A/N: We're back!

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Disclaimer: Blah not blah not blah mine.

WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS MENTIONS OF SUICIDE.

Five groaned and furiously thumped his head on the pillow, wishing more than anything else that he could enjoy one night of uninterrupted sleep.

His dreams were getting meaner and more depressing of late: usually they'd featured him alone in the post-apocalyptic future with nobody but Dolores for company, or worse still, alone in the ruined Commission headquarters with a missing arm and a life support machine barely keeping him alive. That was bad enough, especially since he'd had more than enough time to work out how he'd ended up in those sorry states, and even worse since those dreams were vivid enough for him to feel the chill of a world without central heating or the pain of having his lungs mechanically kneaded like pizza dough.

Now, though, he had dreams of being a respected young agent of the CIA and blessed with all the rights and privileges he'd been denied in the weeks since he'd returned from the future... and in the years since he'd wound up in Reginald's police state. It was cruel in contrast to the real world, a sick joke played on him by his own sleeping brain just to make reality all the more joyless.

Here he was, on the late side of eighteen years old, unable to enjoy his retirement, still not taken seriously.

Actually, that wasn't quite right: he was being taken seriously, very seriously indeed in certain circles, usually by heavily armed men in uniform. It was just that he was being taken seriously for entirely the wrong reasons.

And all because he'd…

…he'd…

Five groaned and buried his face in his pillow, wishing he could forget what had led him to this awful place, but his brain refused to obey: no matter how hard he tried to turn back the tide, the memories always came flooding back to him, bursting through the little dams he'd built inside his head and forcing him to remember in every horrific detail.

It had all started in the days following their departure from the Hotel Oblivion: Five had barely had a chance to settle in with the rest of the newly-united family before the first truant officers had started sniffing around, demanding to know why a thirteen-year-old boy was hanging around with a group of suspicious adults, asking where his parents were, and threatening to get the police involved.

At that time, the Umbrella Academy had only just managed to partially reunite long enough to get their heads together on what to do next, so they could barely afford the rent on the single cramped apartment, much less the fines and legal fees they'd be required to pay, so they'd been forced to let Child Protective Services frogmarch him out the door.

He'd thought he could deal with it, even without his powers, if only he'd been taken to ordinary foster care. As enraging it was to be treated like a child, he could have lived with being stuck with some saccharine foster family for a while, even if they'd found him cold and aggressive. But no, he'd had the rotten luck of ending up in Sir Reginald Hargreeves' idea of a perfect world, where there was no such thing as foster care, and abandoned children were made wards of for-profit orphanages. And in Reggie's utopia, the Hargreeves Corporations were always in need of cheap labour for heavy industry, especially when it came to repair jobs.

And as for getting an education as the truant officers expected of him, Five had quickly found that the orphanage's attached school was designed to get the children just literate and numerate enough to make them useful employees, and once that basic requirement was fulfilled, education was replaced entirely with indoctrination: the employer was always right, unionizing was an unforgiveable atrocity, safety was a concern of the employee alone, your worth was to be measured in how much money you could make for the company, complaining was a sign of an unproductive attitude, and forming long-term relationships was a distraction from loyalty to the company. Quite apart from converting orphans into viable employees with no grasp of anything outside work including sex ed, it was also a very useful method of creating adults who were screwed-up enough to blow all their money on booze from Hargreeves-owned stores, fuck their loneliness away through unprotected sex, and jizz out another generation of unwanted children – ensuring that the orphanages never went out of business.

Well, dad always hated children, Five mused, as he tried and failed to make himself comfortable. Guess his idea of a perfect world just had to reflect that.

But alas, the school was only the beginning of the horrors of the orphanage. The place had been unpleasant enough on the outside, a seven-story windowless concrete monolith crowned with an octet of industrial chimneys that were forever belching pollutants into the filthy sky, so it was already a vision of hell even if you couldn't tell that one of the chimneys clearly belonged to a crematorium (which Five could, unfortunately, having disposed of far too many bodies for his own good, back in his days with the Commission). Inside, the place had been a bloody meatgrinder incorporating brutally sadistic guards, backbreaking industrial labour with zero worker safety standards, soul-crushing re-education classes, and even the occasional gang war on the days when the warden decided that feeding the kids was too expensive and the population needed thinning.

About the only blessing to count was the fact that the guards were required to keep the majority of the kids alive and healthy enough to work unless disease had rendered the latest batch of children non-viable. They were also keen to enforce discipline to ensure that nobody got any ideas about rebelling against them or their future employers, but they weren't obliged to intervene in the case of violence between the kids unless it endangered productivity. So, once the guards weren't watching the cellblocks or the cafeteria, all bets were off.

Not that Five had gotten involved with any of the gangs, in part because he'd spent a good chunk of the first few months under lock and key. Nobody else at the orphanage had possessed his fighting skills or his knowledge of inflicting pain, and even without his powers, he'd been virtually unstoppable in combat unless an entire gang dogpiled him. Even the guards had been taken by surprise when they'd waded in to suppress these little riots, and after the third of them had lost an ear while trying to get Five under control, they'd quickly realized that he couldn't be controlled through the usual methods: even though they had the equipment to suppress him, he knew too much to be indoctrinated like any other child.

So, after his third visit to solitary was over and done with, the warden had made him an offer: improved rations, improved quarters, an end to his work at the foundry, and even few pre-set periods of supervised leave in which he'd be allowed to see his family again – in exchange for helping the guards to "enforce discipline." And after ten months of being bounced between the infirmary, the sleeping quarters, and solitary confinement, Five was so desperate for any respite from the nightmare that he agreed to the bargain almost immediately.

They gave him a uniform, a steel baton, and a taser, and they entrusted him with carrying out the assaults and the vulgar displays of power that kept the kids in life. This he did the only way he knew how: with pure mechanical efficiency, without joy, but not without pride in a job well done. In return, he was given a private room, hot food, extra sleep, and even his own books and TV. And once a month, on a day of his choosing, he was fitted with an ankle monitor, escorted out of the orphanage, and led back to the cramped apartment where the remains of the Umbrella Academy had briefly put down roots.

Of course, that belonged to Viktor alone by then, for everyone else had moved out of that flophouse in the hopes of finding new lives of their own, but even with so many of them finding homes of their own after a fashion, it didn't take long to arrange family get-togethers on these particular days. Everyone except for Allison dutifully gathered, supplying cake, coffee, and what little booze they were able to afford, and even the occasional gift, and despite the grim police state beyond their walls, they managed to find some semblance of merriment.

And when he finally returned to his room, Five busied himself with his age-old hobby of higher mathematics, scrawling up page after page of calculations in a desperate attempt to work out if there was a way – any way – of undoing the dystopia that Reginald had built with their help. So far, it didn't seem terribly likely, and at times, it had been hard to concentrate on his work what with the distant sobs and screams from the sleeping quarters – which could mean anything from a prelude to suicidal depression or a late-night visit from one of the more monstrous guards. Five didn't know, and more to the point, he hadn't wanted to know: he was unofficially required to ignore any instances of guards enjoying "the perks of the job," not to mention the bribery and nest-feathering going on behind the scenes, and as his wilful blindness had been one of the few things guaranteeing his limited freedom, he'd been inclined to continue with it if it meant seeing the rest of the family once a month.

But despite the deprivations and cruelties of this new world, Five had been almost content with it, even on the rare few days when he'd found himself visited by the least-welcome member of the family…

…up until the day before he turned eighteen for the second time in his life.

It was at or around that time that he'd started noticing odd things, things that had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end: the way the guards nodded their heads as he'd walked by, the way the other kids turned pale and looked away at his approach, and how some of them even broke down crying if he tried to speak to them when they were alone. Worst of all was that overly jovial, uncomfortably familiar way the warden had spoken to him, clapping him on the back, offering him candy, even approaching him while he was alone in the restroom for a private chat.

But it wasn't until the warden discussed finding him work in management after he was old enough to leave the orphanage – and severing ties with his family in order to avoid damaging his promotion prospects – that Five finally realized what had been rubbing him the wrong way about the whole affair.

Somehow, after everything he'd done to escape the Commission, after all the bitterness and hatred he'd nurtured in his heart for the organization that had helped ruin his life, he'd ended up replicating his time among them almost to a T, right down to the boss with no sense of personal space and the interest in grooming him for entry into a morally bankrupt managerial class. And this time, there'd be no escape, no briefcase that could undo the nightmare, no means of ferreting his way out of the heartless elite class that he'd unwittingly burrowed into, no way of seeing his family again, not unless he did something truly drastic.

In hindsight, Five had…

…overreacted.

When the guards had finally been able to kick the door down, they'd found him completely naked and repeatedly hacking away at the warden's corpse with a blade torn off a paper guillotine.

It had taken twenty guards to finally bring him down, and only because orphanage security was legally bound to use tranquilizer darts instead of bullets, so he'd had enough time to make them pay for every rat bastard they sent his way. And even when he was finally too drugged to stand upright or hold his makeshift blade, he'd bitten anyone who'd made the mistake of trying to grab him, until at last he'd passed out.

Beforehand, the authorities had been perfectly willing to overlook a few dead orphans and the occasional badly wounded guard. This time, with the warden dead, ten guards dead, twenty-seven wounded, the executive offices beyond repair, and the receipt spike covered in eyeballs, nobody had been interested in looking the other way.

Five had been old enough to leave the orphanage by then, so after a trial that lasted all of six hours, they sent him straight to prison on a life sentence.

So, here he was.

A lone cell in the bleakest wing of a maximum-security prison on the city outskirts, a subterranean hellhole buried half a mile beneath the ground. Three concrete walls and a steel gate – which would have been nothing to his powers, had he still possessed them. Twenty-three daily hours of lockdown, one daily hour of exercise, and all of it conducted under harsh fluorescent lights that would remain on at all times. No entertainment. No visitation, except by the guards. No darkness. No chance of escape. No release, not with the sentence they'd given him. Just a bleak eternity watching his brain cells slowly die from year after year of monotony… which, come to think of it, was probably exactly how his unlucky future incarnation had felt, imprisoned in life support as he had been.

It was no small irony that, now that he was condemned to this similar fate, he'd been able to piece together what had happened to him in that version of history: the Other Five had been through the same battles with the guardians of the Hotel Oblivion and lost an arm in the process just as Five had, but when the time came to sacrifice himself for Reginald's plan, the Other Five had found himself with second thoughts – because unlike Five, he'd realized what their adoptive father had intended to do. Instead, the Other Five had refused the sacrifice and prevented Reginald from rewriting reality, perhaps by killing him, perhaps by killing enough of the family to make the old bastard's plan futile. Nothing was beyond that version of him, not in light of what he'd gone on to do.

And then the Other Five had fled, either through his own powers or that of the Hotel itself, flinging himself out of history and eventually emerging in a point where even the Kugelblitz couldn't touch him, even though it had most likely left his powers almost burnt out from sheer exertion. From there, what remained of his life had been spent building the Commission in the desperate hope that they'd be able to prevent the nightmare from playing out again, always resisting the inevitability of his fate even as it became blatantly obvious: he'd built the briefcases to mimic his most advanced powers, even set aside a few rare prototypes that could stop time – for use exclusively by upper management, though the last one had been stolen from the Handler by Hazel and accidentally destroyed by the Swedes… and of course, the Other Five eventually built the life support machines that would keep him from passing on once he grew too old to function.

After more than seventy years of groundwork, recruitment for the newly formed Commission had begun in 1955, bringing in a broad swathe of the best killers known to history, enhancing them until they'd been strong enough to tackle an out-of-practice Luther, and training them to assassinate anyone who threatened the stability of time, until at last he'd completed the organization that would eventually recruit him and help make his life even worse than it already was. And along the way, he uplifted a goldfish to become a chairman to act in his stead, hired the ruthless psychopath who would one day become the Handler, committed his memories to files that the Handler would one day use to find Lila, and eventually died while in the middle of a confrontation with his younger self, certain that his past incarnation would one day have the same tattoo, missing arm, and looping future as him.

Well, that future had been averted by the mass-rewriting of reality, and all because nobody had listened to his other self's last bit of advice. Five still wasn't sure if literal non-existence would have been an improvement over the corporate police state that Reginald had built, but from where he was lying, oblivion starting to look mighty tempting.

In fact…

Five remembered how the dream had ended, how that utopian park had been possible. It had been easy to believe what his other selves had said in the dream, especially since he would know best when it came to matters of time and the apocalypse, and it certainly seemed believable that they had always been responsible for the apocalypse.

Perhaps, in hindsight, the world would be better if the Umbrella Academy were dead. Perhaps, without their influence on the timeline, perhaps there really would be a perfect world, free from the chaos they brought to it, free from their foibles and stupidity.

And perhaps, death really was the best retirement he had to look forward to. There were so many comforting things that had been taken from him in the last few years, things he never thought he'd miss, things he'd never see again. He thought he'd be used to being without his powers, but he missed the familiar rush of leaping through space and being instantaneously where he needed to be. He thought he'd be used to being without family after the apocalypse and the last few months of imprisonment, but no, their absence hurt all the worse for every second he was alone. He even missed Allison, even after all that she'd done. And yes, he'd long since given up any hope of being able to do the right thing, to the point that even their brief victory in the 60s had turned to ashes in their mouths, but still, the realization of how low he'd sunk in the orphanage still hurt.

But though the prison was awash with methods of self-annihilation despite the best efforts of the corrections officers, Five found himself seeking out none of them. As tempted as he was, he couldn't bring himself to take that final escape route: there were still too many inconsistencies for him to accept it as an interdimensional warning from his other selves, too many logical fallacies and unexplained elements, too rushed, too… contrived.

It was far more likely that he was simply losing his mind as a result of solitary confinement… or perhaps, that someone was trying to manipulate him.

More to the point, he had motive enough to live when suicide would have been wiser, and that motive was nothing more or less than spite. If someone out there wanted Five to kill himself, then he wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of playing along with their games, even if it was for a good cause. If they couldn't be bothered to make the request to his fucking face, then he wasn't going to bother accepting it.

He rolled over in bed, hoisting a middle finger at the ceiling.

You've got to try harder than that, assholes, he thought. I spent forty years alone after the end of the world with nothing but a mannequin and I still found reasons to live. If you think I'm going to end it all just because you say I should, you've got another goddamn think coming.

Reginald stared at the control panel in astonishment.

Unbelievable. Somehow, Five wasn't just unconsciously rejecting the therapy but actively resisting it. True, he hadn't known who'd sent the dream, but he'd recognized that he was being encouraged to self-annihilate and refused to do so.

How was this possible? How had Five suffered so much, done so much that he'd regretted, and yet still found the will to live, even when there was clearly no hope?

No matter, he thought. There's always another night. In the meantime, I still have other prospects to put things on the correct course. All I need is for one to respond the correct way to the therapy, and the others will follow suit. Once they realize the truth that their fallen comrade has seen, they'll willingly accept the logic. I just have to keep trying.

He shook his head, and began irritably reviewing the remaining subjects, hoping to find the results he was looking for.

Number Four would be perfect. After all, it wasn't as if Klaus was uncomfortable with the notion of suicide.

A/N: Needless to say, I wasn't happy with Five's activities in Season 4 - both because of the crowbarred romance and the ludicrously rushed cafe scene. Five also seemed to be lacking the vital spark he'd possessed throughout the previous seasons, with almost none of his usual razor-sharp wit and ruthless determination. If anything, he just seemed tired.

Plus, there wasn't much reflection on his previous season's activities, which left a lot of loose ends on what had previously happened.

So, I'm hoping I've made amends for this with this chapter - or at least, made a start on amends...