Episode One: We Only See Each Other At Weddings And Funerals

Part Five.

I don't own the Umbrella Academy.

Note: There are some trigger warnings ahead, and I will mark when it's over. Please take note of that.

I know that I wanted to honestly kind of stop writing, and I also didn't think that anybody actually really liked my book considering the comments I've been getting, but I checked the stats randomly and I realized that people apparently actually do like it, so I guess I'll be posting this chapter.

Percy leaned against the counter, wondering how long it would take before Five realized that there wasn't any coffee in the house. She felt nice, wearing her own clothes. The dress Allison had given her was hanging on her arm, having planned to return it to her, although she decided that she might have to put her plans on hold while watching Five fumble around for coffee, sure that he was going to find a way to get it, and she would be damned if she let him out of her sight again.

Percy glanced at Klaus, her eyebrows furrowing. She wasn't sure why he was clutching a guitar like it was his child, considering the fact that he didn't even play the guitar, which meant that he had swiped it from someone else's room, but then she decided that she didn't really need to know the answer. It was Klaus—sometimes what he did made sense, sometimes it didn't. They just had to roll with whatever he was doing. Most of her siblings had learned that. Some had not. She wasn't pointing any fingers, but if Luther was in the room, she would've given him a pointed look.

Her fingers began to drum the table, except she wasn't exactly drumming her fingers. It was more like she was tapping out a song on the piano, although she hadn't played the instrument in a long time. It wasn't like she could exactly afford a piano. She could barely afford groceries half the time. But a lot of her skill came from muscle memory, and she was playing River Flows In You by Yiruma, although she wasn't exactly aware of it. It was just a habit of hers.

"Hey, Percy?" Klaus asked from where he was sitting. "Hate to ask you and all... but do you have any cash on you? Because I'm flat out broke."

"I wish," she said dryly. "I'm broke too."

That was a lie. She had twenty dollars in her back pocket, but it wasn't like she was going to give it to Klaus. She supported him in everything he did but drugs, and he had to learn that. She hated the fact that he had to turn to drugs in order to block out the voices, and she sorely wished that there was some sort of alternative she could give him that would help him, but she wasn't sure if he would take it. Because, just like the rest of them, Klaus had been traumatized severely during his childhood, but he had it worse than the others, it seemed. Locking him in a mausoleum when he could see dead people was a pretty fucked up thing to do to him. Besides, she understood his trauma possibly better than the others, although not quite, because she too had been locked up in the vault. The mausoleum and the vault were their own personal hells that they were determined to never go back to.

She wished she could do something for him. She wanted it more than anything. She wanted to just snap her fingers and give him everything he ever wanted. But even with all the Umbrella Academy's abilities, they didn't have the power to just give themselves everything they wanted. In fact, because they had been "blessed" with the powers that they had, the world seemed to decide that they needed an awful curse to balance it out, and made their life so shitty that it was practically a joke.

TRIGGER WARNING

Without thinking, her fingers brushed against her lips. She remembered when, shortly after leaving the Academy, she had seen no way out of her situation, no way out of her life, and she had tried to do something that nobody ever knew—she had downed an entire bottle of pills with shaky hands and waited for the cold grip of death. Except it had never come—somehow, she had survived. Her body had metabolized the entire bottle and she had never even told anyone she tried. It seemed like she was exceptionally hard to kill, because she had tried more than once, and fate somehow kept on intervening. She had stopped a few years back, finally just accepting that she would never just goddamn die, and tried to move on with her life. It was harder than it sounded.

TRIGGER WARNING OVER

"Percy, I know that's a lie," Klaus said.

She scowled. "Fine, I'm not gonna deny it—I do have money on me. But I am not gonna give it to you, because guess what? Drugs aren't the only way to get the voices to stop, Klaus. If you wanna keep doing it—fine, it's not like I can monitor you your entire life—but I'm not going to fund you. Either make your own money, or leech off of someone else."

Klaus clasped his hands, giving her a pleading look. "Please? Pretty please? With a cherry on top?"

She folded her arms, glaring right back at him. "No."

As if on cue, Allison chose that time to stroll into the room, her coat on her arm, still in her black memorial dress. She dropped her coat on the dress, asking nobody in particular, "Where's Vanya?"

"Oh, she's gone," Klaus said, making Percy blink in surprise. When had she gone? She immediately felt like a terrible sister for not noticing.

"That's unfortunate," Five said, holding a coffee maker, although Percy had a feeling he was talking about the lack of coffee in the house rather than the disappearance of his sister.

"Yeah," Allison said softly, before noticing what was in his hand as well and gave him a confused look.

"An entire square block. Forty-two bedrooms, nineteen bathrooms, but no, not a single drop of coffee," Five said in half-disbelief, half-annoyance, setting down the maker.

"Dad hated caffeine," Allison reminded him.

"Well, he hated children, too, and he had plenty of us!" Klaus said, half-laughing, although there was no humor behind it.

Everybody just looked at him like he had gone insane, save Percy who had a small smile tugging at her lips, before Five said abruptly, "I'm taking the car."

Klaus immediately looked concerned, sitting up and uncrossing his legs. "Where are you going?"

Five turned around and said sharply, "To get a decent cup of coffee."

"Do you even know how to drive?" Allison asked, although it came out in a sort of accusing tone. Percy winced. Five was not going to take that well.

Sure enough, he sneered back, "I know how to do everything."

Then he grabbed Percy's hand and spatial-jumped out of there.

They reappeared outside of the house while Percy gasped in surprise, stumbling away, doing her best to keep the contents of her stomach back in her stomach. Although she and Five used to spatial-jump quite often back then, she hadn't actually jumped in nearly two decades, and doing so again, especially when she hadn't been expecting it, nearly made her retch. Instead, after a few seconds of reminding herself that her feet were on solid ground again, screwed-shut eyes, and deep, calming breaths, she decided that probably wouldn't throw up.

"Sorry," Five said. "I forgot."

"I'm fine," she reassured him. "Just try and warn me next time?" And then she looked at the dress on her arm and groaned. "I forgot to give this back to Allison. God, I—"

"Keep it," Five suggested. "It looked good on you, anyway."

She tried to laugh, although her fiery cheeks gave her away. "Mhm. Well, the 'dress' showed about half my ass to the world, so... I don't think I'm gonna wear it again any time soon." She wiggled her eyebrows at Five. "Why? Hoping I'd wear it for you some time soon?"

She had only been speaking in jest, but her eyes widened when his cheeks matched her's in a crimson splash.

"I—do not," he spluttered. "You're... you're despicable, Percy!"

"If you flirt with someone your physical age," she said, "are you a pedophile? And if you flirt with someone your mental age, are they a pedophile?"

"I cannot believe I'm having this conversation with you."

She just shrugged. "I haven't had a conversation with you for seventeen years. I'm gonna have to make up for all of our missed conversations, and that includes every stupid conversation ever." She nodded in the direction of her car. "Let's take mine, but I'm driving, because I do not trust your skills."

"You can drive?" he asked, surprise coloring his voice.

"You can drive," she reminded him. "What difference does it make? We're technically the same age."

"Only physically," he argued. "I'm fifty-eight and you're thirty. That's a pretty big difference."

"Okay, well, we're both in situations where if we tried to date someone, someone in the relationship would be classified as a pedo. So close enough."

Five rolled his eyes and mumbled a few words under his breath that Percy didn't catch, although a small smile did make its way onto her face. She had missed her playful banter with Five—he was one of the only people who could come up with witty comebacks, or at least comebacks that made some sort of sense. And he was always so much kinder around her, as compared to her siblings... except for maybe Vanya. The side of Five that she knew was a side she knew nobody else ever saw. He only allowed himself to be a stupid and goofy dork around her, which she took pride in, even if it was a stupid thing to take pride in.

"But the whole time travelling thing," she said, switching topics. "I'm still confused. How does it work, exactly?"

"There were a lot of calculations," he said. "Complicated ones. Formulas that I made up myself." He glanced at her. "I could tell you all of it... but... well, mathematics isn't exactly your strong suit."

She scowled at him, but what he said was true. While Five had been the math and science genius—but mostly math—of the family, Percy had been more gifted in the department of history, which was so stupid in her opinion, but history just came easily to her... although her knowledge of it was a strange patchwork of knowledge. For example, she could tell someone that the reason snacks were banned during cabinet meetings was because Thomas Jefferson always ate mac and cheese during them and everyone else found it so disgusting, since it wasn't that popular during that time, that George Washington banned snacks altogether, but she couldn't remember when the Glorious Revolution was. Was it sixteen-sixty-six? Sixty-eight? Maybe not even during the sixteen-sixties. She was sure it was some time during the seventeenth century... and now that she thought about it, there was definitely an eight somewhere in the date, which meant that it could've happened during the sixteen-eighties...

"I mean, I wasn't bad at it," she mumbled.

"No, but you didn't have a gigantic chalkboard in your room that you used to solve so-called 'unsolvable' equations when you got bored, did you?"

"You solved the unsolvable equations of the world for fun?"

"Like they were even hard."

Sometimes, she couldn't tell if half the things Five said was him subtly bragging (although if it was, it wasn't exactly subtle), or he genuinely thought that the stuff he said was either obvious or just facts. She was leaning toward a mixture of both, although more toward the not-so-subtle bragging. She was sure he didn't mean to make her feel like an idiot (or he did—she could never tell with him) but she couldn't help but feel like a... well, moron compared to him. Five was just a natural genius, and she could never compare to him. He was the definition of perfection in their father's book—skilled in combat, deadly, useful, and intelligent. Percy? Not so much. Sure, she was good at fighting, but she disobeyed their father far too much for his taste, and she wasn't exactly keen on pursuing STEM-like subjects. She preferred the world of fantasy over the science books he provided her with, and he had hated her so much for it, she remembered. So every time she secretly read a book on magic, she felt like she was punching him in the face by doing so. It satisfied her so much that she continued reading those kinds of books just to get back at him.

"Five," she said hesitantly, "when you were talking to Vanya, you said you read her book in a library that was 'still standing.'" She made quotation marks with her fingers at those two words. "What did you mean, still standing?"

The question had bugged her ever since she had heard Five utter those words. She had fought with herself, arguing with herself that she probably wouldn't want to know the answer anyway, but her curiosity won in the end. Because "still standing" did not seem like good news, and Percy had an awful feeling that something terrible was going to happen—something that none of them could stop.

"Eavesdropping, weren't you?" Five deadpanned, and Percy went pale when she remembered she had been hiding during that duration of their conversation.

"I—"

"It's fine," he cut in. "I just..." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I didn't want to say anything because... well, I didn't think you guys needed to know, but... the world ends in eight days, Percy."

Percy, who had been in the middle of pulling out her keys to unlock her car door, froze at those words. "Come again?"

"I travelled to the end of the world. To the apocalypse. And it's in eight days, Percy. I have to find a way to stop it."

"And you didn't think that was important for us to know?" she demanded.

He scoffed. "And do you really think that any of our siblings would even try and help? Even if I try to tell them, they wouldn't help, Percy. Do you honestly think they would?"

"Vanya would," she found herself saying. "Vanya always listened before."

Five considered that. "Yeah," he decided. "You're right. We can swing by Vanya's after my coffee."

He gave her a pointed glance, and she realized with a start that she still had to unlock her car doors. The car beeped before the two not-so-teenage-teenagers sidled in and Percy, starting the car, drove off to the donut shop she remembered from all those years before.

While she drove there, she and Five made light conversation. They were basically just trying to update the other on what the other had done during the other's absence, but Percy found Five giving careful answers to some of her questions, like he was trying to hide something from her. She didn't call him out for it, though, because it wasn't like she wasn't hiding anything either. They were both trying to skirt around the darker parts of their lives, not wanting the other to know about the darkness inside of them, although they were two very different types of darknesses.

Percy found out that Five's love for desserts had all but disappeared when he ate a bad twinkie once in the apocalypse, and, horrified, she promised herself that she was going to give him some ice cream as soon as she could, because how could anyone hate ice cream? She also discovered that she had been completely correct in not letting him drive to the store, because while he did know how to drive—as in knew most of the signs and the basics of driving—he had learned in the apocalypse, and teaching oneself and actually learning from someone who knew how to drive were two completely different things.

As they chatted and she drove, she realized just how much Five had changed since she last saw him. Because, sure, he looked the same... and that was what was so unsettling for the two. Because the other looked the same as they had seventeen years ago. If they had come back, looking completely different, they could've accepted the other having changed. Expected the other to change. But because they both looked the same... they expected the other to be the same in everything, not just looks. And it was hard, seeing someone that looked so familiar but in reality, was so much more different than they could've imagined.

"Five," she said softly, all of a sudden, "I know there's something you're not telling me about the apocalypse."

He looked startled, as if he hadn't been expecting her to ask that, but he didn't answer, which only confirmed Percy' suspicions.

"We all die, don't we?" she continued gently. "All of us. Except for you... and Ben... because he died before..."

"How'd you figure it out?" he asked.

"You said the apocalypse, Five. Doesn't take a genius to figure it out. So we all die. Did we try and stop it?"

Five nodded. "You all died as a team. Together. And..." He broke off. "You know, when I was wandering the ruins, seeing all your bodies... I had almost convinced myself that it wasn't you guys. That it was just a coincidence there were bodies in the Academy. And then I saw Klaus's tattoo and I couldn't keep lying to myself."

Percy, however, frowned. "But I still look the same. Did I age, or something? Is that why you didn't recognize me? How much would I even have to age—"

"I didn't find your body because you weren't there," he whispered. "You, or Ben, or Vanya. And I don't know why. But that kept me sane for some time. The idea that you three were still alive. And then I found Vanya's book and realized Ben had died long before. And I thought, I thought..."

Five couldn't continue, but Percy understood. He had thought she and Vanya had died years before, before the apocalypse. If she hadn't been driving, she would've given Five a hug, because the expression on his face absolutely broke her heart. She distantly wondered what it was like—accidentally transporting yourself to the apocalypse and finding half your family dead, unsure of where the other half was, but most likely dead, possibly from years before. She wasn't sure how Five had managed to keep his sanity, until she remembered that he had stayed with someone named Delores. So someone had survived. She wondered how, but just as she was about to question him, the shop they had been driving toward came into view, and, while parking, she somehow completely forgot the question.

Five was out of the car as soon as she turned off the engine while she took a few extra moments to gather her things, but as soon as she turned around to get out, she discovered why he had left earlier—he had opened the door for her as soon as it was apparent she was going to leave. She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling nonetheless, and, as soon as he had closed the door behind her, he held out his hand. She accepted it, and they walked into Griddy's Doughnuts together, hand in hand.

A man who was leaving held the door open for them, and while Five just breezed past him without a word, Percy offered the man a small smile, to which she received one back. The store was deserted, but that just meant they could get Five his coffee pretty quickly and then they could get on with whatever they needed to do. Because there was an incoming apocalypse, and Percy was sure that she and Five needed to find a way to stop it. Well, he hadn't exactly asked her to help him, but she'd be damned if she made him solve everything by himself.

They settled themselves right in front of the counter, where Five rang the bell twice, waiting for the waiter. Surprisingly, the waiter didn't come immediately, which Percy didn't understand why, since there were no customers in the shop, but she supposed there must've been a problem with the shop, or something. From behind them, the door opened, and Percy glanced behind her to see an older man stride into the shop, taking a seat next to her. Five shot a wary glance toward the man, his hand tightening on hers, while the man took off his hat with a long exhale and picked up a newspaper, giving Five a side-glance in return, possibly wondering why a thirteen-year-old kid was staring him down, but before Percy could scold Five for scaring a man who had done nothing to them, the waitress—a cheery older woman dressed in all pink—came toward them, notepad in hand.

"Sorry," she said, with a small chuckle, "sink was clogged." Ah, so that had been why she had taken her time. "So, what'll it be?"

"Uh, give me a chocolate éclair," the man said.

"Mm-hmm. Sure," the woman mumbled, writing it down on her notepad, before glancing at Five and Percy. "Can I get the kids a glass of milk or something?"

Percy immediately winced, knowing that Five probably wouldn't take it well. Sure enough, he said, scoffing, "The kid wants coffee. Black."

The woman looked a little startled, before she tried to laugh it off and said, "Cute kid."

The man nodded uneasily with a tight-lipped smile, and Five gave her a shit-eating grin. Percy only sighed, and, trying to diffuse as much of the tension as she could, added, "And I'll have a... uh..." she glanced at the menu and blurted out, "a jam doughnut? Thank you."

It came out more as a question than an answer, since Percy didn't even like jam doughnuts, which Five had clearly remembered because he gave her a confused look, but her politeness seemed to do the trick. The waiter seemed to relax a little bit as she nodded and said, "Okay," before going to get them their orders.

Five sighed, glancing at the man again, and Percy's phone rang. She fished it out of her back pocket and glanced at the screen, blinking in surprise. Shea Sinclair, it flashed. She hadn't talked to Shea in quite a while, but she picked it up anyway, unlatching her fingers from Five as she went to answer the phone, not noticing his slightly confused look when she did so.

"Hello?" she asked.

"Percy?" she heard. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." She frowned into the phone. "Why?"

"You just left without saying anything," he said, sounding worried. "I thought that you... well..."

Percy grimaced.

TRIGGER WARNING

Shea was possibly the only one that knew of one of her suicide attempts—the last, in fact. She had been twenty-six during that time, and she had just wanted to end everything right there and then. Shea had been her first friend after leaving—and pretty much her only friend since leaving the Academy—and he had noticed her depression, always doing whatever he could to try and help her, but it didn't help. Finally, one day, she had written him a good-bye letter, climbed the highest building in the city, turned around, and let herself freefall. She had closed her eyes and thought of Five's smile, wanting that to be her last memory.

Then Shea—stupid, kind Shea—had figured everything out and had caught her right before she was about to splatter on impact. She had been a little pissed at him, and he at her. They had ended the night on a shouting match back at his place until they finally decided that they should probably have the conversation when they both weren't extremely tired. They made up the next day, with him forcing Percy to promise him that she wouldn't try again.

TRIGGER WARNING OVER

"I didn't," she said softly. "My dad died... so I went back home."

She could almost hear his wince. "Did it go okay?"

"Oh, most definitely not."

Shea knew of her dysfunctional family, knew all about her and being a part of the Umbrella Academy. She had come clean to him pretty early on, having to explain to him why she was an adult in a thirteen-year-old body, and he had been pretty confused about everything in the beginning, but had finally learned to roll with it. He was technically younger than her mentally—he was twenty-seven now—but twice her age physically, which usually gained them some weird looks in public.

"When are you coming back?"

She bit her lip. "Um... I don't know. My brother ran into some problems—"

"Oh no."

"'Oh no' is right," she said with a grimace. "Anyway, I'll probably have to help him with it before I get back."

"Which brother? Is it Klaus?"

"Uh... surprising no, actually. It's... um... Five. Number Five."

"Number Five?" he asked in disbelief. "Like the Number Five that disappeared seventeen years ago? That Five?"

"Uh... yeah, actually." She managed a nervous laugh. "He came back today."

"Oh my god!" Shea practically screeched into the phone. "Oh my god! Percy, you have to promise me you'll get me his autograph. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god—"

While Shea was fan-boying into the phone, Percy was laughing at his reaction. Shea had always looked up to the Umbrella Academy—he had been in awe of Percy when he had found out who she was. For most of his childhood, he told her that he had wanted to be one of them, fighting crime and saving the day, until she reminded him that it was dangerous work and all of them had had close brushes with death. That changed his entire perspective on being one of them, but he still did admire them. And out of all of them, Five was perhaps his favorite (except for Percy, because she would alwaysbe his favorite).

"I'll get it for you," she promised.

"Percy... you're the best. I hope you'll remember that for all of time." There was a pause. "Oh, I have to go. Talk to you later?"

"Yeah," she said. "Take care."

"You too, Perse. You know I love you, right?"

"Yeah. Love you too."

He ended the call, and she went back to sitting next to Five, who was staring curiously at her phone.

"Was that your boyfriend?" he asked.

"No, that was my best friend, who has a girlfriend, actually, that is not me. Oh, and he wants your autograph because you've been his hero for like, two decades now."

"He wants... my autograph?"

"Mm. Did going into the future fuck up your brain or something? Is that not what I just said?"

If she had been anyone else but her, he would've loaded her into a cannon and shot her across the ocean for that joke. But seeing as she was... well, her, he settled for just a scowl, to which Percy smirked at. She knew that Five had always had a soft spot for her, and if she didn't take advantage of it... well, that wouldn't have been very fun. Besides, she took pride in the fact that she was possibly the only person on the planet that he wouldn't murder just because she annoyed him. She wasn't sure why. Possibly because it was nice, knowing that Five liked her enough for that.

"Do you remember when we would come here as kids?" he asked her, changing topics.

Percy laughed slightly. "And Klaus ate so many doughnuts that he puked and we had to come up with an explanation as to why that didn't involve us leaving the house against Dad's orders? How could I forget?"

"Everything's changed since then," he said quietly. "It's... weird." He passed her the jam doughnut that was lying on the table, wrapped in a napkin. "I keep expecting everything to be the same now, even though I know it's different. And when it is... it's surprising anyway."

"Did you expect me to be the same?"

She wasn't sure why she had asked that question. The words just fell from her lips without thinking, and even she was a little startled at what she had said. And judging from Five's face, he hadn't been expecting her to ask something like that either.

"I..." he hesitated. "I don't know. You looked the same. I guess I kind of... well, expected you to be the same, yeah. But you aren't. Not really."

"Five..."

Her mouth went dry. She remembered Allison's words, telling her to tell Five what she felt for him. He was still looking at her curiously, clearly encouraging her to continue, but Percy wasn't sure she could. Her heart pounded. She swallowed, biting her lip, and had just opened her mouth to say something when Five suddenly went still, his hand grasping her forearm tightly, stopping Percy from what she was about to say. She frowned, almost making to turn around when she heard the door open, but Five stopped her with a look. She shot him a worried look before glancing back at her uneaten doughnut, a sense of unease spreading through her gut.

"Hmm. That was fast," Five said casually, although his tight grip on her arm told her he felt otherwise. "I thought I'd have more time before they found me."

What? Percy's breathing quickened a little bit when she realized that there were about a dozen armed men pointing a gun at both of them, and they looked trained. She hadn't done any hero-ing business in a decade—she had always tried to stay out of fights. She had had enough of them for a lifetime.

"Okay," the man closest to Five said, his gun pointed right at Five's head. "So let's all be professional about this, yeah? On your feet and come with us. Both of you. They want to talk."

"I've got nothing to say," Five said lightly.

"It doesn't have to go this way. You think I want to shoot two kids? Go home with that on my conscience?"

Five paused. "Well, I wouldn't worry about that." He turned around to look at the man with a cold smile. "You won't be going home."

The man glared at Five as the latter slowly picked up the knife beside him with his free arm. And then all hell broke loose.

Five, with some sort of incredible strength, had literally thrown Percy over the counter with a sort of practiced ease, where she hit the ground awkwardly, hissing in pain. There was a smattering of gunfire, the sound of breaking glass, and then suddenly the lights were broken, flashing rather painfully in Percy's eyes.

Then it was silent while Percy's heart beat rapidly, trying to figure out what was happening, and then she heard Five shout, "Hey, assholes!"

And then the sound of gunfire sounded again, but this time, it had sounded much closer than before, and she realized, slightly horrified, that the gunmen had been moving toward her, and Five's call had taken the attention off of her. She caught sight of the waitress cowering behind the counter as well, a look of fear clear on her face, her hands over her ears, her eyes screwed shut, stumbling backwards for the backroom, and Percy's heart clenched. She was a member of the goddamn Umbrella Academy, for goodness sakes'! She didn't cower and let her siblings take care of everything.

It was silent for another few moments, before she heard gunfire again, and she risked that moment to peek out, knowing that they were distracted. Finally having some sort of idea of where the men were, she ducked back down and began looking around wildly for some sort of weapon, but she couldn't find anything other than an apron. And then she got an idea. A stupid idea, perhaps, that would probably get her killed, but it wasn't like she could exactly just leave everything up to Five.

She then heard a scream, and she made her move.

She snatched the apron and sprinted toward the nearest man, leaping up and wrapping her legs around his neck, swinging him around while he flailed. He fired wildly, hitting one of his teammates while Percy wrapped the apron around his neck and pulled, strangling him. Five was nowhere in sight, which meant that now she was the main target, which she probably should've thought of before jumping into action, but Percy had always been pretty reckless. Thinking quickly, she used her legs to steer the man and flip upside down, using him as a shield, and thankfully, the closest call to death she had was when a bullet grazed her thigh, slashing her jeans, but it was a shallow cut, and it wasn't very painful.

When the man finally collapsed onto the ground, she rolled off of him, ducking underneath the guns and came up behind one of the other men, quickly snapping his neck. When she turned around, there was a gun pointed straight at her face, about an inch away. She didn't even have time to close her eyes before the man could've fired. But no—suddenly, he was crying out in pain, having been yanked back, and Five was there, strangling him with his uniform tie. As Five was busy strangling the man, another one pointed a gun right at him, but Percy snatched up the pencil the waitress had been using and stabbed it in the place where the sun didn't shine. He yelled in pain, falling to the ground, but there were so many more men and Percy wasn't sure if they could take them all at the same time. So she decided to do something that was possibly even stupider than her idea of strangling someone with an apron, and that was already pretty hard to top.

She thrust out her hands, red wisps of energy escaping from them; her eyes glowed; and suddenly, time froze inside the shop for everything except for her and Five. Five glanced up at her in surprise, although Percy didn't notice. She was gritting her teeth, already feeling the strain of doing something on such a large scale after not having done something like that in years. She knew she had promised herself that she wouldn't ever do something like that again on someone, but it was a life-or-death situation. With the men all frozen in time, Five made short work of them, and not a moment too soon. As soon as he finished stabbing all of them, Percy's powers collapsed... as did the girl. Five rushed to her side immediately, and she tried to assure him that she was fine, but she was so exhausted she couldn't even open her mouth.

Somehow, though, with his help, she had managed to stagger to her feet, but Five's hand tightened on her forearm and he led her to the counter instead of outside, where he left her propped up against it, blinking slowly, trying to keep herself from falling asleep. Her vision focused on something in Five's hand. A tracker. And a knife. And then she realized what he was going to do, but she was too tired to even say anything when he sliced his forearm open and dug around for the tracker in his arm, grimacing, pulling out a beeping green device after a few seconds of gross squelching sounds. Then, with Percy's help (although she was fairly sure she had been basically useless), he managed to wrap his arm with a bunch of napkins, and he guided the girl out of the shop.

Percy was too exhausted to even protest at being treated like some sort of damsel-in-distress. She supposed it was her fault for using her powers on such a large scale despite knowing exactly what was going to happen, but it wasn't like she could just not do anything. Still, she had paid the price, and she was really just craving some sleep. She hardly noticed Five setting her down gently in the passenger's side.

"Percy," Five asked as he started the car, "where does Vanya live?"

"Hm?"

"Vanya's address."

"Oh. That... that apartment."

"You're going to have to be a little more specific than that."

Percy mumbled two street names and was out like a light.

She came to some time later, still half-out of it, sitting in some sort of... weird chair, or something.

"Jesus!" she heard Vanya exclaim.

Percy internally frowned. What was Vanya doing there? Actually, where was she?

"You should have locks on your windows," Five said from right next to her, and she realized that she was sitting on Five.

"I live on the second floor."

"Rapists can climb," Five said, as if it bothered him greatly.

If Percy had her senses about her, she might've smiled at his words. Even after seventeen (or forty-five, depending on how you looked at it) years, Five still cared about Vanya.

"You are so weird," Vanya muttered.

Percy somehow managed to peel her eyes open, blinking groggily, her mind still feeling like it was stuffed with cotton.

As Vanya approached them, Percy murmured, "Five?"

She felt him shift. "You're awake."

"No shit, Sherlock."

"Is that blood?" Vanya asked, worry creeping into her voice.

Five glanced at his fingers which did indeed still have the crimson liquid splashed on them, before looking back up at his sister. "It's nothing."

There was a few seconds of silence before Vanya asked, "Why are you here?"

"I've decided you're the only one I can trust."

"Why me?"

"Because you're ordinary." Vanya looked slightly hurt at that, and Five tried a different tactic. "Because you'll listen."

"Okay," she murmured, getting up, clearly to get medical supplies.

In the minute that Vanya took to get the things, Five glanced down at Percy. His mind strayed to their conversation in the doughnut shop, where she had been about to tell him something important—at least, he assumed it was something important considering how nervous she had gotten—when the Commission assassins had interrupted. Without thinking, his fingers lightly brushed her cheeks, something that Vanya managed to catch when she came back, holding the gauze and alcohol.

While she helped him clean up his wound, Five said, "When I jumped forward and got stuck in the future, do you know what I found?"

"No."

"Nothing," Five answered. "Absolutely nothing. As far as I could tell, I was the last person left alive. I never figured out what killed the human race, but... I did find something else. The date it happens. The world ends in eight days, and I have no idea how to stop it."

Vanya looked... well, there wasn't even a word to describe it. Shocked would perhaps be the closest, but it didn't portray it well enough. Horrified, perhap. Stunned. In disbelief.

"I'll put on a pot of coffee."

The ending is kind of rushed simply because this chapter is about 6.5k words when it was supposed to be around 5.5k and I needed it to end before I died from the overload of words. God, this entire episode took 30k words to write.

Before any of you come after me for writing a depressed and suicidal character, I know what it's like to be depressed. People deal with depression in different ways, and some of Percy's depressions reflect my own, and some of it reflects the depressions of other people I know, and known. But Percy's actions and thoughts isn't the definition of depression, just one branch of it, so you might not experience the same things that she experiences, and your trauma is still valid. And just because Percy's depression doesn't reflect yours doesn't mean that I've written depression incorrectly either. Depression isn't just feeling sad all the time and wondering what the meaning of life is—for me, it's being too tired, mentally and physically, to do anything I like, even writing sometimes, or feeling like crying at the smallest things, even if it doesn't make sense. And... well, Percy's starting to healing a little bit, because she's finally reunited with her family after thirteen years ago, and it's in her family that she can find solace, even if she hasn't realized that completely yet.

Also, I know that Five is kind of OOC, and I tried to explain a little why in this chapter—he's nicer, and a little more touch-y feel-y to Percy than he is to other characters, simply because... well, not only is Percy is love interest, but there's also the fact that Percy used to be his best friend, so of course he would be nicer to her than to the others, in my opinion. I didn't want to change his character entirely, so he is still sometimes insensitive and sarcastic to even Percy, but he's definitely much nicer to her for... well, the reasons I stated above. Still, I also know that he might be becoming a little too OOC, so I'll keep that in mind for future chapters.