Notes: Hey everyone! Sorry for the late post, I had a weird and busy week, so I just managed to catch up with everything until now. That might mean there won't be a Wednesday update, sorry! I'll try to write more this coming week, but we will see how it goes!

A Reunion at Last

"I've gotta give it to you, Diego's pride took a big hit," Lila said holding a piece of cotton with iodine to Five's side.

Five would generally enjoy such a victory, especially against Diego who would always gloat about his fighting skills, but he wasn't really in the mood after what had transpired.

"This is not a blade wound, when did you even get this?"

"…back in 2019," he decided to keep the rest of the information out, stupid shrapnel wound kept opening in the worst of times since then.

"Funny thing is, by looking at you and him closely, anybody would think you're the one that lost," chuckled Lila pointing at the collection of bruises, broken ribs and wounds he had.

"How's his hand?" asked Five, eyes fixed somewhere far away.

"A couple of broken fingers and pretty sore, he won't be able to use it well for two or three weeks at least."

"He's lucky I don't have my adult strength, I would have broken some metacarpal bones too," stated Five as a matter of fact with a dark expression, was that regret in his voice?

"Hey, at least you managed to stop him from causing a new apocalypse," smirked Lila fixing his shirt after cleaning up the wound. She guessed it was weird to attend to a prisoner's wounds, but he wasn't a normal prisoner and somehow, he had ended up becoming a decent company during her days at the Commission, especially now that her mom was busier running the place.

Five sighed, "I guess so."

"Hey, stop mopping around, will you? You're depressing me," said Lila trying to sound extremely annoyed.

"Well, I'm sorry my misery annoys you," grumbled Five hiding a small smile, she was such an open book.

"Weird right? One would think it would be more enjoyable," she stood up and walked around the room, "I know, why don't we make a deal?"

Five simply gestured for her to continue, even when he was more aware lately thanks to Lila lowering his sedatives whenever she wanted to talk to him, his body felt sore and exhausted and he hardly felt like talking unless necessary.

"Why don't you tell me another Hargreeves story and I'll tell you what's happening with another one of your siblings," she offered.

"Should I be worried about someone else?" grimaced the Boy not really sure if Lila wanting to share information was a good sign.

" Well… that's a hard question to answer… let's say not right now," she snickered wondering how the assassin had overestimated the ability of his siblings to stay out of trouble.

Five breathed tiredly, "then why would you want to share this information with me?"

"Well, I happened to hear some interesting stuff from the agent keeping track of one of your sisters." The Boy lifted his head, eyes shining with interest. "What do you say? A story for a story? I'll even go first this time."

"…Fine, which sister?" It's not like he didn't have plenty of stories to tell, after all he had spent over 40 years holding on to them like dear life.

"Allison."

"I'll tell you one of Allison's stories then."

A part of Lila wanted to hear more silly stories from Diego, as much as she wanted to deny it, the idiotic vigilante was growing on her, but it wasn't like she could say that to Five of all people.

"Deal," she gave him a toothy smile and sat in front of him, arms resting at the back of the chair. "Okay so, it seems like as soon as she arrived to the sixties around two years ago, a group of men chased her until she found refugee on a beauty parlor. She started working there despite being unable to talk for a year," started Lila with her part of the deal trying to remember the most important details.

As Five listened, he tried to remember his lessons in American history, history wasn't really his forte, but he did remember things would have been rough for black people in the sixties and a sense of dread invaded him thinking about all the things she could have gone through. He hadn't really had time to think about the current situation of each of his siblings, never thinking about Diego being on a psychiatric center being a perfect example, but thinking about Allison, arriving to such a hostile environment, unable to use her powers or even to communicate normally and then losing her daughter, probably for forever, was pretty daunting.

"How is she doing now?" He asked fearing the response.

"She's actually doing pretty good, I don't think she's been using her powers, but she's part of a movement fighting for black people's rights along with her husband and they are doing pretty well."

Oh yes, the Handler mentioned she was married before, Five felt a surge of relief and respect for his sister, thanks to Vanya's book and some guessing, he knew Allison had abused her power in her adult life and that had caused her a lot of suffering, it was good to know she was doing better this time around despite all the hardships she was living. "Well… that's great."

"And then, a couple of days ago she met with two of your other siblings..."

Luther had taken his sweet time trying to process what had happened with Five, he had felt angry and devastated for days unable to understand how his brother had been capable of killing an innocent man in such a cold-blooded manner, with no explanation to him, no nothing, just that sick twisted smug smile of his; he kept wondering if he had truly judged Five that wrong back in 2019, but after overcoming some of his anger and depression, he hadn't forgiven Five one bit, he had cooled enough to think back to what he had said before he left, "Look for the others," now he wondered why he had assumed everyone had died so easily, none of them had any idea what would happen, maybe they had dropped somewhere else, maybe at different years or looking like kids like Five even, so he decided to ask his boss for a favor and he had found Allison's address within a day, if he had only thought of that earlier…

Visiting Allison's house for the first time had been another low blow, he hadn't been expecting to meet her husband, a guy named Raymond Chestnut; okay, he hadn't been expecting to find her married and with a new happy life far away from him, for a second time, but after the initial hurt he had decided to reach out to her again, after all they'd always be family and he sincerely wanted her to be happy, so here they were, sitting at an outdoor dinner having lunch.

"Ohh, guess what? That day you came to the house and found Ray," Luther blushed embarrassed at the memory but Allison didn't seem to notice, "I wasn't at the house because I found a guy that had those same stupid tattoos Klaus has on his hands."

"Really, what's the probability of that?"

"None," laughed Allison with a genuine smile remembering that day, "so I asked the man about them and he told me, hear this, that Klaus is a cult leader!" both laughed at the absurdity of Klaus leading anybody, "turns out he has a huge mansion here in Dallas," said Allison rubbing off a tear of laughter.

Luther wondered once more how it had taken them so long to find each other, Allison being part of a political movement and Klaus having a cult, for God's sake.

"Have you found anybody else?" Allison interrupted his reverie.

"Well… to be honest I had stopped looking for you guys, but Five put me thinking," that was true, would he have looked for Allison again if it wasn't for Five?

So what? Not like Five was looking for us either, he was too busy killing innocents, he griped to himself.

"Wait, Five is here? Why hadn't you mentioned that?"

"Well, I mean… our encounter was short and…," he grimaced, "I think he's working for the Commission again."

"What, the people that did everything in their power to make the apocalypse happen?"

"I know… it's crazy, but he… he killed a friend of mine in cold blood, Allison."

"What? I mean, I knew he had been working as an assassin for the Commission but wow… I kinda assumed it had been an act of desperation, not a chosen career."

"Yeah well, maybe we thought wrong, the little psycho didn't even give me an explanation, he just killed my friend, laughed, criticized my job and left."

"Laughed?" Allison frowned, she hadn't spent as much time with Five as the others since he had returned, sure he seemed as arrogant and intense as he was as a kid, maybe a little crazy and a bit scary, but had he actually become a full-fledged psychopath?

"Yeah, I thought I understood him, you know? We even bonded a little when we went looking for Hazel and Cha Cha, he told me about his time at the Commission and the apocalypse, but now I really don't know what to think, I'm just so angry at him, how could he just leave us here? And for what, to be a murderer?"

"Well, he did seem a bit… you know, crazy since he came back, more intense than he used to be, and that's saying a lot," she stopped to consider things, "but can you blame the guy?"

Allison had never been particularly close to Five, sure, she cared about him, they were siblings, but she didn't care much for his weird theoretical ramblings, being honest, she had a hard time following his train of thought most of the times, only Ben and Vanya seemed relatively capable of understanding half of what he was talking about. And then there were his long winded rants, which used to be comprised by him getting increasingly prickly whenever he was complaining about their father and the house rules, at those times he'd look for whoever still had their lights on at night and blinking to their rooms without warning to talk for hours non-stop, even Klaus seemed to find his antics entertaining for some reason, or maybe he just hated being alone at night that much, but she often found him tactless and harsh, especially with Luther and Diego; then again, Luther and Diego used to treat Vanya the worse, not that she was the best sister to her when they were kids, but Luther used to ignore her most of the time and Diego used to bully her whenever he felt insecure and Five had always had a soft spot for her.

Now that I think about it, despite his edgy demeanor and tactless words, he used to look out for each one of us in his own way, didn't he? She thought back to a day when their dad was yelling at her for wording a rumor wrong, they had been only 6 years old then, but when Five had seen her crying he had blinked in front of her and had confronted Reginald. She remembered looking at Five's smaller frame trembling in front of her, fists closed and voice shaky, but fiercely unmoved by his own fear; that day he had earned a blow to the face with a cane, but he had beamed proudly at Allison quickly wiping away the tears with his sleeve.

I'm not sure if I'd have the devotion to spend that many years trying to go back to my family… I know I wouldn't actually, she thought guiltily looking at her current life, "but maybe the loneliness affected him more than we thought…"

"Yeah… maybe 45 years is too long to come out unscathed…" mussed Luther echoing her last thought as he finished his second hamburger.

"You know, at first I was so mad at him too, I lost Claire and I was stuck in this horrible time for my people," started Allison, Luther looked at her with sympathy, he couldn't begin to imagine how hard things must have been for her, "but then I found a new purpose and met Ray… I'll always miss Claire, but we did fail at stopping the apocalypse, Five saved us from an imminent death. He gave us a second chance to do things better."

"Well, when you put it like that…" hesitated Luther for a minute before a frown returned to his brow, "Still, that doesn't change what I saw, why would he become a killer out of all the things he could have done?"

Allison sighed, "I wish I knew what to tell you Luther… but I'm glad that at least he made you look for me again," she smiled holding his hand, "we should keep looking for Diego and Vanya too, we have no idea what happened to them, to Vanya!" she exclaimed suddenly thinking back at their last interaction with their sister.

Luther looked down, Allison was right, for all that time he had lived his new life without a real worry after he had given up searching for his family, but now that there was a big chance that Vanya was alive somewhere, he really needed to take responsibility and apologize to her… hopefully she was less prone to destroying the world now? At least so far everything seemed to be all right.

Allison noticed Luther's conflicted expression and suggested, "why don't I look for Vanya and you look for Diego?"

"Yeah sure, maybe that's a better idea," Luther nodded sheepishly.

Notes: So, season 3 Allison would probably be as angry or worse than Luther, but I think that Allison in season 2 was actually in a very good place despite the hardships she had lived, yes, she lost Claire, but she was happily married and her life had a lot of real meaning, so I can see her being rational and compassionate enough to be the first one to stop and consider Five's actions.

Thank you so much for reading, remember to leave a comment if you want, I love talking about Five and Umbrella Academy and none of my friends watch it!