AN: Don't own anything. Allusions only to Five/Delores, for obvious reasons, thanks. If anyone gets annoyed by using the whole title 'Number Five' it's just for a little while.
just testing to see how this goes, want to play around with it, tell me if you like and what could be improved. If I keep going, it's gonna def be a Fix-It Fic and possibly wildly AU. Reference to the show only. Cross posted on AO3, same name. Enjoy, not edited.
-Chapter 1-
The first of October, 1989, is a very special and unquestionably memorable day.
It is so special and memorable in fact, that in a video of Top 10 Special and Memorable Dates in Universe History, it ranks as Two. Sitting just above The Big Bang, which remains firm in its indignancy at being outvoted down to Three. Rank One, of course, is, indisputably, when the internet was invented.
But why is this day so special, memorable and three complete thesauri of more synonyms? Because Delores Ray was born, of course!
It was in the living room of her childhood house, right there on the old, wooden floorboards that her mother gave birth to her. Ordinarily, this would not have been remarkable in any sort of fashion as homebirth–and childbirth in general–is no new feat. If anything, it is probably so last century in some places many, many lightyears away from Earth. But that is neither here nor there, for what makes this date so exceptional is that when the day had started Delores' mother had not been pregnant at all!
Twelve hours prior to her first breath, her mothers' stomach had been as flat as a plastic bottle on the freeway run over by five consecutive six-wheelers. It was so flat in fact you could have easily griddled an egg on her stomach without the sticky poultry mess slipping either way, provided it was a hot day and there was a sufficient amount of tin foil and mirrors on hand.
On a swollen baby bump, the eggs hold for a few, precarious seconds before inevitably sliding down to the sternum where it becomes a sad and unfortunate mess. And truly, the loss of eggs always is.
So imagine the surprise her mother and seven aunts felt when, having woken up to an expectedly normal day, she soon found herself sporting the labour of what should have been nine months wrapped up into a sudden hot second. Shocking doesn't even begin to cover it.
It's awfully convenient that one of Delores' many aunts was an obstetrician at time or else they would have rushed the twenty-three-year-old mother-to-be, to the hospital. Regrettably, the blood stain is still in the wood flooring. It's hidden with a well-placed rug.
Had it not been for the mad skillz of Aunt Cecilia Ray, a man of the name Reginald Hargreeves could very well have persuaded Laura, Delores' mother, to let him buy bay Delores off of her for fifty dollars. A rip-off, if Delores had a say. She's worth at least a good hundred–a good hundred stacks of a hundred-dollar bills stacked in the hundreds.
A week later after her unusual birth, worldwide television aired news that the previously mentioned man, Reginald Hargreeves, also known as the billionaire to ever most billionaire in Earth's entire history and based solely on the production of umbrellas of all things, had adopted seven children who, just as she, had been born on the October 1st, 1989 at exactly the twelfth hour.
Laura and her seven sisters thought him mad, just as every other woman who knew the very specific type of hell that being a mother was. What old man such as he could successfully raise seven children on his own? And why when he had previously shown no inclination to such a task before? Every parent with even a fibre of common sense was sent into a tizzy; nothing would ever be done, however, and any protest and petition made in concern for the welfare of those children were easily paid off.
Despite this unnatural phenomenon of Virgin Mary births, it would not be until years later when the world would realise the true oddity of such an occurrence. For not only were these children born in such peculiar circumstances that immediately prompted international scientific, religious and political debate, but they were also granted abilities beyond what science could have predicted or ever possibly begin to fathom.
No, this was not the seven comings of Christ in the modern era. And if you wanted to get semantics right, technically it would be the forty-three comings of Christ. Unknown to Sir Hargreeves, although he did have some well-founded hypothesis' that would never be proven until he was dead and gone and God could giggle smugly at his dour expression like the pre-teen girl of ambiguous ethnic identity she was–he'd only collected seven children of the forty-three that had been born on this extremely special and memorable date.
Delores is not one of those children.
And thank God for that. What would life have been like had he found her scent, sniffing it out like a broke college student in search of a job to pay off their rent and clear off their debt? Not very good, she imagines. Delores hadn't the heart for killing things, much less people, no matter the type of criminal they were. The Umbrella Academy would have left her bitter and broken, brewing cynicism and world-weariness into a little flail of a girl all for the power she possessed.
The only concerns a twelve-year-old should have is whether there will be enough jam in her sandwich to rival the dryness of off-brand peanut butter, or if she'll still get any dessert after angering every authority figure in the household when she stupidly shaved her left eyebrow off and thought that cutting some terrible bangs was a genius idea to hide it.
Twelve-year-old children should not be so confident in their ability to de-escalate a bank robbery, and neither should they have been so casual in taking justice into their own hands, killing the perpetrators themselves instead of letting the system sort it out. Whilst the Umbrella Academy had bad men's blood on their hands, the only blood Delores had was the icing from a gingerbread man. She needn't live in the Hargreeves home to know that it was not a place to thrive healthily or to thrive at all.
The uproar that had shaken the world in 1989 rose again as everyone questioned the necessity and dangers of superhero children. Delores knows in her heart that out there, from the rural land to the suburbs to the cities and every back alley in between a manhunt had taken place, desperate searches for children with capabilities that belied their tiny bodies. How many were shunned because of their inexplainable birth? Or killed? She wonder's today how many are left.
The power they could have held–what terrible havoc could have been wrought upon the world if they were raised in the hands of someone morally unaligned? The Umbrella Academy today is fractured and gone, a result from their upbringing she's sure.
Delores is lucky–her mother and all her aunts could have sent her away or left her somewhere that she would bother no one until she passed quietly. But they all have hearts, and so they raised her. And raised her well they did.
Despite the oddity of her birth, they kept her and fed her, nurtured her and taught her. And why wouldn't they? She was only a child.
By the time Delores was twelve they'd made a genius out of her–someone kind-hearted who cared, but not innocent or naïve to the wrongdoings in the world. Someone who didn't need the eye of the world on them to do a good deed.
An individual with an intelligent head on their shoulders, methodological and morally right. She could be a Pope, except more female, younger, and with a role that actively touched the sick and in pain, the hopeless and lost–not a puppet or spokesperson that preached but the missionary itself. The working hand.
Delores Ray is her name.
Sweet, little Delores who carried an encyclopedia's worth of medical and scientific knowledge in her head and had finished home-schooling by the time she'd turned fifteen.
No, her power–and she had one for she born on that fateful day–was not soaking up knowledge like a quality paper towel. Instead, she'd been blessed with the ability to heal.
Delores is a literal miracle worker.
Except, only to herself. How whack is that? How useless? That's the side of effect of being able to instinctually heal yourself no matter the degree of severity. It works wonder on your own physiology but without proper guidance is a literal death sentence for anyone with even so much as a paper cut. Her Aunt Febe would know. Cough, cough. Ahem.
Best leave it to qualified doctors who actually know what they're doing. Which is why Delores aspired to be a doctor, naturally. There's no magic in her ability, only science. And it's more than just simple healing. She's no wizard.
Magic wouldn't know what to do with the tiny cells in her body, trying to set up broken tissues like it were a blind date. Magic can certainly be valiant, but the thing is, is that magic doesn't know these cells very well, for they're only work colleagues and not good friends, but magic is a bit stupid and not entirely rational and so has the brilliant idea to set these cells up anyways despite the reality that they are very toxic for each other and can only lead to tragedy should they combine. It's like a Shakespeare tragedy. Sort of. Not really. But it's still a tragedy.
Delores tried it once. There's a rosebush in the garden where Brother Roberta lies, may his young soul rest in peace. In life he'd been a little bit dumb and without common sense, but Delores had raised the little poodle, so it was to be expected. It couldn't be helped that her first instinct upon finding the dog severely injured was to assault him with a want of good health.
He died under her hands. It went wrong–Delores had no idea what she was doing and what she was growing, only that she wanted it fixed. But it went too far and within a matter of days, he was gone. She'd been absolutely heartbroken. But that didn't stop her from using her power. Rather than abhorring and blaming it and its shitty sense of health, Delores took it upon herself to take her education more seriously, lest it happen it again.
Hence it left her deeply morose to discover that she could not, in fact, become a doctor. Not because she couldn't get the grades–which she did, has it not been mentioned that Delores is a genius?–or that any university would not accept her–how ridiculous, they would be piling at her door just to experience the privilege of her feet walking through their campus grounds and buying overpriced coffee–and with the combined help of her mother and seven aunts the student debt acquired from medical school wasn't as daunting to her as it would be to any regular person in the world.
It was and still is none of these things. No. That would be too easy. Those things, with a lot of time and effort and dedication, can be achieved. Eventually. But you'd think that aging is something that could be fixed with time, right? Hah.
Disgustingly, the power that chilled and watched tv in her veins and which so many people covet is what keeps Delores tied to her childhood home. When she should have appeared an eager twenty-something year old ready to sacrifice her soul and move out the house to live underneath the desks in medical school, she instead appeared as a gangly fifteen-year-old that was woefully cursed with a face that could not be passed off near any legal age anywhere.
No amount of makeup and more mature fashion trends could fix this problem either.
Alas, Delores seems to have developed a terrible case of immortality. At least, she thinks so. She hasn't quite died yet to lend any validity to such a hypothesis, and she'd rather not any time soon. Good thing it's not contagious. It appears to be restricted to her and her only; for reasons that are beyond any logical thinking, her science voodoo is of the mind that fifteen is peak healthiness and the age of prime condition, keeping her forever in that godless state of an awkward high schooler. It has and will continue to ruin Delores' life.
Thank the modern world for online university. Medical school is out of her reach for the foreseeable future, but with some good strings and a bit of hacking–thank you, Aunt Palmira, for your wonderful if slightly shady prowess with technology–she needn't have to show up to a single class in person, for everything was done through super-cool-awesome-powers of the internet, yeah!
And when Delores finally graduated with a degree in medical science, she was sitting snugly on the family couch whilst her aunts devised a plan to not only source out every medical textbook and journal they could get their hands on but to open an underground clinic for anyone and everyone in need.
Why spend an inordinate amount of money for heavy drugs and useless palliatives when she could take a crack at the sickly? Delores like to think herself a humble individual, but she won't lie–she's basically the best goddamned doctor in this entire world.
The only shortcoming is that she can't legally give any of her patient's vaccines. Of course, it rankles her that any cures or scientific discoveries she makes can't be published in her name, only sent in anonymously with loads of documentation and evidence as proof, but only a bit. So long as the message gets out there, which is more important.
It's not a job she works for the pay, but because Delores has grown up to believe that this is the right thing to do. She knows it's the right thing to do; is it so hard to believe that people deserve to live their lives unplagued by illness that she can cure? If she can change their lives for the better, why on Earth would she keep it to herself?
Selfishness is reserved for eating the last brownie slice because she doesn't want her Aunt Nina to eat it, even if her stomach is about to burst into her abdominal cavity–not withholding treatment to people who need it.
This is where Delores finds herself today.
It's 2019, she's twenty-nine years old in a child's body, her childhood home turned into an unregistered clinic available at any time and every day of the week.
It's a good life, to say the least.
Most patients come by day so that when evening hits Delores is cheerfully and blessedly free.
You know what that means? That's right, it's Party Tim–!
No. No, it's not. It's Science Time! Which technically can be considered Party Time, but only if you break out the bacterial cultures and start dancing the correct choreography to, We Got The Beat. Those are the conditions–the only conditions to enter her lab and join the fun. It is a must. Her Aunt Nina, bless her, still occasionally sends Delores the dirty look when she recalls how Delores bared her entrance into the evil science lair (AKA, the basement) because she wouldn't break out into dance.
Smiling to herself Delores dances around her kitchen, singing in an ugly pitch but still grooving as she pulls out the whipped cream in a can, chocolate shavings and a jug of milk, placing them orderly atop the counter. She takes that extra second to align them neatly against the edge.
The coffee machine isn't a fancy-smance high quality and beyond expensive type, all branded and whatnot, but it does its job well. Rather than taking the neatly packaged styrofoam cups for patients to have a drink while waiting, she pulls out her favourite mug decorated in colourful rabbits. She's had this mug for ten years. It has served her well and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
It's as she puts her mug down ready to pour out a good cup, the doorbell rings.
Delores sighs.
Of course. Of course.
She would never turn away someone in need, but some nights she would greatly like to just stow herself away in her basement and consort with the dead her experiments. Research can wait but she hates to put it off.
Reluctantly pulling away from the kitchen, her feet pad silently against the white tiles and onto the worn, wooden flooring of the living room turned waiting room.
Whoever it is knocking–they're impatient, rapping not hard but relentlessly after ringing twice more. Delores hopes this isn't another injured criminal. They have an irritating tendency to make her a hostage within her own home, and while that wouldn't necessarily cause major concern because any damage she takes will ultimately heal, it's rather pressing to have a hurt and trigger-happy idiot making sharp and unreasonable demands when there are other patients–and not to mention her family–currently present.
Worse yet when there are children.
Thank whichever higher power there is that tonight, for all intents and purposes is a completely ordinary Tuesday night, her mother and Aunt's Donna, Cecilia and Marissa are having a night out bowling. They'd invited Delores out of courtesy sake but had not-so-secretly hoped she'd decline. And for good reason too–not only is Delores the King and Queen of bowling, but also the bishops, knights, rooks, and pawns. They would have been decimated.
Without checking the peephole, she undoes the multiple chains and slide locks, twists several knobs and lastly turns the key twice to open the door.
It isn't usually in use; the side door is the one that's always jingling the bell, facing the alleyway like it is. The whole point of managing an underground clinic is to be out of the public eye which the front door isn't. It's not often that someone comes by that way but it's not a hard mistake to make because, not gonna lie, the alley does look pretty dodgy and not a place you'd go to get your ailments checked out.
Delores personally thinks that the dirty pavement and scruffy bricks add to the aesthetic. She could do without the trash though.
With some slight creaking, the door swings and she pokes her head out.
It's a boy.
Upon seeing her, he smiles wide, forming dimples in his cheeks. "Hello."
Her first thought is where are his parents? He's alone and wearing what looks like a Catholic schoolboy uniform, with the knee socks and everything, and although her height his lowered slightly to peek behind when she bends around the door, he can't be any taller than her nose.
"Hello?"
She can't clearly see the school symbol on his blazer, but it doesn't look like any belonging to the private schools in the area. And Delores knows a lot about the schools in this area, considering she's had at least three patients from each school. There's a terrible epidemic of bullies–if only it was something she could cure in a way that didn't completely rely on an individual's sense of right and wrong.
"Delores, is it?"
She blinks, surprised and suddenly suspicious. "Yes, that's me. Do I know you?" the only people that know her name is her mother and aunts. Every patient since the opening of this clinic either calls her a simple "Doctor" or "Eight"; a meagre attempt at trying to maintain a semblance of privacy and security.
"No, but I know you." How mysterious. Her interest is piqued. He gestures inside. "May I?"
Oh, hell. Why not? It doesn't look like he's wearing a silicone mask in order to hide his hideous, perverted nature underneath so he can fool Delores, gain her trust, enter her home, knock her out and then rob and kidnap her.
She might get hurt–although she doubts this–but she'll heal. Besides, he's what, thirteen? What can he do? Delores is a doctor (maybe not technically and legally but still), as if she'd turn him away. No matter how suspicious he makes her.
"You may," Delores says, graciously, and leans back so he can enter.
"You've a lovely home." Once inside, he pauses, gaze stuck to framed paintings hanging on the wall. They're no masterpieces–finger paintings rarely are, but the abstract quality born from her child mind always enchants the older Delores. She'd been a world of her own back then, home-schooled and without friends, only the company of a poodle and her mother and aunts.
Brushing by, Delores leads him to the kitchen. "Thank you. Would you like a drink–oh."
Outside, the night had shrouded him in shadows; the low, yellow lamplight had only caught his outline, and the ceiling lights inside had glanced his face. But in the kitchen, she can see him with clarity, and that little umbrella sewed into his blazer is telling.
There's a boy who disappeared seventeen years ago, standing in her kitchen, and he doesn't look a day over thirteen.
Delores is struck. Immediately, she wonders if this is why he'd run away. Because he, too, is stuck as a perpetual teenager. And rather than stay at home under the dreadful eye of Reginald Hargreeves had instead chosen to leave.
She wouldn't blame him. If it were Delores, she would've taken off without a word as well.
"Number Five." She doesn't know what to say. What does one do when a missing person–who knows her, might she add, and she suspects in more ways than just her name–unexpectedly shows up at your door? Delores doesn't know. So, she lets a healthy dose of professionalism wash over her because it's always been easier to interact with others as their doctor and not their friend. "I don't understand. Are you hurt?"
He stuffs his hands in his blazer pockets in a casual move. Too casual. "What gave me away? The umbrella? It's always the umbrella."
Caution is put aside in favour of stepping closer, she scans his form. His forearm catches her eye like how the auto-targeting system in a video game snaps to the nearest target; or when someone trips in public and yells like they've been personally assaulted by Satan himself.
It's stained dark–it's not growing but Delores isn't confident in the assumption that he clumsily spilt water or juice. Number Five doesn't strike her as a person that would do anything clumsy. Or drink juice. Sniffing lightly, a vague, tangy waft meets her senses. Blood.
"You are hurt," she says, and reaches forward, pausing just before her gloved fingers–she keeps them in her pocket–make contact; an unspoken request for permission.
He gives it.
Gently, she rolls the blazer sleeve up, unsure of what she'll find. Delores hopes it's not a bullet. They're trickier to heal than stab wounds, but if it is, the arm is a positively better target than the abdominal or chest cavity.
Blessedly, it isn't a bullet wound. But it's not a stab either; it looks self-inflicted. Delores bades her growing curiosity away. She tries not to pry into the lives of her patients, but she can't help it when they share bits of their life stories with her. Number Five, although this has quickly become an unusual and most definitely surreal experience, deserves the same courtesy.
She hums softly and sends a wave of her power over it. In her mind's eye, an image of the incised wound is conjured. She sees the cells inside, different types with different specialties working conjunction to repair the damage and prevent infection. Delores can name all of them and knows what they do; without her help new tissue and skin will grow until the initial wound will disappear, leaving naught but a scar in place.
She can clean it out and stitch the skin together with absorbable sutures and wrap it nicely or use adhesive tapes instead. Alternatively, she can do it with her power, encouraging the already natural healing process to quicken in controlled conditions, allowing the cells do the work themselves, or she can do it manually.
"It's not deep," she says, looking up. "I assure you that won't be dying anytime soon."
He meets her eyes confidently. "Wasn't planning on it."
"You have two options," Delores says and starts to lay them both out. The percentage of patients that are comfortable with her power against those that are more inclined to natural rehabilitation is a fifty-fifty split. Sometimes she gets repeat patients–every time they visit, she informs them of both options. Access to one or the other is not something she would ever withhold.
She's barely spoken a sentence when Number Five tells her to use her power.
"I've never said no before," he says.
"How is that, exactly?" she asks. "I've never met you in my life. I think I would remember if I did."
Yes, Delores would certainly remember if she had met a missing superhero.
Number Five doesn't smile so much as he smirks. It's both completely natural and entirely too adult–if such a thing were possible–looking for such a young face. It suddenly strikes her that, for all that he looks like a thirteen-year-old boy, he doesn't act like one. And without realising it, Delores hasn't been treating him like one either. Yes, her initial thought had been that he might've been like her, physically frozen as a teenager, but as far as Delores can recall Number Five was famous only for his spatial teleportation.
This conversation has lasted for all of five minutes and yet she'd naturally fallen into the familiarity of attending older patients or bantering with her aunts.
"You would, wouldn't you," Number Five says, knowingly. He unexpectedly knocks her temple with his free knuckles, a gesture done with such familiarity that it leaves Delores blinking, startled. "all of it trapped up here, moving in circles like a carousel. Black pony when you were twelve, right?"
Delores decides that she does not like this–not at all. Her curiosity driven by the mysterious nature of his appearance quickly takes a turn for uncomfortable. But as much as she wants him out of her house, she hasn't healed his wound yet.
And Delores was raised better than that. She is nothing if not polite and, although confronted with the unsettling knowledge that this boy knows her, will not stoop so low as to kicking him out. Not until she pulls the truth from him, at least.
Looking down, she frowns upon discovering that she'd unknowingly been gripping his forearm, hard. The glove is taut around her hand. The wound is bleeding sluggishly–her fault.
"Oh, dear," Delores mutters and sends waves of her ability through the wound. She puts away her disquiet momentarily, concentrating at the task at hand. It's an absent thought that he hadn't once flinched while she'd unintentionally caused him pain.
It's a tense five minutes, but when it's done Delores sends one last diagnostic wash to confirm with herself all is right, and then numbs the area once more.
Number Five thumbs it curiously. When he seems satisfied, he rolls down his sleeve, not caring for the dried blood crusting his skin and pockets his hands.
"I'm surprised," he remarks, not looking very surprised at all. "It used to take you longer."
Unhappy with the disadvantage of having no idea what he's talking about, Delores promptly turns and pulls out a chair, discarding her filthy gloves beforehand. "Here, take a seat. Would you like some coffee?"
Because hot chocolate is for children, and clearly, Number Five is not a child.
"Black."
Not even disguising her grimace, she pours him a cup and prepares her own–milk, whipped cream and shavings and all. She suspects she'll need the comfort.
Taking a deep sip, he reminds Delores of Aunt Donna–a regular coffee drinker because of, in her Aunt's words, the stupidity she faces every day. It's not easy teaching thirty odd high-schoolers.
"Where shall we start?"
"You say you know me."
"I do."
"How?"
He pauses. It sets Delores' nerves alight.
"It's weird," he says, finally, lips pursed. He's looking at her, pensive, and there's an emotion in his eyes that she'd say is–well, is longing. The type of longing she sees in Aunt Nina's hands when she thumbs the pages of a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice; a longing that she hears in Aunt Febe's soft sigh when she plays that old mixtape from the eighties on the radio, the label name worn away; a longing in the sweet words of a song her Aunt Margaret had written, absently sung as cooked dinner.
Delores' heart hurts for him. Because the type of longing in his unguarded eyes, a longing that she's seen in those around her–it's the painful sort of longing. It's one that she's never experienced, and it worries her because that old gaze of his is unmistakably directed at her.
She clears her throat. "Weird?"
He shrugs. "You're so… young."
Instantly, she frowns. "Why does that sound like an insult?"
"It's not," he assures her. "I just wasn't expecting it."
"What were you expecting then?"
"Nothing. I wasn't expecting anything, but I should have." He looks down into his mug, contemplatively. "You're different."
Let it be known that Delores is a genius. She may be a confused genius, but she's still a genius. And socially, she's not so daft that she can't comprehend the implications he's making. It doesn't make her feel any better. If anything, Delores feels terrible.
They must be friends, at the very least, in the near or maybe not so near future. He wouldn't seemingly be taking this so hard if they weren't. Delores imagines that if she travelled back in time and met up with a dear friend and they had no idea who she was, she'd be very upset about it despite knowing full well they wouldn't have had any reason to know her until their future, fated meeting.
Which begs the question, why is he here? No longer is it who is he or how does he know her, but why. Why would he deviate and meet her before they are supposedly meant to? And, furthermore, how exactly has he done it?
It's still highly uncomfortable, make no mistake. Delores does not delight in the prospect that someone can know her so well when she, right now, doesn't know him any deeper than his name. But she doesn't believe he holds any ill will towards her, and that settles her nerves.
Levelling her own contemplative look at Number Five, Delores says, "I didn't know you were capable of traveling time. The magazines only ever said teleporting." And then it occurs to her, suddenly. "They said you ran away. But you didn't."
He looks up from his coffee. There's a lot of things in this look, and Delores understands then that this meeting has more meaning and weight for him than it does for her. Breathing in a steady tempo, she forcibly calms herself. She'll find more answers if she takes this in a more rational and logical approach, rather than let confusion and suspicious guide her.
When he doesn't say anything, merely smiles at her, she states, "You don't act your age."
"And how old am I?" he queries, head tilting.
She doesn't answer him. He's older than her; she doesn't have the evidence yet to prove this but she knows it.
"Time travel is controversial," she starts, neutrally. "It's a common trope in science fiction but in real life would cause massive uproar–it's too unpredictable. In the wrong hands–although it's debatable who would be considered the 'right' hands–well, it's fairly obvious. Crime is already rampant without such an ability, starting from a local level up to the government." Delores takes a drink, savouring the sweet cream paired with the mildly bitter kick of her coffee. "Of course, it needn't be used only for world-dominating ambitions but rather for more personal desires; that doesn't make it any less wrong. These are only a few of the moral observations–we must also consider this through a scientific lens–is it the body and consciousness, or only the latter that travels? And if so, what are the effects on the body and mind?"
Delores stands from her seat, leaving Number Five to watch her pace her kitchen. When Delores thinks, she thinks. The role of an academic is one she falls into naturally; she is twenty-nine years old and has spent most of her life studying, writing and practicing. Years of education don't suddenly disappear when she finds herself spending more time in the clinic than a lab or library.
"It's not an ability that would be easily introduced to the world–people threw a fit when it came out that Allison Hargreeves was capable of compulsion and that Klaus Hargreeves communed with the dead. The safest option would be to withhold such information. Reginald Hargreeves was a smart man, he'd have known this already. But," she turns sharply, staring with the intensity of the high sun in an empty desert, the boy sitting at her counter the target of her sights. There's an odd look on his face, but she notes it for later when she can dissect him again. "you were thirteen when you left. The Umbrella Academy made it's debut a year prior. How high are the chances that you'd never previously time travelled?"
Number Five stares at her. "Maybe not so different."
"Are you saying I'm stupid?"
He cracks a dimpled, half-smile.
"Why do you look so–?" Delores gestures at his face.
He sighs. "I projected my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time."
Delores stares, blankly. She has no idea what he just said. "And that version of yourself is thirteen?"
"Appears so."
She pauses. "That… is unfortunate."
Number Five scoffs a sardonic laugh. "You're not wrong."
Inwardly, she's jealous. Because that means that not only at one point did Number Five actually grow up, but that the state he's in right now–it's not permanent. Unlike Delores, he won't be stuck as a teenager forever. He'll go through puberty, again. Delores would gladly endure it all again if it meant she'd finally be able to look her age, wrinkles and all. She thinks wrinkles will look good on her–if Delores looks anything like her mother, and she does, then they definitely will.
She looks at him, hand on the counter and the other on her hip. She still doesn't get it though. "But why did you come back–why go through the trouble?"
Suddenly, a shower of solemnity douses the pleasant feeling that had started to permeate the air. As though a dark cloud has suddenly conjured itself purely on the will of his feelings, the atmosphere is grave and depressed, and the hairs on Delores' neck stand. Apprehension coils in her gut.
"When I jumped forward and got stuck in the future, do you know what I found?"
She doesn't say anything.
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing." His eyes are on her but they're far away. There's a world in his eyes that she can't see. Delores doesn't want to see.
"As far as I could tell, I was the last person alive."
And, like that, the coil springs.
"It's funny," he says in a way that means it's not really. "We came from the same city, but it took us fifteen years to find each other." His eyes drop, down to his hands clasped tightly together. His knuckles are white. "I never figured out what killed the human race, and you–"
She'd probably been dead. But only for a little while. This is quite possibly the most unpleasant way to discover that Delores, in fact, has developed a nasty case of immortality. Even more unpleasant than finding cancerous growths in her patients, or parasites in their stomachs, or-or–so many other things.
If the end of the world couldn't kill her, she wonders what can.
The rational area of her mind tells her not to believe him. She's only known him for as long as he's made himself at home in her kitchen, drinking coffee. It dies a painful, sad death. Her mask of professionalism is gone, too, whittling away the more personal this talk became.
It's not concrete evidence, but the genuine distress written into his skin, the hooded quality in his eyes, the stiff tautness in his shoulders as though he's made of stone and not flesh–it's too real to be anything but the truth.
"When is it?" she asks.
His eyes dart up to hers.
"The world," she says, meeting his gaze. "when does it end?"
"In eight days."