Diego felt the blood in his veins go cold. Though he wished that Five was joking, there was nothing funny about his words nor his tone. There was no doubting the truth of them. "How does Mom know," he wondered, "if Dad doesn't?" Five shrugged and continued eating. Unlike Luther, who continued to glare suspiciously at Five, Diego understood that the boy eating a sandwich with marshmallows, of all things, did not actually know how their mother managed to keep the secret while being fully controlled by Sir Reginald. But that was a gift horse he suspected was better left alone. "How long have you known her," he asked, rather than interrogating Five, "you seemed pretty familiar last night." Both of them were aware that their entire family, as Sir Reginald did not nor would he ever count, were listening.

"Six years, maybe, in her time," Five replied, "and we are… closer." He had no desire to open up particularly much about his friendship with Gwen. She was someone he had found and fully intended to keep to himself, never mind that he refused to acknowledge why until he knew her thoughts on the matter. But, he realized, the others needed something from him. A sign of goodwill, or maybe trust. "She's a good listener," he admitted lowly, leaning closer to ensure that Luther could not hear him, "She understands even when you can't find the words because she can see in here." He tapped his temple. Luther's glare intensified as the others nodded. Five did not care. He did not trust Luther and it was unlikely he ever would. Finishing his sandwich, the fifty-eight-year-old teenager stood and turned to Grace. "I'll be with her today," he told her, "and probably tonight." His mother nodded and patted him on the cheek lovingly. In an instant, he was gone.


Without looking up from the grand piano, Gwen knew when Five arrived. He made no sound, knowing better than to interrupt her lessons with Simon, but she could feel him, sense the presence of something her telekinesis could move and bend to her will. Her fingers never faltered as she allowed Beethoven's Sonata Nr. 14 to fill the room under Simon's watchful eye. The family butler and, quite frankly, caregiver, was passionate about classical music and when the younger of the Silver ladies asked him to teach her he had almost cried. Her concentration was broken when she was pulled into Five's thoughts. She did not mean to do it and thought, at first, that it was a vision. Only… what she saw was blurry images of her, then a mannequin, until he seemingly regained control and told himself to never let her know. "What does that mean?" Gwen asked her question out loud, startling both Simon and Five. The butler, recognizing that he was dismissed for the moment, muttered that he was going to prepare refreshments for them. "What is it," Gwen continued, nodding her thanks to Simon, "that I can never know?"

"Digging in my head again?" Five's jaw clenched with irritation. He hated that she, if she chose to, could see right through him while he was left in the dark regarding her thoughts and feelings. "I thought you respected me enough to at least ask," he bit out, "rather than violating my privacy."

Gwen shook her head, standing from the piano bench. "I was pulled in, Five," she corrected acidly, hands settling on her hips, "because you were thinking about something that has to do with me." Again, without meaning to, she was pulled into his head. Images of a wasteland flashed briefly before he growled and started pacing. Gaze softening, Gwen approached him cautiously. She reached out to him but before she knew what was happening, she was pressed against the armrest of the couch. Five's hands were wrapped around her wrists, but he was not hurting her. She did not believe him capable, even if he wanted to. Not her. His eyes widened when he realized what he had done but she refused to let him pull away. "Let me see," she whispered, winding her released arms around his torso as he started quivering, "let me help you, Five." He clung to her desperately, whispering incomprehensible things in her ear as an onslaught of memories washed over her. Images of his siblings, grown and dead, of the remnants of the Silver townhouse. She listened to the memories of him talking to himself. One memory jarred her more than any other. The one where he realized that he could no longer remember her voice or the exact color of her eyes. In that memory, he finds a mannequin and tells it that 'she'll do nicely'. She saw a woman with white hair, offering him a way out. Gwen felt his hands on her cheeks and realized that she was crying. But he did not ask her to stop, did not push her out. The memories got bloodier the closer to his return she dug. She did not stop until she found the memory where he landed in her sitting room.


Both of them were gasping for breath when she finally returned from her journey into the darkest part of his mind. Tears streamed down her face and Five knew her well enough to understand that she was grieving. Grieving him and the childhood he would never get back. "I never felt at risk," he rasped, throat thick with emotion he only ever showed her, "not until I realized that I couldn't remember how you sound when you're annoyed at me, or how your eyes sparkle when you want to laugh but won't let yourself because it isn't ladylike." He could hear Simon open the front door for Monica and tell her that Gwen was in the sitting room with him, but that they were to be left alone. Monica seemed more upset by the fact that she had not been made aware of his return rather than the fact that he was alone and unchaperoned with her teenaged daughter, if her screeched 'Five is back' was any indication. Both Five and Gwen laughed, the former drying the latter's tears. "I'm not letting anyone take you away from me," he muttered darkly when they heard Monica irritably proclaim that the Carmine family had approached her on her date and inquired if Gwen was eligible for a match with their son, "Never again." Once, years ago, he would have had qualms about hurting someone. Okay, no not really. Years ago he would have hurt them but let them live. As he held her in his arms, the pain in his back was naught but a vague itch compared to the ache he felt at the thought of being forced to forget her again. If anyone tried, even Monica or Simon, he would not hesitate to kill them.

Gwen hugged him tighter before pulling away to look up at him. "They will die trying," she muttered back, unknowingly echoing his thoughts, "slowly and painfully if I can help it." Having seen what he had been through, heard the dangerous thoughts in his head during that time, she was not very keen on letting anyone bring him back to a situation where she could not be there for him. Taking a deep breath, she let go of him completely and straightened her dress out before pulling a smile onto her face as she prepared to greet her mother. Five smoothed out his shirt and followed her into the kitchen, where Monica was leaning against the counter with a mug of coffee. Gwen saw him eyeing the mug and rolled her eyes. On the small table in the corner of the room, Simon had set out a cup for Gwen's tea and a mug for Five's coffee.


He had barely set a foot into the kitchen when his breath was squeezed out of him with the force of Monica's hug. Looking to Gwen for assistance, Five pleaded silently for her to get her mother to release him. Gwen's eyes sparkled and he just about melted. So he surrendered to Monica and let his best friend prepare his coffee. He had learned to see that spark for the laughter it was and he was struck with the realization that, as long as she looked at him with that spark in her gaze, he would move mountains for her. And thus, he found himself further annoyed with the fact that Gwen's feelings remained a mystery to him. "Good to see you again, Monica," he said, forcing himself to think about something other than the girl holding out his coffee to him, "I hear you put the latest fish back into the water."

"You talk too much to my daughter," Monica joked, rolling her eyes, "God knows you two are the only ones I know who disrespect me enough to use wise-ass metaphors like that." She had long since given up on keeping up with the duo. Whenever they got started on her, she usually told Simon to side with her just for the hell of it. He did it too, though his dry and borderline sarcastic defense was not helpful in the least. "Speaking of wise-asses," she continued unceremoniously, grinning when her daughter winced at her choice of words, "I ran into the Carmines last night."

Gwen sat down on a kitchen chair, crossing her legs delicately at the ankles as she sipped her tea. "Pity that," she replied daintily, raising her eyebrows at Five when he leaned against the table, "I hear their precious Tristan is looking for a bride." Fully frowning at Five, she hid a smile behind her tea cup as he sighed heavily and sat in a chair. "Just how many minutes did it take before they insinuated that they would deign themselves to let their beloved heir begin a courtship with the bastard Silver girl?"

"Three," Monica replied, too annoyed to even smirk when Five growled, "About five minutes into the conversation they suggested that you would never find anyone else of good standing, which I found ironic for two reasons." She paused to thank Simon as he placed a plate of leftover breakfast in front of her. She took a bite of bacon and turned back to the teenagers. "First of all, there's the fact that you already have someone," she told them, with food in her mouth, "Second, they suggested it five minutes into the conversation and the one you already have is called Five." Gwen looked sick and Five shared a smirk with Monica. Both of them enjoyed riling the poor blonde up, her proper demeanor making her so very easy to rattle.

"Mother," Gwen admonished while struggling to regain control of her gag-reflex, "are you still drunk?" Five laughed and she had to fight to remain stern with her mother at the rare sound. "I would rather see you still inebriated at noon than capable of such juvenile humor." Gwen huffed as both Five and her mother laughed at her snippy tone and big words. Even Simon cracked a smile, his stoic mask fading as Five teased her about reading the dictionary again.


That night, Five braided back Gwen's hair as she sat by her vanity to remove her jewelry. He had learned how to do it when she had used telekinesis three years earlier to move his hands into making a regular French braid for her. He secured it with a small hair tie and left her to finish pulling off her rings while he dug out his pajamas. As he expected, he found the bottoms in her sock drawer and the top in her chest of nightgowns. He rolled his eyes. Unlike Allison, who kept up to date with the latest fashions even though she rarely wore anything except the Umbrella Academy uniform, Gwen had stuck to the fashions of the 1930s if he remembered her longwinded speech correctly. Or rather, she had been ranting about how fashion was actually graded at Ophelia Murphy's and that anything designed after the Fifties apparently warranted a failing grade. Five had been more thrown by the fact that he, who did not actually go to school, had to wear a uniform while Gwen, who went to an elite school, did not. "Need me to hand you a nightgown," he asked, buttoning his pajama shirt, "or do you already have one?"

Hanging her necklace on its designated hook, Gwen turned to face Five. "Can you put one out while I go to brush my teeth?" He nodded and she disappeared into the en suite. When she reappeared he was under the covers with a book. At the end of the bed he had placed an emerald green, silk nightgown and Gwen could not help the smile that spread over her lips. The last time he had spent the night before he vanished into the future, she had been wearing that nightgown. Unabashed, and smirking at the thought of how her grandparents would react if they knew, she changed out of her clothes into the sleepwear. Five had always respected her privacy, keeping busy with a book or a wound while she changed. "What are you reading?" Gwen carefully folded her clothes and put them in the basket outside her bedroom, for Simon when he felt like doing the laundry, while Five told her about the biography he had picked out in the small library on the third floor. Once she had crawled under the covers, he put it away and turned off the lamp at on the bedside table, making sure to lay on his stomach. They fell asleep together, his arm thrown over her to entwine their fingers.

Over the next couple of days, Five only ever went home to check in with Grace about when Sir Reginald would come back and to assure his siblings that he had not left for the past or future. The rest of his time was spent playing chess with Simon, listening to Gwen as she played the piano and helping Monica tease her daughter. While he had caught Luther grumbling to Allison about how he had apparently abandoned them, Five was relieved to see Allison punching Luther in the shoulder and declaring that it was 'understandable that Five wants to see someone he loves after thinking she was dead for so long'. But his reprieve was brought to an end when he popped in to see Grace and she told him that Sir Reginald would be back within the hour. Five had reluctantly said goodbye to Gwen and asked her to be ready in case he came over with injuries. Surprisingly Sir Reginald did not seem to find anything to punish Five for, leaving him whole and unable to sneak off to see Gwen. Until the night of their fourteenth birthday.


Allison and Vanya both covered their mouths to silence the gasps that threatened to escape. Diego's eyes were wide and Five's palm connected with his forehead. Luther gaped. Ben and Klaus trembled before Sir Reginald, their supposed father's face stormy as his eyes sparked maniacally. The remnants of the cake Grace had made covered half his face. It had been an honest accident. Ben and Klaus had volunteered to help carry food to the table and they had stumbled on a loose floorboard. The cake had made a trajectory through the air that would have been impressive and even funny. Only it stuck to Sir Reginald. Before the man could dole out the punishments, Five jumped in front of them, absently wondering if his lack of Gwen made him suicidal. "You once said that I could take the punishment or pick one of them to be punished," he said defiantly and heard Vanya and Allison release their gasps, "I choose to take the punishment."

"That was only for your own punishments, Number Five," Sir Reginald reminded, voice deceptively clinical, "now move out of the way." He fought to maintain his composure as the boy refused to step away. "Number Five, that is an order."

"Five, please."

But he ignored Sir Reginald's order. He pretended not to hear Diego's pleading. Five refused to move. Vanya and Allison held Diego back as Sir Reginald seized Five by the hair and dragged him to the room. The very same one that he always ensured the rest of his family would never see the inside of. The last thing he heard before the door closed was Klaus sobbing. The pain after that felt never-ending. By the time Five was let out he was spitting blood, not to mention the several cuts all over his torso and arms. He knew that he would have bruises too, but all he could think was that he needed to get to Gwen. She would help him. He was gone before Sir Reginald had even left the room.