She hears him before she sees him which is unusual; Five had a sharp mouth but he could be eerily silent when he walked and even without teleportation he would usually sneak up on them. She doesn't remember that about him and wonders where he picked it up. But there were a lot of things she doesn't remember about Five, ways he'd changed that didn't fit with the ideal of him she'd carried in her mind for the past seventeen years.
His voice came drifting out of the kitchen, soft and surprisingly reverent. "-don't know what else we'd do in that case." A pause, "Yeah, you're right."
She peeks around the corner, feeling a bit foolish. He's at the coffee pot, pouring two fingers of bourbon in his cup. She wants to tell him he's too young for coffee, but then again he's too young for bourbon as well. It probably made them bad siblings, letting a thirteen year old drink. But when had any of them ever been good siblings to each other?
She brushes away the pang of guilt that thought excites and keeps quiet, watching as he pours a second cup and brings it over to the mangled, one-armed mannequin he carried with him everywhere. Dolores. She supposes it's not that far of a stretch, all things considered. Guys did tend to go for women who reminded them of their mothers, hadn't she read that somewhere? She tries to pretend she's not eavesdropping as he begins speaking to it again in that gentle tone, so different than the biting condescension he reserved for the rest of the world. He must not know she's there; he didn't usually talk to Dolores when other people were around. At least he wasn't that far gone.
She takes the opportunity to study her brother, this almost-stranger who had replaced him. He looked the same, and that's what made it so weird. He had Five's face and eyes and even some of the mannerisms she remembers. But he was different, so very, very different from that hotheaded, rash boy who'd ran out the front door one day and never came home.
He didn't laugh anymore.
It wasn't the most obvious difference but to her at least it was the most profound. Five had always been prone to outbursts of temper but he'd been equally quick to joke and smile and laugh. She flickers through recent memory and concludes that she hasn't seen him smile since he's been back. Not a real one anyway. Not the kind that reached his eyes or smoothed the knife-sharp edges of his face. The smiles he gave now were cold, full of bitterness and dark confidence and she didn't like it. No thirteen year old should be able to smile like that, and then she reminds herself that he isn't thirteen anymore.
"My consciousness is fifty-eight. My body apparently is thirteen again."
She hadn't believed that at first but the more she hangs around her brother the more she's beginning to. It wasn't anything definable, just a feeling he carried about with him. An aura of stoic cynicism that made her feel like she was talking to someone twice her age. She wonders about that sometimes. She knows what happened in the intervening years in a vague sort of way, but he was closed-mouthed about the details. He was closed-mouthed about a lot of things these days.
"Good morning Allison," Five says casually. He doesn't bother turning around.
She jumps guiltily. "Sorry. I just- came downstairs for breakfast."
"Hmm," he says, having already dismissed her. She decides she's tired of that and wonders if there's anything they could talk about, any way she could catch his attention without immediately getting shut down. What did you talk about with a brother who was twenty-eight years older than you and looked like a child? As far as she could tell he didn't have any hobbies or interests, none that he wanted to share anyway. Just him and his...doll.
"So how did you two meet?" she hears herself ask because she's been hanging around her siblings too long and apparently stupidity was contagious.
He studies her for a moment as if trying to puzzle out whether or not she's serious and then surprisingly, miraculously, he actually talks to her. "I found her while I was ransacking a partially collapsed department store," he says, voice casual. For a moment she thinks that's all she's going to get but after a brief pause he continues. "I was climbing through some rubble when one of the remaining walls fell on me. I was half pinned, it took awhile to work myself free. Dolores was there and she kept me company. I invited her back to my place afterwards and well, the rest is history." He flashes her one of those tight, sharp smiles and takes a long drink of coffee.
There are about thirty questions she wants to ask but settles for one. "How long was 'awhile'?"
Five shrugs. "A day or two I suppose. I didn't really keep track."
She at least has the grace to close her mouth. A day or two.
"Why didn't you just-" she makes a flickering motion with her fingers, "-blink away?"
He sighs, as if explaining to a small child. "It takes effort, and I wasn't strong enough. Not at first."
She thinks there's an awful lot he isn't telling her. Unfortunately she has a good imagination and those few brief words send it careening down frightening paths. Five trapped under a pile of rubble, trying desperately to free himself and too weak to teleport away from the danger. Five, sick with hunger and thirst, dragging himself back to wherever it was he called home. Five at thirteen years old, hurt and alone and afraid, clinging to a painted-on smile. For a moment instinct urges her to reach for him, offer comfort to that lost, frightened little boy. It's a mother's instinct, one she has to crush down to nothing because he may still be lost in some undefinable way but he wasn't a little boy any more and he'd only resent her for treating him like one.
"I don't know what to say," is what she manages.
Five scoffs lightly, though she gets the feeling it's aimed at himself rather than her. "Well, if I'd been thinking more clearly I'd have moved faster."
"Why weren't you thinking clearly?" she asks, happy at least that he's started talking. But as usual, happiness in the Hargreeves household was a fleeting thing.
"Where's Diego?" he asks instead, and she knows the moment of camaraderie is over; she won't get anymore secrets out of him today. How do I reach you? She wonders if he even wants to be reached. Wonders how much of her brother really came back from the future.
"Five-" she begins, wanting to say all kinds of desperate things. She wants to tell him that he isn't alone anymore, that she's an actress and knows a performance when she sees one, and he doesn't have to act like nothing's wrong. She wants him to tell her what happened. She wants to know why he doesn't laugh anymore. She wants to tell him she loves him. "-I don't know," she says instead, because they were all victims to their programming. "He and Klaus took the car."
"Ah." He stands up, taking Dolores in his arms and she starts to reach out, her hand itching to close the distance between them. He shouldn't need to find comfort in the cold plastic arm(s) of a mannequin.
He gives her a withering glance that stops her cold, "Don't even think about it" and her hand falls. She realizes with an all too rare flash of intuition that he disliked being touched.
He leaves a few moments later, off doing whatever fifty-six year old men did when their bodies were thirteen again. She thinks about Dolores and decides she probably better off not knowing.