Five and romance
“Five is a 58-year-old adult in a child’s body, he should be treated like an adult.”
This is the justification some people use to pair Five with an adult love interest. While I don’t think that these people are wrong and they should be free to ship Five with whomever they want, I can’t help but feel like the justification is a little... off.
Five is not a child, but an argument could be made that Five never actually grew up, something I’m pretty sure a lot of people feel the same about. Yes, he had aged physically, but between the total isolation of the apocalypse and the cruelty of the commission, he never had a chance to mature as an individual.
Consider this: He hasn’t formed any meaningful relationships since he was 13 years old. Every interaction he’s had after finally leaving the apocalypse and getting to meet people is either confrontation, negotiation, extortion, supplication, or any combination of the above. Everything he’s done since he was 13 was to survive and to save his family. He doesn’t know what to do without an apocalypse dogging his heels and he’s admitted as much.
Despite Five’s intelligence and the way he carries himself, deep down I think he is still the boy who ran away from home and got lost 45 years ago. It makes me uncomfortable to think how horribly easy it is to take advantage of him in such a vulnerable state, not just inexperienced but also stunted, traumatized, and starving for human affection.
There is no easy way to write Five romance because it feels wrong regardless of whether he’s in the body of an old man or a preteen boy. At this point I think Five is simply not ready to consent to a romantic or sexual relationship and it has nothing to do with his age.
Imagine Five fresh out of the apocalypse having an affair with the Handler. That cannot be in any way a consensual relationship even if you take blackmail out of the equation. (So much angst potential though.)
Right now what Five needs is lots of platonic love and therapy. He needs to unpack all those years of trauma and adapt to a life that isn’t a constant battle for survival. He needs to reconnect with his siblings, form new connections with other people and learn relationship dynamics. He needs to have a chance to grow up again and learn how to be himself before venturing into more intimate relationships because it wouldn’t be healthy otherwise.
He needs to be treated like an adult by other people as well, not just by one person. That would be an imbalanced relationship, one that opens him up to exploitation of his biggest insecurity. How easily Five could be led to believe that the love interest is the only one who treats him like an adult, the only one who understands him, and then Five would become entirely dependent on that person for validation.
(I feel like this is the crux of a lot of self-inserts but that’s a can of worms I’m not touching with a 10-foot pole.)
Five is not a child, but he isn’t just an adult in a child’s body either. He’s neither here nor there, a boy lost in time and a man who lost a lifetime, simultaneously too old and half-grown.
He doesn’t need to be treated with kid gloves, but he should be allowed to mature properly and develop an identity of his own, so that he is better equipped to handle more complex relationships. If it takes years for him to get there, in enough time for his body to reach adulthood again, well, that’s not a bad thing either. I mean, what’s the rush?