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Never let it be said that Allison was the softest one out of them all.
Sure, there was the whole “I’d do anything for my family” deal that all of them had going on but none of them acknowledged, but she was also ruthless when it came to stuff that Five found rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Really, how important was housekeeping when he could instead be spending his time trying to figure out how to stop the next apocalypse?
(All of them kept telling him that there was no next apocalypse. Herb had promised. But Five didn’t trust Herb for shit. He didn’t trust anyone from the Commission—including, at times, himself.
If there was no next apocalypse to prevent, what was he there for? If he didn’t have a world-ending catastrophe to shut down, what was his purpose?
Once he had accidentally let a few of those questions slip when he was drunk off his ass. He remembered the looks everyone had given him the next morning, when his head was just about ready to turn itself inside out. Looks like they felt sorry for him. Looks like they felt guilty.
“Five, you know that we care about you, right? You don’t have to—”
He jumped away into his room before he could hear the end of Viktor’s sentence. He hoped that it looked like he just hadn’t heard over the ringing in his ears.)
All of them agreed to move into the mansion together after finally getting back to their time (they said it was to get settled back in, but they all knew that wasn’t the real reason). Less than two weeks into the arrangement, Allison had called a family meeting in the kitchen, where she slapped a calendar whiteboard labeled Chore Schedule onto the table and said, “Write down your names. We’re all taking a shift whether you like it or not.”
And while a couple had protested, namely Five and Diego, they all eventually did as she asked. Now they rotated chores every week, like they were a fucking picket-fence family whose kids had soccer on weekends and parent-teacher conferences every few months. Five wasn’t happy about it, but he was too scared to defy Allison, not that he would ever admit that. So he grumbled his way through vacuuming the house, but vacuum he did, and that was good enough in Allison’s eyes.
Which brought him to today.
In all honesty, he had completely forgotten about the chore list. He was this close to cracking the formula that he had been working on for the past month. It was in one of his rare trips down to the kitchen to get some food that he walked by the calendar on the fridge, barely glancing in its direction, then swiveled his head back around to reread in more detail.
Luther: dusting
Diego: mowing the lawn
Allison: vacuuming
Klaus: getting mail (EVERYDAY & w/o snooping)
Five: laundry
Viktor: taking out trash
His gaze locked in on his own name, scrawled there in his own messy handwriting, and then on the word written in Allison’s elegant cursive right next to it. He sighed, set the sandwich down on the counter, and jumped to the laundry room, muttering to himself the whole way. All of the others were out doing their own things, so it wasn’t like he could complain to any of them about it.
Strangely, there were no dirty clothes in any of the baskets. Usually all of them brought down their own laundry on Sundays, so the fact that it was Monday and nothing was there was suspicious, and if he was being honest, slightly worrying. He spotted a post-it taped to the top of the dryer and reached over to pick it up.
Five
I had some extra time last night and this morning, and I knew you would probably forget because of all of your work, so I just threw these through the washer and dryer for you. Now all you have to do is fold them and put them away. Remember to eat food and drink water (not coffee)!!
Viktor
Well, then. Five would have to go and get Viktor a donut or something to thank him.
He took all of the clothing out of the dryer, still faintly warm, and loaded it into one basket. He could separate them all later when he had to put them away.
Ten minutes later, he was sitting in the living room surrounded by piles of clothing, organized by owner and type of clothing. They had a lot of clothes between them, but this week seemed to be rather light compared to what he had seen Klaus with last week. His brother had been whining about how much there was the whole time he was doing it, grating on not just Five’s nerves. He only shut up after all of them had already vacated the entire bottom floor.
Speaking of Klaus… he had a lot of clothes, which was one of the main things that had annoyed Five last week, because most of what he was complaining about was his stuff in the first place. Anyways, Klaus got new clothes just about every week. He insisted that since they were, in his words, “really fuckin’ rich” now, he was able to go shopping for whatever without having to worry about not having enough money to afford breakfast.
But what Five had just come across was not one of the brand new items he had purchased on a whim. It was a deep red sweatshirt, so well-worn that there was a small hole torn into the pocket. Five had no idea how long Klaus had owned this, but whenever he was too lazy to put together one of his elaborate and stupidly colorful outfits, he threw on this exact sweatshirt and wore it around the academy. All of the siblings had seen it a million times.
And for some reason, Five felt inclined to keep it.
The sudden urge made him widen his eyes and throw the sweatshirt across the room as if it had physically hurt him. Was the paradox psychosis having lingering effects? He could think of no other explanation behind the, quite frankly, sickening urge he just had. What was happening to him?
He slowly stalked towards the sweatshirt lying limply against the wall, and then snatched it up quickly, going for the element of surprise. He was remotely aware that what he was doing, treating this inanimate object like a living enemy, was probably a sign that he was finally losing it.
The sweatshirt smelled like Klaus—a weird observation, but Klaus wore the same cologne every day, so all of them knew what it smelled like by now. There it was again, that strange compulsion to take the sweatshirt and just keep it. He didn’t have to wear it, just to have it near would be enough. So, after taking one last look around to make sure there were no witnesses, he jumped to his room, hid the sweatshirt under his bed, and went back to the laundry. And that was the end of it.
Until a few days later, when he came across one of Luther’s jackets sitting in the hall. It had gone missing a couple weeks earlier, and Luther made sure that everyone knew about it. Privately, Five suspected that it had simply been misplaced, but apparently it had never been found even though it was sitting right out in the open, which made it more likely that someone had taken it to mess with Luther. But who knew? Five certainly didn’t care enough to put any effort into finding out.
It was taunting him, just sitting there innocently by itself. He glared suspiciously at the air around him, wondering if this was supposed to be some lame sort of prank on him. He couldn’t spot anything—no peering eyes, no hidden cameras, nothing.
So he picked up the jacket and brought it to his room. He stashed it with Klaus’s sweatshirt, far underneath his bed, almost backed against the wall. It was imperative that none of his siblings ever found out that they were there. Or, better yet, maybe if they weren’t in a place he could see them, he would eventually lose the urge to keep them with him. Out of sight, out of mind.
That night he sprung up from his slumber, panting and with watery eyes, panic flashing through his mind, thoughts of go see them, make sure they’re not gone, make sure they’re safe the only thing he could focus on. Without even registering what he was doing, he got on his stomach and army-crawled all the way until he could reach the wall. He reached forward blindly, grabbing hold of the first thing he touched and holding it to his chest in a death grip as he wormed his way back out.
The sweatshirt slipped on over his pajama shirt. It wasn’t as big on him as one would expect, given that he was physically thirteen putting on an adult man’s sweatshirt. When standing up, it only reached about halfway down his thigh. Klaus was scarily skinny, but not in the malnourished kind of way. He had always been like that, even when they were kids. No matter how much he ate, which was quite a bit when he was in a good mood, he never seemed to gain any weight.
He didn’t care that he was this close to overheating; he had faced far worse conditions in the apocalypse anyhow. The extra weight on him was grounding somehow, and the fact that it was his brother’s was calming. It reminded him of the fact that they were all still in the house, that they were all just fine, that they weren’t going anywhere. He would’ve noticed if someone had broken in to kidnap them, or if they had tried to sneak out by themselves. Five hadn’t slept soundly since the night before that fateful day. Any sudden noises, any sounds of struggle, and he would be up in an instant.
And when he woke up again that next morning, his eyes slowly widening when he remembered what had transpired hours ago, he felt the horror rise inside him as he realized that this was not something he was getting out of easily.
They didn’t notice it at first, probably because Five went about it using a method that was, in his humble opinion, genius. And it was simple, really, but it was so simple that none of his siblings could possibly ever think of it.
That’s what made it genius. The simplicity of it.
They were always going off trying to make things as complicated as possible, especially when it came to him. For some reason, and he had absolutely no idea where it could have come from, they had the idea that everything he was involved in had to have layers upon layers of rules and steps and backup plans. But sometimes the best plan was the one that was so completely basic that no one would even think of it as an option. Of course, there was also the fact that they had no idea he was devising a plan that probably helped him stay undiscovered.
Paranoia was something that Five was used to. He couldn’t trust that good things just happened sometimes. When one of his siblings told him not to look a gift horse in the mouth, he pried open the horse’s jaws and took a good, long look around every single crevice. So, naturally, he had to keep anyone from finding out about this little… habit of his. As far as he could see, there were two possible outcomes of them figuring out that he had been the culprit behind all of their missing clothes:
- He becomes the laughingstock for the rest of his life
or, in a worst-case scenario,
2. They’re disgusted and hate him forever
Both of those were things he would greatly prefer to avoid, which was why he enacted his very cleverly simple plan.
As much as he loathed to admit it, even to himself, a part of him knew that the urge wasn’t going to leave him until he had something from each sibling. He would rather gouge out his own eyes than just ask them to take one. He could imagine how that conversation would go.
“Hey, do you mind lending me a piece of your clothing? Oh, and by lending, I mean that I’m never going to give it back. Why do I want it? Because I’ve somehow conned myself into feeling like you guys are with me when I’m wearing your clothes. No, it’s not creepy at all, what do you mean?”
Just the thought of that interaction was enough to make him never want to interact with another human being ever again.
So he devised his plan: take a piece of apparel from each one in order of least to most likely to notice it was missing.
There. Simple and easy. Just like that.
At least, this way, if the ones most likely to notice did, in fact, notice, it would be near the end of his plan. He would’ve been able to milk the benefits for as long as possible before he got found out and one of the two aforementioned outcomes took place. The first goal was still to have no one notice, but he had this fail-safe in place just in case.
Klaus was the least likely to notice, so it was only fitting that he had been the first one. He was already out of the way, though, so Five had to move on to the next person.
As it turned out, Luther was the second one. He didn’t have a lot of clothing like Klaus did. He just didn’t care enough to keep an eye out. The only reason he had raised such a fuss about the jacket was it was one of his favorites. In a way, Five almost felt sorry for taking it. Almost.
Next up was Viktor. With him, it wasn’t that he wouldn’t notice as much as it was that he wouldn’t mind. He would most likely see that the item was missing and then just shrug it off. Of all his siblings, Five was closest in height with Viktor, so he chose to take his sweatpants. He had to take them from one of his dresser drawers while he was out giving violin lessons.
Allison was a close call. She usually took note of most things that happened in the academy just because she was always wary of pranks. She also had Claire, so she was used to having to keep an eye on the little things. The summer had faded into fall by the time Five had an opportunity to snatch something of hers, and when he saw her hang up her scarf on the rack by the door, he knew it was his chance. But as he was in the process of walking over, she came back into the entryway. She narrowed her eyes at him when he startled.
“Is something wrong, Five?” she asked.
“Nope,” he said casually. “Nothing at all.”
She looked him up and down before nodding slowly. “If you’re sure.”
He didn’t say anything after that, jumping away to his room. Ten minutes later on the dot he went back down, saw that the coast was clear, and lifted the scarf off the hook. When his sister saw that it was gone, her immediate suspect was Klaus.
And then there was one. Diego rivaled Five in levels of paranoia. He took most things as a threat. Five always enjoyed bringing up the time that Diego opened a new jar of peanut butter, only to discover that the protective layer was gone. He then proceeded to accuse the grocery store of trying to poison the whole family.
It was later discovered that Luther had used it for a sandwich.
There was no way Five, even with his literally top-of-the-class stealth skills, would be able to sneak into Diego’s room without him knowing. He was forced to wait until his next turn on laundry duty to grab one of the older’s t-shirts. Even then, to exercise extra caution, he took a shirt that he knew for a fact Diego owned several identical versions of. He didn’t think that Diego would go as far as counting his clothing to make sure it was all there, but you could never be sure.
For a few weeks, Five was doing fairly well. His plan had worked perfectly, not that he had ever doubted it would. Now, whenever he was awoken by nightmares, he didn’t have to stay awake the rest of the night, scribbling equations on the walls in an attempt to distract himself from reality. All he had to do was get one of the items from under his bed and slip it on over his pajamas. Some of them were big enough that they hung off him (Luther), while others were close enough to his size that they fit almost as well as his own clothes (Viktor).
And then it all came falling apart.
One night it was worse than the others. He didn’t even remember much of what it was about; he just knew that all of the others were there, as well as The Handler, and, well, he could hazard a guess as to what the rest contained.
He woke up shaking, mouth dry and throat hoarse. He jumped into the bathroom and turned on the sink. It was an effort getting his hand to settle enough to grasp tightly enough to turn the faucet on, but he managed. He leaned his head under the stream of water and caught it in his mouth, gulping it down like his life depended on it. He wiped the moisture from around his mouth before jumping back to his room. The landing was unstable because of his legs that were shaking like a fawn learning how to talk. He stumbled over and bashed his shoulder into his dresser, knocking several things onto the floor in the process, but he felt no pain. His mind was too far gone to be able to think anything other than, “My family, where are they, she can’t touch them, won’t touch them, I won’t let her.”
Maybe that was the reason that, as he pulled out all of the clothes piled under his bed this time, slipping his own shirt off and replacing it with Diego’s, he didn’t hear the many sets of footsteps making their way down the hall, the confused and dazed mutterings of five people jerked out of their slumber by loud clanging coming from their brother’s room.
The door creaked open slowly. “Five?” Luther called. “You okay in there?”
Five froze. Each train of thought ground to a halt, and all of a sudden every single neuron in his brain was being dedicated to figuring out how he could possibly still save this. Part of him was tempted to just give it all up. Five Hargreeves was many things, but a quitter was not one of them. There was no way to remove Diego’s shirt; he could only hope that the darkness disguised it beyond recognition. He shoved the rest of the clothing under the blanket, creating a rather suspicious-looking pile.
“I’m fine,” Five replied shortly, annoyance tinging his voice. “Is there a reason you guys are all here or is it just ‘let’s all disrupt Five’ night?”
“We heard—” Viktor’s voice cut off as soon as he saw Five. All of them filed into the room, and Five would’ve been tempted to make fun of them for how they were standing in a line against the wall like schoolchildren if not for the fact that all of them looked incredibly worried at the state of him. Evidently, the minimal natural light filtering through the window provided enough light to see his face.
“Were you crying?” Diego asked incredulously.
Had he been? Five lifted his hand up, fingers swiping across his under-eye. They came back wet, tears glistening in the moonlight.
“No, I wasn’t. You guys all look like idiots standing there like that, y’know.”
“I’m sure we do, Fivey,” Klaus said lightly. “But you also look like an idiot trying to lie to us when there’s such clear evidence.”
Five snorted. “What reason would I have to lie to you?”
Allison let out a frustrated sigh and started approaching the lamp. “I can barely see you.”
“Don’t!” Five shouted. “If you turn on that light I swear to god I will take out all of your guys’ eyeballs with a melon baller and make kabobs.”
It said something about how much more used to each other they had gotten that none of them seemed the slightest bit fazed by the threat.
“Why don’t you want the light on? Are you trying to hide something?”
“It’s dark in here. The light is gonna hurt my eyes.”
“We all know that you don’t care about that.”
“Well—”
“That’s it!” Diego exclaimed. Without giving any of them time to react, he lunged forward and yanked the chain on the lamp. A dim light flooded into the room, illuminating their faces so Five could now see them. “If you’re not gonna tell us—is that my shirt?”
Though it may not seem so, the jig wasn’t up yet. Five pulled the blankets up even further so that most of the shirt was covered, inadvertently jostling the clothes underneath into an even more noticeable position. He winced internally, but otherwise schooled his expression into a careful neutral.
“Why would I be wearing your shirt, dumbass?” he said derisively. Or attempted to, at least. His voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, a product of both his heightened emotions and the pubescent body he was stuck in.
“That’s what I’m wondering. I know that’s my shirt, Five, just tell me why you have it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! These are my own pajamas.”
“No, they’re not!”
“Guys, calm down,” Viktor tried to cut in, putting his hands forward in a placating manner.
Diego turned to look at him. “What, Viktor, are you trying to tell me that this little creep isn’t wearing my shirt? You’ve all seen me wearing that!” He threw his arms up.
The rest of them all turned away from Five to do their best to stop the mounting argument from going any further. He took this as his chance to smooth down the pile of clothes under the blanket. Moving them back under the bed wasn’t on the table; as oblivious as his siblings were, even they would notice him trying to move that far.
Just when he got them settled down, all smoothed out and in one layer, someone banged hard on the wall. Five jumped, his leg kicking out reflexively, knocking one of the items to the floor. And that was when he knew that he was well and truly fucked.
“Hey, Luther, is that your jacket on the floor?”
Five closed his eyes and bit his lip. Goddammit, Klaus, can’t you keep your mouth shut for once?
They all stopped arguing, because they should’ve known that one was unpreventable once they got going, and looked to where Klaus was, sure enough, pointing directly at Luther’s jacket.
“Yeah, it is,” Luther said slowly, looking up at Five. “What are you doing with my clothes too?” He turned to Klaus. “Did you see where it came from?”
“Oh, so you care now that you’re the one who’s affected,” Diego muttered.
Ignoring him, Klaus said, “Ben saw it fall off of Five’s bed.”
As Five made frantic, increasingly violent threats, Luther stalked forward and ripped the blanket off the bed. It seemed that he wasn’t quite expecting what was revealed; none of them were. After a moment to process, chatter exploded into the air. No one looked tired anymore. Now they just wanted to figure out what was going on.
There was a light blue glow. “Oh no you don’t,” Allison said, grabbing hold of Five’s wrist before he could jump away from them and most likely disappear for the next few days. “You owe us an explanation.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” Five spat. But he still shrunk down into himself. He wasn’t making any moves to speak, but he wasn’t actively trying to escape either.
“Please, Five,” she repeated, gently this time, “tell us what’s going on.”
Five surveyed his siblings. Luther looked confused, Diego’s anger was softening into something that he couldn’t identify, Allison looked concerned, Klaus was a mixture of worry and amusement, and Viktor looked like he was putting together a puzzle. This was one of his fear’s come to life. The cat was out of the bag; they knew.
And yet, they were still here. They hadn’t run away. They hadn’t kicked him out of the academy. Yet. He still wasn’t entirely convinced that they wouldn’t do those things once he told them the full story.
Wait a minute. Back up. Once he told them? Since when was he going to say another word?
Maybe since he had realized that they were (for the most part) holding off judgment until he explained. Maybe since he realized that he had a better chance of staying with them if he actually told them the truth.
He sighed. Was he really about to go through with this? Part of him couldn’t help but feel like he was under some form of mind control.
“Having your clothes,” he began, “makes me feel like—” he cut off, unsure how to continue. But it was too late back out now. All of them were looking at him expectantly, their surprise at his willingly speaking visible. “It reminds me that you guys are still here.”
They looked at each other. “What do you mean by that?” Viktor prodded softly.
“Sometimes I forget that you guys are, y’know, alive,” his voice drifted down to a whisper. “These help me remember.”
Everyone was silent. They all knew what Five meant by that. For all of them, the thought of losing (another) sibling—it was unbearable. Time and time again, they had each proven themselves willing to sacrifice themselves if it meant keeping the others alive. But they could only imagine how elevated that feeling was for Five.
“We’re not going anywhere, Five,” Allison said. “Not again.”
“Yeah, Cinco, you can’t get rid of us that easily. We lost you for 17 years. We’re not gonna lose you again.” Klaus’s earnest words were a stark contrast to the easy smile playing on his lips. Five recognized the expression to be when he was trying to be serious but he didn’t want you to know that he was trying to be serious.
Diego uncrossed his arms and made a great effort to look Five in the eye. Neither of them was completely comfortable with it, but it was for emphasis, to make sure that his point got across. “What they said. And—I’m sorry for getting angry and calling you a creep,” he muttered.
“What was that last part?” Five leaned forward, cupping one of his ears. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”
“Oh, shut up. I take it back, you little shit.”
Luther elbowed him in the side and then cleared his throat. “If it really makes you feel better to have our clothes with you then I have no problem with it. Just ask next time, alright? I’ve been looking for that jacket for months.”
“About that… I was the one that took it first,” Klaus volunteered, raising a hand. “Fivey must’ve found it afterward.”
“Why would you take it?”
Klaus shrugged. “Ben wanted me to.”
“Yeah, that’s rich. Why would Ben want you to take it?”
Five didn’t know how long they sat there together in his room, getting into petty squabbles about the stupidest of topics. It was entertaining to watch them all try to defend themselves even if he rarely joined in. Eventually they all sat down on the floor or his bed or a chair. He couldn’t bring himself to tell them off for keeping him up on one of the few nights that he could afford to go to sleep.
At some point his eyelids started drooping and he stifled his yawn. He struggled to keep himself awake. Sleeping around other people was a big no-no, had been for years, but…
This was his family. They weren’t going to hurt him, nor were they going to let anything else hurt him. This was his family. This was safety.
(Those two words had recently become synonymous).
So he let himself drift off, leaning his head against Viktor’s shoulder.
It didn’t take long for the others to notice when their resident psycho went silent. Viktor smiled and slowly moved Five so that he was lying down on his pillow.
“Y’know, he’s kind of adorable like this,” Klaus whispered.
Allison hummed her agreement. “It kinda tricks me into thinking he’s actually thirteen sometimes.”
“I mean, he never got a chance to grow up like the rest of us did,” Viktor said thoughtfully. “Somewhere in there has to be the child version of him, hidden away.”
“I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing him get to be a kid for once,” Diego admitted. “It would be a nice change of pace.”
“Yeah, but like Klaus said earlier, he was gone for almost two decades. I’ll take whatever version I can get,” Allison said.
“Even if that means the version that would happily gut a person?”
“Yep,” she affirmed, sounding much too fond for the topic of conversation.
And as they all made their way out of his room, careful not to wake him from what looked like his most peaceful sleep in a while, they were sure that they agreed.