deadly little thing

THE APOCALYPSE IS COMING

[tempportal]

Five rolls his eyes at his brother's useless gibbering, dropping the blazer into his lap in a crumpled heap of dark cloth and gingerly pressing the fingers of his good hand into his injured arm. It feels like an icepick drilling straight through the bone, but if he wants to do it right, he has to get a good grip. He blinks away the little white stars bursting into being behind his eyes like firecrackers, trying to come up with something to say to Luther so the big guy can't tell he's half an inch away from passing out. "Because what—what happened is... irrelevant. It's been handled." That should be enough to satisfy Luther, but his family's astounding inability to respect his privacy and not involve themselves in his business is apparently on full blast today, because now the big guy wants him to have someone look at that. Like he's such a colossal idiot he doesn't know how to set a broken bone.

"What, you mean, like a hospital?" Five has never actually gone to a hospital before in his life, and he's certainly not breaking that streak for something as insignificant as this — just the thought of it makes his stomach turn over, all those long white hallways and big white rooms and bright white lights and doctors and nurses and beds and IV drips — but he's pretty sure he knows how they work when you look as young as he does. "What, so we can turn a process that'll take me ten minutes into two hours, and they can force-feed me a bunch of drugs and tell me I'm such a brave boy and give me a lollipop? Sounds like a dream come true."

[enduranceofsurvival]

Luther lingers despite Five's warnings, hands hovering as if he feels like he should be doing something. What that was... Well he wasn't sure. But he remained, feeling like he was needed. Besides Luther worried. Five had a way of trying to deal with everything himself, which frustrated Luther to no end. "Someone hurt you Five, that doesn't sound irrelevant to me. And besides if you've pissed someone off again it'd be nice to have a heads up before they show up here looking for you!" That and he looked like colossal shit. Like he needed to stop and rest. No matter if Five could push through it or not, Luther wanted to make sure he was okay.

"I don't know, maybe?" That's what normal people did. See a doctor. Right he forgot... Normal went out the window in this family. There were no doctors visits when they were young. Any medical care usually provided by their robotic mother or the experimental methods of their father. And well it would mean Luther wouldn't have to wince with disgust when Five started poking at his arm. "Would that be so bad? At least then you'd actually get some proper treatment and rest, instead of walking around like you're indestructible and doing whatever this is!" Luther gestured at Five's arm with an exasperated look.

[tempportal]

Okay, so, Luther has officially dropped all the way down to Five's Least Favorite Sibling, and all in a span of eight and half minutes. There's plenty of competition for that particular spot, but he blew them all out of the water in one go. Even Allison, always hovering low in the Sibling Rankings for one perfectly legitimate reason or another (trying to take his hard-earned bottle of bourbon away from him yesterday, saying it's not good for your growing body, trying to get him to go on a shopping trip with her the day before that, saying you should get rid of that dusty old uniform and find clothes you actually like to wear, trying to walk him to the library like he's a goddamn toddler a week ago, saying I'm headed that way, anyway, and I could use the company) has never managed to make herself persona non grata so quickly. Way to go, Number One.

"No one is going to show up here looking for me," Five bites out, furious that he even has to say it — but that's on him, for thinking Luther could read between the lines, for thinking anyone in this goddamn family could ever understand what he means without making him spell it out like a fucking phonics class. "I told you, it's been handled. If you'd been listening to me, you'd know that."

He wipes away a thin trickle of blood weeping from the cut on his brow before it can drip into his eyes, and pretends his chest isn't caving in on him as Luther grows more and more insistent. In the back of his mind, somewhere, he knows that Luther is just being Luther, bumbling and awkward and so kind you sort of hate him for it, for being so inherently good, for having a heart bigger than the sky and open so wide anyone could step into it, and he would let them. But Five is all out of jumps, shaking and dazed from the pain still rolling through his arm in waves, cold sweat and warm blood coalescing into a tacky mixture at his temple and matting in his hair, and Luther is talking about hospitals, all wide eyes and good intentions, and Five's throat feels like it's swelling shut with sheer panic.

"No," he chokes out, blue electricity sparking to life and dancing on the tips of his fingers — trying to save him, trying to take him away from the threat — but it flickers out barely an instant later, slipping through his fingers like water. "No hospitals." His voice comes out smaller than he meant it to, desperate and pleading, and he has to work to inject the usual bite back into his tone, swallowing hard around a red-hot tide of humiliation. "I-I didn't... I didn't survive getting impaled with a chunk of rebar at the end of the world to go to a fucking hospital for a broken arm, Luther. I'm fine. Just let me set it, for god's sake, and I'll be on my merry fucking way."

[tempportal]

@enduranceofsurvival said: “Whoa, whoa, take it easy! You got pretty banged up back there, and you don’t want to go making yourself worse.” - from Luther

One thing that's remained consistent throughout the last forty-five and seventeen years is that Five can still, apparently, always count on his siblings to make everything a hundred times more complicated than it ever needed to be. "Oh, pipe down, Luther, I'm fine. I've had way worse than this." It takes a minute to get the blazer off his swollen arm, and the sight beneath the sleeve isn't pretty — already, the limb is purple-black with bruises, bursting and blooming like perverse flowers over his pale skin, but none of the bones are sticking out, which is a lucky break (ha). It's always so much harder to fix those types of fractures. And the rest of his injuries are minor enough — a shallow graze on the side of his leg, a slightly deeper cut just above his left eyebrow, and a swollen bump on the back of his head that makes him feel dizzy and vaguely off-kilter, but doesn't actually impede him in any material way — that he can easily ignore them until they've completed their objective.

"Just give me a second to set it, and then we can get back to work," he graciously decides to informs Luther of his intention before he actually carries it out, since he has it on good authority (Dolores) that watching him pop his own bones back in place is "really very nauseating" and "so unsettling". "Apparently, it's not a pretty process, so do us both a favor and look away if you think you're gonna get squeamish about it."

[enduranceofsurvival]

Complicated and messy was kind of the Hargreaves family way. Most of them were a functioning mess at best, each with their plethora of issues. Yet despite that, they always tried their best to look out for each other. "That isn't a good thing to brag about! Besides you didn't even tell me what happened." Luther often felt a little left in the dark, especially by Five. Okay his brother was under a lot of pressure - Luther knew that. But they were a team and he worried. They had a lot of dangerous enemies and the last thing Luther wanted was to risk losing his brother again. Even if right now he was being his usual pain in the ass. Although he can't lie the sight of the bruised arm made him wince. He wasn't too squeamish by any means... But still.

"Set it? What by yourself? Shouldn't you really have someone look at that." Luther knew that was little merit to argue with him. But it didn't mean he wouldn't try. Glancing at the arm he pulls a face, okay yeah that sounded unpleasant. Maybe he shouldn't look... "I'm not gonna get squeamish! It just seems a little..." Extreme? Barbaric?

[tempportal]

Five rolls his eyes at his brother's useless gibbering, dropping the blazer into his lap in a crumpled heap of dark cloth and gingerly pressing the fingers of his good hand into his injured arm. It feels like an icepick drilling straight through the bone, but if he wants to do it right, he has to get a good grip. He blinks away the little white stars bursting into being behind his eyes like firecrackers, trying to come up with something to say to Luther so the big guy can't tell he's half an inch away from passing out. "Because what—what happened is... irrelevant. It's been handled." That should be enough to satisfy Luther, but his family's astounding inability to respect his privacy and not involve themselves in his business is apparently on full blast today, because now the big guy wants him to have someone look at that. Like he's such a colossal idiot he doesn't know how to set a broken bone.

"What, you mean, like a hospital?" Five has never actually gone to a hospital before in his life, and he's certainly not breaking that streak for something as insignificant as this — just the thought of it makes his stomach turn over, all those long white hallways and big white rooms and bright white lights and doctors and nurses and beds and IV drips — but he's pretty sure he knows how they work when you look as young as he does. "What, so we can turn a process that'll take me ten minutes into two hours, and they can force-feed me a bunch of drugs and tell me I'm such a brave boy and give me a lollipop? Sounds like a dream come true."

[winter-seance]

The Umbrella Academy 3.09

[cosmogenous]

*leaves 'for a smoke' and comes back speckled with blood*

[tempportal]

@enduranceofsurvival said: “Whoa, whoa, take it easy! You got pretty banged up back there, and you don’t want to go making yourself worse.” - from Luther

One thing that's remained consistent throughout the last forty-five and seventeen years is that Five can still, apparently, always count on his siblings to make everything a hundred times more complicated than it ever needed to be. "Oh, pipe down, Luther, I'm fine. I've had way worse than this." It takes a minute to get the blazer off his swollen arm, and the sight beneath the sleeve isn't pretty — already, the limb is purple-black with bruises, bursting and blooming like perverse flowers over his pale skin, but none of the bones are sticking out, which is a lucky break (ha). It's always so much harder to fix those types of fractures. And the rest of his injuries are minor enough — a shallow graze on the side of his leg, a slightly deeper cut just above his left eyebrow, and a swollen bump on the back of his head that makes him feel dizzy and vaguely off-kilter, but doesn't actually impede him in any material way — that he can easily ignore them until they've completed their objective.

"Just give me a second to set it, and then we can get back to work," he graciously decides to informs Luther of his intention before he actually carries it out, since he has it on good authority (Dolores) that watching him pop his own bones back in place is "really very nauseating" and "so unsettling". "Apparently, it's not a pretty process, so do us both a favor and look away if you think you're gonna get squeamish about it."

[tempportal]

Between his forty-five years in an apocalyptic wasteland with a steady diet of crunchy cockroaches and expired dog food, and his full-time job as an assassin with more corrections under his belt than square meals in his stomach, Five has never been much of a cook. Sure, he can make the basics, obviously — scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, chicken noodle soup, spaghetti so long as the sauce comes out of a jar and the noodles come out of a box — but he's never really bothered to learn anything more complex than that.

It's kind of nice, though — the rhythmic and repetitive motions of slicing the tomatoes and onions, the dull thud of the sharp knife against the cutting-board, the spicy-sweet smell of the sauce as it simmers comfortably on the stovetop, and the feeling of the heavy ladle in his hands as he stirs it around in its pot, the careful precision of the whole process, and the way every step demands his full attention, the way every step keeps him firmly grounded in his body and in the moment so he can't get lost in his head, the way he can look at his bloodstained hands that have never done anything but destroy and realize, with something very close to wonder, that he's creating for what might be the first time in his whole life.

Even the vague background noise of Klaus — fluttering around the kitchen like a large and rather overexcited bird, humming and laughing and chattering on about a million and one things Five couldn't possibly hope to keep up with — is calming, in a way, the tension easing out of Five's ever-taut shoulders the longer he listens to his brother's aimless, irrelevant rambling.

"Is this the way the sauce is supposed to look?" he asks, breaking his silence for the first time in nearly an hour — say what you will about Klaus, but at least he knows how to carry a conversation when the other person doesn't have much to contribute — and taking a step away from the stove so his brother can come and take a look. Klaus is the self-proclaimed huevos rancheros expert after all, not him. "It seems kind of chunky."

@theseancekid l liked

[theseancekid]

"So anyway, I'm buck-ass nude in his kitchen, right? And I'm trying to find a towel, only I can't see shit because I'm crying from all the pepper juices in my eyes, so I'm feeling my way around and— OUCH, fuck."

He interrupts himself as he scorches his fingertips trying to flip over the tortilla currently frying in the pan (yes he knows he should use some tongs or something, but he can't be arsed to grab them from the cabinet across the room). He's never been particularly good at multi-tasking, but somehow it's easier to talk to Five like this. They've got their own separate tasks— no more need to brace his nerves under the scrutiny of his brother's intensive gaze. And it's...really nice, actually, here in the quiet morning bubble of their childhood kitchen. The world is safe. Five is making salsa. Maybe things will be alright after all.

"ANYWHO! That's how I found out he was married, when I wiped my eyes on a towel hanging from the oven door. Single gay men don't keep tea towels."

He shouldn't be surprised when his brother turns to him with a question about the sauce, but the novelty hasn't worn off on him just yet. Five, asking KLAUS of all people for guidance!

"Oh uhhhh...we're supposed to blend it, at some point."

He can't remember when exactly that step comes into play. There's no recipe in his head— just a whole lot of intuition (which has never lead him astray, really), and a vague memory of the time that one hookup made him breakfast. If the sauce ends up being fucked, he'll take the blame. It'll taste good, though, and that's what matters. That's his forte, anyway— measurements and instructions are all well and good, but they're nothing without a knock-your-socks-off flavor profile.

"That's fine," he decides, as he makes his way over to the fridge to finally retrieve the eggs. "Just char the absolute shit out of the tomatoes and then we'll blend it after."

[tempportal]

This is the first time Five is hearing anything about the blender, and whatever meager confidence he was beginning to have in Klaus' culinary abilities takes a sharp, sudden nosedive — though he supposes that's on him, for daring to believe any of his siblings could be competent at anything that isn't self-destructing in the most dramatic way possible, and spectacularly fucking up the timeline — but he's not particularly stressed about it, either, to tell the truth. When he thinks about the apocalyptic stakes he's usually dealing with, the consequences for messing up a meal are pretty low in comparison.

It's nice to know that the absolute worst-case scenario won't lead to anything worse than a handful of dirty dishes. It's nice to know the world isn't going to end just because he or his siblings made a mistake.

"Char the absolute shit out of the tomatoes," he repeats, dryly, as he proceeds to do just that, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "That'll go down in the Hargreeves Family Cookbook for sure." He's quiet for a while after that, enjoying the peace of the moment too much to break it — the faint sizzling of the stove burner, the popping and bubbling of the sauce as it reaches a boil it probably isn't supposed to, the heavy thud of Luther's footfalls on the upper floor as he gets ready for work, the swelling solo symphony of Viktor's violin as he practices his latest piece for the orchestra...

Five meant what he said to the Handler, somewhere in between blackmailing her best agents and blowing her up with her own grenades — he's not looking for happy. But, in moments like this, it feels almost like he's found it, anyway.

"Single gay men don't keep tea towels sounds an awful lot like a generalization," he says, at last, never mind that he doesn't know what the difference between a tea towel and a dishtowel even is. As far as he knows, they're both just pieces of cloth that go in the kitchen. "And a judgmental one, at that. Shouldn't the gayest person in the family be setting a better example for the rest of us?" He glances over his shoulder at his brother, a slight, teasing grin on his face. "Come on, don't leave me hanging. What happened next after that? Did you ever actually meet his husband?"

[tempportal]

There aren't too many things that can ruin Five's favorite class of the day — there's just something so soothing about the usual late afternoon Potions lesson, with the light clinking of the cauldrons, the gentle hissing of steam and vapor, the soft bubbling of all the various liquids as they boil and simmer on their burners, and the precision of the work, the exact measurements and repetitive movements inherent in potionmaking — but finding out he has to pair up with Prue Starling, the golden girl of Gryffindor House, to make a childishly simple draught that really only requires one person anyway, is almost enough to make him turn around and walk right back out of the dungeons.

Okay, so maybe Five has never actually had a full conversation with Prue Starling before, and he's making an unfair judgment of her based on her reputation. Sue him. He's never actually had a full conversation with any of the other students at Hogwarts before, not even his own housemates, so it's not like it's anything personal. It's just that he's not here to make friends.

But he is here to get full marks in all of his classes, so he doesn't turn around and walk right back out of the dungeons like he very much wants to. He just gets to work, gathering the ingredients and settling in the seat beside his partner without complaint, or even any outward expressions of hostility. Maybe he should just count himself lucky it was only Starling, because there are far worse Gryffindors he could have easily ended up with.

Right on cue, his gaze drifts over to Dolores Ramirez, two desks down, infuriating as always in her bright red robes. Even when she's nowhere near him, she manages to be a distraction, joking around with her own partner so loud the whole room can hear it.

Five pointedly turns back to his own seatmate, refocusing his attention on their potion instead. The cauldron must have already reached a boil, because his face is burning all of a sudden. Even so, the liquid inside their shared pot is distinctly greener than it should be at this stage...

"Did you already add the first round of moonstone?"

@powerof3in1 l liked

[powerof3in1]

Another day, another set of classes. That's how it felt lately, although, maybe it would do best not to complain about slight mundanity for the moment. After all, life has proven to drop the other chaos laden shoe without a glimpse of warning.

Today, the young girl found herself sitting before a cauldron and an array of potion ingredients splayed across the table's surface surrounding said cauldron. She didn't quite remember even walking to potions class, quite frankly, her mind was elsewhere as the sounds of the classroom filtered in and out of her consciousness. She barely noticed when Professor Snape paired her up with a Slytherin student instead of a fellow Gryffindor; seeing as her usual partner was in the hospital wing (something about a transfiguration mishap the day prior), Prue wasn't too worried about being paired up with Five, even if he was a Slytherin. They couldn't all be as insufferable as Malfoy, could they? Surely there were at least a few that were just there to learn and get through school like the rest of them...right?

Of course, she hadn't known entirely too much about Five other than he was in her year, a Slytherin, and mostly kept to himself even among his housemates. Then again, aside from her immediate group of friends, Prue also liked to stay a bit isolated from the rest of the students. It was, after all, the easiest way to keep her powers hidden. No one needed to know about her extra inherited powers anyway and the last thing she wanted was any more attention than she had already gotten the past couple of years. She didn't need the hassle or ridicule or accusations. She was a bit curious about the name, though, Five. Was it a nickname? She could ask, he probably wouldn't tell her, she knew it wasn't really her business anyway.

As her eyes scanned the bowls and jars in front of them, Five's voice cut through her disassociation and pulled her attention back to the potion which was now definitely the wrong shade of green. "What?" She asked, hearing something about moonstone and shook her head in response. "I haven't added anything yet, what did you put in there?"

[tempportal]

Admittedly, Starling doesn't really look like she's lying, and it'd be pretty illogical of her to do that when her grade depends on the results of this potion just as much as his own, but he instinctively opens his mouth to argue with her, anyway — after all, it couldn't have been him, or he would remember it — but the moment that particular thought occurs to him, he realizes it's very possible he wouldn't remember it, actually. That's been happening to him a lot lately — Professor Handler called them blackouts, said they were perfectly normal for a young Seer coming into their power, and even though Five is still pretty sure Divination is a bullshit branch of magic, he's not really fussed about the problem, either. If it was something truly serious, he'd probably be in the hospital wing by now.

Just to be sure, he glances down at his own hands — and, sure enough, there's a distinct greenish glimmer of moonstone dust on the tips of his fingers, and he huffs out an irritated little sigh before he reaches for the wooden spoon and gives the potion a quick clockwise stir. He wonders vaguely if that was actually a blackout, or if he was just too busy glaring at Dolores Ramirez to notice the reflexive motions of his hands, because that's been happening a lot lately, too. She's so distracting.

"Right, that was my bad, then," he admits, finally, after a long and painful internal struggle. But he can't exactly not say it, either, not when Starling is sitting close enough to see the dust on his hands for herself. If she's anything like the rest of her annoying little housemates, she'll get all huffy about it if he doesn't at least acknowledge the unfounded accusation hanging between them. "I'll handle the belladonna if you'll crush up the nettles."

[powerof3in1]

Prue tried to follow the range of emotions crossing Five's face in the long silent pause between them, but even if she hadn't taken her empathy quieting potion that morning, it still would've been difficult to say the least. She never could quite gauge his expressions or thoughts. Not that they'd ever truly been in the position in which they had the opportunity, or misfortune in Five's opinion more likely, of speaking for more than a shallow greeting or single glance in a shared hallway or staircase.

As the boy's bright eyes fell to his own hands, she followed his gaze to see the incriminating color of his fingertips -- knowing exactly what had caused that particular hue to show palely on his skin. Her gaze slid back up to his face without lifting her head to look up at him under unamused brows; her expression saying, seriously? for her without having to say the words.

When he grumpily admitted that it was in fact he who had added the moondust powder prematurely, Prue shrugged her shoulders and repositioned herself on her stool. It was clear that Professor Snape truly wanted them to be uncomfortable and miserable throughout the class period. It was nearly impossible to find a comfortable position on a wooden stool. The young witch shifted again, pulling her skirt closer to her knees as she pulled the nettles along with the mortar and pestle closer to her. "It's fine," she retorted, unwilling to make things more awkward between them. "Yeah, I got this bit. Be careful with the belladonna though. It can be...hallucinogenic, at times."

"Before you take that the wrong way," she added quickly, "I don't mean to say you're a tosser or something, just that, well, you seema bit distracted today. Just don't feel like finishing this by myself when you've been sent to the hospital wing." Truthfully, Prue didn't want to see him actually hurt, but she doubted he would believe her anyway if she said that.

[tempportal]

Five rolls his eyes at the unnecessary warning, irritation flaring in his chest — of course the one time his blackouts interfere with his academic performance is also the one time somebody is here to witness it, because that's just the way his life goes, apparently — but he doesn't bite back, mostly because he knows that's an argument he won't win. The proof of (what she'll perceive as) his inattentiveness is right there on his hands, after all. He just bows his head low over the table and focuses on the belladonna, the rhythmic thud of the knife and the soothing feeling of the blade's smooth handle under his fingers.

A scowl tugs his brows together as Starling goes on, apparently interpreting his stony silence as a green light to talk him half to death about his "distraction" — a typical Gryffindor, rubbing his failure in his face at every opportunity — but he's not really in the position to defend himself, either, because that would mean he'd have to try and explain his blackouts to this girl he barely knows, and doesn't particularly like. He doesn't even like to discuss his blackouts with Professor Handler, although she's always pushing him to, and she's his favorite teacher at Hogwarts by a mile.

"Maybe I'm distracted," he says, at last, and perhaps a bit sharper than he absolutely needs to, "because there happens to be a very irritating Gryffindor right next to me."

[naughtyneroli]

i’ve been in tears over this for 5 minutes

[urlsaremeaningless]

See if I can handle every family burden

                    Watch as I buckle                                    and bend but never 

                                                                                      B R E A K

[reveriiea]

       you’re  built  to  DESTROY.

                               you  can  n e v e r  belong.

[soracities]

Sujata Bhatt, from “The One Who Goes Away”, The Stinking Rose

[Text ID: “But I am the one / who always goes away. // The first time was the most – / was the most / silent.”]

[azulafacts]

have you ever considered therapy for your repressed anger issues? it would help.

they’re not repressed i’m expressing them a lot

[tempportal]

my moving date has gotten bumped up to this weekend, so it looks like i won't be available until next friday. sorry for the delay, and thanks to everyone for being patient!

[tuagifs]

☂️  the umbrella academy:

number five + smiling (part two)

[tempportal]

@dvarapala l continued from x

Five has barely even stepped through the door, and he's already completely and totally overwhelmed. He prepared himself pretty thoroughly, or so he'd thought, for a great number of unpleasant receptions when he finally accepted one of Gaira's incessant invitations last week — it could very well be an ambush after all, his sworn nemesis and a couple of her fellow superheroes lying in wait for him, ready to attack the instant he came inside, but that sort of underhanded trickery simply doesn't correspond with Gaira's usual behavior, so he'd dismissed the theory almost as quickly as he'd postulated it, and moved onto likelier hypotheses.

Perhaps she had just wanted to see if he would actually fall for it, see if he would actually allow himself to believe the tentative bit of... trust friendship whatever they'd established during their alliance against the Puppet Master would still hold up now that they no longer shared a common enemy. Perhaps she had just wanted to exact a bit of vengeance now that he was finally willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she would laugh in his face when she saw him on her front porch, because god, Five, who would ever willingly spend time with you? did you seriously think we were actually friends, or something? believe me, I'm not that desperate! and then she'd slam the door on him, go back to her quiet, villain-free night with her mother, and forget all about him.

Or perhaps she gave him the wrong address. Perhaps she just wanted to ensure he understands that the nebulous, nameless Whatever they established during their alliance was a product of forced proximity, and it would never survive concrete reality. Or perhaps she was being genuine when she invited him, but she's changed her mind since the last time he saw her, and she'll send him away with one of her sheepish, apologetic smiles.

Any of those outcomes would be perfectly fine, of course. Five isn't particularly fussed about them. He does not desire Gaira's acceptance in any form or fashion. He does not desire anyone's acceptance in any form or fashion. He's above such trivial things.

Still, he has a very specific procedure in mind for each and every one of her potential reactions, so it's... surprising and unexpected and a little bit terrifying when he doesn't have to use them.

Because Gaira (or, Udyati, technically, since she's not in costume right now, but using her civilian name is a very slippery slope to being friendly, and he is above such trivial things, remember, so he refuses to do anything that could ever possibly be construed in that manner) positively beams at him the moment she lays eyes on him, her whole face lighting up like a Christmas tree, and immediately unleashes a barrage of information that he can't even begin to keep up with. There's something about vegetarians in there, for sure, and also something about Diwali (which he knows is a Hindu holiday, but that's about where his knowledge taps out) and then she tosses out a bunch of names he only sort of vaguely recognizes, and he's trying to match them to the faces of all those annoying little friends of hers, and then she's telling him to leave his shoes in the hallway. Five's skin prickles at the very thought, itching with discomfort — the convenient thing about teleportation is that he can just leave a situation whenever he feels like it, but the inconvenient thing about teleportation is that he has to keep all his essentials on his person at all times for a quick escape and, personally, he would very much consider his shoes to be one of those essentials. How is he supposed to get out when this whole thing inevitably turns sour if he doesn't have his shoes?

This was a mistake, Five realizes, blind panic and burning shame twisting up around each other like twin serpents in his stomach. This was a terrible, horrible, foolish mistake, one that he should have known better than to make — one that he did know better than to make, if he's being perfectly honest with himself. This was an absolutely imbecilic mistake, and he needs to go back to the lair right now, while the evening is still semi-salvageable.

But.

He doesn't.

Five pulls in a deep breath, leaves his shoes in the hallway, and follows Gaira deeper into the house.

Now that he's finally taking a proper look around (mostly to try and distract himself, so he doesn't go completely off his chump and blink away before he even reaches the kitchen) he's struck by what a nice house his nemesis lives in. his lair is something of a palace in comparison to the boys' home, but this is something else entirely. it's wonderfully warm, especially in contrast to the cold autumn wind blowing outside, with electric lamps throwing golden pools of light everywhere. The floorboards remain steady under his feet, and the windowpanes are intact. He wonders idly if this roof leaks something awful when it rains, or if the inside gets as dreadfully cold as the outside in the winter, like his lair.

But, to tell the truth, the luxury isn't what really catches his eye, as fantastic and unbelievable as it is. It's the touches of life all around the place — the throw pillows and afghans on the sofa, the decorations on the walls, the framed photographs on every available surface, pictures of a much younger Gaira grinning at him from all possible angles.

And then he's in the kitchen, caught in the eye of another storm of color and light and noise, and his breath trapped somewhere in the back of his throat as he tries to figure out what he's meant to do in this moment, and how Gaira's mother could possibly smile at the boy who's left her daughter with more bruises than he can even count.

(Gaira did the same thing, he realizes, when she opened the door and saw him on her porch. No one has ever looked at him like that. No one has ever been happy to see him.

This can't be real.)

"...Okay?" Five says, finally, when his sticky-slow brain eventually registers her offer of chai, like he has any clue what chai is. It's not like he'll turn his nose up at it, whatever they serve him — any food is good food, after all. You take what you can get and you count yourself lucky every night you don't go to bed hungry. He winces at the sound of his own voice in his ears, so small and pathetic in a way Number Five never is, and quickly tries to get back some modicum of control. He needs to do something, he needs to distract himself from the absolute clusterfuck going on in his head right now. "I-I can... help? With the table?" Is that allowed?

[dvarapala]

Aw, he looks so cute when he's gobsmacked. Like a tiny, overwhelmed kitten.

As she gives him a tour of the house, she wonders if his brain is close to melting out of his ears already. All the colors, all the smells. The warmth. All the... everything, really. It must be an assault on the senses, if nothing else.

He stammers something about helping while they're in the kitchen and Udyati's mom nods her head again. "That would be great, thank you. Especially considering that one---" She inclines her head at her daughter. "---did the bare minimum in regards to prep work."

"I did not!" Udyati laughs as she pours Five a glass of chai - black tea, milk, water, cardamom, ginger, black pepper, nutmeg and so much more - and brings it to the living room for it, cradling it gently until she sets it down on the dinner table, a rectangular thing located at the back of the living room, near the window. There are already three seats at the table, too, like they'd been waiting for him long before they issued the invite. "That guy from the puja store down town - the one that's selling the flowers - gave me some from last week's batch so I had to go back and get new ones for our mandir. It's not my fault that his shop is very out of the way."

"Sure, like it isn't your fault that you conveniently went to the bookstore afterwards, either?"

Luckily for Five, the drink comes in a regular glass rather than a boot shaped Christmas mug. (Yes, they've got a few of those. Udyati's mom is fond of going to Christmas Markets, but that's neither here nor there.)

Ankita doesn't even take the bait. Instead, she chooses to remind her daughter of her ability as she stacks three empty plates and hands them over to Five while Udyati comes back for the forks, knives and spoons.

"I can't just step through a door in front of civilians, Amma."

"Except all those times that you did," Ankita says dryly, though there's a twinkle in her eyes as she speaks.

"I did that in front of my friends," Udyati says with a faux long suffering sigh. "That's different! They know!" She shoots a look at Five that clearly says: see what I have to deal with all the time?

[tempportal]

Five gingerly sets the plates down in front of the respective seats around the table, careful not to bump or bang the fragile ceramic against the polished wood, while the easy banter between Gaira and her mother flows around him like water. His body has been pulled tight ever since he stepped into the house, muscles and tendons taut as violin strings, but the tension slowly begins to bleed out of him as the conversation continues, a mindless white noise in the background of his thoughts. Although he's listening, vaguely, to the debate between mother and daughter, nodding silently along in agreement with Ms. Rao's perfectly logical and reasonable arguments — and wondering how on earth a woman like that could have possibly produced someone as illogical and unreasonable as his archnemesis — he doesn't expect them to pull him into it, so he fumbles under Gaira's expectant glance for a minute or two.

"Your mother is right," Five says, finally, once he's gotten over his momentary surprise — although, if he's being honest, he would probably express the exact same opinion even if he didn't agree with Ms. Rao. Arguing with Gaira is kind of his specialty, after all. "You should be more careful with your powers, even in front of people you trust. You never know who could be watching you." He almost informs her that her recklessness has directly induced his victory over her in combat on more than one occasion, but then he remembers he's in her house, in her kitchen, with her mother, because she invited him over to dinner, and he decides to table that particular discussion for now.

Instead, he turns to speak to her mother, instinctively smoothing out a tiny wrinkle in his sweater (yes, he's wearing normal civilian clothes tonight, because he couldn't very well show up here in his schoolboy uniform, could he? it feels a bit strange to be wearing a simple sweater and slacks in front of other people, yes, but it would be infinitely stranger to wear his supervillain costume to dinner. her mother miraculously doesn't seem to recognize his face, if the fact that she didn't immediately expel him from the premises is any indication, but that outfit is a dead giveaway, and he knows it) and resisting the urge to do the same thing to his hair, and feeling astronomically foolish once he realizes what he's doing. It was second nature to him throughout his childhood to fix up his appearance a bit whenever he had to present himself to an adult — he had naively believed that, perhaps, if he just didn't look so dreadfully unkempt, they wouldn't instantly write him off as a scruffy orphan boy or juvenile delinquent. Perhaps, if he just proved to them that he was really trying his very best to be good, they wouldn't be so angry with him all the time.

(Of course, that was an ignorant assumption. But little Number Five had been nothing if not stupid and persistent.)

He maintains a careful distance from Ms. Rao as he addresses her — close enough that it isn't glaringly obvious, and she likely won't think anything of it if even she does notice, yet far enough away that she can't reach him, can't grab him or smack him or hold onto him and prevent him from teleporting out of the room and escaping her. "What else can I do, Ms. Rao?"

[tempportal]

For all that Five lives his life in a state of perpetual annoyance — and, honestly, with siblings like his, who wouldn't? — it's not too often that he finds himself genuinely, properly furious with much of anyone, at least not so long as they aren't a direct threat to his family (which, actually, happens far more often than you'd think, seeing as his siblings tend to attract vengeful enemies like rotten fruit attracts flies).

But right now, there's a clawing itch of white-hot rage scratching and bubbling up beneath his skin, so intense and all-consuming that he's literally seeing red, vision blurring and eyes burning and blood pounding in his ears, painfully loud, as April's words slowly piece themselves together in his brain.

"Let me get this straight," he says, very quietly, but his voice is as taut as a violin string, thrumming with anger. "You tracked down the Handler, and went all the way to Commission Headquarters to speak with her. Am I getting this right? Am I understanding it correctly? Tell me if I'm wrong, Becker, and if I'm not, then you'd better have a really good excuse for this."

@hvbris l plotted starter

[the-dead-poets]