Five finds a pillow pet in the apocolypse and goes fucking nuts. Similarly could also happen with a snuggie
you say pillow pet but what i hear is “Five having more than Dolores in the apocalypse au”
so it starts with Dolores. He picks her up, and she has a human face that isn’t decomposing, and it’s partially on a whim that he sticks her in his little red wagon and partially out of desperation. He needs company, he needs someone to talk with, or else he’s going to genuinely go insane.
He takes her with him because he remembers reading about programmers who talk to rubber ducks in order to find problems in the code, and he thinks “okay, this mannequin will be my rubber duck and she’ll help me with my equations to go home, simple as that”
it’s not as simple as that, and Dolores becomes someone real
but Dolores isn’t enough
he finds the teddy bear in the street, dropped a dusty and he very purposefully does not look around for where its owner might be. He already knows there are no survivors - he checked every body he came across in those first few weeks. But the bear is sitting there, and it looks so sad, and he has room in his wagon - and he just picks it up without really thinking about it and pops it next to Dolores.
Five names him Buddy, and learns that Buddy has a wicked sense of humor if a little dark.
Next he finds a little stuffed cat caught between bits of rubble. He’d thought it was a body at first (it wasn’t just humans killed in the apocalypse, after all) but no. The fabric is face, the eyes are plastic, and maybe once upon a time it was white but apocalypse living doesn’t exactly help with cleanliness. He calls her Snowy anyway, and places her in the wagon next to Dolores and Buddy. She’s very shy at first, and she doesn’t like Buddy’s jokes, but Dolores enjoys having another girl on the team.
And from there on it becomes a thing.
He doesn’t take all of them with him, and some are only temporary companions. Jasper is a dog that’s missing two legs. Scrappy is probably a panda but honestly is so filthy that Five is just guessing. Will is some sort of goofy looking monster. But every one he finds, he brushes off and introduces to the others and has a conversation - even if they’re just pretend conversations. Because it’s the end of the world and he’s the only one left and he’s hanging onto his sanity by his fingernails but having some form of companionship is… nice.
Even if it isn’t real.
So Five lives the apocalypse surrounded by dozens of toys who never speak but who have their own individual personalities that Five learns. He breathes life into them and makes them real, or as real as they can possibly be out in the apocalypse. It isn’t always stuffed animals. Sometimes it’s other mannequins. Sometimes he pauses to say hello to an intact statue, tracing the names people over the years have drawn and carved into them with gentle fingers.
He keeps Dolores by his side always, she was the first and he is most attached to her. The others are a somewhat rotating cast. Candles the lion lives in the ruins of the pharmacy with Jellybean the giraffe. Hoot the owl perches on top of what Five figures must have been an old church bell or something. Chip the hedgehog usually stands around the halfway point between the library ruins and the ruins of the umbrella academy. They’re familiar faces that when Five goes out scavenging, he calls out greetings to and pretends he receives them in return. An entire unliving city full of the creations of a desperate, lonely child.
They’re his neighbors. They’re his friends. They’re all the companionship he has out there as the only person left in the world.
And then the commission grabs him, and he leaves his friends behind, and he wasn’t quite expecting it to hurt as much as it did because he’s always been gearing up to leave them eventually. To travel back in time and save his siblings. But it still leaves him anxious and jumpy without any of his friends to confide in, though Dolores at least is with him even if she does constantly point out that his equations aren’t finished.
He goes back. He shows up on the day of the funeral. He goes to find the owner of a glass eye, he speaks to his brother, and then he shows up with Dolores. His siblings don’t question her. But they are slightly more confused when random stuffed animals start also popping up in the house.
“What’s this?” Allison asks, puzzled, picking up what could be a crocodile or a lizard or… something vaguely reptilian in looks.
Five doesn’t even look up, “That’s Snorri. Snorri, Allison. Allison, Snorri.”
“Okay.” Allison says slowly, and puts the stuffed toy back on the counter.
And when the stop the apocalypse, it keeps happening. Luther sits on the couch and is immediately shoved at by Five who has jumped over in a flash of blue. “You’re suffocating her!” He’s yelling, and Luther moves, and Five fishes out a stuffed whale which might or might not look like it came from the giftshop of the local aquarium. Five jumps away, cradling ‘her’ protectively in his arms before Luther can say a word.
“Should we ask about this?” Klaus asks at the breakfast table after Five takes his leave, looking at the place at the table where Five has placed a stuffed dog as if it was actually a person. “Like, I feel this is something we should be somewhat concerned about?” and nobody has anything to say to that, because Five had just carried out a one-sided conversation with a stuffed animal at the breakfast table like that was a normal and sane thing to do.
Finally Diego, who was volunteered by his family and upon refusal was goaded into it by Luther sighing and saying that he supposed, as team leader he should - , addresses the issue. Sort of.
“So uh,” Diego coughs from where he’s sitting awkwardly on the couch. Five is cross legged on the floor next to the coffee table, scribbling away at some equations while a plush wolf watches over with baleful eyes where its placed across from him on the tabletop. “What’s your uh, friend’s name?”
“Allie.” Five gestures with a wave of his hand, “She’s the best with polynomial functions.”
Diego nods, like that makes sense. “And uh, where did she come from?”
“I made Allie’s acquaintance on the corner of First and Gregory, I believe. She was trapped under a street lamp and about half a house when I found her.” Five says absently, still mostly focused on his equations. Honestly it’s easiest to get answers out of Five like this, when he’s only paying attention to what he’s saying with half his brain.
“Oh uh, in the apocalypse?” Diego asks dumbly, as if there were random collapsed houses in the streets.
But Five doesn’t call him out, too busy scribbling out some more numbers to bother verbally eviscerating his brother. He just nods.
“Are they all from the apocalypse?” Diego prods a little further, a picture starting to become clear in his mind and it’s not exactly one he’s liking.
“Mmhmm.” Five hums, “It’s not everyone, obviously. I’m not going to tear anyone away from their family of course. But anyone I met in shops and the like are fair game, and they’d much rather live with someone familiar to them until we figure out accommodations.”
“Accommodations?” Diego was so not ready for this discussion. He shouldn’t have let Luther manipulate him. He should have volunteered Vanya for it instead, no matter her excuses about actually having a job or whatever.
“Yeah,” Five nods, frowning at his paper for a moment before quickly erasing a number and continuing on, “Like Hoot used to live on the church bell but she can’t anymore ‘cause the church is still up. And people would try and make Chip move if he lived on Windsor street again.”
“Alright.” Diego says, and then decides to bite the bullet, “You do know they’re stuffed animals, right?”
The scratching of the pencil stops abruptly, and Diego finds himself staring into Five’s furious eyes. Five stands gracefully and Diego shifts warily, almost expecting Five to launch himself at his brother and attack. But no, instead Five scoops up the plush wolf into his arms and looks at Diego like he’s dirt, “You can apologize to Allie when you’re ready.” Five sniffs, before jumping away and taking the wolf with him.
Diego goes back to the rest of the family and is basically like ‘so like, he found them all in the apocalypse i think. He plans on rehoming them? I think? So I guess just… ignore it for now. And also if I’m smothered in my sleep know that it was murder.’
but yes five with lots of apocalypse friends of his own making, but dolores is still the most important because that’s his wife !!
and yes, some of those friends might be pillow pets :’)
