Holy shit the support on this so far is absolutely mind blowing. Thank you so much :') I hope you'll all stick around with me for the ride.

December 9th 1980, New York City

Five, 29 years old and still looking his age, slammed his hand against the wheel of the car he was driving. "Damn this New York traffic." he muttered to himself, glancing in the rearview window. It was hard to imagine he was the same young boy that had been a member of the Umbrella Academy. Not only because of how more hardened his personality had become, and how exponentially his hand to hand combat had improved, but because of how different he looked. The apocalypse had forced him to get used to the feeling of facial hair and he now allowed himself as much stubble to grow out as possible before he started to look scraggly. One thing that hadn't changed, however, was his pale green eyes.

A hand reached over from the passengers side seat and rested on his arm. "Hey, relax." Martha said as soothingly as she could. One might think she looked identical to the day she appeared in Greenwich in 1997. The differences were subtle, but they were there. Her blonde hair barely went down past her shoulders and she was still growing out her bangs. Her smile was brighter and she had the remaining bit of her childlike innocence still about her, despite being older than 100 years old and being an experienced assassin. "If we lose him again I'll drive and you can jump ahead. I wanna get this job done quick so we can visit Times Square."

"You know, for a real New Yorker, you seem to want to go to a lot of tourist stops." Five commented, a small smirk spreading on his face as he looked back out at the traffic in front of them.

She punched his arm before crossing her own in frustration. "It's not that I want to go to the tourist stops, I want to see how much things have changed." she explained. "My friends and I used to walk to Times Square every other weekend."

"A lot different than how I grew up." Five commented. "Going to the donut shop was the most exciting part of the week."

"Being an actual superhero wasn't the exciting part?"

"Quite the opposite, actually." He told her.

Martha was clearly surprised but didn't say much else, instead reaching for the car radio and flipping through the stations until she picked one that she liked. She propped her feet up on the dashboard and quietly sang the song playing to herself. It was inhuman how happy she was. Sitting in the middle of New York City traffic while their target was easily getting away would be one of the last situations where Five would feel like singing. Yet she seemed like there was nowhere else she'd rather be. Knowing her there was no place else she'd rather be.

When they first heard the sound of sirens behind them neither one thought they were meant for them. But the closer the trooper got to them the more unsure they became.

"Maybe we should pull over." Martha suggested.

Five followed her suggestion but shook his head while he turned the wheel. "We haven't done anything wrong."

"Maybe the tail lights out."

He had a feeling that wasn't the case.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Five woke up just as he had every morning since they started staying in the Greenwich apartment; the sun shining directly into his eye. He let out a quiet groan and rolled over onto his side so the glare wasn't as bad. He was used to having weird dreams, that had been happening for years. And he as used to dreams about Martha, she appeared in his subconscious more than he cared to admit. He just wasn't used to them bringing so realistic or including his siblings.

When his eyes eventually started to open they went wide at the sight of someone that was definitely not Luther lying beside him. Five quickly sat upright and stared down at the sleeping Martha by his side. Her hair was much longer than it had been years ago and, up close, he spotted a small scar below her eyebrow that he didn't remember being there. Slowly and tentatively he reached out and brushed her hair behind her ear so he could see her face better. She was real. She was there.

Yet another thing Five hated about being stuck in his 13 year old self were the raging hormones he'd already had to deal with once. The urge to touch her, to kiss her, was almost unbearable. The night before, while they'd been lying facing each other waiting for sleep, it had taken all his self control to keep himself from pulling her into his arms and never letting go. Five was far from a romantic but there was a side of him that existed solely in Martha's presence. A side of him that almost wished he'd been born normal so they could be normal together.

But the chances of them meeting had that been the case were incredibly slim. After all Five had been born in Ontario while Martha was born in Manhattan almost 30 years earlier. At least that's what he remembered her telling him. Neither of them spoke much about childhood.

Five quickly retracted his hand when Martha stirred in her sleep, afraid that he had woken her up. After a few seconds passed and she was still sleeping he decided to get up and get some coffee before he really woke her up. She clearly needed the rest.

He slid out of the bed and wandered out to the kitchen, still dressed in his pajamas, only to find Klaus and a solidified Ben sitting at the table already. Five still got the sensation that he was hallucinating Ben, much older than he was when he died, and he wondered if he would ever get used to the newly discovered layer of Klaus' abilities. He also wondered if that was how his siblings felt when he returned from the future.

"Sleep well Number Five?" Klaus asked between bites of scrambled eggs.

Five quickly turned his back to his brothers and grabbed a mug from the counter above him. "Slept fine, thanks." He said flatly. "Not sure you did, though. You might have been too busy being nosy."

Klaus hissed through his teeth while Ben snickered. "You wounded me, Five." He said dramatically. "I try to be nice and ask how you're doing and you snap at me? Those years in the apocalypse haven't left you the nice young man that I remember."

He rolled his eyes and faced Klaus once again. "I know you get off on meddling in people's business but is it alright with you if I have just a few things in my life that are private?"

"One of those things being your girlfriend?"

Five shook his head. "Martha isn't my girlfriend."

"Well maybe you should make her your girlfriend before the next time you assault her with your eyes."

He set his mug down with a small but angry thud. "My personal relationship with Martha is none of your concern. Your concern, and everyone else's, should be stopping the apocalypse."

Klaus looked over at Ben for advice but he seemed to be busy enjoying the show. "Apocalypse shmocalypse. I'm trying to help you, Five."

"I don't need your help."

"Oh, I think you do." Klaus said with a laugh. "Because, from what I remember, you have no clue how to talk to a woman."

Five rolled his eyes again. "I know how to talk to Martha."

"You know how to talk to her as your partner." Klaus agreed, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his knee. "But do you know how to talk to her as your lover?"

"I'm officially done with this conversation." Five announced, pushing himself off the counter and grabbing his mug. "Stay out of my business, Klaus." He called back as he escaped the kitchen.

He shut the door behind him when he made it to his shared room and turned to find Martha sitting up in the bed. She had bedhead and had yet to rub the sleep out of her face. Klaus' words echoed in his mind and he struggled to keep a straight face.

A halfhearted looking smirk appeared on her face. "Were you talking about me?"

"Yes." He admitted, coming over and sitting on the edge of the bed next to her. "Klaus doesn't know how to mind his business. He's gotten some ideas into his head about you."

"Only him?" Martha asked.

"Probably all of them."

Martha shrugged and leaned against the headboard behind him. "I've never been one to care much about what people think of me."

She never had been.

"I only really care about what you think." Martha confessed.

"You know what I think about you."

"Do I?"

"Well it hasn't changed much."

She looked down at her hands. She still had a bad habit of picking at her cuticles when she got nervous despite how many times she had gone too far and made herself bleed. "Even if I've changed?"

Five nodded. "Of course." He said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Because it was. "You're still Martha. You're still my partner."

Her cheeks flushed ever so slightly and she bumped her knee against his leg. "You sure your ability isn't mind reading?" she asked him, "Because you seem to always know exactly what to say."

"I think you're the only one who thinks so." He said, nodding his head in the direction of the door. "They seem to think I'm insensitive and harsh."

"Oh, they're absolutely right."

He gave her a lightly shove.

"I'm sorry Five but it's true." She told him, sitting up again and turning to face him. "I know they're your family, and things are very complicated, but they're just as much on your side as I am. They care about you, and they want to help you. You just don't like the way they show it."

"You're right, I don't."

"Well maybe they don't like the way that you show it, either."

Five stared at her for a moment before standing up and walking over to the dresser, picking out a change of clothes. "I forgot how annoyingly well you know me." He muttered before heading out to the bathroom to get dressed.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

"Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?" Five asked for what could have easily been the millionth time.

Martha looked up from the strap of her heels she was trying to clasp. "I'll be fine, Five." She insisted, standing up once her shoes were on. "It's just clothing shopping."

"Nothing is ever just what it seems with my family."

She playfully rolled her eyes at him and headed out to the living room, Five following right behind her. "You have to stay back and work on the briefcase, remember?"

"That can wait." He argued.

She let out a laugh. "It definitely can't." Martha said, turning to face him while the rest of the siblings watched. "Especially if you're putting it off to a shopping trip."

"That's not why I'm putting it off."

Martha suddenly seemed very aware of their audience and, for a moment, was unsure of what to say. "This is more important." She eventually replied. "I'll bring you back a scone and a coffee."

"If they have a-"

"Raspberry, I know." She turned towards Allison and Vanya. "Ready?"

The sisters nodded, getting up from their seats and heading to the door with Martha following close behind. Just before she shut the door Allison called over her shoulder "We'll take good care of her, Five!"

Five wasn't sure he believed that, but he chose not to say anything and instead brought the briefcase into the kitchen to get to work.

The walk to the shopping center was short and the weather was nice. A little warm for a sweater, both Allison and Vanya thought to themselves, but they figured there hadn't been room in the briefcase for a change of clothes. They were about halfway to the shops when the questions started.

"You and Five seem very close." Allison commented. "How long were you together?"

"We were partners for about 20 years." Martha answered. Both sisters noticed she chose not to use the same choice of words as Allison.

She whistled. "That's a long time." She said, "More time than he spent with us. I'm surprised he hasn't mentioned you to us since he's been back."

Martha shrugged her shoulders, seemingly unphased by the fact. "Maybe there's just not much to say."

"Maybe there's too much to say," Vanya suggested, "and he just doesn't know where to begin."

"That could be it." Martha agreed. "We have a lot of stories."

"Like what?"

She fell silent as she thought back on all the years worth of memories she had to choose from. Allison and Vanya glanced at each other, wondering what kind of things their brother had been up to when they'd thought he might be dead.

"There was one night." She eventually began. "New York City in the 20's. We'd just finished a job and decided to go to a speakeasy afterwards before getting our next assignment. We danced a lot, and drank a lot, an then the club got raided. We got arrested and he had to jump us out of the car. Then we wandered around Central Park for about an hour trying to find something to pick the locks of our handcuffs. And I passed out on a bench so he had to carry me close enough to our hotel to jump."

"He didn't leave you there?"

Martha let out a laugh, "What? No, of course not."

"It just seems like something too gentlemanly for Five to do." Vanya explained. "Once he tripped Klaus down the stairs because he dripped his bloody nose on him."

She winced. "That definitely sounds like him at work." Martha admitted. "But once it was the two of us he was different."

"Different how?"

Martha shrugged her shoulders. "Gentler, I suppose."

They made it to a small local boutique filled with clothes Allison had grown up reading about in magazines. It was easy for the two sisters to remember that they were in the past, a time when they were only 8 years old across the ocean. But Martha didn't bat an eye as she walked into the store and walked right over to the collection of plaid pants and tube tops. She picked out a couple of shorts and pants but both girls noticed she only chose long sleeve shirts. The weather definitely wasn't fitting for a day at the beach, but it was the time of year that made it easy to get hot from layering up.

"Aren't you gonna get hot?" Vanya asked after the 4th long sleeve Martha draped across her arm. "We don't want you getting heat exhaustion in the middle of all this."

Martha laughed but shook her head. "I'll be fine." She assured her. "I always wear long sleeves."

"Do you have some kind of embarrassing tattoo?" Allison joked.

"Something like that."

"So you were a hitman too?" Vanya asked, keeping her voice low so anyone who happened to be passing by wouldn't hear. "You guys did that together?"

She nodded her head. "It's an interesting thing, killing people." Martha replied, keeping her voice just as low. "No one ever thinks they have it in them do it, but everyone does. And it's just like every other unpleasant necessity; you get used to it the more you do it."

"How many people have you killed?" Allison whispered.

"That's like asking how old I am." She said with a laugh. "Who's to say what the exact number is?"

"How old are you, generally?"

"175 was the last birthday I celebrated." She said as if it were perfectly normal. "Birthdays get quite boring after so long."

They both gaped at her with their mouths hanging open. "You're almost 200 years old? You look so young."

"I've been 17 ever since I joined the commission." She explained to them. "This is my physical peak. Most people choose not to age, so they stay in the state that they're the healthiest. If my body ages anymore I'll start to develop scoliosis, so they kept me the same age I was when I joined them."

"You've been a hitman since you were 17?"

She laughed again. "No, no, I started at a desk job and worked my way up to that." Martha said, heading over to the cashier to buy her clothes. "They normally wouldn't take on someone so young, but they'd hired my mother and offered me a position so we could be together."

"Where else did you work in the commission?" Vanya asked her as Martha grabbed her shopping bags and headed for the door. "You must have had some kind of involvement in the experiments, you know so much about them."

But Martha shook her head. "I'm just nosy and stubborn. I knew it was going on, and I knew the information would help all of you, so I stuck my nose where it didn't belong."

"You must have been some hell of a fly on the wall."

Martha simply nodded before ducking into a coffee shop on the way back.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Five heard the footsteps of his brothers walking into the kitchen behind him but he didn't even bother looking up. The table in front of him was covered in every possible tool he could find in the apartment that might help. His head was stuck inside the open suitcase while he tried to figure out a way to disable any kind of location device. But to disable it he first had to find it and Five wasn't quite sure what to look for. Three pairs of eyes on the back of his head certainly didn't make it any easier.

"If you're not here to help me than I suggest leaving the room." Five said, twirling a screwdriver in his hand.

None of them turned away. In fact Diego walked over and sat in the chair across from him. "We need to talk to you about something."

"Three guesses what it's about." Klaus mumbled just loud enough for everyone to hear.

Five looked back down at the briefcase and shook his head. "I'm not doing this." He said to them. "The fate of the world is in our hands, why don't any of you understand that?"

"We understand, Five." Luther reasoned. "And we're gonna do everything we can."

"But we need to know who the hell this chick is." Diego continued. "We're not gonna let you put us as risk just because you think she's hot."

He pointed the screwdriver at his brother. "Watch your mouth or I'll put this right through your hand." Five said before returning to his work. "And Martha's not a risk. She's an asset. You heard what she said, she knows more about the commission than I do. We need that intel."

"And you believe her?" Diego asked.

"Why wouldn't I?" He paused from his work once more and glanced at his brothers. "Look, I know I wasn't there when you all got some sense of family, but I just don't have it. And I've know Martha longer than any of you have been alive. I know I can trust her with my life because I already have."

"So then you get to make the decision for us to do the same for us?" Diego asked.

"Honestly, I don't care how long it takes for you to trust her." Five said. "But I know you all will."

Luther cleared his throat quietly. "Look, Five, we know she's important to you. But you haven't seen her in a really long time. People change. Don't you think it's possible she's not the same person she was before."

He would never admit it out loud but he had. Something was certainly different about Martha. Though she hadn't aged a day she somehow seemed older. Sadder. The years they spent apart had been a burden to her and he had no clue why. It irritated him that Five was so out of the loop on her life, both the good and the bad. There had once been a time where he knew what she had done every minute in a given day. Now he couldn't even get her to tell him why she all of a sudden had such a sadness in her eyes.

When he didn't give up the information they wanted Diego got irritated and Klaus got bored and they both eventually left. Once it was just the two of them Luther took the seat Diego left empty. Five kept his eyes fixed on the work in front of him, refusing to meet the unwavering gaze of his much larger sibling.

"It's nothing against her personally." Luther said to him. "We just can't risk any kind of sabotage right now."

Five knew that. He just wished they would listen to him.

"There's something between you two. I can tell."

"If you're gonna imply that she's my girlfriend then save it." Five muttered. "I already got them from Klaus this morning."

Luther shook his head. "That's not what I think. I think it's something much more."

Five faltered for a moment, unsure how to reply. Maybe someone did understand. He just didn't expect it to be Luther.

"Despite my wide vocabulary I don't know a single word to describe it." He said. "Martha knows me better than I know myself. Which is really saying something since I had just myself for a very long time."

"She's special to you."

"She's not special to me. She's special to everyone." Five looked back down at the briefcase, though his focus was now somewhere else. "She's annoyingly kindhearted. I treated her like shit for the first month I knew her and she was still happy to see me every morning."

"Why?"

"I think she knew I needed someone like her." he mused. "Someone to love me when I forgot how to love." He looked up for a moment. "Not romantically."

"I understand."

"Do you?"

"I don't have to relate to understand."

From the kitchen they could hear the door open followed by the sound of the girls voices filling the apartment. Five quickly dropped his tools and jumped to his feet, eager to see that Martha had returned safely. He doubted, after thinking she was dead for so long, that letting her out of his sight would be easy.

Just as he reached the doorway he hesitated, turning halfway back to face Luther. "Don't tell her I said any of that." He requested, his voice not quite as stern as it had sounded before.

Luther smiled at him. "Your secret is safe with me."

Five offered him a fraction of the same expression in return before turning and rushing to see the very person he had been talking about.