number_five: (pic#16018759)
2023-12-19 04:28 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Hargreeves House has accumulated more books than its small library can hold. It's mostly Five's fault, but each of them has added books here and there, even Ben and Allison when they were in Darrow. But he shelves are full, and recently, Five has had to start stacking them in the corners.

In the apocalypse, libraries were his sanctuaries. He'd made a home in the ruins of one when the Handler recruited him for the Commission even. So maybe he's a bit apprehensive about downszing the library.

The truth is, there's space. But that would mean taking over one of the empty rooms on another floor. Rooms that he'd always hoped their siblings would be back to occupy. But it's been years now. The more time that goes by, the less likely it seems that Diego is going to come knocking at the door.

So Five is sorting through the bookshelves, trying to figure out which books to relocate.

And trying not to think about how many trips it's going to take without using his powers.
number_five: (pic#16018759)
2023-09-27 09:03 pm

For Luther

"Please tell me there's an explanation for this. And that it's not completely ridiculous," Five says.

His already wide open schedule is especially wide open today, and he's decided to spend most of it at home. After a long shower, he's headed down to the kitchen for coffee and what passes for the newspaper in Darrow.

Only, when he passes Luther's room, Five is confronted with an absolutely obscene amount of apples.

He's sure there's some explanation for this, and he can't wait to hear what it is.

Or maybe he'll wish he'd had his coffee first.
number_five: (pic#16018764)
2023-09-26 09:20 pm
Entry tags:

For Klaus

For Five, today has been almost eventful.

Taking up tutoring physics students at the college doesn't pay much. But since Five made the decision that he's effectively retired, it fills up the hours. After his stint alone in Darrow, he'd become more of a recluse than he liked, and at least this gets him out of the house. And despite his body finally being of legal age in the city, there's not much work out there for an 18-year-old that doesn't involve flipping burgers.

Today's student wasn't a complete idiot at least, so Five's in a pretty decent mood. But drained, so he as soon as he gets home, he makes a bee-line right for the kitchen for a sandwich.

Only, when he opens the pantry for bread, he finds there's only one heel of the loaf left in the bag. And suddenly his day isn't so good anymore.

"If you eat the last of it, you buy more!" he shouts, not sure who's even home to hear him.
number_five: (broken)
2022-07-04 06:06 pm
Entry tags:

This world is not made for you (one-shot)

The first time Five tried a time jump, he'd been naïve. Trying to prove to his father that he knew what he was doing, that he was ready, that he was capable. It'd been a horrible mistake that had cost him decades of a normal life and left him stranded in an apocalypse.

The second time, he'd miscalculated. He'd spent downtime on missions running equations in notebooks, in the margins of books. Sometimes, he got distracted by the job at hand. There'd been a typo. And while he'd made it to 2019 like he planned, he'd ended up back in the body of that overconfident 13 year old, a constant reminder of both mistakes.

They say the third time in the charm, but that obviously hadn't been the case. A rush job had scattered himself and his siblings across the 1960s. Sometimes, he feels like he shouldn't blame himself for that one; he's saved everyone's lives and given them a second chance to stop the apocalypse. But it'd been another failure.

It feels like pure insanity to give a time jump another shot, especially after three failed attempts. But this time, he's been careful. Since Ben and Allison disappeared, he'd spent countless hours alone working the equations, refiguring them the more he learns about Darrow. Of course, the pocket dimension they've all found themselves in is unpredictable. People come and go at random, history seems to keep rewriting itself at a moment's notice. But when he thinks about those months when they were all together, just waiting on Diego to finally show up...

...he doesn't know how he can't at least try to get them back. After all, it's what he's been fighting for ever since that day he stormed out of the house. He's just been trying to get back to his family.

It takes another shot of liquid courage from the decanter in the library, and another glance at the numbers before he's ready to try. All he needs is a year. They were both in Darrow then. Pop in, grab them both and pop out without running into himself. Piece of cake. At least in theory.

Five curls his hands into fists and concentrates, a blue glow emerging from his hands as he starts to open the portal. It's different in Darrow, somehow. It feels a little less stable, a little more chaotic. Papers in his bedroom fly from the table, from the bed, and a lamp nearly hits him in the head before he's able to dodge it.

Okay, scratch less stable. It's not stable at all. And it won't be open long, so this is his only shot. Five lunges forward, into the light, into Darrow's past.



Something's gone wrong.




He realizes it instantly.





For starters, though his taste in decor has always been reasonably sparse, his bedroom is nearly empty. The cracks in the wall he and his siblings carefully spackled over when they all moved in, there again. His bed is gone, and the chair in the corner where Delores should be carefully watching him isn't even there. This isn't one year ago.

Quickly, Five throws open the door to his room and bolts into the hallway.

"Ben? Allison?!" he calls, and his own voice echoes off of the walls, "Vanya?"

Their home is empty. The months of work and living its seen, gone. But that doesn't necessarily mean this is as big a mistake as it could be.

He tells himself this until he heads down the stairs and opens the front door. The streets of Darrow are empty. the hustle and bustle of the city, gone, the sounds of traffic and people silent. So either he's somewhere in Darrow's past, or somewhere in its future. Or the city has rewritten its own history again.

Great.

Delores told him this could happen. He probably should have listened.

And just like the first time, when he tries to open that same portal again, to go back to where he came from, he realizes he can't summon enough energy to do it. So he'll wait. He'll regain his strength, run the equations again, then go back to 2022.

But for now, he walks down the empty, quiet streets of Darrow, looking for signs of life.
number_five: (broken)
2021-09-22 05:25 pm

Minus Six.

And just like that, he’s lost his brother again. Truthfully, Five wasn’t around the first time they lost Ben, being stuck in the apocalypse with better things to do… like surviving, but that doesn't make the loss any easier.

It takes Five a few weeks to truly come to terms with it. Denial is generally a useless coping mechanism, but that doesn't mean Five is immune to it. People disappear in Darrow all the time; he's heard the stories. They disappear, they come back, sometimes they don't remember being there in the first place, other times there are stranger forces at work. His siblings seem to accept the loss more quickly than he does, because even though he knows this may not be the last time any of them see Ben, it becomes more and more difficult to convince himself of the fact as the days stretch on.

It's denial, that useless coping mechanism, that leads to what can only be considered stupidity. Five starts innocently enough, with a solitary night in the library at home, scribbling equations in the margins of a book he's been trying to concentrate on for the past hour. That turns into notebooks full, those equations then continued on the walls of his bedroom.

It could work. He knows it could. He's made a mistake before; a wrong character had cost him his adulthood, so he knows the risks. That's why he's checked them over and over again. And this time, he only needs a few weeks, not years. He can bring Ben back.

Five stands in his bedroom with the door shut, and he clenches his fists as he concentrates. The blue glow is almost blinding as he tries to open a portal, tries to fling himself back through time. It's harder than it should be, and his head is pounding as the seconds stretch on into minutes, and as nothing happens.

Five full minutes go by before he gives up, sweat beading on his forehead and the weight of failure heavy on his shoulders.

"Shit."
number_five: (broken)
2021-05-12 10:33 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

It's been a few months now since Five woke up in Darrow in the correct body, but he can't help but think back it on it again and again. He'd felt more normal than he had since maybe before he stepped out his contract with the Commission. No one talking down to him, questioning him if he just wanted to get a drink or be out for a walk in the middle of the day...

And he'd met someone. Her name was Ellen. She was a physics professor at the college and they'd had drinks. He'd seen her several times that week, and then... well then, he'd woken up as a thirteen year old again, his constant reminder of the simple mistake he'd made in the equation when he'd jumped back home.

Five had known it wasn't likely to last, and he knows he'd been a fool for hoping, but it was hard not to.

Needless to say, after finding himself back in his teenage body, he hadn't contacted Ellen again. It was all too much to explain. Or maybe he was a coward for it, trying to keep himself from inevitable rejection. But he knows it was a shitty thing to do to someone.

So now, Five isn't sure if it's guilt or regret that brings him to track Ellen down today, discretely watching her from across the street as she dines outdoors at a Cafe. She's reading a book he's familiar with, and he would give just about anything right now to go and talk about it with her.

Alas, some things just aren't meant to be.

He sighs and turns, not expecting to find his sister walking up to him.
number_five: (serious)
2021-02-14 12:51 pm
Entry tags:

For Luther

Living with his brothers and sisters again, Five has to admit, it's been an adjustment. He's got used to Klaus's comings and goings, living with him for a few months before this, but the rest of them add a new dimension to things.

It's not bad, just an adjustment. But they're making the place their own. Five's biggest contribution so far has been the house's growing library. Each one of them has added their own books to the collection, but Five's added the most books by far. Quantum physics books, dimensional theory and the odd biography, mostly. Today, he's shelving a book on paradoxes-- theoretical and very wrong, of course-- when he finds something he thinks Vanya's added. Music theory's never been his thing, but he doesn't have anything else to do with his afternoon.

He tucks the book under his arm and decides to head to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, but when he walks into the hallway, there's someone there he doesn't expect. At least, not today.

"Oh. It's you," Five says, looking up at his brother with a mildly surprised expression, "You know, between you and Diego, my money was on him showing up first."
number_five: (broken)
2021-02-14 12:52 am
Entry tags:

For Vanya

There's a meteor coming for Darrow, and there's nothing Five can do to stop it.

When the news first started spreading, Five had been skeptical. Strange shit happens in Darrow, and as far as he's been able to tell so far, much of it doesn't amount to much. Sometimes there are monsters, sometimes there are small town cults, but life generally gets back to some semblance of normal quickly.

But when the chatter becomes more than just chatter, and when he can't seem to figure out any way to stop it-- if he'd know what caused it before it was maybe there would have been a chance-- Five's left basically helpless.

He doesn't like it one bit.

But with no briefcase and no way to be sure that trying to time travel on his own won't just strand him in Darrow's 1963, Five finds himself turning to despair. And bourbon. They keep the house pretty decently stocked most of the time, so at least he doesn't have to go out for it. He's four drinks in before he figures, who cares if he gets stuck and has to spend another couple of decades alone? At least he'll have time to figure out how to keep his family safe again. At least this time, he can save them from the apocalypse.

Five sets his drink down on a table in the Hargreeves library, holds out both fists and he's surrounded by a blue glow. He tries to concentrate, but his head is fuzzy, the room is spinning and he's tired. The blue glow is gone as quickly as it appeared, and then there's just Five: drunk, useless and unable to protect his family. Again.
number_five: (pensive)
2020-12-23 09:50 pm
Entry tags:

December 25, 2020

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]