Prompt idea that I sincerely don't know anywhere else to put out, but what if, one mother of the seven like... delayed giving up the baby idk why, but like, in the end the child goes to the academy, but like... they know the world outside this mansion full of all sorts of abuse and violence, and so is trying to bring good sense and awareness to all of other children somehow, even though like... you don't know very much or correctly the things in general, but is trying anyway because yeah
it’s gonna be Five bc u know how I roll by now and you didn’t specify a child, so this is a non-twin world uwu
I see some people naming him Fievel so we’re gonna have to go with that, nicknamed Five by the other kids who thought it was absolutely hilarious to ask “which one?” whenever Reginald snaps “Five!”
Though officially, of course, Five is number seven.
So Fievel is born in a park to a mother who was never prepared to have achild, but held him in the hospital and looked into the eyes of a man offering her money for her newborn and she says - no.
Because she’s poor, yes, and she’s working two jobs to make ends meet, and this man might be able to provide for her child but - she doesn’t like the fact that he offered her money. As though he could place a price on a human life.
(His stupid mustache might have played a role as well. Bastard.)
So she keeps little Fievel, and it’s hard. It’s so hard. Babies are expensive, and she was barely making enough as it was, but her best friend works from home and offers to take him sometimes during the day instead of a more expensive daycare. Some of her other friends ask around relatives and friends and hunt through garage sales until she has a passable amount of baby items.
It would be easier if Fievel wasn’t such a precocious child. He’s curious and into everything, a loud baby that demands attention.
“C’mon Fi,” She begs her three-year-old son from where she’s draped across the sofa. Aren’t kids supposed to sleep a lot? Why did she end up with the one kid in the world who is on the go twenty four seven? “Can we please take a nap?”
“No.” Fievel says with a mulish look in his eyes and he shoves a book towards her face and almost takes her eye out with a corner of it, “Wead to me.”
And she sighs, and she’s so tired, but she hauls herself up and pats the sofa next to her and her little boy beams at her with such - such love that it almost takes her breath away. “Dogger, again? How many times have we read this?”
Fievel kicks at her with his little soft foot, and she catches it in a hand and smiles and she drops the book in her lap to bring her other hard over to dust feather light fingertips against her baby’s sides.
He’s terribly ticklish and giggles even as he shrieks “NO” loud enough that their neighbors will probably complain to her about it again. But in that moment she doesn’t care as she brings her head down to blow raspberries on her son’s stomach and make him laugh.
(But she never has any time. Her friendships are more distant now, because she’s either at work or spending time with her son. She’s always exhausted because she works such long hours and Fievel keeps her awake when she’s a home. She doesn’t blame him, he didn’t ask to be born into the world any more than she asked for him, really. But it’s hard.)
Fievel is a curious child. She takes him to children’s museums and zoos on the discount days and watches him run around with seemingly endless energy. She has to keep a careful eye on him otherwise he will disappear, get distracted and wander off no matter how many times she’s tried to tell him to never do so.
Her baby is so smart. And he’s restless. And even though the place she works has a daycare through them, the people there are one incident away from banning Fievel. She thinks that’s dumb, considering they’re the ones that didn’t watch Fievel closely enough and lost him almost four times in recent months.
So she signs him up for preschool.
She gets him a brand new outfit for the day, fussing over him until he’s all squirmy and pouty and slapping her hands away with all the grump that a four-year-old can muster.
She sends him off to daycare with ruffled hair and a wide smile and tries not to worry too much.
She’s at work when she gets a call from the school informing her that they’ve lost her son. She hurriedly lets her boss know and sweeps out of work without a backwards glance, showing up at the school just as her phone rings again and a flustered individual informs her that they’ve located him.
“I have no idea how he got out.” The frazzled teacher looks close to tears when she meets with the poor woman, giving Fievel a fierce look that promises that they will be having a talk about this.
“I din’t do anything.” Fievel pipes up mulishly, “I didn’t go nowhere, the class did.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose, and faces the teacher apologetically. After a pointed comment from a friend, she’s been vaguely looking into ADHD since her kid is like this, “I’ll have a talk with him.”
“I’ll - I’ll make sure to keep a better eye on him.” The woman looks floored that she isn’t tearing strips out of the school administration for losing her toddler. Actually when it’s phrased like that she probably should be more pissed off. But she also knows her kid and what a handful her is.
So she takes him home and sits him down.
“This can’t happen again, Fi.” She tells him, and he’s got his little arms crossed and he’s pouting with his entire body. “I mean it. I had to leave work, and you know I have to work.”
“You don’t hafta.” Fievel says harshly, “What about me?”
She sits on the couch next to him, heart heavy, “Baby, you know I have to work so that we can have things and go places.”
Her son scrabbles up on his knees and puts his hand on her arms and gives her big eyes, “I don’t need lotsa toys. An’ we don’t hafta go to the zoo.”
“Oh baby,” She pulls him into her arms and lets him snuggle into her, “I gotta work. And you gotta go to school and be good. Okay? You can’t be leaving the classroom again.”
“I din’t mean to.” Fievel sniffles, and she hugs him just a little tighter as the tears start to flow.
“It’s okay.” She murmurs into his hair, “I got you.”
To his credit, Fievel does his best. He still manages to leave the classroom somehow, seemingly whenever the teacher is looking away. No one seems to know how he does it. Emma who sits next to him exclaims that he just vanished like he went BAM and wasn’t there all of a sudden!
(Oh, the imagination of four-year-olds, the teacher thinks to herself.)
But whenever he does he seems to come back within fifteen to thirty minutes. Sometimes the teacher doesn’t even notice he’s gone before he’s knocking on the (locked) classroom door to be let back in. They don’t call his mother about the incidents anymore and the teachers nickname him Houdini with a sort of despair.
Fievel is four-and-a-half when he’s taking a walk with his mother down to the park. He’s got his little rainboots on because he always wades into the pond and he likes the slosh of the water on his feet when it goes over the top, and his little duck shirt. He’s making loud quacking noises which don’t actually sound anything like a duck but when he looks at her for approval she nods with a smile.
They’re crossing the road at the crosswalk, holding hands because they always do, when the car comes careening around the corner.
She can’t react in time, eyes widening and she’s hollering and she moves to push her son and she only has eyes for him as she places her body between him and the car and -
She watches his eyes go wide and afraid and she
and then the car clips her and she’s sent sprawling and that’s the last thing she remembers.
She wakes up in the hospital hours later with a concussion, a broken arm, several broken ribs, and a lots of scrapes. She’s lucky, they tell her. She demands to know where her son is.
Hours later, when she’s worked herself up into a right tizzy, her son sprints into the room followed shortly by some very harried looking cops and she has to haul him into the bed so that he doesn’t hurt himself getting up.
“Gentle, gentle.” She warms him, wincing when he bangs a knee into her bad ribs, “I’m a little tender at the moment, baby.”
“You got hurt!” Fievel yells at the tops of his lungs and then immediately bursts into loud and terrified tears. So she ignores her bad ribs and messed up arm and cradles him close to her making shushing noises and stroking his back until he’s cried himself out and drops off right there in the hospital bed.
She gets out of the hospital with a cast and a bill she can’t afford right now and she sits Fievel down on the couch.
She wants to write off the fact that her son literally vanished before her eyes to the concussion. But - she thinks about a locked preschool classroom and a son that has a tendency to vanish when she takes her eyes off of him and -
“Baby.” She asks, “Can you teleport?”
“What’s tell-ee-port?” Fievel asks, scrunching up his nose.
“Do you find yourself in other places without getting up and going to them?”
“Yeah.” Fievel states it so easily, like she’s dumb. “I told you so.”
She pressed her fingers to her face, “Can you do it now?”
Fievel frowns and then scrunches up his face real hard and then -
He’s gone. And then he’s opening his bedroom door and scurrying back out. He runs over and tugs at her pants eagerly, “I did it! Did I do good?”
She crouches down and ruffles his hair even though it kills her ribs, because she can’t pick him up with a broken arm. “Yeah baby,” She praises him, mind moving at an hour a minute, “You did good.”
That night she lays in her bed and watches Fievel’s chest rise and fall as he sleeps. He sprawls out like a starfish but sometimes in the night always buries himself into her side like a tick. She’s put a pillow in between them to try and spare her poor ribs, but she has doubts it will work.
Her son can fucking teleport.
That’s when she cries. Because she loves her son, but he’s a handful. She didn’t even notice. She didn’t notice that he son has a superpower. Doesn’t that make her the worst mother in the world?
Crying is a terrible idea. Her ribs are painful enough that she can’t sleep. She needs to ration her pain medication because they really can’t afford it.
How is she supposed to handle this? How is she supposed to raise a child that can vanish without a second thought? Her bright beautiful boy who loves feeding the ducks and being pushed on the swings and playing unfathomable games with his friend Emma that she can’t even begin to understand the plot of.
(She’s almost certain one of them is supposed to be a cheetah for some reason? Or a lion? There’s a lot of running involved in the game, and hiding.)
It’s a few months later when her arm is healed and her ribs are better and Fievel is turning five when everything comes crashing down. Because she doesn’t get a call from the school. She gets a call from the police.
Apparently Fievel managed to get out of the school far enough away that he got lost. He admits tearfully to her that he’s been getting further and further away when he ‘jumps’ - and it’s not his fault. He tries not to jump. But it happens whether he wants it to or not and if he keeps getting further and further away then -
She thinks of a car and a road and putting her body between death and her son. And she thinks about the fact that when he jumps, she isn’t there.
Look. She’s not stupid. She always knew that her kid wasn’t exactly a normal child.
(Hello. He’s practically a miracle. She wasn’t exactly a virgin but that doesn’t really matter when she was very suddenly nine months pregnant where she hadn’t been before.)
So she reckons that the powers have something to do with that. And who does she know that definitely has a child who was also one of the miracle babies?
(He’d mentioned he’d already acquired like, what, four kids when he came to see her. As though that was supposed to make her want to give up her kid even more.)
So she requests some vacation days (that she can’t afford) and she pulls Fievel out of preschool for a week (it’s preschool it’s not that important) and they fly over to a city where she can hopefully get some answers.
(Fievel spends the whole flight with his face pressed to the window and his plane toy clutched tightly in one hand and his stuffed dog in the other as he enthusiastically makes whooshing noises.)
And she goes up the the big mansion thing and knocks and goes inside where she smiles at Fievel and tells him to go play with the other children while she talks to Mr. Hargreeves, thank you baby.
As she clenches her hands into fists and listens to Sir Reginald Hargreeves condescend to her about her ability as a mother, Fievel enthusiastically bounces over to the kids his age who stare at him like they’ve never seen anything like him before in their life.
(“I’m Fievel!” He introduces himself loudly, “And this is Doggy! My mama is here to speak to your dad.”
“Uh. I’m Six.” A bewildered little girl says back.
Fievel blinks, “Oh! I just turned five.”
The girl giggles, “No! No I mean my name’s Six. but I’m five-years-old as well.”
“That’s a funny name.” Fievel says.
“Nuh uh.” The girl refutes, “Your name is weird. See, ‘cause we’re all numbers ‘n you’re not.”
And he’s introduced to them all. One is tall and awkward looks. Two hides behind the others a little bit. Three has her hands on her hips and she looks at him, but softens when he tells her that he likes her hair. Four is a skinny wisp of a kid, with big wide eyes and no sense of personal space. Five sticks pretty close to Four. And Six, of course, is the one who talked to him first which obviously means that they’re temporary best friends.
Temporary, because of course Emma is his best friend. ‘Cause she’s in his class and they sit near each other and play together with each other first.)
And his mother comes out to Fievel bossing the others around and them going with it, all with bewildered little expressions on their faces. Fievel is balancing on the back of the sofa next to a little girl who is holding Doggy, possibly in the middle of an evil villain speech? The little girl is solemnly petting Doggy like she’s a Bond villain at the very least.
It makes her smile, just a little bit.
“Fievel, baby, can you come here for a second?” She asks, and her son beams at him and vanishes from his seat over to by her leg where he pulls on her leg so that she’ll sweep him up into her arms.
(The children gape at him, all wide eyes and staring between them and their father like they’re shocked. And they probably are. Reginald has informed her that none of them can teleport, but they do have a variety of weird powers between them.)
“You know that you’re getting big.” She says, and she tries not to cry, “And you’re not going to be in preschool soon enough.”
“Yeah!” He enthuses, “Gonna learn real stuff!”
And that’s just like her son. Voraciously hungry for knowledge.
“Well, this is a school for very special people.” She tells him, and watches his eyes go big and round, “People who… can teleport, for example.”
Fievel considers that. And then twists around to look at the other children, “You can teleport?” He demands loudly, like it’s a betrayal of the highest form that they’ve been friends for an hour and this hasn’t been brought up. And maybe it is. She doesn’t claim to understand the intricacies of children’s hierarchy.
“Uh uh!” A little boy exclaims, frowning. “I can just throw stuff real good.”
“I’m strong.” Another little boy offers. And then proceeds to demonstrate this by picking up half the couch and sending the little girl careening onto the floor with a shout, but she gets up and dusts herself off easily enough.
“Okay.” Fievel says brightly, appeased by this somehow as he twists back to his mother expectantly.
“Okay.” She says, her mouth dry. “Well. This is a special school for special kids. It’s, uh. It’s a boarding school.”
“It means you stay here.” She tells him. “I’ll - I’ll come and see you when I can. And you can call me whenever you want. But you have to stay here.”
“Like a sleepover?” Fievel asks, scrunching his face up in confusion.
“A little bit.” Her smile feels weak and forced and she can’t even see it. “Like a lot of sleepovers all in a row. And when you wake up, you don’t need to go anywhere because you live at the school.”
“Baby…” She cards her fingers through his hair. “I know it’s scary. I don’t want you to go either - ”
“Then I don’t gotta.” Fievel says, matter of fact as he starts wiggling to get down. She hefts him up in her arms.
“Baby. Fievel. Listen to me.” She says firmly, “I can’t take care of you well enough.”
He looks at her with betrayed eyes.
“It’s not your fault. You can’t control your powers.” She tells him softly, because she loves him and she doesn’t want to give him up but - “I can’t keep you safe, baby. And the teachers can’t keep you safe. But you’ll be safe here.”
“I don’t want to.” Fievel says, loudly. In the tone which says that a tantrum is approaching.
“You’ll learn how to control your powers!” She says in a forced cheery voice.
“I’m going to school with Emma.” Fievel insists in a slightly louder voice.
“You’re already getting along great with the other kids.” She insists.
“NO.” Fievel says, at maximum volume, and then he’s gone from her arms and she’s stumbling because it’s weird to go from holding something to nothing.
“He’ll show up in a bit.” She assures Sir Hargreeves, beyond tired. He’s been watching the whole interaction and she hopes he hasn’t gotten a negative impression of her son.
If he’s able to handle six other super powered children then surely he can handle hers. No matter what he asks. No matter how difficult it was to sign over the rights to her child. He promised that she can visit Fievel on weekends whenever she wants, for however long her son wants to do so.
He’s going to keep her child safe. He won’t be running out onto streets. He’ll be able to train his powers, be able to control them, and maybe one day -
(Maybe one day she’ll get her baby back. Safe and sound in her arms and able to control his powers so she doesn’t have to worry at all.)
So she leaves, and she leaves Fievel alone. And no matter how much he screams and cries and begs, no one lets him go back to his mother. He tries to run off, tries to jump away and follow after her - but a blond woman in pristine skirts comes and retrieves him.
(He tries to jump away, but she keeps coming and finding him until he’s too tired to protest when she carries him back to his new (prison) school in her arms.)
Reginald tries to lock him in his room. He jumps out. Reginald tries to put him in time out. He jumps out. Reginald says he doesn’t get any dinner. Fievel jumps downstairs and raids the cupboards in the night.
It becomes an intense battle of wills between Sir Reginald Hargreeves and little Fievel.
Locks go on the cabinets, Fievel breaks them off by bashing them with one of the bookends he manages to snag. Reginald refuses to let Fievel play with the others. Fievel runs away again and has to be brought back by the blond lady.
(“You can call me Grace if you’re so against mom.” she had told him demurely, after he yelled himself hoarse telling her that she’s not his mother that he has a mother and that she’s so much better in every way)
Then Reginald takes Doggy away, and Fievel begrudgingly has to fall in line lest he risk his stuffed companion. One of the only links to his real life he has.
(He doesn’t even get to keep his clothes. He has to wear the stiff awful uniform that the other kids wear. It’s the absolute worst. He looks stupid but no one listens to him.)
When his mother comes to visit, Fievel is sullen and still angry with her for abandoning him. He sulks and doesn’t talk to her a lot.
He grows like this. The Umbrella Academy turns six, and then others receive names after Fievel loudly points out that having numbers for names is weird and that no one should ever trust a man who names his kids numbers it’s lazy and stupid.
So One becomes Luther and Two becomes Diego and Three becomes Allison and Four becomes Klaus and Five becomes Ben and Six becomes Vanya.
They all think it’s really funny, that they all get names instead of numbers and Five gets a number instead of a name.
He’s six and Reginald sits him down and tells him in no uncertain terns that his mother essentially sold him. That Reginald controls him. And if Five isn’t a good boy then… well. Bad boys don’t get to visit their mothers.
(Reginald finds a far more… effective way of controlling Five than a stuffed animal.)
(Good boys also don’t talk to their mothers about their training. They smile and act happy and lie because they want to keep seeing her. They don’t tell her about how scary it is, how they desperately want to come home, how maybe their mother could take all the kids because they don’t even have mothers and it isn’t fair.)
So Five grows bigger, gets new uniform, clashes with Reginald as much as he dares, and settles in to life at the academy. He sprawls across Vanya’s floor and tries to remember all the story books he read with his mother.
(There’s only grown up books in the manor that they’re expected to read. And Five likes them, he loves to learn, but - he misses storytime. He misses the wonderful books about adventure and other worlds. He misses when he felt like he was going to go on an adventure because he had powers and was special!
He doesn’t wish he’s special anymore.)
Vanya asks him once why he hangs out with her, because she’s normal. Because she doesn’t have powers.
And Five looks at her and tells her that that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. He spend years surrounded by people without powers. He tells her about his best friend Emma, who definitely didn’t have powers.
“I wish I had a best friend.” Vanya tells him, face sad and drawn and Five pulls her into the fiercest hug he can.
“You’re not my best friend,” He tells her, and she looks even sadder until he finishes it up with, “You’re my sister.”
“But you have a mother.” She says, sounding confused.
Five shrugs, “Doesn’t matter. Reginald is legally my dad, and he’s legally your dad, and so we share a dad. That makes us siblings.”
“Is a sibling better than a best friend?” Vanya asks after a long moment of silence.
Five doesn’t think so. He misses Emma. He misses his preschool. He misses his life, the life before the Academy. But Vanya looks so sad and pale that he hugs her again and says “Yeah, of course. We’re family.”
The others tolerate him in varied amounts. Luther thinks he’s dumb because he’s always mean to Reginald. Five thinks Luther is dumb, and he’s definitely right. Allison constantly bugs him for information about what she terms “the outside world” and Five has told her about birthday parties at least a dozen times and she still looks wistful and asks him to tell her about them again.
(They turn eight and Five produces a paper crown for his sister because she looked so wistful when he described Emma’s birthday tiara. Allison wears it until Reginald snaps at her to get rid of it, but Five sees her tuck it in the waistband of her skirt rather than throw it away.)
When Reginald snaps at Diego for his stutter, Five snarls and snaps back, getting between the man and his new brother and yelling because he knows that’s not how you help kids! Yelling doesn’t help! His teacher said so! And his mama!
Diego is never particularly thankful for his interference, but Five doesn’t care.
Five is nine and he jumps into the mausoleum with Klaus and holds his most fragile brother and snarls, threatens to run away. To take Klaus and just go, that they’d go to Five’s mother and she would take them away from Reginald and this place and -
Klaus always buries himself into Five’s side with his hands over his ears until the morning when Five either jumps away or glares with furious eyes at Reginald even when he’s punished after.
He’s nine when he gets into a screaming match with Diego who says that Five isn’t one of them that he has his mother and if he had the chance he would abandon them in a heartbeat.
Reginald threatens to cut off his mother’s visits if he finds Five interfering with “Number Four’s training” one more time.
Five looks at Klaus, who is his brother. Who is frail and skinny and pale with dark bags underneath his eyes.
Reginald looks satisfied because Five has always backed down before when his mother is threatened. It’s his ultimate trump card.
Five is so very very tired of his mother being used against him. And he loves Klaus. And these kids, they are his siblings. (He tries not to think about the fact that next year he’ll have officially been here just as long as he was with his mother. He hates it.)
Reginald finds Five in the mausoleum with cobwebs in his hair and his brother against his side and a glare on his face and Reginald forbids his next visit with his mother.
Five keeps jumping into the mausoleum. Klaus looks at him with wonder in his eyes and Five pries up the floorboard that hides Doggy (because even after Reginald found a better way to threaten him, he remembers) and cries himself to sleep.
“You chose us.” Ben states instead of asks, very quietly, when they’re studying together.
“My mother can look after herself.” Five says stiffly, not taking his eyes off the page. “Klaus can’t.”
Ben doesn’t say anything more, but Five feels eyes on his back for a good long while after that.
When Five is ten, they debut for the first time. They go to the bank, and stop the robbers.
(“We can’t send Ben in,” Five insists, “They’ll die!”
“They’re robbers.” Luther scoffs, crossing his arms.
“Doesn’t matter. They’re still people.” Five insists. “You definitely aren’t supposed to kill people. It’s a law.”
“Shut up, Five.” Diego says grouchily, “We just need to get this over with.”
“Dad’ll be pissed off if we let any of them escape.” Allison says, and the whole group goes quiet as they consider their father’s disappointed fury.
“I’ll go.” Ben mutters reluctantly, and Five tries to meet his eyes but the other boy slips into the vault before he can. The group stands silently as they listen to the screams and watch the blood splatter.
“This is wrong.” Five whispers.
“This is how it is.” Klaus whispers back, sounding defeated.
They don’t talk about it, after.)
Five smiles for the camera and lets Klaus lean on his shoulder and steals a thing of tissues from a reporter’s purse and uses them to wipe more of the blood from Ben’s face with a tight smile and the world goes on.
(He doesn’t know his mother watched. Doesn’t know the fury she flew into. Her son was supposed to be safe - he was supposed to be at a school. Why the fuck was he stopping a bank robbery like some kind of little child soldier?
She becomes a problem. And Reginald can be awfully practical about problems.)
Five is ten-and-a-half and he hasn’t seen his mother in a year and a half. And he’s tired and he’s rebellious so one day he sneaks out and finds a pay phone and the only reason he remembers his number is because his mother made him memorize it and quizzed him frequently.
(He’d gotten lost so often from wandering away and accidentally jumping. His rules were to approach either women with children or people who worked wherever and ask them to call her.)
Except the call can’t connect. Disconnected number.
Five frowns, and end up doing some research which involves massive lies to the library, and then he has a picture of a newspaper obituary in his hands and a hole in his heart.
Car accident, the paper says.
Five crumbles it up, and then smoothes it out again because there’s a picture of his mother next to the article and Five doesn’t have any pictures of his mother. So he hides it under the floorboards next to Doggy and cries himself to sleep and then he gets up and does his training and doesn’t talk about it.
He doesn’t tell his siblings. Not even when Luther blows up and calls him a stuck up brat who can go cry to his mommy if he think it’s so bad here. Not even when Klaus jokes about running away with a cracking voice in the mausoleum, not really jokes at all. Not even when Vanya asked him for another of his mother’s stories and he started crying in the middle of them. He’d just told her it had been a hard day of training.
(Vanya never asks him questions if he mentions training. He feels bad about lying to her and using it as an excuse but…)
He waits for Reginald to tell him. He waits, because surely someone would tell him that his mother is dead. He’s her son.
Reginald never tells him. He tells Five that he’s bad and still hasn’t earned back his visiting privileges. Five hates him so much. So so much.
Five is twelve-years-old and he is sprawled across Vanya’s bed after a particularly brutal day of training. Reginald has been trying to overtrain Five the day before he puts Klaus in the mausoleum overnight so that Five will be too tired to jump in. It doesn’t work, but it’s an exhausting enough punishment.
“I wish I didn’t have powers.” He tells Vanya.
“No you don’t.” Vanya says back fiercely, fists clenching in her blankets, “Not having powers sucks.”
Five tilts his head and looks at her, “No.” He says gently, “No one knew I had powers. And I was loved. I was so loved, Vanya.”
“Stop it.” Vanya says, face tight. “If you were so loved, why did she leave you here?”
And Five opens his mouth and nothing comes out, because it hurts.
“You don’t wish you had powers, Vanya.” Five tells her finally, and there are tears in his eyes but he’s looking at the ceiling not at her so it doesn’t matter. “You wish you had a family. A proper family. Not this - this stupid academy. I hate it. I hate it here.”
“Don’t call it stupid.” Vanya says, “It’s not fair. It’s not fair that you have a family and we just - we just have the academy, okay? So don’t call it stupid.”
“We deserve better. We deserve a childhood.”
“We have a childhood.” Vanya scowls, “Just because it’s not as nice as yours was or whatever - ”
“This is my childhood, Vanya.” Five snarls, propping himself up to face her, “I know you all think I’m so spoiled and - and I’m not one of you or whatever, but I came here when I was five. My memories of before - Vanya they’re fading. I couldn’t pick Emma out of a crowd if I tried. I’ve been here for years longer than I was ever there, and it’s not fair.”
“You still have a mother - ”
“No I don’t.” Five cuts her off, his voice ice. Vanya’s eyes are wide, startled by his tone. “Vanya, look around you. When was the last time I saw my mother?”
Vanya’s lip wobbles as she realized she can’t remember.
“It’s been three years.” Five tells her, eyes hard and cold and angry, “She’s gone. I made a choice, and I chose you. I chose the academy. Because despite everything, I love you guys. You’re my siblings, even if sometimes you don’t act like it.”
“No.” Five cuts her off, hopping off the bed and shaking his head, “I’m going to - I’m going to go to my room. You get some more practice in or something. I think Pogo picked out this piece and you know what he’s like.”
He doesn’t let her get a word in before he jumps up to his room.
Five is twelve when he stands in front of Reginald and says “I’m not using my powers anymore.”
“You have an assignment.” Reginald says severely.
“No.” Five refuses politely, and his family watches with wide eyes from the sidelines. The only family he has left. “I’ve got control now. I’ve decided I’m going to be normal now.”
Reginald locks Klaus is the mausoleum early and watches with unimpressed eyes as Five picks the lock and strolls in.
Reginald handcuffs Five to a rail. Five plucks a paperclip from his sock and picks those as well.
Reginald locks Five in a room from the outside and tells him that he’ll get dinner when he jumps out.
Five opens the window and shimmies down the drainpipe and has to be picked up at Griddy’s where he’s charmed the owner out of a free doughnut and hot chocolate with a sob story about school bullies to explain his grubby appearance (the shimmy down the drainpipe hadn’t exactly been graceful. or clean.)
He locks Five in the basement in a weird room that’s soundproofed. Five tries to hunger strike but - it’s so quiet. He can hear the sound of his own heartbeat. He can’t stand it. It’s like the room was made specifically to torture him.
(He looks at the little bed in the room. The sheets were dusty. This room has been around for a very long time. He wonders who it’s for, Allison, perhaps? She’s always been fairly obedient, maybe this is the reason why.)
He jumps out on the second day, and doesn’t talk to anybody. Reginald is smug like the cat the got the canary, and Five hates it.
Then Five is messing around, and something slots into place, and he realizes - oh, he might be able to time travel.
Once he figures it out, he’s desperate. He’ll save his siblings that way. He’ll take the to a time where Reginald can’t get them. They’ll be out of reach.
(maybe - maybe they can travel back in time. maybe he can save his mother -)
Five is thirteen-years-old when he time travels for the first time. When he runs out of the house like he’s done so very many times before, except he’s angry and frustrated and he’d tried to bait Reginald into telling him his mother’s dead again and he hadn’t and -
Five jumps. It’s snowing. He did it. He jumps again, laughing. He jumps again -
He tries to jump, but his power fizzles out. He calls for his siblings. No one answers. He finds the academy - rubble.
So Five lives in the apocalypse. He tries to go home, he does. He buries his siblings as well as he can. He wanders around gathering food and textbooks. He picks up a mannequin and names it Dolores.
(He searches the rubble of the academy, but he can’t find Doggy or the picture of his mother. Either they were found and removed years ago, or they’re buried beneath too much rubble. Five doesn’t know.)
He takes Dolores on a road trip. He tells her it’s to see if they can find any people, any survivors.
he arrives in a graveyard and traces his mother’s name with trembling fingers. this is the first time he’s been to visit her grave. this is the first time he’s seen her in four years.
So he survives. He grows up, desperately clinging to life by his fingernails. He does complex calculations, wondering what his mother would think of him now.
He meets the Handler. He becomes an assassin.
(he’s glad his mother is dead, so that she will never see what he has become.)
And then one day, he gets home. He falls into the courtyard, and looks at the faces of his grown up siblings and -
(he’s so tired of losing people. he’s so tired of being taken away from his family.)
He hops to Griddy’s, he gets into a fight with assassins, he cuts a tracker from his arm, and he goes to Vanya’s apartment.
And he’s Five, but he’s also Fievel. And somewhere inside he’s still that same kid who loved his mother and wanted her to fix thing, who trusted her even though she didn’t have powers. His mother wasn’t ordinary, and he’s never seen Vanya as such.
So he asks her for her help.
(Later, she tells him that they hunted down his mother when they were fifteen, because they’d been absolutely convinced he’d just run away and gone back to herno matter how much Reginald insisted he was dead.
That’s when they found out about her death. Her date of death.
“I’m so sorry, Five.” Vanya says, tears in her eyes as the whole family shuffles and looks away.
And Five puts his hand on Vanya’s. “I knew, Van.”
Her head snaps up. Klaus blurts out a what in the background.
Five shrugs, “I’ve known since we were ten. It’s okay.”)
Five sends Vanya to investigate the eye.
(He asks Klaus - “Have you - ”
“No.” Klaus says instantly, shaking his head. He knows what Five is asking.
Five considers that answer, then shrugs. He’s not sure if it would be better or worse for his mother to be one of the ghosts that tormented Klaus. “After I - after, did dad get worse?”
“Yeah.” Klaus says simply, because it’s true.
Five hadn’t been there to jump into the mausoleum and try and shield his brother from invisible enemies.
“I’m sorry.” Five says quietly.
Vanya comes back and the eye hasn’t been made yet. Five swears, loudly and at length.
And maybe in another world Five snaps at Klaus and denies Vanya and goes off on his own and ignores Allison but -
In this one, Five was the only kid who not only didn’t care that Vanya was ‘ordinary’ but actively challenged her on it. Who told her in no uncertain terms that he was jealous of her.
(It’s a very different book that comes out.)
In this world, Five shielded Klaus and challenged Reginald. He jumped into the mausoleum and hugged his brother and, most importantly, he chose Klaus over his mother. And Klaus knows that. Klaus has… a lot of loyalty to Five, and even though he’d though for a long time that Five abandoned him… he knows better now and he feels - he feels guilty for doubting his brother. That guilt may or may not manifest in being a bit clingy.
In this world, Allison thought Five was fascinating because he’d been in the real world. He’d been to real school. She remembers him telling her about his mother, about trips to the zoo and the museums and the birthday parties, about sleepovers and playdates and parks.
(She has a daughter, and she takes Claire to the children’s museums and to zoos. She tries her best for her daughter and hears Five’s voice telling stories in her ears. She does her best to be a good mother, she tries so hard.)
It’s a slightly more united family that stands against the apocalypse.
But there’s always something with them, isn’t there?
“Don’t you know?” The Handler says, with her perfect lipstick smile, “I don’t have to win, I just have to take you out of the game. Your weak spot has always been the same, hasn’t it?”
“You don’t have shit.” Five says, unimpressed. “My family is fine.”
“Are you so sure about that, Fievel?”
(Five already chose his siblings over his mother the first time. The choice is… much more difficult the second time.)
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