Alternatively: In which, Five says, "Fucked up a perfectly good group of kids is what you did. Look at us! We've got anxiety."

A/N: Decided to try something different and do a Five-centric one-shot. It's angsty, but there's comfort. I did this instead of writing the third part to my other story, so oops. But this idea had been annoying me for a while, so I decided to just get it out there for you guys to deal with. This is after the apocalypse and they travelled back in time as their younger selves. I wanted to explore what at least one of them thought about the comics that were written about them. Inspired by The Maine's (no surprise there) Fucked Up Kids. Lemme know what y'all think!

Disclaimer: I do not own Netflix's Umbrella Academy or The Maine's Fucked Up Kids. This is purely for fun and not for profit.

Who the hell do those bastards think they are?

A fiery rage burned in him as he viciously ripped the pages from his copy of The Umbrella Academy Issue #2 comic. He then proceeded to violently crush and hurl each of them over his shoulder. They joined the mutilated scraps of Issue #1 already strewn across the hardwood floor.

They had no fucking right to pull this bullshit!

The cover of the succeeding comic that laid on his bed stoked the flames of his wrath. He seized it with a murderous growl and the same cruel intentions as he had with the previous editions. Issue #3 would no doubt meet a similar fate to its mangled predecessors, a retribution that was rightly justified in his mind.

Those assholes don't fucking know us!

The furious blaze that had engulfed his being began to die out. The gravity of his thoughts knocked the wind from his lungs.

They don't know us.

A sob escaped his lips and tears welled up in his eyes. His legs gave out, forcing him to his knees. The comic slipped from his fingers, allowing him to burrow his face in his empty palms. He leaned forward to rest the back of his hands against his bed as he wept.

Five wasn't inclined to cry when he was upset, even before he got stuck in the future. However, he did learn early on in his apocalypse days that shedding tears didn't do him any good. It dehydrated his body in a world with scarce water sources, immobilized his limbs until he calmed down, and hijacked his mind so he could only think about his sorrow. He quickly realized that crying was a hindrance to his survival and immediately abandoned the act.

Instead, he masqueraded his grief with a blistering anger and a searing bitterness. He substituted mournful tears with incensed yells and hostile insults. Now, it seemed as if the decades of hardship had caught up to him, and his pent-up feelings came crashing down on him like a wave of despair. The seething inferno within him had been all but extinguished.

Shit, I can't breathe.

Five gasped for air in between sobs. He was drowning in his emotions that had flooded his mind and inundated his heart. He needed to calm down, or he would surely suffocate on the feelings that had swallowed him whole. He wracked his brain for anything that could help.

The other day, Vanya had told him about a technique that she used to ground herself when she started to panic. She would pick something she saw and try to describe it as if she was explaining the object to someone who didn't know what it was. Five was uncertain if the strategy would work for him, but he might as well try.

He leaned back on his heels, pulling his face away from his hands. His eyes wandered to his desk where he saw one of his notebooks left open, words and equations scrawled across the pages in his messy handwriting.

That's a notebook. It's an object that has multiple, individual pieces of paper bound together by a metal spiral. A plastic cover page and a cardboard back protect the papers from damage. It's a designated space for people to record their thoughts, feelings, stories, theories dreams, etc. This particular notebook is mine. The cover is bright red and has my name written in black marker. It's already half-filled with my blue-ink equations for temporal teleportation…

Five blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes to pull himself out of his train of thought. His breathing was slightly erratic still, but it had returned to a reasonably normal pace. Vanya's method had been successful. He could breathe again.

He risked a glance at the fountainhead of his breakdown, the shreds of which were scattered on the floor. The few editions that had escaped his savage assault and remained intact laid on his bed, save for Issue #3 that had fallen to the ground beside him.

Those assholes.

Five remembered noticing the flashy comics that morning. The title caught his eye as their car passed the comic book shop after their mission. He was irritated when he recalled that the stories of their lives had been adapted for entertainment purposes, but felt curious about their contents nonetheless. When they returned to the mansion, he jumped to the store and back with their comics in hand before anyone was aware of his disappearance. He had planned to read them and ridicule the exaggerated storylines, but things got out of hand, to say the least, as was evident in the disarray around him.

The bright, gaudy colors of the comics were a stark contrast to the dreary, muted tones of his bedroom. If not for the way his throat tightened and his vision blurred, he would have scoffed and rolled his eyes at the dreadful yet accurate metaphor that he had unknowingly created in his heated stupor.

Fuck that shit.

That was exactly what Five hated about the comics. They painted this beautiful picture of a happy family and a cohesive team, when in actuality, they didn't exist. Unfortunately, the Hargreaves were a miserable and dysfunctional lot, but nobody knew that.

Nobody knew them at all.

That was the twisted irony of the comics. The authors didn't know who they were writing about. They were written to tell people who they were and what they did, but it was all a lie. The stories written about them were just fantasies, and the heroes were just legends in the making.

The people who admired them, the people who wanted to be them, they didn't have a clue what it was like behind the closed doors of the Umbrella Academy. They didn't know what went on beyond the foreboding spires of the iron gate, in the eldritch mausoleum close at hand, in the sinister depths of the basement. They didn't suffer the cruel childhood and the abusive training. They didn't live through the actual hell they did.

Honestly, fuck Dad.

Five felt resentment festering inside him. How the fuck did Sir Reginald ever think it was a good idea to adopt seven super-powered children and raise them in the most atrocious way imaginable? The fate of the world depended on them his ass. He wanted heroes, and all he got was psychologically-damaged, emotionally-stunted, utterly fucked up kids. It shouldn't have been a surprise since it was his fault they ended up that way.

Being a hero wasn't easy, it wasn't supposed to be, but their heinous upbringing made the noble effort a thousand times more harrowing. They were just kids, but they had the weight of the world shoved onto their shoulders, bearing the burden of the sky like 21st century Atlases. Their dreadful lives at the Umbrella Academy had left them all wanting, starved for something they were deprived of as wards of Sir Reginald Hargreaves.

Luther desired approval. He obeyed his father's directives to garner his favor. He prospered as the jewel in Sir Reginald's crown of tyranny and the apple of his father's critical eye. He preened himself as the golden boy of the Umbrella Academy. He grew up being the favorite child, the one gifted with the most power and privilege and prestige. However, this stripped him of his chance to develop a mentality of his own. He mindlessly did his father's bidding to receive his praise because he was conditioned to do so. He blindly adopted his beliefs and reasonings out of habit instead of coming to his own conclusions. He naively became a carbon-copy of Sir Reginald rather than becoming his own person.

Diego desired control. He didn't want power over others, just power over his knives, his stutter, and most importantly, his own life. He had fallen in line to the commands of his father and the leadership of Luther throughout his childhood, but he was tired of following orders. He was desperate to make his own decisions, to be the sole authority on how he lived his life. He was set on escaping the iron-fisted rule of Sir Reginald and his beloved Number One. This unfortunately led to his absolute contempt for every type of authority figure, culminating in his rebellious personality and reckless attitude. He was a devil-may-care delinquent who frequently found himself in heaps of trouble.

Allison desired love. She never received the attention from her father that she longed for, so she learned to seek compassion in the arms of others. Not a terrible solution, but she abused her power, manipulating the people around her to serve her selfish impulses. She wanted to be adored and cherished and idolized, wishing for more than the simple love and respect she was denied as a child. She craved the devotion and admiration of her followers, thriving on their worship. It was never enough, though. She was never satisfied with what she had, always wanting more than what people could reasonably give.

Klaus desired freedom. He felt trapped in the literal hellhole that was their lives. He was surrounded by a family that had given up on saving him and spirits that put too much faith in him saving them. He was haunted by the living and the dead equally. He just wanted to be free from the judgmental stares and the bloodcurdling screams that plagued him day and night. He was addicted to the intoxication that could make him numb to the torment. He drove himself past his limits on many an occasion to quiet the voices in his head, almost subjecting himself to eternal silence. He was hooked on the liberation the high offered him because it made him forget that he was a failure in the eyes of his family and his haunts.

Five desired purpose. He had spent his entire life working towards something because it gave him a reason for just being. First, it was mastering spatial jumping and being a superhero. Next, it was solving time travel and finding his way home. Then, it was being an assassin and maintaining the timeline. Finally, it was stopping the apocalypse and saving the world. This was sixty years of life experience under his belt. Now, he found himself at the beginning again, with no ambitions, no pursuits. His work defined who he was, and without it, he felt like he was nothing. He had no purpose, but he had all the time in the world to think about how insignificant he was without a mission to complete, a goal to achieve, a target to hit.

Ben desired peace. He was tortured by the demons that resided within him. He was pressured by his siblings and father to utilize the power that he despised more than anything. Hurting, let alone murdering, people with his monstrous creatures weighed heavily on his mind after every training session and field mission. The guilt gnawed at his insides until he felt like an empty shell of a person. He wished he could be at ease with who he was and get a good night's sleep without the nightmares keeping him awake. He just wanted to feel okay again. Even in death, he couldn't find peace as he was condemned to haunt his brother and witness the disintegration of his family from the sidelines.

Vanya desired belonging. She ached for the feeling of being welcome in her own home and in her own family. She was pushed away and isolated from the rest of her siblings, longing for the intimate bonds that she was restrained from forming with them. She closed in on herself as she never captured their affection and acceptance. She couldn't believe she was good enough for anyone, not when she yearned for the love and care she never received as a child. She wallowed in anxiety and solitude, knowing nobody would ever come to save her from herself. Nobody cared enough to help her.

Fucking hell.

Five snorted and shook his head solemnly. They were extremely fucked up kids, and the best part of it all? They were back to relive the horror of their childhood again.

He didn't know how much more fucked up they could get a second time around. Then again, they were always surprising themselves with how shitty they could be, especially to one another. He was certain that it wasn't impossible for the Hargreaves, and he rather expected them to be worse than they were in the original timeline.

They couldn't let that stop them, though. They needed to do better this time, for the sake of the world and themselves. They needed to be the happy family and cohesive team that the comics made them out to be.

Well, shit.

In that moment, Five realized that maybe he wasn't frustrated with their inaccurate portrayal in the comics. Rather, he was upset because they illustrated the story of the lives they should've lived. They depicted the family they should've been. They represented something they never were, not even remotely close, and it made him want to mourn what could've been. He was envious of their comic book personas, coveting the lives that should've been theirs.

It was unquestionable that his siblings regretted how they lived their lives, as well. Each of them may have been fucked up in their own way, but the lack of a real family was a collective struggle among all of them. It was no wonder that their personal problems stemmed from their common difficulty. They shared the same desires as a result of their shitty family life. Their fixation just manifested in different forms.

It was the bitter irony that made Five chuckle to himself. In the first timeline, they were out to save the world when they couldn't even save themselves. They just didn't know how. Hopefully, they could learn this time around and help each other un-fuck themselves, if that was even possible. He didn't think it was.

We're fucking screwed.

A light knock on the door wrenched him from his thoughts.

"Hey, Five?" It was Vanya. The young Vanya he had abandoned. The sweet Vanya he had known and loved. "Can I ask you…?"

Her question trailed off as she opened the door and caught sight of him. There was no doubt that he looked like shit. His eyes burned and felt swollen, tears still lingering in them. His face felt warm, and his throat stung from choking back sobs earlier. His breathing was still hitched, and he noticed that his hands had balled up into fists, his nails digging into the skin of his palms. He slowly released the tension in his fingers, revealing crescent moon indentations and a small amount of blood.

"Oh, Five," she whispered as she made her way to him, eyeing the comics that littered his bedroom. "It's okay. They're just stories."

I call bullshit.

Vanya kneeled beside him and wrapped her small hands around his. She didn't look at him, but rather focused on their hands joined on top of his bed, just as he was doing. She was reminiscent of a mother assuring their child that it was just a bad dream, that there were no creatures lurking under the bed. Unfortunately, they both knew the nightmares were all too real and the monsters could be found sleeping in the beds themselves.

"Isn't that the problem, though?" he croaked. "They shouldn't just be stories. They should be us."

"I know," she murmured. "They didn't know any better, though. We didn't know any better."

I wish we had. It would've made life less of a fucking torture chamber.

Vanya understood what he was trying to say. Hell, she was the one with the balls to write an entire memoir detailing their shitty lives and how they became shitty people. She knew better than most that they were seriously fucked up, that they were never a real family. She deserved better than the life she got. They all did.

"We know better now," Five rasped, looking to her. "We have to do better this time."

She met his eyes and offered a small smile. A sense of calm washed over him at the sight. She had a soothing presence, one that he had missed dearly in the forty-five years he was away.

"We will," she promised him. "We'd be stupid not to."

The Hargreaves children NOT being dumbfucks? Now that's a joke.

He laughed, feeling a smile form on his lips. The gesture felt foreign to him as it was sincere rather than sarcastic. He hadn't genuinely smiled for decades, and it didn't feel right. It probably didn't look right, either. He tried his best, though, for Vanya's sake.

"Unfortunately, we are quite the clueless bunch," he admitted, "but I'm hoping we can turn the idiocy down a notch and not act like complete jackasses this go-around."

His response made her giggle, the sound of which made his grin widen and feel more comfortable on his face. Maybe smiling for her wouldn't be as difficult as he thought.

"I think we should give ourselves the benefit of the doubt," she said with a light squeeze to his hands. "We're not perfect, but we can try our best to be a family. All we can really do is try our best."

Our 'best' has always been half-assed shit. I don't think we've ever done our 'best' for the sake of each other.

"Yeah," Five responded with a sigh. "I just hope it's good enough."

"Don't be such a cynic," Vanya playfully scolded. "Things can get better if we stop wallowing in our self-pity. Trust me, I know better than anyone." She glanced down for a moment in her embarrassment, but returned her gaze to him again. "Even if everything goes to shit again, at least we can say that we tried, that we tried to be the family we were supposed to be. There's nothing more that we can do beyond that, but I think trying is good enough in itself."

Damn.

Five stared at her in admiration. She had changed in the past few months after they had jumped back to 2002. She was more confident in herself and didn't have this constant look of dread etched in her face. She was happier, livelier, more radiant than he had ever seen her before. Her medication had done a number on her, locking away her emotions and keeping her trapped in a dismal cage of numbness. Now, she was free from her prison at the reluctant consent of Sir Reginald, and she was flourishing. He couldn't be happier for her.

"Old habits die hard, but I do understand what you mean," he confessed. "I do think it's possible, but it's going to require the utmost effort from all of us. It certainly won't be easy."

Vanya shook her head.

"It absolutely won't, but at least we've got each other," she said.

I like the sound of that.

"At least we've got each other," he echoed wistfully, remembering the lifetime he had spent away from his family. Even if they did everything wrong in this timeline, he still had the comfort of knowing that he wasn't alone anymore, that he wasn't alone in the end.

She squeezed his hands again and pressed a kiss to his cheek before standing up from the floor. She looked down at him while he tilted his head to look up at her.

"Klaus suggested we go to Griddy's tonight for donuts and some 'much-needed sibling bonding time'," Vanya snorted. "As if we don't have enough of that as it is. These days, there's never a time when any of us are apart for more than an hour."

Five laughed.

"I think Griddy's is a great idea," he said. "Although, I agree that we've all been clingy as fuck since we jumped here. I'm almost sick of your guys' constant presence."

"Almost?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Never. Not anymore.

"Almost," he repeated.

Vanya ruffled his hair before walking to the door.

"We're meeting up in Diego's room at ten-thirty," she called over her shoulder. "Don't be late, or we'll leave without you!"

"Wouldn't dream of it," he replied. "And Vanya?"

She turned back to him as she stood in the doorway, waiting for what he had to say.

"Thanks for being there for me," he said. "You're always there for me, for all of us, and we don't thank you enough. I guess this is me trying my best to be a family, so thank you."

Her smile lit up the room.

"You're welcome," she said. "What's family for?"

What's family for?

With that, Vanya closed the door behind her, leaving Five to his quiet and empty bedroom. He turned to the remnants of the comics covering his floor and decided that he should clean up the mess he had made in his emotional lapse. He swept the pieces of vivid paper into his trash bin and dropped the other comics onto his desk. He planned to keep them as a reminder of what they were trying to do, what they were trying to be.

The Hargreaves children were fucked up, that much was true, but they weren't going to let that prevent them from righting their wrongs. They were going to try to be a family this time around, and strangely enough, Five had hope that it would work, even if it was just a small bud that Vanya had planted in him. He wanted to be worthy of the stories told about them, about their lives. He wasn't sure how they would get there, but they would figure something out and learn what family's for. They had to, or the world and themselves would go to hell in a handbasket.

At least we can say that we tried. At least we've got each other.

That was more than good enough to him.

Hope y'all enjoyed!

~SOS~