(Authors Note: I'M BACK ON MY BULLSHIT!

So this chapter isn't that new for people who remember the old chapter 4, which I've torn apart and made two chapters cause it's my party and I can if I want to. I took some things out and added some other things and on the whole I'm much happier with it now.)

There's a heavy silence that swallows them up and for a moment no one speaks, each of them struggling to shoulder the weight of Five's words. Luther feels hollow, the same empty feeling in his chest as when he realized his four year exile to the moon had been for nothing.

It had all been for nothing.

Allison's the first to break the silence. "But...why? Why pretend, if all they wanted to do was kill us, why go through the trouble of making us think he was back?"

"Sadistic freaks," Diego mutters, glaring at the tabletop but Five shakes his head.

"They aren't- well they are, but that's not why." He turns, looking at Vanya. "It's because of you," he says softly.

She looks up, meeting his gaze for the first time since they got there. "Me? Why me?"

"Why was it you the first time? Because of who you are, what you can do." He glances around the table, gathering them up in the conversation. "The Commission still wants their apocalypse. At the time they still believed the best way to make it happen was to manipulate Vanya, drive her to the point of destruction again. But she's put a lot of work into controlling her powers since last time, so it wasn't going to be so easy. It was going to take a lot more than a Harold Jenkins to trigger that kind of destructive impulse. It was going to have to come from someone she really loved. Someone she trusted."

"Five," says Vanya, voice thin as smoke. Allison reaches out and clasps their hands together.

Five looks at her and nods, something like an apology in his eyes. "That's why we looked thirteen. You weren't supposed to know. None of you were."

Luther has to admit it made a weird sort of sense, in as much as anything the Commission did could make sense. Except... "He didn't want to trigger an apocalypse. He wanted to kill us. What was the point?"

Five looks down and Luther can't see his eyes anymore. "He didn't want to", he says, voice full of what might be regret. "He didn't have a choice." After that he's quiet for so long Luther starts to wonder if he's going to say anything else. Then, "Something went wrong. We think- we think they didn't have a chance to finish whatever it was they were doing. Whatever programming they were trying to give him, that would have made him push Vanya over the edge. Somehow, he escaped."

"How did you escape?" Luther asks, playing a hunch. Because who else could have created this clone except the Commission? Who else would have branded the word CHRONOS in his flesh? And how else could he be here helping them, fighting his own doppelganger, except he'd managed to get away as well? Unless this too was part of an elaborate ruse...

"We had help," he says, waving the question away, "but that's not important right now. Like we said, he escaped. But he would have been confused, scared, running on instinct. That instinct would have brought him back to the academy, but his mind was- well. He wasn't the Commission's lapdog yet, but he wasn't really us anymore either. He had a killer's instinct but they hadn't erased his personality completely. He-" Five catches himself and falls silent. Luther leans forward.

"He what?"

"Nothing."

"Now isn't a good time to keep things from us, Five."

Five looks at them, looks uncomfortable. Looks away. "He was -probably in a lot of pain," he mumbles finally, almost too soft to be heard.

Luther doesn't want to think about that and apparently neither does Five. He shakes himself and hurries on, giving them no time to linger over the words and their implications. "Anyway, when it became clear his programming didn't take the way they expected the Commission started looking into other avenues of apocalyptic genocide, something that didn't involve any of you." He tips his head to the side, a thin, mirthless smile cutting a line across his face. "They found one, which made Vanya and the rest of you obsolete, along with the boy's mission. So they reacquired their lost property and patched in an update. But they weren't taking any chances this time. By the time the Commission was done fucking with his head there was nothing left; nothing but his powers and that's the only thing they've ever cared about anyway. Everything else- everything he was...gone. He had to follow Commission orders. Only this time the orders weren't to infiltrate the academy. They were to terminate it."

Diego's been slowly splintering the tabletop with the tip of his knife, tremor in his hand belying his agitation. "So if we're all 'obsolete', where does that leave Five? Wouldn't they just kill him now too?"

Luther hadn't thought of that. What assurance did they even have that their brother - their real one - was still alive?

"He's too valuable to kill," Five says, the faint sneer on his face telling Luther there's more behind the words than his brother's usual self-aggrandizement.

"The Handler said he had information they needed," Vanya interjects hopefully and Five's sneer deepens.

"Genetic information," he clarifies, "and they got it. That's why they aren't going to kill him. It's also why they aren't going to let him go."

"CHRONOS," Luther says suddenly, proverbial light bulb turning on at last.

"Chronos," Five agrees dryly, "The clone project name. Appropriate, don't you think? "The father of time". I'm sure whoever came up with that one felt very clever."

Luther thinks about that, working his way through to the logical conclusion (and probably getting there long after everyone else). "So he's what, some kind of tissue donor?"

The smile Five gives him is bitter as week old coffee. "That's a pretty politic term for it, but yes. He's a tissue donor. So they can create us; the perfect temporal assassins."

This time the silence isn't just heavy, it's palpable; a pebble thrown into a well with no bottom.

"Five- Five would never agree to that," Vanya says, her voice small and thin to the point of breaking because no, Five wouldn't agree to that and they all know it but something tells Luther it doesn't really matter. Five wouldn't have agreed to most of the things that had happened to him lately, Diego had been right about that much.

Five's smile twists, and the laughter is sharp enough to draw blood. "You think the Commission gives a damn? You think we had a choice? It's the Commission. They'll take whatever they want whenever they want it, they always have. And what they wanted from the Prime were the warp abilities locked in his genetic code. As far as they're concerned everything else is disposable. Lucky for him, cloning a clone doesn't work too well. There's a degradation that happens, the DNA's too easily corrupted. That means they have to keep him alive; fresh samples work the best."

Something about the way he says it makes Luther's skin crawl. Like Five was nothing more than a specimen. Something to be poked and prodded and used. To that end, the time sickness he suffered from was probably a bonus for them. Made the job so much easier now he couldn't fight back... he feels ill.

By now Diego's gouged a quarter sized hole in the table, slivers of wood littered about like confetti. "But Five hates the Commission," he points out, not looking up. "Last time he went anywhere near 'em he blew their headquarters to shit. They're lucky there isn't more than one of him. H-how did they think it would work out for them, making more of you? Why would they even want to?"

"You'd know the answer to that if you'd been paying attention," Five snaps and Diego's back stiffens. "Clones aren't like other people, Deigo. We can be programmed, and unprogrammed. And the Commission has some very scary technology at it's disposal. Genetic modification, behavioral implants, memory wipes..they can mold us into anything they want us to be. All they need is a donor."

Luther lets the words wash over him, feeling less confused about some things and more confused about others. Christ, no wonder Five had been desperate to get away..."So who programmed you?"

"Nobody. We escaped before they had a chance to mess with our head."

That sounded plausible, but something wasn't adding up, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Luther went over it all again, looking for whatever it was he could sense but not see.

Allison got there first.

"But you're not sick," she says suddenly, "If you're a pure clone of Five, shouldn't you have time sickness like he does?"

He shakes his head, "They would have repaired that neural damage before they cloned us. Otherwise they would have had to go back and fix each one of us individually. A lot easier to fix it at the source and not have to worry about it any more."

It's the first hopeful thing Luther's heard tonight and he hadn't been expecting hopeful. As such it takes him a few moments to realize what he's just heard. He looks up, trying to keep the feeling at bay, not let it spread. He isn't ready to hope yet. Still..."You mean- if we find him, he could be better?"

"He should be, yeah."

A shadow leaves the room, leaves everything feeling a little bit brighter, the air a little bit fresher. The weight on his shoulders a little bit less. It was still a horrible mess, but there's a sliver of hope, something to cling to. If they could just find him, move heaven and earth and get him back...they've fought the Commission before. They could do it again. They would.

They could save Five.