I heard the tires screech as Five pulled in next to the Academy. The moment the car came to a stop, my brothers jumped out and rushed Allison inside, while Five came over to my side of the car and got me out, grabbing my hand to drag me in. I still couldn't completely process what was going on, and as a result, had all the composure and coordination of a limp noodle. However, my mind started to come back to me as we entered the old Infirmary and Mom began to evaluate Allison.

"She's suffered a severe laceration to her larynx," she informed all of us. "One of you will need to give blood."

"I will," All five of us stated at the same time. Immediately, I glared at Five and pointing an accusatory finger at him.

"You've lost way too much blood these past few days. I'm not sure you can handle losing anymore."

"I'd caution against you donating, either, Miss Mina," Pogo warned as he limped closer. "Although you are making improvements, you are still not physically healthy enough to safely donate blood." I shrugged my shoulders, pretending I didn't feel more guilt attack me.

"Fair enough."

"I'm doing it," Luther stated, acting as though we all should have known that already.

"I'm afraid that's not possible, dear boy. Your blood is more compatible with mine." I could see the moment Luther's ego took a hit. Pogo was completely right, but I could tell Luther wanted to be the hero who swooped in and saved the day, so the fact he was helpless in this scenario must have killed him on the inside.

"Hey, don't sweat it," Klaus tried to reassure him. "I-I got this big guy. I-I love needles." He smacked the crook of his elbow, as though that would somehow help.

"Master Klaus. Your blood is... How shall I say this? Too polluted."

"Move," Diego ordered, pushing the rest of us aside so he could stand next to Mom. He rolled up his sleeve confidently, keeping a brave face for now. There was just one problem...

The moment Mom pulled out the needle and presented it to Diego, his face went pale, and he let out a single whimper before collapsing to the ground, unconscious. I suppose it was the thought that counted, but the fact he'd been so dedicated to the cause he forgot his own phobia honestly impressed me a little. We all stared at Diego on the floor for a moment, contemplating what to do.

"Stick him." My eyes widened, and I stuck my hands up in surrender.

"Remind me never to piss off Pogo," I muttered.

Grace inserted the needle into Diego's arm and twisted the tube in, beginning to draw blood from his vein. We all stood there and watched for a while, but slowly, the images came crawling back. The dead faces appeared in front of my eyes, taunting me with what I could have done. I started to hyperventilate, causing my conscious siblings to look my way in alarm. My brain started to scream, every little piece of me gave up on whatever little progress I had made. I needed to go do this, get my mind off of things and fix it all.

I pushed Klaus out of the way as I sprinted down the hall, ignoring the shouts of my siblings. If I ran fast enough and locked the door, there was nothing they could do.

"Mina!" Luther shouted.

"Mina, get back here! Don't do this!" I heard Klaus beg.

"You guys stay here, I've got this."

I'd just barely reached the door, when Five jumped right in front of me and pushed me backwards. I stumbled a bit, but as I regained my balance, a sort of strength surged through me, and I clenched my fists as I stared him down.

"Out of the way, Five," I growled.

"You can't do this, Mina. I need you to take a breath, take a moment." Part of me knew he was just trying to calm me down, but that didn't exactly work. My brain had long left its place in my head, replaced with an overwhelming current of painful images threatening to sweep me away. Still, I managed to get to a point where I wouldn't scream at him.

"I just... I just have to take my mind off things, Five." I could use that excuse as many times as I wanted, it wasn't going to change the fact that all of my brothers saw through my bullshit. "I promise I'm not going to do what I usually do," I lied, "just let me go in there."

"I can't Mina, and I don't want to, truthfully. You have to break this habit, it's killing you." His voice caught in his throat toward the end there, but I thought nothing of it. These past few days had been sleepless and emotional, I'm sure that was all.

"I'm eating again, that's already a step in the right direction. I should be fine if I go in for a few minutes, right?" In the moment, that seemed perfectly reasonable. Five remained silent for too long, his head slowly falling downward as his fists clenched. I fully expected him to get angry and start shouting, but instead, his voice only got quieter.

"Let me rephrase: it killed you."

I stepped back a bit, shock overtaking me for a moment. He had to be lying to me, I hadn't danced in days. How the hell had he reached that conclusion? Did he think somehow I'd danced myself to death when he found me in the rubble?

"You're losing it," I scoffed. "You said we all died because of the apocalypse. What does my dancing have to do with that?" Five sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose before attempting to calm himself and explain.

"Look, I get this is hard for you to comprehend, but there was a whole day that didn't happen, but it did. After I left the Commission with the information, I teleported to what would have been the current time. But when I got back to the house, no one had seen you, so I jumped to your theater. You'd pushed yourself too far, and I found you dying in your dressing room. So I rewound to the start of the day so I could save you."

For a while, I didn't know how to react. I felt my body crumple a little, attempting to come to grips with the reality presented to me. Well, the alternate reality. I thought I was better, I thought I could do more than I could, and it cost me something valuable.

Healing isn't just instantaneous. It takes time, and you can't just expect to jump right back in the same way you could before. I understood that now, more than I had when it was just Klaus. All of us had been struggling with something, and it still got to us. I could make any excuse I wanted, but at the end of the day, I was relapsing.

It was a relapse. I could fight this.

Slowly, I kneeled on the ground, trying to meet my brother's eyes. We fought and yelled at each other just as often as we hugged and cried- it was a strange cycle. As the anger subsided, the guilt still consumed me. But there were better ways to deal with it, and Five certainly didn't deserve the blunt force of it all. Not after everything he'd seen.

Rather than speaking, I just pulled him into a hug, squeezing him as tight as I could. I thought something had been off about him ever since he got back the second time, now I understood why. Everything had been thrown at him so quickly, and he had no way to deal with it except copious bottles of alcohol and a mannequin. Now, he had all of us, and we had turned our backs on him at one point or another. What the hell kind of siblings did we think we were?

Five offered me a reassuring squeeze before the two of us pushed away and I stood. We still remained in silence as we headed down the stairs, finding Klaus and Diego waiting with nervous expressions. Once they spotted the two of us- with me standing upright, most importantly- they made their way over and wrapped me up into hugs, offering that last bit of reassurance I needed.

"Okay, let's get down to business." Five had fallen right back into his strict demeanor.

"The bastard that nearly killed our sister is still out there, with Vanya. We need to go after her."

"Vanya is not important." I crossed my arms and shot Five a surprised look.

"Hey, that's your sister. A little heartless even for you, Five." I watched his leg drag as he limped across the floor, still clearly in a severe amount of pain from his healing wound.

"I'm not saying I don't care about her, but if the apocalypse happens today, she dies along with the other seven billion of us. Harold Jenkins is our priority." As much as I hated to admit it, he was right.

"I agree. Let's go."

"You guys count me out." Diego, Five, and I stared at Klaus in disbelief. We'd come this far, we were so close to solving this thing, and he wanted to just give up now? "I mean, you know, no offense or whatever. It's just... I kind of feel like this is a whole lot of pressure for newly-sober me, so..."

"You're coming," I stated flatly. If he wasn't letting me give up, I wasn't about to let him get away with laziness.

"No, no, no. I mean, I think we can all agree that my powers... I mean, it's pretty much useless. I'd just be holding you guys back."

"Klaus, get up," I sighed, growing exasperated with his persistence.

"You can't make me."

Before I could stick my hand out and shock him, Diego removed a knife from his belt and chucked it in Klaus' direction, getting it to land just perfectly between his legs in the couch cushion. Klaus stuck his hands up in surrender, staring at the blade with pure fear as he slowly removed his legs from the seat, trying his best not to touch the knife.

"Oh, then again, a little exercise couldn't hurt. Yeah." I turned to Diego as Five and Klaus started for the door.

"Thanks."

"Yeah, anytime, sis."

We joined our brothers in my car and headed off toward Jenkins' address, hoping we could find Vanya and him there. Klaus and I were supposed to get her out if she were there while Diego and Five dealt with him, but something told me Vanya wouldn't go down without a fight. Even if she didn't have powers, she could still do some major damage. And as much as I hated the thought of it, if she had been spending this much time around Harold Jenkins, there was a good chance she was too far gone for us to get to.

Once again, he had left the door unlocked. This guy was strangely trusting for someone that had a record and five angry siblings hunting him down. He had to know we'd be coming for him at this point, after what he did to Allison. The glass from the door was still shattered, laying in pieces on the hardwood. I suppose he hadn't been home long enough to fix it, but I'm sure that tipped him off we had already looked into him. Hopefully, he hadn't run already. But the house was strangely quiet.

Everything fell into place as we entered the dining room, finding Harold's body littered with knives and forks. Blood ran from his face and wounds, indicating he was more than dead at this point. The dining room itself looked as though a tornado had come through, whipping everything up in a violent wind and throwing it wherever it pleased. Something wasn't right here... this wasn't just a normal death.

"It's not exactly what I was expecting," Klaus muttered as he crouched down.

"The understatement of the year."

"No sign of Vanya," I pointed out, already worrying about where she could have gone. Had the person that did this taken her?

"Let's get out of here before the cops come." Diego, Klaus, and I turned on our heels, but Five just continued to stare at the body, as though mesmerized. I couldn't let him get pinned for this just because of his morbid fascinations, we needed to go.

"Five-"

"In a minute."

He made his way over to the body, removing the glass eye from his pocket. Carefully, he removed the bandage covering Harold's eye and set the artificial replacement in. I grimaced a little at the squelching noise it made, trying my best not to cry out in disgust and make this whole situation worse.

"Same eye color, same pupil size. Guys this is it. The eye I've been carrying around for decades, it- it's found its rightful home." I couldn't help it gagging as Five reached in and removed the eye from the socket and just set it back in the bag he'd been using to carry it as though it were nothing.

"How necessary was that?" I scoffed. "The guy's already dead, you could have just left that thing with him."

Somehow, I'd been a few steps behind my siblings, but I got there eventually. The eye matched Harold Jenkins, which confirmed he was the guy who started the apocalypse.

"We got the guy we needed to kill to stop the apocalypse!" My brothers all nodded, clearly resisting the urge to insult me for falling a bit behind.

"Yay! Let's go." Klaus tried to run back to the car, but I grabbed him by his vest and yanked him back.

"No, no. Wait, wait. It can't be this easy," Five reasoned. It seemed pretty clear-cut to me, but maybe there was some other element he'd left out when he told us about this whole thing. "Look, this is the note I got from the Commission." He pulled the white piece of paper out again, presenting it to the three of us. "The one that says 'Protect Harold Jenkins,' aka Leonard Peabody."

"Yeah?"

"But who killed him? Who did this?"

"I have a crazy idea. Crazy, but why don't we find Vanya... and ask her what happened?" Before Klaus could finish his statement, Five jumped, likely heading back home and leaving the three of us on our own. I grunted and rolled my eyes before immediately rushing out to the car, barely waiting for Diego and Klaus to get in before heading back to the Academy to chew out my little brother and search for Vanya.