Chapter Notes:

Five would die and kill for his siblings, but it's starting to gnaw at him that he doesn't really know them. He also suspects he lost his ability to really know anyone a long time ago. Vanya helps, though not quite how she planned.

Check the endnotes (or ask me) if you have specific concerns about (mostly minor) references to possibly sensitive content.

Chapter Two

What an Ordinal Name for Such a Singular Being

...o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o…

Five knew that his family was up to something. It had started the previous day, when Klaus had come home from his and Ben's therapy appointment only to deliver an accusation of skin hunger, served with a side of the typical moronic Hargreeves antics.

When Five had returned to the living room some time later, he'd found four of his siblings piled together on one of the couches, napping the afternoon away. He'd taken the opportunity to curl up with his book on the opposite couch.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was reassuring to hear the majority of his family breathing peacefully just about four feet away. Enough so that he'd already been drowsing off when Diego had passed by on his way out. And apparently Five had fallen more deeply asleep afterwards, because he'd come back to consciousness unusually gently almost two hours later. He had been alone in the room, his book on the side table with a scrap of paper marking his place, Luther's coat draped over his body.

It had felt… nice. A touch unnerving that his hard-earned situational awareness had deserted him, yes, but otherwise nice.

However, it had become apparent since then that he'd missed some sort of family meeting. Of course, that had been his intent when he'd retreated, so it wouldn't make sense to be upset about it. Which he wasn't. It was just a little off-putting, seeing the change in his siblings' behavior and not knowing what precisely had caused it.

Not that that was unusual in and of itself. Somehow he'd been making do based on a patchwork of decades-old (cherished) memories of thirteen-year-old children, what little he'd been able to glean from the bodies of four (horrifyingly familiar) strangers, and the text of one heavily-biased (much-loved) autobiography. No one had called him out on it too pointedly yet, so he supposed he'd filled in the blanks well enough.

These new behavioral aberrations, however, had begun to show up at dinner that evening. And as one might expect from the nature of Klaus' accusation, they mostly had to do with physical contact and himself.

The hardest divergence to quantify was a change in how Luther looked at him. During and after dinner, whenever there was a quiet moment (not often, due to the presence of Klaus), Luther's gaze would turn to Five, and it would be… different from before. Soft, but more intent perhaps? That was the sum total of Five's assessment. Frustrating as it was at times like these, behind each person's face lay depths that Five could no longer fathom with any accuracy.

He didn't recall having difficulty with that sort of thing in his actual youth. He had frequently tried to make clear that he didn't generally care about the inner workings of his fellow humans, but he'd been able to discern those workings well enough. Though his social circle at the time had comprised a sapient chimpanzee, a possibly-sentient android, an eccentric billionaire with less emotional warmth than the aforementioned android, and six other equally-unsocialized superpowered children who, depending on who you asked, might not count as human either. So it was possible he was overestimating his childhood mastery of social cognizance.

Regardless of how it had started, his ability to read his conspecifics in that way had atrophied completely over his decades as a species of one. He and Delores had shared a perfect understanding, and that was all he'd needed.

Of course, it wasn't long after his recruitment to the Commission that Five had discovered he still possessed a certain way of reading others, though it bore more of a resemblance to bestial pack instinct than to hominid theory of mind. It intuited animus and intention; it presaged motion, direction, and force; it answered the ever-vital question, 'Will they strike, submit, or turn tail?'

The upside was that he could fight, kill, and survive when thrown into the chaos of the populated world. The downside was that he could do little else.

It was this atavistic intuition that always warned him whenever Allison was feeling the urge to mother him. He'd been a little surprised that he could even recognize that for what it was, seeing as the maternal impulses they'd grown up under had been electronic rather than biologic in origin, and therefore lacking certain subtle tells. It seemed his hindbrain was functional in at least that respect, though.

Five had never said as much, but he was grateful to Allison for continually restraining herself from actually making contact. True, there was a puerile part of him that cried out for such motherly gestures, for which he placed the blame squarely on his de-aging. But he knew himself well enough to realize how he would react to a woman's fingers combing back his hair or caressing his face or straightening his jacket lapel.

At least when the Handler had subjected him to those and a hundred other minor indignities, her own lupine instinct had doubtless informed her that the feral dog at his core knew it was in no position to bite back. Five's subconsciousness felt no such galling constraint to hold still and submit to his sister. Which was, of course, preferable to the alternative. But it also meant, if Allison had actually tried to wipe his face clean with a napkin, he quite possibly would have broken her wrist before he could have stopped himself.

That really was an impulse he had seen twitch at the muscles of her arm during dinner. He didn't know if she'd been able to read either his guardedness or, God forbid, the dread of the memory evoked by the mere thought, or if she'd simply had the sense to realize in time that it was a terrible idea, but in any case she had refrained from following through. As she refrained from following through with any of the similar impulses he saw her fight back with unusual frequency that evening.

(Didn't he also remember Luther trying to wipe his face with a napkin at some point? Yes, back when he had been suffering from the 'excessive perspiration' symptom of paradox psychosis. Luther's hands and mannerisms were about as unlike the Handler's as possible for any ten-fingered human, but the discomforting familiarity of the gesture had still broken through the haze enough that he'd felt the need to push it away. God, that whole debacle had been such a painful demonstration of his own stupidity and hubris that he wished he could erase what fuzzy memories remained.)

The final living sibling present at dinner had also been acting oddly. Relatively speaking, of course, given that it was Klaus. He had apparently chosen to employ false unconcern, a common tactic for him and yet one that somehow still seemed to frequently fool their brothers and sisters. Though calling it a tactic was surely giving Klaus too much credit for premeditation.

Ironically, Klaus was still extending the same tactile overtures to Five that he usually did. The main difference that evening was that he seemed to be pretending he wasn't thinking about his actions, whereas previously those same actions had been genuinely unthinking.

This was by no means the first time Klaus had tried to elbow Five in the side in agreement with a snarky comment, or place a hand on Five's arm during conversation, or get Five's attention with an unnecessary tap on the shoulder. But this time, the forced nonchalance accompanying the motions made Five's inevitable avoidance of them feel more justified.

All of this meant that Five really shouldn't have been surprised when Vanya's call the next morning had taken a strange turn.

When he had blinked down to the bedroom hall extension in response to Luther's distant yell of, "Five, it's Vanya on the phone and she wants to talk to you!" (a welcome diversion from getting nowhere on the mathematics of rewinding time) he'd anticipated an exchange of pleasantries, perhaps advance notification of an upcoming concert, possibly a coffee-related invitation. He even held onto a likely-vain hope that one day she would take him up on his offer to help her install window locks. (Her frankly terrifying powers rendered violence to her person a much less likely threat, but did nothing to protect her property from burglars in her absence. As he had pointed out, to no avail.)

While the pleasantries were as stilted and the concern for home security as nonexistent as he had expected, the point of the call was… not.

"Five? Are you still there?"

"Yes. I'm just trying to think of a way to break it to you gently that we're not Luther and Allison."

"...What?"

"Correct me if my limited understanding of popular culture has failed me, but I was under the impression that the sentence, 'We need to talk,' in that tone of voice, typically precedes a conversation about a romantic relationship."

"Oh! No, that's not what I meant at all! Ew, no, ugh!"

Five agreed, yet all the same couldn't help feeling a little insulted at her vehemence. "Tell me how you really feel, why don't you," he remarked dryly.

As he'd hoped, Vanya's reply carried overtones of laughter. "Sorry, sorry! Let me start again. Five, I'd like to discuss a… pretty serious and probably unpleasant topic that is in no way incestuous, adoptive technicalities or no."

Now it was Five's turn to laugh. Brief and sardonic, but sincere all the same. "Fine, I'm in."

"Okay. Do you want to meet at the house, or my apartment? Would four-thirty work?"

She might feel more comfortable in her own territory, and he could probably use the change of scenery anyways. "Sure. Your apartment, four-thirty. Do you have coffee, or should I bring some?"

"Yes, Five, I have coffee. Colombian, dark roast, I even have a grinder if you want to do that part yourself."

The fondness audible in Vanya's voice gave him a hint of that particular warmth he would always associate with first reading her words proclaiming the two of them childhood confidants. He responded wryly as possible, "It's a date," and hung up on her startled laugh.

Unexpected it may have been, but Five thought that interaction had gone rather well, all things considered.

...Now he just had to find some way to occupy himself for the next seven and a half hours, given that his math had stalled out. Maybe he could find another book he didn't remember previously reading.

...o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o…

As he knocked on Vanya's door, it occurred to Five that he hadn't brought a gift. No, that was for things like dinner parties, wasn't it? A hostess gift, that's what he was thinking of. Definitely not appropriate for siblings talking over coffee. Even Allison wouldn't bring a bottle of wine or a potted plant or what-have-you to something this informal, he was ninety-four percent sure. No, make that eighty-nine percent; the custom might have been different in 2010s California or in 1960s Texas and that would be a confounding factor. Still a reasonable level of certainty. And if he was wrong, waiting politely outside the door instead of teleporting right in could count as his gift.

There went the locks, and then Vanya was opening the door with a hint of a soft smile. "Hey. Come on in, coffee should be done in a minute. But you can start a new pot if you want to make it how you like."

"No, whatever you made is fine. I'm not really that picky."

As he came in and Vanya reset her locks behind him, Five briefly wondered if someone without his powers (so, literally anyone except himself or, he supposed, Lila near him) would have a different emotional reaction to watching their host fastening the main exit shut.

The image of a closed door was one he had occasionally come across in his reading, but not one that had ever resonated with him. He did sometimes experience a ghost of an emotional reaction to padlocks and certain other fastenings, but he doubted that the remnants of childhood traumas were comparable to the innate understanding that certain barriers were impassible. An understanding that everyone but him had been born with, yet one that had taken him thirteen years to even begin to conceptualize.

Was this something like how Klaus had felt about death, up until his Dave's timeline-erasure when they went to the 1960s and then their Ben's final passing? (Not to mention whatever the results of that first, horrifically botched six-person consciousness-projection timeline jump counted as.) That would explain a lot, actually.

And now nearly all of it had been undone, one way or another. Of late, reality was pulled thin and ephemeral, the glistening skin of a soap bubble.

Vanya turned to find him watching her, and stared back. It took four seconds, but eventually she realized that he was waiting for her to take the lead, and headed into the kitchen. He followed as she poured two mugs of fresh coffee, handed him one, deliberated for three more seconds, then went to sit on her couch.

Five took a bracing breath of coffee steam before he also sat on the couch, within arm's reach.

Within his sister's reach, that was, which was shorter than his own. She really hadn't grown at all since they were thirteen, even less than the few inches he'd gained in the hard years leading to his own adulthood.

On the other hand, he was beginning to suspect he had already grown a bit in just the short weeks since his body had reverted again in this last jump. (The constant aches in his bones seemed to support that hypothesis, though it was possible they were something other than growing pains.) It remained to be seen whether his increased height was due to accelerated aging caused by his repeated time travel without the protective effects of a briefcase, or whether he would have had a swift growth spurt at this age the first time around if he hadn't been stunted by malnutrition, dehydration, polluted air, and unprecedented levels of stress.

If it was the former, it would at least decrease the currently uncomfortably-high likelihood that he was eventually going to outlive his entire family yet another time. Even in the worst-case scenario of rapid progression, he could once again have intelligent conversation with Ben, and might even try assisting him by arguing Klaus into better life choices. It could be a nice change from always being the person practically killing himself (and actually killing numerous other people) trying to keep his siblings alive.

Almost three minutes and a good third of his mug's contents later, Vanya put down her own mug and turned to face him. "Hey, so, yesterday, the rest of us got to talking."

"So I gathered."

"Yeah, well, it was actually… good? We finally did some real sharing and communicating, and no one got in a fight. So that was nice."

Five raised an eyebrow. "The unexpected localized rainstorm was just a coincidence, then?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry about that. It was pretty cloudy and, and humid, and the pressure just kind of…" She made a poorly-defined, finger-wiggling gesture that might have been intended to imply shaking or squeezing rain out of the sky, then trailed off into a sheepish shrug. "It just- It's not like our talk was lighthearted. It started out with Luther telling us what he'd researched about, you know, skin hunger like Klaus had mentioned, and from there he got into symptoms of social isolation and solitary confinement too. And he kind of strongly implied some things about his time on the moon, and it got pretty heavy. I think he cried a little? And Klaus hugged him. And later Klaus told us some terrible shit about his personal training when he was a kid. Then Allison hugged him and he cried. And I had a little bit of a flashback but Diego actually helped me through it and I don't think I even went white-eyed or shook anything that time. Oh, and I cried too at one point. It was cathartic, I guess. Endorphins all around."

"That sounds… eventful." And one part in particular was surprising. After himself and possibly Diego, Five would have ranked Klaus as least likely to be frank about something like that. "Klaus seriously opened up about his childhood training?"

"Yeah, it seems like therapy is really working out for him. I mean, he was acting a little flippant, but it's Klaus, you know?" Vanya's face crumpled a little. "Apparently Dad used to lock him up in a dark crypt with, I think he said, the most deranged ghosts he'd ever met by age eight. I guess that's when it started. I don't know if it- I mean, when…"

"Shit." While the old man's methods for training Five's power had been admittedly ruthless, they had at least also been largely effective. But it seemed his methods had been the opposite of effective in dealing with some of the siblings' more nebulous or emotion-linked powers. And really, clearly half-assed unmonitored exposure therapy with an unwilling subject? That was how you evoked learned helplessness and avoidance, not confidence and competence. Even Five knew that much, and his entire education on the subject came from the remnants of the 612 and 150s sections in the rubble of the local library. "Somehow I don't think Dad intended to kickstart Klaus' addiction issues and pathological fear of his own powers, but I can't imagine what other effect he could possibly have expected."

"Yeah, the others were really upset by it too," Vanya said, apparently misinterpreting his aggravation. She opened her mouth again, hesitated, bit her lip for two seconds, then hazarded, "I was kind of surprised no one had known about it. When we were kids, I always thought the rest of you had at least a general idea of what was going on with each other's training. I mean, you were supposed to work as a team, right? So I kind of assumed…" She shrugged.

One of the multiple inaccurate assumptions that had littered the pages of her book. Five huffed a humorless laugh. "For all of Dad's talk about teamwork, he didn't have a clue how to actually build a team. Another thing to add to the list. No, by the time I jumped forward, we were all already isolated in our own ways, hiding our damage and vulnerabilities from each other. A pack of stupid, selfish children unable to see past our own noses." And none of them had matured past that, even him. Especially him.

Somehow, Vanya's doe eyes had not lost any of their old ability to look piteously forlorn. "God, Five, you were just kids. We were all just kids when… Younger than most of my students. Younger than- than Harlan was. Dad never should have-" She reached out as though to touch his arm, then thought better of it and let her hand drop to the couch between them.

Before he could second-guess himself, Five put down his mug and placed his hand over his little sister's. Her fingers twitched in reaction. That responsiveness, the warmth and give of live skin…

He breathed slowly, watching his hand and willing it to stay still and relaxed. There was no reason for the unnerving sparks now racing through his veins from the point of contact, except… "You know, I can't remember the last time I intentionally touched a living person non-violently. The last time I tried…" He tried to laugh, but made a different sound entirely. "Did you know that, back in 1963, I met Pogo? And I know better than to- But he was so small and young, and it was Pogo, you know? Thirteen years of me being an aggravating little shit and I never once saw him lose his temper. So I reached out. Couldn't even say why exactly; maybe to comfort him because he looked scared. And he gave me those scratches I had on my neck when I found you in the cornfield." He sighed. "I guess I was lucky he was just trying to get away. Even a young chimp could cause serious damage to a grown man, let alone a scrawny kid who was stupidly off guard."

"You really never-" Vanya's voice sounded thick, like she might be crying, but he couldn't bear to look up and check, "never touched anyone, after you left the apocalypse?"

"It's not like I never had contact. I just never initiated it. Except in a fight, of course. Couldn't really avoid incidental touch, like brushing by people on the sidewalk, once I was back in the world. Probably shook a few hands here or there." Eight, actually, and brushed hands while paying or getting change six times. "And the Handler was always…" How to put it so it wouldn't sound wrong? "Tactile. She could hardly say hello without touching your shoulder. Then since I came back, I'm sure I've grabbed a couple siblings by the arm. And, if you remember, I let you tend the cut where I dug the Commission tracker out of my arm."

"So that's what that was?"

"But this is… different." He couldn't quite quantify how, but it was. The thrills running up the nerves of his arm had eased a bit but remained disconcerting. The sensation was loosening something in his chest and back, while tightening something else in his throat and behind his eyes. He didn't know how much longer he could stand it, but was feeling that familiar urge that had always driven him to push at any limit he came up against.

Vanya's hand drew into a loose fist under his palm, and he finally tore his gaze away from their hands to look at her face. Her eyes were brimming but not yet overflowing, her mouth a pale, twisted line.

"Five, I am so, so sorry."

The pity was only barely more tolerable from her than it would have been from anyone else. "It's okay. I think I've gotten by all right so far."

She shook her head, and a tear spilled over. "No, that's not how I mean. I need to apologize."

Five asked warily, "For what?"

Now that one tear had breached the dam, the rest began to follow. "For causing the apocalypse."

He very much did not like where this was going. "You didn't. We're through with April 2019, and the world's still limping along."

"This time, yeah. But I caused the first one, the real first one, the one you got trapped in. I'm why you went through… God, just, everything. You were alone for so long, you grew up in a wasteland, I can't even imagine. And it was all because I fell for a manipulative creep, and I found out Dad was even more of an asshole than I knew, so I threw a tantrum that ended the whole damn world. I murdered billions in a fit of self-pity."

She didn't seem aware of it, but white was creeping over her irises, more gradually than Five had seen before. At some point his hand had clenched around hers.

She continued, "If I hadn't, you wouldn't have landed in an apocalypse. You'd have landed in… I guess, just in a normal world. You could have lived at the mansion, or moved in with me. Finally knowing what happened to you, that you were safe, God, I would have given anything. I think any of us would have."

Five's throat now felt tight enough he wasn't sure he'd be able to speak even if he could come up with words.

"Even Klaus might have stuck around for a while if thirteen-year-old you had shown up out of the blue and asked. No, I know he would have, as long as he could. You know, after it sank in that you weren't coming back, he tried so many times to summon you. I remember this one time, I heard a noise in your room while I was going to see Ben, so I peeked where the door was cracked open. Klaus was sitting on your bed, curled over his knees, blue light coming from his fists like I'd never seen his powers do before, and, that and the dark hair, just for a second, I- I thought maybe…"

She shook her head with a sob. There was a quaver in her voice when she resumed. "Then, over a year afterwards, he… I don't know if he wanted to give us closure, or get Dad off his back about it, or if maybe he'd taken something funny - he was just getting into the harder stuff then and there's no way he knew what he was doing - or maybe he somehow just convinced himself…"

And now Vanya's skin was paling unnaturally. Five remained frozen.

"I think that's why none of us asked if Ben… I mean, Klaus was high pretty much all the time by then and we knew that inhibited his abilities, yeah. But at least for me, I couldn't have- If I believed or even hoped, and it had turned out not to be real, like before, I don't think I could have survived it."

Five managed to say, "You didn't mention that in your book. You just said he failed to summon my ghost, and everyone lost confidence in him."

"I couldn't. When we figured out you weren't really there, that's when it hit me that you might not ever come back, not even to Klaus. It hurt, almost like Ben's death did later. I did write that I left out those sandwiches for you every night until I finally accepted I couldn't magically draw you back to us. That, that was when. That was as close as I could go to it without-"

She finally seemed to realize that her powers were active, as a locus of distortion started to shine from her chest. She gingerly reached her hand up to it. Morbidly curious, Five leaned forward and let her hand carry his own along.

It was an intensification of an almost familiar feeling, and all the stranger for that twisted resemblance. The thrum of her power was inexplicably similar to that which he felt in his hands whenever he warped the surface of space, pushing across the inbetween to his destination. But it had a strong oscillating quality unsettlingly reminiscent of the guttering flicker between the presence of the continuum and the nothingness of the inbetween when he couldn't quite tear through. The sensation of his powers failing him, the sensation of being trapped. It occurred to him that this was what he had felt around the edges of that harrowing, inexorable pull when she had suspended them in the theater.

That power gentled to a vibrating hum as Vanya breathed slowly, pressing her sternum into her palm. Then, on a shuddering exhalation, it dispersed with a quiet snap into a ripple that fluttered some papers, rattled the windows and the cupboard contents, and made Five pop his ears reflexively as he did when landing a longer-distance teleport.

Vanya dropped her eyes, now brown again, to their hands over her chest, fingers interleaved and curled like they were about to start joint CPR compressions. She put her palm back down on the couch, and Five moved with it to keep his hand atop hers. After weathering the raw pulse of his sister's world-ending power, he found the uneasy prickle of touching her hand much more bearable by comparison. And this was as good a time as any to start building up his touch tolerance.

Voice glum, Vanya said, "This really isn't the conversation I'd planned to have with you. I was all set to apologize for everything, for the, what, three apocalypses you had to deal with because I couldn't handle my powers? And instead I demonstrate my lack of control. Again."

"Vanya, you've known about your powers for how long? Sure, it was non-continuous, but a bit over two months total?"

She squinted dubiously, but nodded. "Give or take."

"Do you know what I was doing with my powers after having them for only a couple months?"

"...Huh. I don't even know when your powers manifested. Or any of ours, really."

"It's definitely recorded somewhere in Dad's journals. But two months after my powers showed up, according to Pogo at least, I was teleporting myself and my onesie about six inches apart from each other. Usually followed by bursting into tears."

Vanya covered her laugh with her free hand. "Oh my God, I wonder if there's video."

Five suppressed his smile at successfully lightening his sister's mood. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. What I'm trying to say is, you're doing pretty well. Especially considering that the body you projected into on our last jump was pretty messed up from just having dropped your meds cold turkey."

She gave an exaggerated shudder. "Ugh, don't remind me. You know, when I landed in Dallas, Sissy and I just figured I had a really nasty case of the flu."

"Was it as bad as Klaus' first few weeks after this jump?"

Vanya grimaced. "Not quite. I guess going off several classes of drugs at once was worse than my one med. Hey, and don't remind me of that either! Didn't we officially agree to never mention it again?"

"If you examine that eyesore of a document," and it was almost impressive that Klaus had found such a hideous shade of glittery ink, "you'll notice I managed to avoid signing it."

With an air of astonished jealousy, Vanya asked, "How? He badgered me about it for hours before I gave in."

Five gave her a flat stare for two seconds. "How do you think?" He pulled up a wisp of his power for emphasis, and Vanya's hand twitched under his when it flared blue and space-warping.

"Oh! That feels weird. Like when you'd blink me alongside you. Is that what it feels like to you too?"

"I don't know; is what I felt earlier the same as your powers feel for you?"

"Okay, yeah, kind of a dumb question."

"I guess Lila would be the one to ask, if you want to compare what our powers feel like from the inside."

"Oh yeah. Well, unless her mimicry feels different to her than our natural powers do to us. How would we even know?"

Five nodded in acknowledgement. "Good point." And suddenly that was enough skin contact for the day. He gently drew his hand back. Automatically, he took it into his opposite hand and began rubbing his thumb into the palm, as though to replace the sensation of a foreign touch.

He examined Vanya's expression, but as far as he could tell, she wasn't taking offense. Good, because he had a pressing issue to address. "I forgive you."

She froze, mouth slightly open in apparent shock.

"As the only person in the timeline who experienced any part or aftermath of that first apocalypse - which was actually caused by a Vanya that you diverged from when I came back the day of the funeral, by the way - I absolve you of that completely." He took a deep breath, and continued, "Next, in case you feel the need to apologize for defending yourself back in the theater, I'll save you the trouble and forgive you for that too. Though the energy tentacle thing was one of the less-pleasant experiences in a life already filled with unpleasant experiences, so I'd appreciate if you refrained from a repeat in the future."

Vanya nodded stiffly. "Of course. I don't even know how I did it in the first place. Everything was pretty… blurry and instinctive by then."

"Which brings me to my next point. I'll admit I am still pretty upset about that second apocalypse - or perhaps first apocalypse take two is more accurate - but I forgive you for it. I seriously doubt you were aiming for the moon when you discharged your accumulated power and fainted, so it's not like it was intentional."

"But what about the house, and Mom, and- and Pogo? God, I killed him myself, on purpose. And I brought down the entire house, not caring that any of you could have died, not even caring that Mom actually did. Just a few hours earlier, I was hysterical at the thought that I might have killed Allison on accident, and then I tore down the building she was convalescing in. All because, after less than an hour locked in the basement for being a dangerous lunatic, I had to prove Luther right by listening to a hallucination telling me to make them all pay."

It was Five's turn to stare in shock. "Somehow, almost all of that is new information to me. This family really is the shittiest at communication, isn't it?" Suddenly, a thought both appalling and absurd occurred to him. "Now, all we need is for Diego and Allison to each suffer isolation and go mad, and we'll have collected the whole set."

Vanya yelped out a horrified laugh. "Oh my God, that is terrible. Just… so terrible. And you know what? I wouldn't even be surprised anymore if we found out that they had at some point. Dad was the actual worst."

That wasn't quite the way Five saw it, but apparently he'd missed the man's 'golden years', as Diego had put it. He gave a thoughtful hum. "Well, he did do one good thing for us."

"Bought us all from our probably terrified and overwhelmed mothers and made us siblings?"

"Fair enough. I suppose he did two good things."

"Died and left us an enormous estate, assuming it ever gets through probate?"

"Okay, three things. Actually, something he said to me after that fiasco of a 'light supper' back in Dallas saved all our lives."

Vanya furrowed her brow. "When did that happen?"

"It was just before the Swede killed the Handler. Well, it was in my timeline; it didn't happen at all in your timeline, strictly speaking."

Her eyes rounded in realization. "That was a time jump, not just spatial?"

Quicker than expected. He'd known there was a reason she was one of his favorites. "Sort of, yes. In my timeline, the first time through, she shot and killed all of you. Including Lila, who turned against her. While she was distracted with savoring her victory, the Swede shot and killed her. That's when I remembered the advice Reginald had given me earlier about my time travel… difficulties. 'Seconds, not decades.' And I realized that was all I needed."

"And you jumped back. Without a… a vortex?"

He tilted a hand back and forth to indicate yes-and-no. "It was something new. I didn't make a vortex or a portal. Instead, I… pushed crossways through spacetime? There aren't really words to describe it. I don't think there's even math to describe it yet, though I've been working on that. Basically, it was less like a jump and more like a manual rewind. I aimed for the doorway before the Handler came in, and pushed myself across space and backwards through time until I was then and there, with all of you alive again. Then I let go and the timeline resumed from that point."

A soft look on her face, Vanya said, "Sometimes I forget how… how unbelievable you are."

This touched on something that had been gnawing away at the back of his mind for a while. "Really, we all are. Even aside from the circumstances of our births, we all bend the previously-known constraints of reality. I used to think Allison's powers didn't necessarily have to, but something she did in the battle before the 1963 apocalypse made me realize her powers don't work the way I thought at all. Then, Ben's and my powers both use portals in spacetime. In wildly different ways, yes, but equally problematically for conventional physics. Actually, some of the problems there aren't too different from the issues raised by Diego's and your own forms of telekinesis. Huh, you both have telekinesis, and you both have secondary powers that affect biology. I wonder if that's related?"

Vanya raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, I have what?"

"A secondary power. Unless you want to tell me your sonic telekinesis somehow explains both the tentacles that drained our biological and or power-related energy, and the… whatever it was that happened with Harlan?"

"Oh. When you put it that way, it seems obvious."

"Yes, well. Continuing with what I was saying, next, everyone seems to overlook how impossible Luther's power is. But even if he had the proportional muscle mass and bone density of a neanderthal, or of an actual ape, or, hell, even if he had already been his current size naturally, none of that would account for his strength, let alone his casual flouting of the rules of kinetic energy, momentum, just, every concept in elementary physics. And don't get me started on his durability, which is so selective, I'm tempted to say it has to be some sort of reflexive telekinesis. Or, actually, it wouldn't be considered telekinesis if it requires contact, would it?" Wait, no, he was getting distracted. He could ponder what to call that later. Back on track. "And finally, Klaus. Just… Klaus. His powers look at physics, at entropy, at conservation of matter and energy, at the sum total of the scientific knowledge of mankind, laugh, and flounce off in another direction entirely. Which, now that I think of it, is actually kind of fitting."

Vanya's smile had widened during his… well, he had to admit it was a bit of a lecture. Now she laughed openly. "That all may be true, but it's not what I meant."

"What?"

"I mean, yeah, your powers are unbelievable. And honestly, so is your brain. But I was talking about your… dedication? Your devotion, really. Everything you do is for us, isn't it? And we repay you by being the most ridiculous collection of easily-distracted, self-sabotaging, world-ending morons and giving you, just, so much shit continuously."

That was… uncomfortably accurate. "Well, you're not exactly wrong."

And there went those soft doe eyes again. "You've saved us how many times now? Even from dangers we never even knew about. Whenever you mess up, or I mess up, or anyone messes up, you just keep trying until you fix it. This family is shit at saying it, but I want to make sure you know that we all love you too, Five. Thank you for saving us, even when we don't make it easy for you."

Oh. Five cleared his throat of its obstruction. "Finally, some overdue appreciation for the thankless task of keeping you idiots mostly among the living." He picked up his mug from the coffee table. Empty. When had that happened? "I'm going to refill. You want more coffee?"

"No thanks, I'm good here."

Five would maintain that he did not flee to the kitchen. It was a strategic retreat until he got this uncalled-for itchiness in his eyes under control.

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What an Ordinal Name for Such a Singular Being: Number Five

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Author's Notes:

Content Allergy Warnings: Five's musings get a little morbid at times. References to his touch-starvation-induced touch aversion, and the Handler's canonical disregard of such. Fears of physically harming a loved one due to ingrained violent responses and/or PTSD. He briefly considers the possibility of dying prematurely of natural causes and decides it wouldn't be a bad thing. Also, in case Klaus is your emotional support character, you should know Vanya mentions some bad choices teenage Klaus made that had hurtful consequences for everyone. (Klaus isn't present for the mention, and no one expresses condemnation, just hurt and sadness.) If any of that may cause you problems, please protect your mental health.

General Chapter Notes:

Geez, Five, what is up with your character voice? It's like you formed your adult internal monologue from- Oh. From reading dry old books instead of hearing people talk. Sorry. Carry on! Got a heck of a case of the morbs, though; you should probably have someone take a look at that.

Leave a review or send me a message if you have any critiques, or if you have questions, or if you just want to talk about TUA or writing or whatever!

I'm going to try and wait a little longer this time before posting the third and final chapter of this work, but it's highly possible that plan will fail because my impulse control is weak.

Also, this is definitely part of a series now. Chapter One of the next work really should be done by now, but it just keeps getting longer. Eight thousand words in, and I'm not even halfway through my tentative outline! It doesn't stop from growing. Also, part of me wants to theme the work and chapter titles after Dickinson's "One need not be a Chamber - to be Haunted -", but another part wants to title it "OtNoT 2: Eclectic Boogaloo" and dispense with chapter title themes altogether. One of these ideas is surely madness, but I'm not sure which…