"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.

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.

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.

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.