December 25, 2020

[number_five]

When Five had first arrived in Darrow, he'd been convinced that he was going to be stuck there alone. After all, he'd spent 45 years on his own, and it just seemed par for the course.

But then Klaus had shown up, and suddenly he had family again. Sure, it was Klaus, but despite his brother's many eccentricities, Five cares for him, and it's been good having a chance to catch up. There hadn't been a lot of time for that, scrambling to prevent one apocalypse after another.

And though Five has been floundering, trying to figure out what the hell happens to him next and what he's supposed to be doing with his life now, things have been okay. Even if he'd become convinced that it'd just be the two of them. This isn't a result of Five trying to time travel, this is something sending them all hurtling across dimensions; maybe the rest of them show up, but odds are, they don't.

Five had been trying to make his peace with it.

That is, until seventeen days ago, when Five found his sister in the street, asking if they'd managed to make it home. And five days ago, when his other sister had knocked on the door in the middle of the night.

Suddenly, there are four of them.

They're all in Darrow, but somehow, it feels like they're still scattered.

Truthfully, Five has had the idea for a while, but it's after Allison shows up that he really decides to put it into action. He's only gotten a peek at Darrow's underworld before now, heard whispers at some of the less reputable establishments he sometimes finds a way into. But it doesn't take long before he finds an in, and gets himself hired-- anonymously, of course-- taking out high value targets from rival gangs.

It's like Commission work, but easier. He takes on a job, gets the money, comes home late and hopes Klaus doesn't notice the blood on his collar.

He's not supposed to be doing this anymore, he doesn't enjoy it, it started to turn his stomach after he took the Handler's deal. But he needs a lot of money, he needs it fast, and... well, this is what he knows how to do. He's good at it; the Commission made sure of that.

So it doesn't take him long at all before he has enough money to put a down payment on a small building on the corner of Crescent and Gerard. Three floors, a basement, a decent amount of space, even if the rest of their siblings do eventually turn up.

The invitation might be a bit much, he knows, but his siblings do turn up at the right time. Five is standing out front, his hands in his pockets.

"This has been a shitty few months... few years, depending on your perspective," Five says, "I figured it was time for a change."

He pauses, looking back at the building, then back at his brother and sisters.

"It's ours, and you're welcome to stay here if you want, but don't feel obligated. And it's not the Umbrella Academy, but maybe it can be something else."

Everything still feels scatted, but maybe this will help. Maybe the pieces will finally start to come together again, after 45 years.

[Tag in, tag each other, tag Five]

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[number_five]

Five's eyebrows go straight up when Vanya grabs his hand and pulls him forward toward the house, but he doesn't yank it away. He should have expected his siblings would be this excited about the house, but somehow he didn't think that the four of them being so scattered really bothered anyone else as much as it does him.

Five has no delusions about what happened to him in the apocalypse. He knows that long alone had an affect on him, even if he hasn't had a chance in the last few years to sit still long enough to realize it.

He just never really thought they felt the same way he did.

The door's already unlocked, so Vanya's easily able to tug him inside. It's not nearly as spacious as the Umbrella Academy mansion, the entryway splitting off into the library and sitting room almost immediately as they walk in.

"I think it used to be a boarding house," Five explains, and makes the left into the empty library. Built-in bookshelves cover the walls, but they're empty for now.

[fifthbeatle]

As her feet and Five's beat a path to the front door, she is clamping down the blast doors in her head as hard as she can. Vanya has felt something like this only once before: in Texas where her family took what seemed like their last stand and came out on top. Together. There was no time or space to feel anything other than triumph and relief. Here, in front of the most incredible (and maybe only) gift she's been given in her entire life, she can feel a whole cacophony of things that make her feel all kinds of ways she doesn't understand. All she can do is focus on her hand on Five's and hope that's enough to keep them all safe from any unintentional harm.

The inside of the place knocks the focus out of her. She's got her hand cupped in Five's when they reach the juncture to the library. All the way up, empty space to fill with anything they want. Anything they want. This is not the Library of Reginald Hargreeves. She is standing in what will become the Hargreeves Family Library.

"It's incredible," she breathes, mouth falling open a bit as she scans all the way up the empty rows. Her mouth shifts into a small smile as she adds, "we're going to need some ladders."

[number_five]

"First, we're probably going to need some books," Five says, and he looks up at the empty shelves in turn. He's bought a few books since arriving in Darrow, mostly to try to get more of a handle on just how weird the city is, but it's nothing compared to how many they had at the mansion.

Or how many he managed to gather after decades in the apocalypse.

"I used to live in a library," Five says, probably more nonchalant than he should be, "Or what was left of one, at least."

[fifthbeatle]

"That, too." That small smile is a full grin, now. She lets her hand drop from Five's and is pulled gravitationally toward the empty shelves.
When they were young, this is the kind of stuff they'd dream up: big rooms full of books they'd like where they could go in whenever they want and read anything they wanted. No curfew, no restrictions, no stupid rules. Then, Five was gone. Standing in that space feels like a win for the little Vanya that could have been and her brother that used to feel like her only friend in the world that got whisked off to the end of it. A certainty beats in Vanya's heart: they deserve this. All of them.

"Yeah?" Vanya asks, quietly grateful to hear anything that comes out of her brother's mouth about his life, about the things he knows. She turns to face him. "Tell me about it." The shelving is such that Vanya can tuck herself atop one of the rows, perched in an almost-sit on what she assumes is a display shelf, considering the space between it and the shelf above.

[number_five]

"I wandered for a long time," Five says, crossing both arms over his chest, "I guess I didn't want to settle down just in case there was anybody else... for better or worse."

Five frowns, wishing there was somewhere to sit and leaning against one of the empty shelves instead. He hasn't gone into detail about what he went through all that time he was alone, then again, there hadn't been much time to.

"I spent so much time researching, trying to learn everything I could so I could figure out how to make it home, a library just made sense."

[fifthbeatle]

As Five talks, Vanya pulls a leg onto the shelf and sets her head on her knee, listening. It's hard not to feel a little sad thinking of Five by himself in the rubble of a library for 40 years, looking less and less like her brother as he stands before her now. Sometimes, when Five is really tired or really melancholy, Vanya thinks she can see that old man.

"Of course," she says, watching him sideways for a little longer. "So, that's how you survived? I imagine you had to learn to grow food - how and where - and gather and filter water, right?" She wants to understand, but this isn't a cool hypothetical desert island they're talking about, and Vanya wants to approach as gently as possible.

[number_five]

"Not at first," he says, thinking back to those first days. Even after all this time, it's still not a time he likes to revisit. "At first there was a lot of looting stores that hadn't been destroyed, salvaging what canned goods and perishables I could. At least until everything started going bad."

He'd been so young then, and it'd taken a couple of bouts of food poisoning before he started turning to alternative means for food.

"You know that rumor about Twinkies? It's bullshit."