would take a lot more than two half-wit lunatics to frighten me-" 

"Детка, tell Tony the intruder can handle a healthy dose of interrogation-"

"Trust me, anything you two brain-dead buffoons come up with won't be enough to make flinch let alone spill my guts-"

"See! He's terrified and Natasha is not helping-"

"Terrified? Are my words simply incomprehensible to someone with such an impressively minuscule brain-"

"Damn," Barton - where the fuck had Barton come from - interrupted, shoveling handfuls of buttery popcorn into his mouth. "The little kid is roasting your ass, Stark."

Five turned from his precarious position atop the fridge, rage dancing in his muted green eyes. "To call me a little kid would be equivalent to calling yourself an uneducated toddler you insipid, inbreited hog-"

"I dunno what half those words mean," Clint shot fingers guns. "You can't insult a moron, can you, Fivey?"

Oh no. Clint had angered the devil.

"Alright, alright, ALRIGHT-" Bruce attempted to diffuse the situation to no avail, as Five teleported two feet from Barton, startlingly every individual in the room, Clint the most. The man shrieked, throwing his popcorn in the air. 

"Sorry! I'm so sorry angry demon child, please, let me live in peace-"

"I will rip out your intestines, mark my words Clint Barton, you and your family won't live to see another day if you dare give me such a demeaning title ever again."

"Jesus, heart attack." Tony grimaced, eyes flickering between Clint and Natasha. 

"You're talking," Clint muttered, hands raising placatingly when Five's ire swung back to him. "Sorry! I'm so sorry I don't know what I did to deserve this but regardless I am so sorry feel free to kill me and relieve me of my sins I apologize for everything-"

"Holy shit, shut up." Tony snickered.

"Stark." Natasha whacked Tony on the side of the head.

"Hey! Sorry for insulting your little boy-toy over there, but-"

"Oi! Fuck you Stark!"

"You wish you were screwing this, Barton."

"No, I really don't-"

"ENOUGH." Bruce roared, realizing far too late he had let a bit too much of the green dude shine through. The bickering back and forth conversations halted, Five with his hands around Clint's throat, Tony and Natasha with their fists raised, and Barton turning the wrong shade of purple. 

"You turn green?" Five mused, and it was only then Bruce remembered Five didn't know the Avengers, didn't know about Bruce's little predicament. "Do you have superpowers? Tell me, does your birthday happen to fall on October first?"

"What? No." Bruce didn't let the left-handed comment stop him. "Look, I don't know why we're fighting, or what the hell Clint is doing here, but someone better explain to me what is actually going on before I blow a gasket and trust me, those tend to involve the other guy."

Five tilted his head consideringly while the others - save Natasha - blanched. "I had halted my proceedings to acquire a new writing instrument," Five held up a pencil worn to the stump, and Bruce couldn't help but feel bemused confusion. "When these obstinate, confoundingly belligerent fools interrupted me and began arguing."

Clint mouthed the words 'confoundingly belligerent fools' to himself while Tony puffed up like an irritated peacock. "We did not just 'start arguing', Natasha had called me three dozen Russian slurs on the way to the kitchen, and I, being the self-respecting superhero billionaire that I am, grew justifiably annoyed and justifiably retaliated!"

"He got pissy I called him a монстр." Natasha jabbed a finger towards Five, who was still sadistically squishing Clint's fragile neck. 

"Why?" Five cocked his head at them. "Nothing that isn't true."

Bruce paused. Sometimes it was really hard to decide whether or not the jaded 'teen' was joking or not. If sarcasm was a blade, Five wielded it with the utmost proficiency.

"Kid, no..." Tony seemed to determine Five wasn't kidding.

"Oh, spare me the pity party," Five began to roll his eyes before seemingly thinking better of himself and shoving his hands in his schoolboy shorts. Bruce spotted dark stains marring the fabric, and severely hoped the substance wasn't a certain red fluid required to keep the human body up and running. "I've killed more people than your puny brains could even begin to grasp. Trust me, both your 'assassin' stints pale in comparison to my ledger."

Clint, who had previously been sucking in hacking gasps of air, paused. "Are you... are you talking about me? Me and Nat?"

"Yes, who else?" Five narrowed his eyes. "Now, if you excuse me, I have inter-dimensional mathematical equations to solve..."

"Wait!" 

"What." Credit where credit was due, Tony hardly flinched at Five's venom-filled words. 

"I- I- you said we could, we could take a look at your abilities..." Huh. Oddly convenient Bruce didn't know about that. Oddly convenient Tony forgot to let Bruce know the entity allowed them to study his ability. Maybe it would've been nice for Bruce to know about that? A small part of Bruce not furious at Tony was secretly praying Tony let him in on the proceedings, because goddamnit, teleportation was Bruce's dream ability, okay?

No one was expecting to see a clear ripple of discomfort flood Five's face, nor the way his vaguely lax posture instantly stiffened to a perfect line. "...certainly. Would you prefer a demonstration here, or in one of your laboratories?"

Of course Five knew his way around the tower already. Of course. "Errr... my lab would be fine, I guess." Bruce wanted to laugh. Tony sounded so out of his depth for a surprisingly capable man, it was hilarious. 

"Alright then," Natasha was watching Five closely, likely cataloguing his every twitch into a portfolio revealing any sort of weakness the kid had. "Shall we?"

...why did Five sound like he was being sentenced to death?

"We shall indeed," Tony mocked before outstretching his hand towards Bruce. "C'mon Brucie-Boo, science awaits."

Chapter Text

"-now Five, I'm sure you may be opposed to-"

"Opposed?" Five wanted to cackle. He wanted to cackle and laugh and scream until his throat began to bleed and he couldn't scream any longer. "Really. What could've possibly given you that suggestion?"

"Don't give me lip, Five, you're a fifty-eight year old man, not a fussy toddler." The Handler's nails were a vivid crimson red. They were the first thing Five had noticed when she intruded his abode, his gaze somehow bypassing her clean, unconventional outfitting, and peculiar style of hair. In the apocalypse, you didn't see bright colors. Anything 'bright' that survived the original blast was covered in layers upon layers of dirt and dust, and Five never had the heart to brush away those relics of time. But that red color... that red was the color of fresh blood.

Even as Five glowered, the Handler's nails snuck over his gnarled wrists, and he resisted the urge to vomit. "What's wrong Fivey? Cat got your tongue?"

"You asked me to consent to genetic modification," Five huffed an incredulous breath. "Can you give me a second to breath?"

The woman's hand vanished, and Five felt his soul return to his body. "You make me sound so mean, Fivey. All I'm asking is permission to tamper with your ability. I'm sure Reginald did a dandy job with your upbringing, but you could be so much more than a superhero burnout, lost to time. You could be my greatest weapon. My perfect assassin."

Don't. Throw. Up.

"Isn't that a hell of an upgrade," Five snarked. "From hero to villain."

"Villain is such a subjective word," The Handler sniffed, crossing her legs. The point to her stiletto glimmered in the artificial lights. "More like, someone who does what needs to be done."

"Right," Five said blandly. "Are we not sugarcoating murder?"

"I expected better from you, Five," the Handler sighed, rapping her claws against the polished wood of her desk. "Intellectual beings like us can't afford to be so simple-minded."

"Simple-minded," a snarl caught in Five's esophagus, and his nails cut half-moon circles into the flesh of his palms. "Doing a great job convincing me, aren't you."

An odd sort of silence followed Five's jab, and he glanced up, surprised to find the Handler's gaze cutting deep into the mottled flesh of his skin. Her eyes were cold and dead, her lips pursed in a displeased smile. Five found he couldn't look away, locked in a battle of wills. 

Finally, the Handler frowned severely and spun her chair around in a surprisingly childish gesture. "I didn't want it to come to this, Fivey."

"Come to what?" Five couldn't help but ask, cursing his body's instinctive reaction to respond. 

"Forty years in the apocalypse," the Handler mused, avoiding the question. "To be honest, none of us thought you would make it past the first week. We had bets, you see, and unfortunately, you lost me a lot of money, Fivey."

"Oh, I'm soooo sorry." Five had to respond. Five had to respond or else he would've burst into tears unbecoming of a weathered old man. His entire life had been a struggle for survival, a battle against the invisible ticking clock marking his life away. Five had fought with everything his body had just to live another day, to sleep another night, to breathe another breath, and these people had been betting on that?

don't throw up don't throw up don't throw up-

"Apology accepted," the Handler nodded shortly, ignoring the sarcasm dripping from Five's every syllable. "But regardless, it's difficult to survive forty years in complete isolation, working for an unreachable goal, an impossible fate. You must've been so lonely Fivey. Tell me, when's the last time you've had a hug?"

Forty-five years.

"None of your concern," Five managed through clenched teeth.

"So feisty," the Handler purred, slinking over to one of her hulking cabinets. "No matter. In order to survive that long, you need something driving you. An unattainable goal that pushed you to roll out of bed, pushed you to walk past your shotgun, and pushed you to live just one more day."

Five had a bad feeling curdling in his stomach.

"Have you ever heard of Sisyphus, dear Five?"

"The Greek myth?" Five cocked his head. Books had been a rarity in the apocalypse, but Five recalled his obsession with Greek mythology before Everything (capital letter perfectly necessary) with no lost love. 

"Sisyphus had cheated death twice in his lifetime." The Handler lifted two fingers teasingly, her other hand shuffling around in the cabinet. "Angered by this, the gods decided ample punishment was due. Sisyphus was dragged down to the Underworld kicking and screaming, but ultimately failing to escape his mythological bounds. Sisyphus was given a simple task by Hades. Roll a substantially heavy stone atop a sloping hill, and be free of the Underworld all together. Although difficult, Sisyphus managed the task relatively easily, however, that's when his true punishment kicked in. The stone was stopped by an invisible force, colliding with this 'thing' before rolling back down, crushing Sisyphus in the process. Sisyphus was doomed to forever push that stone up that hill in a beautiful example of natural human greed. But let me cut to the chase, I didn't bring you here to preach into your deaf ears."

"Really," Five said blandly. "I had to idea."

The Handler sniffed - likely at Five' impudence - before continuing. "Tell me, Fivey, do you know what drove him, what forced Sisyphus to continue ?"

"What." Five resisted the urge to bolt out the door and never return.

"Pain," The Handler murmured coyly, finally retrieving what she was rummaging around for. "For him, it was rather physical. The agony inflicted upon Sisyphus when he paused wasn't worth the breather. But for you? It's all up here, in your head, my dear." The Handler tapped her forehead mockingly, placing an object in front of Five. "You abandoned your siblings to die Five. You buried their bodies and mourned their lives for forty years. The pain of losing them, the torment of being unable to save their lives, that's what forced you past your distraughtness and that's why your incredible brain is still intact in front of me."

Five was going to puke. He needed a distraction, anything, anything to stop the acidic bile rising in the back of his throat-

He glanced down. 

Fuck, that was a photo of his motherfucking family.

Five was upheaving into a conveniently placed wastebasket faster than he could even think.

"Oh Fivey baby, it's okay," The Handler's claws were in his hair, mussing the already ruined strands.

"Why- Why the fuck would you..."

"Psychoanalyze you? Well it's quite simple Fivey. I want an assassin, and you want to save your family. Don't you see? At the Commission, we can help each other. A quid-pro-quo, if you will. But, you can't be much use to us in this crippled body of yours. All I'd be doing is... fixing you."

"I don't- I don't want to become a monster," Five coughed out, resisting the urge to snap her wrist like a twig.

"Oh Fivey," She whispered softly. Her red, red, red painted nails curved around his jawline, titling his head upwards. "You already are."

___

Five Hargreeves didn't panic.

Sure, he may occasionally flounder or feel rare terror, but Five had never once panicked in his entire life, which is exactly why he wasn't panicking. 

The Commission was an organization transcending the simplistic boundaries of time and space, the Handler a powerful cog in said flawless system. It was highly unlikely any mere mortal could possibly conceive anything Five hadn't already been subjected to, trust him, Five had run the numbers countless times. 

(He couldn't find a solid variable group for the uniqueness of a different dimension. It wasn't possible to place a single estimate on something he hadn't known was possible until a day prior. Five couldn't find a solid variable group for the uniqueness of a different dimension, which meant his statistics were flawed by a glaring X factor, which meant Five's numbers weren't finished, they were left unresolved, undetermined-)

"You okay, kid?" Right. The idiot Stark and the peculiarly green monstrosity, Bruce Banner. Five narrowed his eyes at the awkward, meek man. He had pegged him as a soft-hearted 'gentle giant' of sorts, but Five was beginning to realize 'gentle' wasn't exactly the word he was probing for. Perhaps an authoritative behemoth hiding behind a facade of ineptness. "...kid?"

"The thickness of your own skull and the perplexing vastness to your over-inflated ego never fails to bemuse me," Five spat sarcastically, hating how he sounded like a cornered house-cat rather than a stalking feline. If anyone was the predator in this situation, it was certainly not Stark, whose mouth dropped open in an offended huff as Banner hid his guffaw. "Must I remind you of my elderly stature?"

"Hardy hardy har, grandpa," Tony grumbled. "Turn right here, we're almost there."

Oh joy, Five wanted to shoot back. He just couldn't wait to get pricked with needles and forcibly injected with enough DNA to kill all of his pre-existing genes in a painful procedure that absolutely should've killed him and Five still couldn't figure out the science behind his apparent survival.

"-Five? Jesus k- err... Jesus dude, you going deaf?"

Stark's abrasive voice was a light in the foggy dark, as Five found himself lifted from the musings forever lurking in the back of his head. Banner and Stark had halted in front of presumably a laboratory. The walls were made of glass, the interior an amalgamy of different robotic components. A soft whirring noise reverberated, passing through the translucent walls. "No."

"Not going to regale us with more of your sophisticated insults?" Stark pitched his voice impossibly high on his last two words, grabbing an imaginary feather boa and strutting past both him and Banner. Five ignored the unwanted, achy feel of homesickness deep within his most useless organ. His siblings could handle themselves without him. Maybe. 

"Let's get this over with." Five decided to say, restraining an eye roll when the occupants of the corridor did no such thing. "...the door?"

"Oh, yes. JJ baby! Open sesame!"

"Right away, sir." Five restrained his instinctive flinch. He had to remember about the AI in walls, watching his every movement and cataloging his every step. Stark claimed the AI could, but wasn't permitted to see into Five's residence, but logically, to not do so would make zero sense. Why create a powerful tool, capable of monitoring your pseudo-prisoner, and just... not use it?

Maybe the people in this strange, near fantastical world were just imbeciles. God knows Five had enough evidence to support that hypothesis. But regardless, he couldn't gamble with the 'kindness' of these virtual strangers. The room for error was just too large.

Like something plucked straight from a futuristic novel, the glass doors parted smoothly, panels combining together with a hardly audible chinking noise. Almost instantly, the whizz and whirring of machines grew louder tenfold, and Five nearly winced at the uptick in sound. Banner simply sighed in exasperation while Tony cupped his palms around his lips and called, "DUM-E! Butterfingers! Stop screwing around, we have company, and U, stop messing around with the screwdrive- U! I didn't mean throw it!"

Stark flounced into the room with his hands on his hips, Banner following close behind, which left Five standing nearly motionlessly at the front, silently tapping his foot in apprehension.

"Come in Five! I'll be there in a second- BUTTERFINGERS WIRE-CUTTERS ARE NOT TOYS-"

Heaving a dramatic sigh, Five stepped into the grayscale room, observing the cacophony of sound and chaos in relative amusement. Although Stark was wrangling three somewhat humanoid robots, Five couldn't help but be drawn to the blue... holographs(?) lighting up a corner of the room. The panels shimmered, white text splashed atop the surface, hardly legible from Five's position. Tossing a cursory glance around, (Banner was groaning amusedly at Stark, who was climbing on top of a robotic armature) Five gently approached the rectangular curiosities, surprised when they parted around him.

Now fully encapsulated by... by the holographs, he couldn't help but prod at one of them, surprised when the information on the screen moved. Originally, the white words were talking about some sort of cataclysmic alien invasion, (another thwarted apocalypse?) but after Five's abrupt interruption, they shifted into blueprints for some sort of weapon based on electrocution - perhaps for one of the occupants living in the tower. Growing bored at the listless information, Five scrolled again, receiving images of underwater pipes, and clips for news headlines prattling on about green energy.

"The Umbrella Academy."

Five spun around with a snarl.

"You're part of it, aren't you." Stark was staring in abject horror at Five's sleeve- no, not at Five's sleeve. At the pale skin marred by a black tattoo said sleeve revealed after it had traitorously fallen down. Five hastily fixed the piece of fabric, feeling quite idiotic as he glared down at the blue stitching. "That's why you asked about it yesterday. It wasn't just a major event in time, you were a part of it holy shit you literally have powers I am the dumbest genius ever-"

"Right on that, sir." The AI said, scarily in sync with Banner's, "glad you finally admit it!"

Five took a single calming breath before shutting down. "...You just realized this?"

"I am running off of 75 hours of sleep, ten shots of pure Espresso, and my insatiable craving for knowledge and science," Stark deadpanned, lips twisted in a smirk. "Forgive me for being a bit... 'obstinate', as the prissy bastards say."

"Only 75?" Five quirked a brow, restraining a growl. "That's pathetic."

"Hey! My record's 150," Tony pouted. "And I could've kept going! Alas, foiled by Stevey's insistence on ruining my attempts at Guinness."

"Sir, if I may, Mr. Rogers was merely concerned after watching you mistake a watering can for the coffee pot and drink a non-caffeinated liquid for five minutes before exclaiming someone had swapped your latte for tap water." The AI sounded somewhat smug, a disturbingly human emotion that hit Five right in the box of things he never talked about. 

"JJ you traitor."

"My pleasure, boss."

"I-"

"Enough." Five couldn't, no, wouldn't deal with Stark and Banner's wishy-washy bullcrap. "Go grab your machines and get this over with."

Some of Five's real emotions must've leaked through in his annoyance, fuck he was slipping, for Stark tilted his head nervously. "Five, if you really don't want to do this, I'm not making you-"

"Shut up!" Five snarled. "I've had enough of your time-wasting bullshit! Instead of spending every precious hour I have doing something useful, I'm stuck down here baby-sitting you two morons while waiting for my pun- waiting for you to run your experiments. Fucking hell, none of us know how dimension travelling works. Every second I spend on this planet could be days in my world, hell, potentially years. So stop acting like you don't know your way around a laboratory and get to work!"

...Maybe Five was panicking a bit, but he wasn't about to admit that to anyone.

Banner and Stark exchanged extremely subtle glances, clearly arguing about something. Five's angle and distance from the pair made it impossible to parse what exactly the argument's subject was, but after a brief moment of silence, it was obvious Banner had won, for he began to move towards the edge of the laboratory, bee-lining towards a grotesque looking contraption, fit with jagged steel, electrical pulses, and a constricting headset.

Yay.

"Five, listen to me."

The emo teenager still buried within Five wanted to petulantly cross his arms and turn away, but since he was above that, all he did was glare spitefully at Stark's stupid face.

Stark seemed mildly surprised to have garnered Five's undivided attention. "Oh, um... okay. Five, I'm not going to lie, it's kind of obvious you're uncomfortable with something right now. I don't know if it's the 'shop or the experiments themselves, but whatever it is, I can't solve that issue until you let me know what's bothering you. Seriously! If it's like, I don't know, the atmosphere we can leave, if it's the idea of being watched we can-"

"Stop. Just stop." Five pinched his brow. Do these morons really think Five would just give up his weakness because of some 'kindness' Stark was 'offering'? And what the hell, did they genuinely think the 'ambience' of the laboratory would matter to him? Oh, just because there's kitschy wallpaper and a homey vibe, pain just disappears. Obviously. Because that's how life works. "I've wasted enough time as it is."

"Okay, just, let me-"

"Tones! Got it!" Banner reappeared, clutching more tools in his big hands. Unwillingly, Five felt himself falling back onto his version of a crutch. Dissociation was not uncommon to Five. The process had gotten him through many of the Handler's tests before she had realized what he was doing and forced him out of its comforting embrace with more fucking agony.

"Alright. Alright! Show time! Ladies and 'gents, welcome to Tony Stark's first and probably only teleportation trials, trademarked," Stark clapped his hands. "Five, do you want me to explain-"

"Just do it-"

"Okay, okay, Nike!" Stark seemed intentionally oblivious to the grinding of Five's teeth, as the man gently held out the headset. "Now, I need you to hold still while I attach these nodes, can you do that for me?"

"I'm not thirteen years old, Stark." Five reminded, honing his muscles to complete stillness. He knew the lack of twitching or even a hint of sway was eerie in an uncanny way, and was proven right when Banner eyed him.

"...How are you doing that?" He asked curiously.

Five glared. "I'm a masterclass assassin and technical superhero. Remember Stark? Superhero."

"Hey!" Stark stuck out his tongue. "I resent that!"

The cool press of metal against Five's sweaty forehead shocked him out of the light... bantering he was participating in. Five leashed in the automatic hitch of his breath, eyes locking with Banner's confused expression. Fear wasn't something Five dabbled in often. But he admittedly, had experienced the mortal emotion before, more often with Reginald then anything else. But panic? As Five had expressed prior, Hargreeves don't panic.

...don't panic don't panic don't panic don't panic don't panic don't panic don't panic

"Now I'm attaching these nodes to certain points on your body I'm assuming the driving force of your energy is coming from. Could you hold your hand out for me, Five?"

"Hold out your hand Fivey."

Five clenched his jaw and thrust his palm towards the goateed man, trying hard to picture tan skin and not cream white.

A delicate pressure fluttered against Five's veins. The node was circular and gray, winking teasingly in the reflected light. Okay, not painful yet. That was an okay sign.

"Great. Great! Brucey-poo, what do I do now-"

"Five, could you lift your face up just a tad?"

Curved claws cutting jagged lines against his cheek, red spilling across the white of his collar.

"Stop babying me." Five managed, jerking his head upwards and relishing the large, blinding white lights attached to the ceiling. They burned the illusions away.

"Yes, of course. Sorry Five." Was that Banner speaking? Stark? The Handler? Reginald? His siblings? Five couldn't tell anymore.

Ten more minutes sludged by. Each second was filled with oppressive touch, every minute the untapped energy flickering just beneath Five's skin thrashing wildly in response to his anxiety. Finally, finally, every node was firmly attached to Five's unwilling person, and he found himself frantically thinking back to his previous calculations as Banner used a screwdriver to tighten the headset imperceptibly. It can't be anything to do with physical torture, that was only used after to determine the effectiveness of her latest tests. It couldn't be mental torture, these virtual strangers didn't know which strings to pull to make Five dance like a damn marionette. Fuck. Electricity. It was probably electricity. Man, Five really hated elec-fucking-tricity.

"Okay, we're gonna start off simple, Five," Stark was perched by a machine, Banner clutching a clipboard and looking on with fire in his eyes. Didn't clock him as a sadist either. You think you know a guy. "Can you teleport over to that square right by DUM-E?"

A medium sized box formed by black tape. Taking only a split second to catalogue the variables, Five blinked, landing in the perfect dead-center. He subtly braced himself for a flare of excruciating pain from any of the nodes taped to his body, but was genuinely surprised to find nothing.

Five supposed that made sense. He had to remember Stark and Banner knew absolutely nothing about space time distortion, and would need to collect data before testing the limits of his ability. 

"Fascinating," Banner mumbled.

"Woah," Stark beamed.

"Pick up your jaws, you both look moronic." Five grumbled, crossing his arms. 

"Chill, Five," Stark motioned in Banner's general direction, pointing towards a jagged line on his machine. "Look at this spike."

"Wow," Banner leaned closer, jotting something down on his clipboard. "Five, how does your teleportation work?"

"Math." Five responded primely.

A pause.

"A bit more than that?"

Five grimaced. He had already explained the bare bones of time travel to Stark, but did he really want to throw down another one of his cards so early? One glance at the machine Stark was hovering behind solidified Five's answer. "It's quite literally, just math. There are variables to blinking, and many complex equations, but all it boils down to  trigonometry and tugging on my power."

"...Blinking?"

Right. He wasn't with Natasha. Although the red-head was a sub-par assassin, at least she understood him more than the idiots he was forced to fraternize with ever would. "My teleportation. They're called blinks."

"...why?"

"Shut up Tony," Banner rapped the scientist on the head with his clipboard, before turning serious once more. "Five, I don't suppose you could explain how you tug on your ability?"

Who were these people? Why were they making small talk instead of cutting to the point and electrocuting the shit out of him? And besides, what kind of question was that? "Explain to me how you move your muscles? How you talk? How you think? It isn't something I do consciously, it just happens."

"Thank you Five, that's actually very helpful." Banner offered a kind smile, and Five felt his lips curling distastefully. Simpering fools.

"Ugh, enough of this Brucie-bear, I want to see him teleport again," Stark bemoaned like a toddler, leaning over Banner's shoulder to jot something down. "Teleport to me, pleeeeeeeeease-"

Five was in front of the man tapping his wrist impatiently not even a half a second later. "Hurry it up."

"Oh my god," Stark squealed. "That was so fast, are you sure your ability actually needs math?"

Five puffed up in concealed rage, jabbing a finger between Stark's innocent brown eyes. "Of course it needs math? If I decide to blindly teleport there's no telling where I could end up! In the wall, six thousand miles into the ground, or fucking New Zealand. Ever single un-calculated jump is just one more unnecessary dance with death, you listening, Stark?" Of course, Five was leaving out the other repercussion of blindly teleporting, that being the insanely fast draining of his energy, but Stark really, really did not need to know that. 

"Loud and clear," Stark grinned, scribbling something down. He glanced up, meeting Five's gaze. There was something glimmering in his eyes, and Five found himself bracing for whatever the hell Stark asked him next.  "...Could you try time traveling? Just a little bit? Maybe a couple seconds into the past?"

"What?"

"What?"

It was hard to say who was more offended by Stark's question.

Banner, shockingly, recovered first. "You- you can time travel? He can time travel? Since when? Tony what happened to no secrets? Oh my god this changes everything, what the fuck Anthony Edward Stark-"

"You want me to time travel. You... you want me to time travel? Do you comprehend how difficult that is? The equations, the variables, the year, the minute, the second, the circumstances, everything has to be finely cultivated over years of preparation and even then the room for error is too much for fucking time travel to ever be useful, period. The two times I tried it I managed to strand myself in the fucking apocalypse and then all my siblings in the fucking sixties. So unless you want a one way ticket to anywhere in space and time, no, I will not be demonstrating that particular ability, you fucking moron."

Stark and Banner both froze. "...Five. What do you mean by apocalypse?"

Oh.

Oh.

Holy shit this... this was exactly why Five hated the experiments. With pain, it's easy to stand strong. Some roll over to give up precious secrets at any hint of violence, but Five was the opposite. His resolve and drive to never let anyone win was enough for anything long-buried to stay within the ground. But, with stupid fake kindness and apprehension, Five's tongue involuntarily loosens, especially when he was trying to prove his correct point.

No. No. No. Now they were going to test his time travel, make him predict the apocalypse, make him live through that hell hole again-

"How would you like another hour of this?"

She sat dainty on a lawn chair, sipping an ice cold margarita.

He was huddled beneath a rocky outcropping, beating back the memories with nothing but his blood-drenched fists.

"No."

"...Five?"

Fuck. He had to go, get out, get the fuck away from Stark and Banner and their manipulative kindness. 

So, without any thought or preconceived plan, Five was blinking, calculations desperately running through his head, panic flooding his very body.

Five Hargreeves wasn't lying when he said he never panicked.

Cause yes. Five Hargreeves, the cool, collected, resident asshole of the Umbrella Academy had never panicked before. 

But the new, molded man the Handler had shaped with her talons and words?

He was a different story.