It all started with peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches.
Vanya had heard Number Five leave his bed. She could pick out the unique squeak and creak of every door and stair tread of the Umbrella Academy. She wasn't sure how she did it, but she could distinguish between Allison's high arches, Luther's even tread, Klaus' clumsy patter, Ben's thoughtful gait, and Diego's near silent whisper of feet against ground, her ears capturing the tiniest of noises from the furthest of corners.
And then there was Number Five. His footfalls the most familiar but the most difficult to describe. Like her, he was often awake at odd hours. Unlike her, he helped himself to the house, feeling an ownership, a belonging, that she had never had the confidence to emulate.
Vanya plucked her fingers over the duvet, unconsciously contorting her hands around an invisible violin. He was making his way to the kitchen. She moved her hands to maneuver the imaginary bow. He was opening the silverware drawer, the faintest clatter reverberating through the beams of the floor. Vanya's fingers stumbled, she knew it was all in her mind but still the imagined screech tore through her mind.
Her hand wafted to the bottle of pills on her nightstand. This was the point where she usually took another dose of medication and succumbed to its numbness.
But then she heard something.
Sounds she couldn't quite make sense of. A rustle. A pouring of something…sticky? A clatter. A muted curse.
She placed her feet cautiously on the ground. Hesitating. Wondering.
Perhaps she just had to know. Her hand slid off the bottle and she tiptoed from the room.
She entered as Number Five was placing marshmallows on thick smears of peanut butter.
He greeted her in his usual way - a preoccupied, but not unkind wave.
Vanya smiled at the peculiarity of peanut butter and marshmallows. Wishing she could be more like this brilliantly contrary, out of the ordinary snack.
He sat and ripped off a quarter sandwich for her. Generous. Inclusive. The simple gesture hit her like an unexpected punch, almost painful in its sweetness and unfamiliarity. When their fingers touched she resisted the urge to grab his hand, to solidify some sort of wordless yearning that seemed always to simmer right beneath her surface.
She imagined the sound as their fingertips touched, the barest of friction moving the air, creating something from nothing.
He had resumed scratching at a notebook, absorbed heatedly with the work, comfortable with her presence.
She plucked a tiny white blob that was dangling from her sandwich. She popped it in her mouth the way she did her pills. Upside down Five's sketching looked like the x-y algebra quadrants she had been struggling to master under her father's disappointed gaze. These quadrants were disappearing into…an ocean perhaps?
He spun it around to show her. Again, unasked. Generous. Inclusive. The quick way he pushed the pages toward her brazen, as if there was nothing about himself he would ever be embarrassed of. Self-assured. Cocky.
"Don't tell anyone," he said around a mouthful of peanut butter.
It was a mix of swirling doodles, algorithms, and trajectories mapped out like catapults.
"Time travel." He clarified, getting up to extract the milk from the fridge. He slapped it on the table with a self-satisfied smirk and poured two glasses.
He clinked his glass to hers. Raising it high.
"To the future!" And he drank it all in one swallow.
Vanya took a sip. Tilting her head forward so her hair hid some of her smile, as if excitement was something she wasn't allowed to feel.
"Well, aren't you going to say something?" He leaned back and kicked his feet on to the tabletop. Lounging as if the future had already been won.
"Wow," she said.
He laughed at her subdued tone. And then she laughed, unexpectedly snorting into her milk, causing them to laugh in unison. Both leaning forward, as if the kitchen table was the possible, theoretical future and they could simply build a bridge of belief across the divide. Absurd. But delightfully so. And strangely…it was believable. She did believe it.
Maybe it was because he was an outsider too. Nameless. And as friendless amongst their siblings as she. His sarcasm making it clear that he was not only the smartest but knew he was the smartest. He pushed Dad's patience for sport and pushed his powers in training until he seemed to have no limits. Nothing could hold him back. Walls, barriers, challenges. Nothing was impossible. Vanya wondered with another painful stab of emotion what it must be like to feel limited only by your will, desire, and courage. Her fingers seemed to know she would fail before she even attempted difficult pieces of music.
She pulled her sandwich apart. The marshmallows a constellation, an unconnected web like the numbers swirling in Five's journal. She picked off each white speck and handed the peanut buttered bread back to Five.
"To the future," she said and she threw back her head, swallowing the marshmallows with one long drink of milk. And when she put down her glass she saw him looking at her like she had just done something surprising and charming and all together out of the ordinary.
And that's how it all started.
Peanut butter marshmallow sandwiches at midnight, and his whispered goodbye as they parted ways in the hallway:
"We should do this again sometime."
And they did.