#five has spent so long in the apocalypse with dolores who knows what he is thinking

[stupidcanofpeaches]

could you do five for the character bingo?

oh five. my honey my darling my punching bag my blorbo <3 where do i begin even. he's such a nuanced character!! like at the surface he seems to be one of those gruff, sarcastic, downright mean characters that frankly as much as i love assholes in media can be hit or miss. but! five's such a wonderfully fleshed out, tragic character that i just. i cannot. i love him so much. he's not an open book either, we're not given everything - like for example with his apocalypse backstory, we're given plenty of empty spaces to fill out with what his life must have been like back then, the things he'd been through, how he must have had to teach himself to cook, build things, probably sew, etc - or his interactions with dolores and how she grew into this whole other person that kept him more-or-less sane during those long lonely years - or his childhood at the academy, what he had been like as a kid - those empty spaces make him so human, for a lack of a better word.

another endearing thing about five, is that five's not entirely good and not entirely bad. he's done some truly terrible things for an ultimately noble purpose. unlike his original comic version, this five has a big, big bleeding heart. now, comic five is a delightful little psychopath and i love that about him, but tv-show's five - he's truly something else. his entire motivation is his family - everything he ever done before and everything he does now is solely for them, and they often don't even know that which makes it all the more heartbreaking. their safety is his main priority. he's not looking for happy. what he's looking for is alive. they're the only important thing in the whole wide world, and he loves them so goddamn much he'd give anything to just have them alive and breathing. which, of course, five sees no need to outright tell them that, they only ever learn that he saw them die in bits and pieces - in s1, five tells luther alone that he found their bodies, and then announces that he witnessed their deaths again in s2 in an effort to make them stay and work with him (and the sad thing is, is that luther, the one who at this point knows that this is the second time five got to see them die, is also the one to outright throw it back in his face before leaving so really, i don't think they truly realize just how much seeing that messed him up.). he almost leaves a little crumb trail for them to follow - he never does tell them everything all at once, and they pretty much have to connect the dots to figure out what's going on and what five's doing (which, his abysmal communication skills are also completely to be expected from someone who spent his important formative years in a dead wasteland all on his own, and that also makes his characterization all the more real to me).

also, since we're talking about the character flaws - his superiority complex is both a little infuriating and also very humanizing in a way? like. he is very smart. he's really, really good at what he does. and he's old - older than his siblings ever got to be, so naturally he feels like it's his responsibility to save them, to direct them (and frankly, seeing how bad they are at managing on their own, i cannot blame five, especially coupled with his trauma from prolonged isolation, for assuming he'd better take things into his own hands).

all of that is not to say that five's right and correct in assuming that he's automatically better than they are, or that everything he does is good and smart (because really he's as much of a mess as the rest of them) - but being able to see how he he comes to that conclusion, what influences him to do this and that, is what makes him such a good character imo. we can see the impact of that childhood trauma of finding his siblings dead, can see what the apocalypse did to him, can see the lingering influence of reginald raising all of them as child soldiers and what being relentlessly pushed to succeed did to him - to all of them. he's so much more than a sarcastic old man in a child's body - he's flawed and traumatized and desperately driven to do anything to save his family and he's angry and also full of love, and i love him for it.

also i know that given his body count he can probably be considered a serial killer (and i still wonder if they're going to use the whole serial killer dna thing in the show), but i personally find it funny to just sometimes pretend he's a precious little darling boy who never did anything wrong <3

so yeah here's some ramblings for you. im so sorry for taking so long to answer. thank you so much for the ask!!

#five my beloved #tua #character bingo #asks #i love asks!! #here you go my fixation on full display #five is such a good character #i really did project some of my issues on him too lol #i have some issues with food let's put it this way and it all just spilled out in spoiled pretty much #but fr considering the extreme food insecurity he probably went through he's bound to have some sort of ed i think #irl he'd probably be uhhh exhausting to be around #but he's my fictional darling murder man and i love him

[bytedykes]

Ask game anon. Im stupid. Five/Eleven questions 2, 3, 8, 9 and 30 djdjdjcn

kajdkss no worries anon i felt that

im gonna do both <3 five first

2. When I think I truly started to like them (or dislike them, if you've sent me a character I don't like)

ok see the thing about five is that he is such a compelling character to me. INSANELY compelling. i mean come on, kid who lost himself in the literal apocalypse at THIRTEEN and his whole family was dead, and then he spent DECADES working his ass off and then working as an assassin all to get back and save his family but when he does he fucks up and is an old man stuck in a child's body? i ate that shit RIGHT UP. he's a bitch he's an old geezer he's a cranky weirdo he kills people and his morals are fucked as all hell. i LOVED five right away he was so cool

HOWEVER. HOWEVER. if u were in tua fandom circa 2019 u know what a hell hole it was. u know that no one could be normal about any fucking thing. the amount of victim blaming accusations at the siblings were ummm. yeah. it was hostile back then and to some degree it still is probably adkdsjds. so after a while that kind of ruined five for me a little bit because. no one GOT him u know? no one got him right and it was frustrating + all the five stans were the weirdest most rabid people around back then. so that began to put me off the character as a whole. plus aidan gallagher was being so rampantly silly (derogatory) back then too

but actually i do still like five. i think that his story is really interesting and his love for his family is so integral to the central plot of the whole show and he deserves to retire and have a chill relatively normal life. i didnt care for season 3 but even after all that yeah he should get to just hole up somewhere and idk do normal old man things. also five is funny as hell like im sorry but 13 year old boy losing his absolute shit 24/7 because he's actually a 58 year old adult man with the worst life in the world is never NOT gonna be funny

3. A song that reminds me of them

UNIVERSE EXPANDED BY FRANZ FERDINAND......... it is SO fivecore it is so him in the apocalypse trying to get back home. especially the parts that go "I'll meet you coming backwards, Yes I'll meet you coming back, When the universe has expanded, Time will contract, You'll come back" like . ARGHHHH. also not so much anymore but in my prime of tuaposting "lucky ball & chain" by they might be giants made me think of five and dolores every time without fail

8. Your favorite outfit of them

ok i actually do love fives s3 outfits. like it may not have been as good as the first two seasons but it DID go off with finally letting five wear things that arent a plain suit or an academy uniform. i love his stupid hat i love it when he rocks up to the family gathering decked out in old geezer swag

9. Your least favorite outfit of them

GRRR THE UNIFORM... listen i KNOW its iconic i KNOW he spends two seasons wearing it but AGHH FREE HIM!!!!!!! FREE HIM

30. The funniest scene they had?

every other scene he's in is so insanely fucking funny i cant pick. lets see tho umm big fan of when in s2 he rocks up to elliott's house and starts acting like he owns the place, big fan of his return scene in s1 where he's making the world's worst sandwich and calls diego stupid for not understanding quantum physics, also i liked the whole worlds biggest ball of twine subplot in s3. OH ALSO when he was making his list of who he needs to kill in s1 and luther was like "thats murder you cant do that" and he was like "oh my fucking GOD, luther, grow the fuck UP" there are so many fucking things wrong with him

OK THIS GOT LONG so ill put el in a separate post <3

#tua #character ask game

[in-tua-deep]

au where five found out about vanya's powers in the apocalypse? Like maybe he found Reggie's book or he saw the eyes of vanya's corpse?

oh man like. that would be interesting to be sure, if Five managed to find Reginald’s book in the apocalypse

(He doesn’t read it at first, not for a few months after he finds it. He opened to the page that detailed Reginald’s experiments with how long Deigo could hold his breath in clinical unfeeling words and has to put it away while he breathed - not too deeply though, he didn’t want to breathe in more ash than necessary)

But he eventually does. He sits Dolores up and rages and vents to her, cursing Reginald’s name with every new sordid detail, every new terrible sin he now knows to hurl at Reginald’s feet. He reads no great loss under his section and he’s too dehydrated to weep but something breaks inside his chest nevertheless

(He’d never thought that dad loved them, not really. He might have hoped, back when he was little but he knew better now. He was thirteen, old enough to know better. But he’d at least thought that dad found them useful. 

Five had tried to hard, trained so much, been so adaptable. Even then he was no great loss.)

Five finds out from Reginald’s book about Ben’s death. Cold words that describe the way his brother died. Reginald seemed to care more about Ben’s death than Five’s presumed death, but that could be becuase Ben’s power was always bigger than Five’s. More violent. More efficient. Of course Ben was a greater loss, Five’s power wasn’t even inherently useful for fighting.

(Klaus’s power wasn’t useful for fighting either. Reading Dad’s dismissive words calling Klaus a failure makes him bristle. Reading about Reginald locking Klaus away in the mausoleum for days make Five want to hurl the book against the wall.)

Finding out about Vanya is - it’s weird. Vanya was always so ordinary. He loved her of course, for fucks sake he was the only one who cared to interact with her half the time. He loves all of his siblings but he has no illusions about how casually cruel they could be to one another.

But he reads about her powers and clenches his fists and wonders what Reginald would have done if Five had stayed, if Five had kept on his path of rebellion. Would Reginald have drugged him, too?

(Reginald had the power to take their powers away. Five wonders what Klaus thought when he found out, if he had cursed and sworn and raged at the man who watched his son suffer and turn to drugs to deal with seeing things no child should ever see. Reginald had the power to help, and he tortured Klaus instead.)

Because - of course Five assumes that they know. He reads Vanya’s books as well when he comes across it, tucking it into his wagon. He wonders when the truth came out, because the rage that drips from those pages is very real. Vanya doesn’t mention her powers in the book of course, but she would have been what, in her 20s when she wrote it? 

Vanya said in her book that she left home at 18, which means she’s had years to get the drugs out of her system and discover what their father had taken from her. Did she think that they knew? That they had kept it from her? Is that why the pages of her book drip with bone deep hurt, making Five’s fingers shake with the ache of them

(Or it could be the hunger, a now constant companion)

Five keeps both books close, even though he wants to vandilize Reginald’s book half the time. It’s strange to see the insight on them and their powers from the perspective of a scientist, odd to see the written results of the torture they went though

(He almost rips the page on the effects of electricity on his warping powers out on principle, but he just ends up curled around Dolores as he trembles involuntarily at the memories)

Five has so few belongings when he is recruited to the Commission, or at least has very few personal ones. He leaves Dolores behind in the apocalypse with a heavy heart but she’s too big to take with him. Too big to hide.

(Five always learned to only take what you can hide, because what you can’t hide will always be used against you.)

He tucks Reginald’s notebook in the waistband on his pants, the hard edges against his back a constant almost reassuring pressure. Vanya’s book gets pushed into one of his deep pockets. The glass eye gets shoved into his sock the same way he used to hide scavenged bills and quarters he would then place beneath the floorboards of his room

(He wonders absently if his money stash was ever found, but it doesn’t really matter now does it?)

He goes through the Commission with the knowledge that he has a bomb hidden away. As much as he keeps the notebook around out of a sense of sentiment he knows he doesn’t want it to fall into the hands of the commission, doesn’t want them to have this dissection of his powers on hand

(he has so little of his siblings left, just the bitter words of Reginald and Vanya both - the irony is that no matter how much Vanya extolled being excluded she had constantly been by Reginald’s side to write down observations, listening to his words, by his side more than any of them. sometimes he reads Vanya’s vicious words and hears the echo of their father in them. It makes sense. He still hates it, just a little bit)

He writes his equations into Vanya’s book instead of Reginald’s. He doesn’t like to read the red book, only opens it to look at the photos included so that he won’t forget what his siblings look like, tries to ignore the words that detail exactly how much force it takes to pop Luther’s bones out of his oh-so-durable joints

He solves them one day, or at least comes close. Closer than he ever had before, and he figures why not? Time for another little experiment. Who knows? Maybe he’ll add this one to dad’s book.

He pushes, and pushes, and then he falls and he’s in a courtyard he hasn’t seen in decades staring at people he hasn’t spoken to in just as long. He looks at them all with wide eyes

(He looks at Allison and hears his father’s clipped tone stating how Allison in improving at overriding survival instincts, he looks at Luther and hears Vanya’s childish voice accusing him of caring more about being a hero than anything else in his life, including his family, he looks at Klaus and sees a face covered in ash and blood with unseeing eyes)

He looks down at himself and sees smaller hands with smoother skin, absent of the burn marks from the variety of fires he’d set in the apocalypse, absent of the crooked knuckles from when he’d crushed two fingers in some rubble trying to get to a can of food, absent of the cracked and brittle nails from malnutrition and food issues

“Shit.” He says, with feeling.

He can feels the press of the glass eye against his leg, the solid weight of Vanya’s book in his pocket, the edges of Reginald’s notebook digging into his skin as he hauls himself off the ground and into a standing position.

They have a family meeting in the kitchen.

Sort of. Five flits about, snagging bread and peanut butter and marshmallow fluff from the cupboard to make himself a sandwich, trying to avoid looking too desperately eager. He hasn’t had his favorite food in so long that the anticipation is actually insane.

“What’s the date?” Five asks, and learns that he doesn’t actually have all that long until the end of the world. But hey, it’s doable. Probably. Unless the reason the world ended was like, political nuclear war or something? But there would probably be survivors of that somewhere, so it was more likely something bigger scale.

(It has to be something he can stop, or this was all for nothing. He refuses to believe he doesn’t have a chance.)

“Cool, so like, the world is ending.” Five says, because why the fuck not? He has all his siblings in one room (except Ben, he has failed Ben, will always have failed Ben because he’s a coward who couldn’t return to a time when Reginald Hargreeves was alive) and he has Reginald and Vanya’s words pressed into his brain, “We have eight-ish days to fix that.”

“Five, what the hell are you talking about?” Luther demands.

Five waves his hand, “Dad sucked, I time-travelled, the end is nigh. I figured even you could grasp that.”

(His eyes ghost over Luther, skittering about the room. He can’t look at Luther’s body without remembering the cruel diagrams pain stakingly inked into the book as Reginald grumbled about failed experiments.)

“You went to the future?” Diego says, voice full of doubt that make his voice harsh. It’s so much deeper than when Five left, no more of the cracks of puberty.

“No shit.” Five says, and he’s so tired. “I was in that hellscape for forty-five years.”

“Forty-five years?” Diego squawks, as though he’s personally offended.

“That would make you... fifty-eight?” Luther’s voice also has doubt in it, and Five can’t really blame him looking at his squishy little barely teenage body.

“Dad was right,” Five manages to get out without gritting his teeth, “Time travel is a crapshoot and sometimes your body does fun and wacky things on you, blah blah blah trees and acorns.”

“Prove you’re from the future!” Klaus demands, eyes bright as he leans across the table, “What’re the lotto numbers, baby brother?”

“I think they’re ‘fuck you the world had already ended by the time I ended up stuck there,’ Klaus.” Five says, mock thoughtfully before tearing off a chunk of his sandwich.

It tastes like ash and peanut butter. Only Five’s genuine trauma regarding food waste and the fact that most things tasted like ash in the apocalypse have him still chewing his food and swallowing.

“Rude.” Klaus says, making a ‘blat’ noise in disappointment.

“Dad’s rich as fuck, wasn’t him kicking the bucket essentially like winning the lottery?” Five points out, and this time it is Luther squawking at him in disapproval.

“Don’t talk about Dad like that!” He demands, and Five has some more uncharitable thoughts about the way Luther’s arms flex just a little unnaturally underneath that big trenchcoat.

“I like this version of Five better.” Klaus declares, looking like Christmas has come early.

“Dad was murdered and you guys don’t even care.” Luther spits out, looking very offended.

“You were murdered and I care very much about that.” Five retaliates, and the entire kitchen goes quiet.

“Can you elaborate a little, Five?” Allison says, ever the diplomat.

(That’s a lie. Allison started more fights than Diego, probably. She just got caught way less often.)

“Well. I mean, I dunno if murdered is the right word considering everyone was dead. You might have just been collateral damage, who knows? Does murder imply intent?”

“Everyone was dead?” Vanya says, voice very quiet.

Five shrugs, then nods, then shrugs again. He doesn’t like thinking about it. “Yeah, but that’s not going to happen this time.”

“I don’t have time for this nonsense.” Luther mutters, and Five valiantly tries to ignore him. 

“Five, are you - are you sure you’re alright?” Vanya’s voice wobbles and she looks like she wants to reach out and hold him or something ridiculous like that. She looks at him with big sad brown eyes, “Dad did say that time travel could... mess with you a little.”

Allison nods and oh, Five does not have time for this bullshit. 

“I have proof.” He says, and he reaches back and pulls out Reginald’s red notebook and slams it onto the table.

“Is that Dad’s - ” Luther cuts himself off, looking at the notebook with wide eyes.

It is very clearly beaten up to hell and back. Ash has stained the edges of the pages grey and there may or may not be a gouge across the front from a near miss with a bullet while working at the commission. It is a book that has clearly been through hell.

Five also dig’s Vanya’s equally beaten up book from his pocket to dump on the table as well, equally stained with ash and barely held together after being read over and over again for decades, including being used as a notebook in the final years.

(Vanya lets out a little gasp, hand flying up to her mouth with the knowledge that at least one of her siblings read her book. Certainly not the one she thought it would be.)

Five reaches into his sock to pull out the glass eye triumphantly, setting it down on his small stack of treasures.

“What the fuck?” Diego is the one to ask.

“If I time travelled from that day in 2002 to right now, how the fuck would I have Vanya’s book?” Five says triumphantly, “It came out in 2015.”

“Why do you have an eye?” Allison sounds slightly horrified.

“It’s the key to figuring out who caused the apocalypse.” Five says, turning it over in his hands, “It’s gotta have something to do with it at least.”

“Why does he have Dad’s notebook?” Luther demands, sounding equally outraged.

“Found it.” Five shrugs, like the little scavenger he is.

(Emphasis on little. His suit still almost fits, and reading the numbers in Reginald’s notebook versus seeing how fucking tall all his siblings got in person is frankly unfair.)

“Oh my god, okay.” Allison says, throwing her hands up in the air like they’re all nuisances. It’s a familiar Allison look, and Five actually feels a little soothed by the memory. “So the world is ending, Five is back from the dead, and our only clue is a goddamn eye?”

“I was never dead.” Five points out, “But basically, yeah.”

“I don’t have time for this, I have to get back to my daughter.” Allison says, shaking her head.

“I mean if you want Claire to live I would think stopping the apocalypse would kind of be a priority.” 

This draw Allison to a halt from where she’d been gathering herself to leave, “You... know her name?”

Five makes the executive decision to not mention the torn out magazine cover featuring his sister and niece that is pressed between some of the pages in Reginald’s journal. “I’d like to meet her one day.”

Just like that, Allison has been won over.

“Do you think it has something to do with whoever murdered Dad?” Luther asks seriously, even if the question makes Diego groan like this is an argument they have had before.

“Who knows?” Five shrugs, “But if we’re splitting into investigation teams, I call Vanya.”

Vanya startles from where she has been sitting quietly, “Me?” She asks, eyes wide.

“Yeah.” Five nods, “I mean, with Ben gone you’re probably the team’s heaviest hitter.”

“What?” Several voices ring out in confusion.

Five blinks, a little confused himself. Unless - “Wait, did you never train your powers?”

“Five,” Vanya says slowly, like she’s explaining a simple concept to a particularly dim child, “I don’t have powers.”

This was - this was unexpected. Why did he not think of this explanation? It’s just - he has now known about Vanya’s powers for like way longer than he hasn’t. It’s almost second nature to think of Vanya as having powers by now. And she doesn’t know.

“Oh boy.” He says, picking up Reginald’s notebook, “This debriefing may take a bit longer than I first thought. Oh, and at some point we should probably cut the tracker out of my arm as well.”

“The what out of your what?”

Yeah the day doesn’t really get much better from there.

#the red book au #five finds reggie's journal in the apocalypse #and so he is very familiar with his sister's powers!! isn't that fun #he's also like 50% more spiteful because actually Fuck Reginald Hargreeves #he is the president of the Dad Sucks Club #because he has the notebook he's been essentially planning his apocalypse game plan for years #with the power of strategy and knowing his siblings powers inside out #or at least to the extent reggie understood them #so he's much more MISSION REPORT when he gets to 2019 #time to debrief the squad on what the fuck is up #five lets the cat out of the bag so early lmao #fuck u leonard #five: haha yeah i want vanya on my team so i can see her sick ass powers in action #the family: her WHAT #five: *surprised pikachu face* #five has spent so long in the apocalypse with dolores who knows what he is thinking #that he struggles with the concept that people don't know what he knows sometimes #me pointing at vanya's book and reginald's notebook: there are both traumatizing to read #Anonymous #long post #far tua long

[i-like-writing-stuff]

four months; part 2 [five hargreeves x reader]

a/n: thank you all so so much for your support and feedback! i literally could not believe that the first part has over 200 notes and yall want a continuation like omagash??? im soft, thank you guys <3

here is the long awaited part two, but before we dive into that, i felt the need to ask yall if you want five to be aged up?? in most x reader i’ve read on this site, five is aged up, but I felt like, in my case, i didn’t really needed to mention that because i am only like two months older than the actor, and its not like im gonna write smut with him- gross. point is, idk. should i age him up tho??? idk what to do, so here are both aidan and timothee to soothe ur heart for this second part!! <3

(the gifs do not belong to me, lemme know if u know who made them so i can give credits- they’re real cute mah gawsh!!!)

alsoo if you want more five imagines or literally any other hargreeves sibling or fictional character ousside tua, feel free to leave a request in my inbox! kisses <3

summary: after a long family meeting and more booze, you decide to make a bold move and profess your buried feelings.

part 1

“Men are stupid shitheads.” You concluded, setting your flask on the counter, looking at the new bangs Allison had just cut for you.

Even in her drunken state, they seemed to be very nicely done. You were quite surprised by the way they turned out, but pleased nonetheless. It was a spontaneous decision, getting bangs. You had been sitting in the hair salon she was working at with her, Klaus and Vanya after a not so great family meeting.

Hugs were shared, true, but then arguments started and before you even knew it, Luther stormed out, Diego followed him, Five went missing for whatever business he had, and Klaus claimed that Ben was not even there- apparently, ghosts can’t time travel.

So, it was just the four of you, drunk in a hair salon, with too much alcohol and way too many scissors around you, complaining about how shitty your love lives could be.

“Amen.” Klaus raised his drink in the air, “I’ll drink to that.”

“Right?” Allison nodded, combing her second client, Klaus, “The nerve of Ray! I mean, one thing goes wrong and he’s on a warpath!” She vented, holding the bottle of liquor in her free hand, “I mean, doesn’t know who I am?! No, no! No, Ray- you know exactly who I am, you just can’t handle it!”

You watched with a raised brow as Vanya was out of zone, pretending to be shooting the long line of empty bottles gathered in front of her, as Allison kept on continuing her rant. Her husband had just seen her use her powers on the night they started the protest, and was now having a real hard time comprehending what was going on. You didn’t see him at home either, so you figured he may have been upset with you as well for maybe hiding the secret. Or maybe he thought you were like her, who knows?

“Hey, wouldn’t it be weird if Five grew up all hot?” Klaus suddenly asked, taking a drag out of his cigarette, as he got up from his seat to walk around the hair salon, “Wouldn’t that be weird?”

“Why would you even think of your brother like that?” You asked riddled, narrowing your eyes at the man as his sisters almost gagged at the thought.

“Oh, please, you’ve been thinking that, haven’t you?” Klaus asked, pointing at you as you took another swig from your nearly empty flask.

“I... I mean- he’s... Five... uh... no comment!” You suddenly declared, at loss of words, as you got up from your seat, trying to maintain your balance as you made your way towards the bottle of liquor to fill your flask again.

“When are you two gonna confess your feelings?” Allison asked with a groan, letting her head fall backwards as she sat on the chair, “It’s getting really tiring!”

“We have an apocalypse going on!” You argued, “There’s no time for feelings!”

“This is the perfect time for feelings!” Klaus chimed in, taking another drag out of his cigarette, “These might be your last six days on Earth! Do you want to die regretting that you never told Five how you felt about him?”

“I’m not having this conversation anymore.” You declared, out of arguments, as you poured liquor in your flask, “Why don’t we talk about Allison’s crush on Luther instead?”

“We have never even kissed!” Allison defended herself, causing Vanya to spin on her chair confused, looking between the three of you.

“Yeah, but you guys were making little sick moon-dog eyes at each other all through puberty and breakfasts and... all that.” Klaus waved her off, sipping from his own flask.

“Aren’t we all brothers and sisters, or...?” Vanya wondered confused, as you and Klaus snorted amused at her innocence.

“Well... technically...” Allison tried to find an excuse or explanation, but she was having a hard time putting her thoughts in place.

“Technically?” Klaus raised a brow, “If you....” He stammered, trying to regain his train of thought, “If you have to use the word technically, you’re already in trouble.”

“Okay, can we go back to Five and Y/N?” Allison tried to change the subject, “Or maybe at least help me save my marriage?”

“That’s like...” Klaus stumbled on his own feet, filling his flask again, as you leaned against Vanya’s chair curiously, “That’s like asking a nun how to hump someone’s leg! I mean, who in this room knows shit about relationships? This one?” He asked, pointing at Vanya, “In secret love with some farm Frau!”

“Her name’s Sissy.” Vanya informed him.

“Which is an improvement on her previous love interest.” He said, looking at you and Allison, as you shook your heads to slightly tell him to shut up, “...the serial killer.”

“What?!” Vanya yelled, looking between you and Allison for an explanation, but you just softly waved her off, promising to remind her later.

“And look at this one!” Klaus ignored the three of you, pointing at... well, you, “A fifty year old assassin, who got the chance to be a teen again, but she is too afraid to admit her feelings for the... wait, is Five a boy or a man?”

“Both?” You raised a brow, unsure of the answer.

“Meanwhile, I’m carrying a torch for a soldier I haven’t technically met yet, and Luther is in love with his sister.” Klaus waved you off, trying to keep his balance again on his feet.

“Okay, again- we are not biological!” Allison tried to defend herself once more, but Klaus simply ignored her.

“Face it, the healthiest long-term relationship in this family was when Five was banging that mannequin.” He said, making all of you nod in agreement, as you couldn’t help but confess, taking another chug out of your flask;

“I can’t believe I got to the point where I was jealous of Dolores.”

Okay, maybe ‘banging’ and ‘jealous’ were strong words, but you had to admit you were not that pleased when one of the first things that Five did when he got back to 2019, was go to some store to get back his plastic girlfriend who kept him company in the four decades he spent all by himself in the apocalypse.

You understood his mind, though. You would have gone insane as well if you had to be all alone after the end of the world, without another soul on the planet. Nonetheless, you still were maybe a tad too happy when he decided to return her to the store.

Leaving you the only woman he had eyes for, unbeknownst to you.

“I’m gonna tell Sissy that I love her.” Vanya suddenly declared, straightening her position confidently.

“You go, girl!” You cheered, clapping for your friend.

“I don’t want any secrets.” She said, making you and the other two nod in agreement, contemplating about your own lives.

“Yeah!” Allison said, getting up with the bottle of alcohol tightly clutched in her hand, “Yeah, yeah- you’re right! Yes, ‘cause, you know- if this all goes tits-up, the least I can do is be honest with my husband!

“Oh, does that mean I have to face my cult?” Klaus sighed, “I just hate group break-ups, it’s why I stopped dating twins!”

You pondered about it for a moment, in your state that was definitely not the most sober. You had a lot of alcohol coursing through your veins, but you felt like maybe it was better. You could think with your heart more than you could think with your brain, and your heart was telling you that your friends were right.

They all are getting themselves ready to take big risks in their lives, why shouldn’t you? They had a valid point; the world was gonna end in six days if you guys couldn’t find a way to solve this. Last time you didn’t have the brightest plan, so why should this time be a success? Reality hit you; there was a real big chance that you might die.

So why not just be honest with Five? What was the worst that could happen? You manage to save the world and Five rejects you? Big deal!

Well, it actually was a big deal.

“What if he rejects me?” You asked all of a sudden, causing the three siblings to turn to you, “What if I tell Five how I feel about him and he rejects me? I know maybe at my age I shouldn’t be this anxious about a man, but... it’s not like I’m going anywhere, I’m glued to the Hargreeves clan.”

And it was true. After the events of the 2019 apocalypse, right before you and the others got separated, you shared an adorable moment in which you confessed to each other how happy you were to have met and be taken into their family as one of their own.

“Normally, I’d say to not ponder on that for too... long.” Klaus slurred, “But given that it’s Five, you don’t even have to worry about that.”

“He’s right.” Allison shrugged, “That won’t be a problem.

“I have no memory of any of you, but from the hug I’ve seen you two share earlier- you’re not just friends.” Vanya spoke up, making you stare into nothingness for a moment.

I mean, it’s Five we are talking about. If he were to have any feelings, it’s not like he’d be honest with them or act, right? It would be up to you to make the first move.

You let out a long sigh, rubbing your hands on your upper arms, reminding yourself of the hug. It may have been the first time you and Five actually hugged, in all the years you’ve known each other. The way he held you close and nuzzled his face into the crook of your neck, taking in your scent, feeling you in his arms, even if for him it had been only four days. You had to live with the thought that he may be dead for months.

And you hated that, you knew you wanted him alongside you. You wanted that little rude, at times obnoxious dipshit, with a soft heart- as much as he hated to admit it. You loved how much he cared about his family, about saving the world. Five is a great person; he is caring and has a big heart, as much as he tried to hide it behind his trashmouth.

“Fine!” You groaned, letting your head fall backwards, “I’ll tell Five I fucking love him and his dipshit face!”

“Yes!” Klaus clapped, as Allison and Vanya cheered proudly, “Come here!”

You and Vanya walked towards him, as Allison wrapped an arm around his waist, waiting for the two of you to skip towards them, pulling you into a group hug, as “Twistin’ the night away” by Sam Cooke blasted on the radio, causing the four of you to start a small dance party, letting for the first time in a long while your problems just go away.

For the sake of the song.

After a couple more hours of drinking, gossiping and dancing, the four of you decided to finally part ways and attend your promised business. Klaus went to deal with his cult, as Allison decided to be completely honest with her husband at home and Vanya was going to confess to Sissy.

As for you?

You were going to tell Five Hargreeves you were in love with him.

“Hey, dipshit!” You confidently yelled, running up the stairs of the store, trying to find Five.

“Y/N?” Five frowned, walking out of the kitchen with a coffee mug in his hands and a confused look on his face, “Are you... even more drunk? And did you get bangs- what the...?”

“Shut up.” You waved him off, walking towards him to grab the mug out of his hand to sober yourself up, “Why in the hell are you even drinking coffee at this hour?”

“I’m... trying to calm myself...” He frowned, watching as you chugged his freshly poured coffee.

“Normally I’d ask.” You said, setting the mug on the counter, shaking your head, “But right now what I have to say is more important.”

“Is that so?” Five raised a brow curiously, as you slowly slapped your cheeks, trying to get the room to stop moving, “Why don’t you go to bed?” He asked, gently pushing you towards the couch, “And we talk in the morning? I don’t really have time for this.”

“No!” You yelled, stopping in your tracks to poke his chest, “We don’t have to talk! I talk and you- you listen!” You said, poking his chest again, “You never have time for anything, all you can think of is your stupid apocalypse!”

“Oh yes, isn’t that a trivial thing to be thinking of?” He asked with a sarcastic smile, crossing his arms.

“I don’t need your sarcasm!” You yelled, poking his chest a third time, feeling him get more tense.

“I swear to God, Y/N, if you do that one more time-...” Five took in a deep breath, as he could feel as he was slowly losing his patience.

“Shut up!” You groaned, watching as his brows knitted in confusion, “I’m trying to confess my feelings for you, you moron!”

“W...What?” He asked, as his face suddenly softened, unfolding his arms.

“I’m in love with you!” You sighed, rubbing your face, “Okay? I-I am in love with you and I am trying to sober myself up, but I think I may have had too much to drink.”

“You think?” Five scoffed, slowly leading you towards the couch, “Are you sure you’re not saying this just because you have a ton of alcohol coursing through you?”

“Well... kinda, ‘cause if I were sober there was no way in hell I would have confessed.” You puffed, complying, as you let yourself guided by him, “Allison, Klaus and Vanya all convinced me that I should tell you, that we only have six days left on Earth and in case we don’t save it... I shouldn’t be going down with regrets.”

Five listened to your every word carefully, as you continuing venting about how his siblings spent the whole day trying to convince you to tell him about your feelings, as he slowly held your hands, as you took a seat on the couch. He nodded at your words to let you know that he was listening, as he took two pillows off the armchairs beside, placing them at one end, softly pushing you down.

“...and then Klaus said that he hates group breakups.” You said, not even noticing what was going on, feeling your lids get heavier once your head met the pillow.

“Not a surprise there...” Five muttered, grabbing the blanket that was rested on top of the couch, placing it over you.

“Are you trying to dismiss me?” You wondered, but still making yourself more comfortable, as you sat on your side, with your head facing Five, who knelt in front of you tired.

He bit back a smile, watching as you slowly closed your eyes. He knew you were extremely drunk, he could see that in the way exhaust took over you. Not only you had a lot of alcohol in your system, but you’ve also had some long couple of days, and some longer ones were ahead of you until you knew for a fact the world was safe once more.

“I don’t know how it is, that you’re the one person who actually makes me feel... soft.” He confessed, watching your lips curve into a smile at his words, “You... drunken idiot.”

“I regret nothing.” You said proudly, as Five couldn’t help but let out a small laugh, softly stroking your hair to help you fall asleep sooner.

“We’ll see about that in the morning.” He smirked amused, watching as you pouted.

“You never gave me an answer, you know.” You pointed out, letting his soft touch calm you down, as you felt sleep slowly take over you.

“You never gave me a question.” He retorted, knowing for sure that if your eyes were opened, you would roll them at him.

“I think you like to hear me say that I am in love with you, it’s the third time I have to say it.” You said, slowly placing your hands under your pillow, making yourself more comfortable.

“I am happy to see that you still know how to count.” Five said, placing some wild strands of hair behind your ear.

“Screw you.” You said, making him grin, as he went back to stroking your hair.

“In this whole... shitty situation I managed to get myself into, you, Y/N, might as well be the only thing keeping me sane... surprisingly.” Five frowned at the last bit, watching as you opened your eyes, shifting your head to watch him, “I love you too, moron.”

“I never said I love you.” You smirked, teasing him as he rolled his eyes.

“You little chipmunk...” Five sighed, shaking his head in disbelief amused, as you leaned into his touch more, closing your eyes, pleased with yourself.

“Yeah, but you still love me.” You said, not once dropping that smirk on your lips.

“You’re impossible, did you know that?” He wondered, resting his forearm on the couch beside you, as he knelt on the floor, trying to make himself more comfortable, noticing the way you were enjoying the scalp massage... for free.

“A little bit.” You slowly shrugged, wrapping your arms around his, once you felt it beside you.

Five watched with a soft smile as you pulled his arms closer to your face, nuzzling into it with a satisfied smile, happy that you listened to your friends.

And deep down, so was Five thanking his siblings.

#tua #the umbrella academy #the umbrella academy x reader #the umbrella academy imagine #the umbrella academy imagines #number five #five hargreeves #five hargreeves x reader #five hargreeves imagine #five hargreeves imagines

[tehmoonofficial]

five is bad at camping.

you’d think, this is Five Hargreeves we’re talking about! he spent 45 years in the apocalypse! of course he’d be great at surviving outdoors.

but five, five who was thirteen (or ten, in the comics) and never faced a consequence for anything from literal murder to ripping the fabric of space into neat little portals, has found himself One Big Consequence when he appears on april 2nd, 2019.

and so he waits. he waits for his powers to return, as they always do, so he can just traipse back home and tell reginald exactly what just happened, if it wasn’t a dream or a hallucination to begin with; yeah, a prank, it must be, his siblings can’t be twenty-somethings and dead.

so he remembers some training, some recitation on a record, about what to do when abandoned with no resources. so he shoves it down deep, because it’d be ridiculous to actually be in an apocalypse. stupid. hilarious.

he gets better over the years. doesn’t want to admit it, that’s for sure. if—when—if he gets out of here, this will be just a blip. him and dolores will be out of here, back when it all started, so he can prevent it from ever happening in the first place, because it’s a prank, a dream, really, a hallucination of his scrambled mind from time travel. he gets better, better at finding food and setting up shelter and weaving his way through equations he finds in thick astrophysics books widely regarded as fanatical.

second, it’s the commission. they tell him how to do things he already knows, give him faces of numbers to, er, correct, and fuck around with his dna until he’s just a pile of twisted, twisted ladders, ladders that lead to the inky black soul of a mass murderer. he keeps his sister’s book on hand, uses a pencil down to a clumsy stub so he can finally wake up from this nightmare. he’s 58, fifty-fucking-eight, and his siblings actually died at twenty-nine, didn’t they? he’s not letting that happen, even if it takes him another 45 goddamned years.

five is bad at not killing people, it appears. funny, a mass murderer trying to stop billions from dying. untangling this mess of a mystery feels like plucking individual notes out of an arrangement the commission desperately wants to accompany. he’s trapped, between the sixteenth notes and the lack of rest, and hell, he’s out of tune now that he looks thirteen again.

if he closes his eyes, he might be able to forget. he might be able to reopen them and see a world where april first is just a fun holiday he celebrated with his siblings when he was little.

he can’t. it was real. is real. and these two weeks have been the longest in his entire life.

last, when it’s finally all over and done with, his siblings are cautious to ask him if he wants to go camping with them. out in the woods, where it’s fatally silent. vanya’s the one to do it, grief in her eyes and heart from what she’s caused in the past. she still blames herself for it all, even when the handler conducted it all, even when she was little and a simple crescendo and a crack of glass led to her believing she was completely ordinary. she wants to help five, help them all, into feeling like a family again.

he agrees. the car ride is long and slow, klaus and diego sharing earbuds until allison gives a big speech about enjoying things as a group and then luther is screeching off-key lyrics of tiffany. five watches the pines grow thicker and knows, knows logically speaking, that there were no forests like this in the apocalypse. he’s safe. he’s safe.

they split up into groups once they get to the area of the camp site they’re staying at. five and klaus are in charge of setting up the tents. nobody says why they specifically are in charge of this; nobody has to.

klaus sets up his half of them with ease. it’s methodical and quick, muscle memory. life skills of war. a thing expected from five.

but five, as stated earlier, is notably bad at camping. it’s a statement now, and he commits to it as he fumbles with bars and cloth and whatever the fuck that is that he’s supposed to use to build it with.

“what, fivesie, never set up one of these bad boys?” klaus asks with his usual trademark blend of masking humor and observation.

“no, klaus, i just choose to be bad at it.” five snaps back. he doesn’t really get why he snarked like that, why it’s so frustrating. shit, this was supposed to be the smooth part. all the hard bits were supposed to be over.

“hm,” klaus hums, walking over and straightening a stake. “i guess you can allow yourself to do that now, be bad at something. how does it feel?”

five freezes. his eyebrows draw together and he looks inward. it feels... cloudy, confusing, infuriating that it’s confusing.

“freeing.” he decides upon. “it feels freeing.”

#:’) #tua #the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #ua #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #tua fic #five #number five hargreeves #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #poor ben.. hes Gone :(((((( #cant tag him in this then #the handler #the commission

[tv-music]

Umbrella Academy Review 1.09

Changes

The penultimate episode begins with a look at Vanya’s childhood, back when she still had powers, and boy, did the writers do a great job convincing me that Reginald may have been spot on about hiding Vanya’s powers from her - how many people did we watch a very young Vanya kill? It also explained to us why their Mum is a robot - so Vanya couldn’t kill her. 

A grown up Vanya seems to be in shock after slitting her sister’s throat at the end of the last episode, as Leonard continues to try to manipulate her. She thinks Alison's dead and all she wants is to explain to her siblings what happened, but Leonard convinces her she’s special.

Vanya later finds her Dad’s journal at Leonards house and finally sees him for what he really is (it’s about damn time) Leonard tries to manipulate her once more but it seems as though the fog has finally lifted. Leonard then tries a different tactic, at least I think that’s what he was doing, by berating her and calling her ordinary, just like dear old dad used to but this backfires in a major way. Her powers kick in (and really do seem to possess her) and she kills Leonard. Well I can’t pretend I’m sad about that

The siblings arrive back at the house and Alison is somehow still breathing (Im no medical expert but surely she wouldn’t have survived that in the real world) and Pogo and their Mum start working on trying to save her

She wakes up with Luther by her side but due to the damage to her vocal chords, she can’t speak. She grabs a notepad and tells Luther about Vanya’s powers, Pogo steps in and finally reveals all

Klaus decides he’s had enough of being sober and goes searching for pills while being lectured on life by Ben, as Klaus continues to be, well, Klaus, Ben punches him and for the first time since dying, makes physical contact. It seems that now Klaus is sober, his powers are growing - is this what Reginald meant by how he hasn’t scratched the surface of what he can do? 

Five and Diego continue with their mission to try to stop the apocalypse and make Klaus join them. When they arrive at Leonards house they find his body, and Five confirms that this is who the eye belongs to. Five, as usual, has the right train of thought, if Harold doesn’t cause the apocalypse then what does? It’s been clear to the viewers for a few episodes that Vanya must be the cause, it’s about time the siblings caught up.

Hazel shows up at the house while Five is having a lovely little date with Dolores. Just as Hazel is about to tell Five why he’s there, Diego attacks him for his ex's death, while Five just sits back and watches, all he’s missing is a bit of popcorn. He finally knocks Diego out and hears what Hazel has to say, he wants to help stop the apocalypse, Five tells him its done and they part on good terms - but not before Five gets the answers Diego needs, Cha Cha killed his ex and Hazel produces the gun to prove it. 

Agnes returns to her hotel room and finds Cha Cha waiting for her. Seriously, what is her deal? Why does she care so much about Hazel moving on with his life? Why can’t she just be happy for him - I’m really not enjoying this part of the show and wish she would just go away. Hazel returns to the motel to find Agnes tied up and Cha Cha waiting for him and the two begin fighting - the handler shows up just in time which to be clear is the only reason i’ve mentioned this part of the episode at all - she survived and now she’s pissed.

Vanya finally arrives at the house and finds Luther waiting, to Vanya’s credit she doesn’t try to lie about what happened, she’s nothing but honest and asks Luther is she can see her. Luther said all the right things and even opened up his arms for a hug, but it was clear from his demeanor that something was off. Instead of just hugging her, he squeezes her until she passes out and locks her up just like their Dad did when they were kids- what the fuck were you thinking Luther?

Diego and Klaus seem less than happy about the situation, both making the point that she’s their sister and that she doesn’t need to be locked up, she needs their help. Alison shows up and also tells Luther to let her go, insisting that it was her fault but Luther won’t budge and let’s face it he’s physically stronger than them all so they don’t have much of an option

Five returned Dolores to the store in what was truly an emotionally charged moment, watching him say goodbye to the inanimate object that was his only company for so long was heartbreaking 

Down in her cell, Vanya began speaking with her childhood self - I’m not sure what to call it - and she tapped into her power once again, this time using the only noise she has, her own heartbeat. Her powers truly are incredible, but they also seem like they’re not actually her. It really does seem like she’s possessed while all this happens and are nothing like the Vanya we see any other time. When any of the other siblings use their powers they are simply them but with powers whereas Vanya doesn’t feel or seem like her at all. Is this how it’s supposed to be? Was this explained and I’ve just missed it? I’m not sure but that final shot of her having broken out of her prison was truly terrifying - her siblings better watch out

Extra Thoughts

Five and Klaus’s conversation about addiction - and Klaus’s very astute observation that Five is addicted to the apocalypse - was brilliant. These two are by far my favourite characters and I love watching them interact

Luther really pissed me off this episode - why could he not understand what Vanya needed in that moment. Klaus literally said it to him - she’s scared, she’s just found out about this new power and doesn’t know how to control it - she needs their help

Surely once Luther was distracted by Alison not speaking to him, one of the siblings could have gone down and let her out 

There’s some irony in the fact that the Five’s spent all this time searching for a way to stop the apocalypse and the first person he told when returning way back in episode 1 was the person who causes it (of course at this point I’m also willing to make an argument that Luther was actually the one that caused it by acting like their awful father rather than just being there for his sister)

#tua #umbrella academy #the umbrella academy #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #diego hargreeves #alison hargreeves #luther hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #ben hargreeves #pogo #hazel #cha cha #the handler #tua review #review #tv

[zontiky]

okay so i tried to save this ask as a draft and it got deleted because tumblr is just such a functional website like that <3 but the prompt was “the hargreeves as ghosts in the apocalypse with five” or something like that i’m going to scream

this is SUPER long so i’m putting it under the cut hfkjsd

pre-five: the hargreeves siblings are dead. wait i feel a drabble coming on ooh

The Hargreeves siblings are dead.

Ben isn’t very aware of this at first. He’s been dead since 2006 -- he’s quite used to it, by now. What he is aware of, first, is light. Blinding white light. And Vanya, in the middle of it. He doesn’t close his eyes because he can’t feel pain, but if he could he thinks she would have made him blind. There’s light, and heat, and power, and then he closes his eyes anyway because the ceiling is collapsing around him and it’s instinctual.

When he opens them again he sees ash. Ash -- and Klaus.

He’s gotten used to Klaus, too. Klaus has a memorable sort of face; even if he didn’t, Ben has seen it every single day for almost twenty years. He doesn’t know if it’s actually been twenty years, for him. He doesn’t know how time moves for ghosts. Klaus has assured him it moves the same as it does for the living. Ben isn’t sure Klaus, stoned out of his mind, bleeding sluggishly from his arm, knew what he was talking about.

Anyway.

Klaus.

He’s wearing the coat he’s been flaunting around for the past week. His shirt is see-through, with little stars on it, like a pale imitation of the sky. Ben remembers his pants had laces on them, he’s sure they did not a minute ago, before the brightness that threatened to wipe out his very soul -- his soul is all he has left, really. His gaze drifts down anyway, to check.

Yes. Klaus’ pants have laces up the sides.

“No,” Ben says. Klaus is laying in a heap on the ground, his fingers curled like his tendons have been cut.

His lips feel numb because they always feel numb. Because Ben can’t feel at all. He takes a step. “No,” he says again, louder, surer. “No!”

Klaus looks up at him. His makeup is smudged, like it tends to be. His lips are bitten raw, like they tend to be. His hair is a mess, like it tends to be, and like it will be, always, because Klaus isn’t breathing.

Klaus is lying in a heap on the ground. Klaus is standing above his own body. Klaus is reaching for Ben like he’s hoping to touch him for the first time in years. Just when Klaus’ cold, dead, fingers brush his face, a voice from behind says, so quietly, dripping with disbelief: “Ben?”

Ben shuts his eyes and wishes desperately he could cry.

He feels a hand on his shoulder, for the first time in so, so long, but he also doesn’t feel it at all. He feels-but-doesn’t-feel someone turn him around, until they are saying, “Ben? Ben!” and he has no choice but to open his eyes and face the music.

Diego is gripping his shoulders like he is a dying man and Ben is the answer. Behind him, Luther and Allison watch them, stunned silent. Allison’s hands are pressed to her mouth. She looks like she wants to cry. 

And Vanya. Little Vanya, painted white. Her head is hung as her shoulders shake with the weight of the destruction she has so inevitably caused. (Ben would say he always knew she was destined for great things -- but he can’t, because he didn’t.) (Nobody ever said great things had to be good.)

The Hargreeves siblings are dead. Their bodies are strewn across what is left of their childhood home, smouldering and burning, and Ben is very aware of that fact.

righto anyway. so they have an emotional reunion but its also kind of bitter? id have to actually write this for it to make sense so lets skip it for now lol

five shows up

he cannot see them obviously bc theyre all ghosts

god if i did write this it would be such a monster of a fic and would take me like 2 years to finish i already know fhkjdsk

somehow ?? they manage to influence the world around them maybe? idk maybe now that klaus is dead hes sober

or maybe hes high for all eternity?

for the purposes of this au lets say he died sober or in the late stages of withdrawal, and bc ghosts cant feel pain in action hes sober

so EVENTUALLY they figure out how to corporealize bc klaus is like blam wham ghost powers

asdlfk that sounds so stupid im sorry

he would say that tho imho,,, it sounds like something hed say,,,

if i DID write this it would be alternating povs also,,,

ok so out of all of them klaus and ben have the most experience homeless

and while being stuck in an apocalypse is not at all the same thing as being homeless it does help to have some knowledge

five doesnt eat the twinkie!! good for him

dammit okay. theres 2 options we can take here. in the comics five couldnt get back bc he fucked up his math and spent 15 years doing the wrong thing, but if u apply that here, with 6 other ppl checking his work this could be avoided and they end up skipping the whole assassin shtick and just hopping straight back to 2019, ready to prevent the apocalypse

OR five still gets hired for the commission but the sibs are tagging along

i think bc five isnt completely alone in this au unfortunately dolores doesnt exist :((

for each other the 2 paths tho theres also options?? bc they (ghosts) can go back in time and inhabit their past selves bodies? OR they could just,,, cease to exist

IM JUST NOW REALIZING HOW MANY PATHS THIS COULD TAKE,, AAH FUCK

okay gonna split this into parts. this is gonna be so long brace yourselves.

1) they go back in time because math checking and the ghosts swap out for their past selves

after multiple years of being stuck in an apocalypse together i think they would learn to get along with each other. like at least a little bit

which would make it easier for them to prevent the apocalypse

bc theyd:

trust each other more

already know abt the apocalypse and not have to wait for five to grace them all with his knowledge

are working as a team from the very beginning

have open lines of communication

yeah uh. so there

vanya is also already aware of her powers so the whole harold goading her into turning against her family and snapping to wipe out all life on earth thing? yeah that doesnt happen

oh and harold wouldn’t know how to do that in the first place because klaus wouldn’t throw out reggie’s journal! this solves so many problems wtf

there’s still commission issues bc they (and by they i mean five) are on the commission’s radar

so there’s still dope fight scenes sdlkfd pinky promise

okay idk. they stop the apocalypse and everything is okay the end hfkjd

2) they fix the math but only five can go back and the ghosts cease to exist

this is just sad! it would be sad okay! im sad! lets move on

subset of the past one: ben CAN go back with five because he was already dead and time travel affects them differently or something idk

aaaaaa

five & ben dynamic duo would be dope as shit BUT five would not be able to see him... so they use klaus as a middleman fjsdsfd

is there 2 bens? is one ben deleted in favor of the time-traveling ben? i dont know! i dont know my brain is melting

either way shit is happening yall!! obviously klaus is clued in, directly or indirectly it doesnt matter but he is on board the ‘don’t let the entire world end in flames’ train

3) they join the commission and then when five goes back in time they all go back

this is fun because now five is a highly trained assassin who is also lowkey a complete marshmallow for his siblings and once again TEAMWORK WOO

basically the first path but now five has a gun fhsdjk

4) they join the commission but five has to leave them behind and they cease to exist

five with a gun but hes sad now

i didnt go into how much losing his siblings would suck in the prev path but like. it would suck so much. he’s already lost them once if you think about it when he time traveled the first time and yeah he found the adult ghost versions but,, its different

and now suddenly hes stuck with these strange adult versions of the people he knows and he KNOWS them but also he doesnt? at all? they dont have all the years of shared experiences together? and theyre all grown up from the first ‘set’ of siblings he had which for five was like 40+ years ago??

SCREAMS

i have losing my mind disease (self-diagnosed)

subset: five has to leave them behind but they still exist because the commission is out-of-time kind of? idk but they’re still floating around somewhere and come back to impact the plot later or something

yeah idk. literally just wrote them down bc i didnt want them to die^2 hfkjwehd

subset: they still exist but instead of being just Somewhere they’re specifically at the assassination of JFK onwards because thats where five left them and they either go on ghosting and make an appearance in s2 OR they cease because them-wise they havent died yet but that doesnt make sense because ghosts can time travel so nevermind

i dont have the brain energy left to explore this one aaaa

okay jesus christ i think that’s all

I DON’T KNOW. i don’t know. i might write some more of this because honestly it is a very fine flavor of angst + hurt/comfort <3

#didnt proofread this at all 💀 fhsdfks #tua #the umbrella academy #pls dont let this flop i spent like an hour on it hfjksd #aus #team zero #ben hargreeves #wip #I GUESS #misc #ghosting au

[ancientstone]

any more BofA ideas? 😊

I have literally been unable to stop thinking about this au since it first appeared in my brain! 😂 Thank you for giving me an excuse to ramble 😊❤

Recently I’ve been thinking about Five and Sebastian in the apocalypse, and how tough it must have been for Five.

By the point he summons Sebastian and makes their deal, he’s been in the apocalypse for decades. He’s been isolated and completely alone (minus Dolores), surviving off canned food and cockroaches, navigating falling ash, fires, bodies, and ruins. Everything that has come his way he has been forced to face by himself, be it injury, sickness, natural disaster, or whatever else. 

It’s part of the reason why he’s able to just get on with things once he’s back, right? Five’s used to rolling up his sleeves. 

He’ll stitch up his own arm, no worries.

He’ll deal with the assassins the Commission sends, no issue.

It’s probably why it takes pretty much until season 2 for him to actively seek out someone to help him. 

Don’t think I didn’t notice the season 1 “I can do this by myself, you don’t need to know” vs “I need your help to stop the apocalypse” shift...

But then we fling Sebastian into the mix.

Sebastian, a demon capable, as seen in the flashback during the Campania arc (spoilers?), of turning smoldering ruins into a functioning manor and making a table filled with food appear before his master’s eyes.

Like, sweet Jesus, that’s a one-eighty. 

Imagine Five taking Sebastian back to his crumbly little base at the library, for the first time realising how lonely and pathetic is it, and then Sebastian just tuts and goes, “This won’t do.” and BAM! Library is restored! Oh, and the Academy as well, because that his master’s home, right?

Do you....Do you think that when Sebastian rebuilds the academy, he includes Five’s portrait over the fireplace?

Oof, can you picture it? The proof of how your father felt about your disappearance (as a lesson to the other children never to defy him) right there, as you desperately struggle to claw your way back from your mistake. Yikes.

That’s probably why Sebastian leaves it up, the bastard.

Decades, though, most of Five’s lifetime, spent outside in the ashy remains of the apocalypse, and then suddenly he has running water, and electricity, and a bed with feather pillows and soft blankets and warmth!! All at a near flick of a demonic finger! That must mess with the head.

I watched a documentary about homelessness once, and I remember a man on there saying that after so long spent on the streets, he can no longer sleep inside because he finds it too claustrophobic. Five could easily feel the same way, like that first night he has a bath (a goddamn bath?!!) and gets settled in the bed, Dolores at his side and just...

Rests there. His eyes wide open. Acutely aware of how muffled the world suddenly sounds.

Yeah, he sleeps on the roof that night. Sebastian probably scolds him for that.

“You could get sick! Humans are weak and fragile creatures, any number of-”

“I’m literally the expert at this.” Five snips. “I built a fire, calm down.”

“A fire is no replacement for a bed-”

“Listen, asshole, I’ve spent over twenty years making a living in this shithole, I think I know a thing or two about this.”

Five then spends months just...naturally heading outside to do anything after that, much to Sebastian’s chagrin. It’s ingrained by this point, a force of habit that’s had years to develop. Unlike Ciel, who had a month of hell before returning, Five’s been scarred in a way that leaves so many behaviors that it’s honestly a wonder why Sebastian rebuilt the academy in the first place.

Need water? Go outside.

Need food? Outside.

The bathroom? Yep, outside.

The first time it rains once Sebastian is there, he finds Five having a makeshift shower in it, and has to remind him that there are showers and baths in the academy, sir!! Please use them!!

Oh boy, the showers.

Let’s face it, Five going to be one stinky man when Sebastian finds him. Much like with Ciel (again, Campania arc spoilers), Sebastian probably insists on helping him bathe the first night, because Five’s likely littered with scares and nicks and god knows what else. Whereas Ciel was somewhat able to put up with Sebastian washing him, Five?

Nope.

No.

Not an ounce of human contact in decades and then someone comes along and wants to wash your hair? No thank you, not today or any other.

It doesn’t help that, when you try and insist, your master has this unfortunate habit of disappearing, probably going outside and getting even more goddamn dirty.

I don’t think Sebastian would get his way here. Five’s a grown man, unlike Ciel, and is far more able to put his foot down. Dear old Sebby just has to put up with it and trust Five to get himself relatively clean.

He does give Five a haircut, though. And gives his beard a trim.

Dolores thinks he looks very handsome. 

Five thinks he’s going to get sunburn all over his face without his beard to protect it.

Then there’s the food.

hoo boy Five’’s palate is a mess. Literally, a mess. Sebastian is beside himself half the time. Whatever Five picks at (and he’s not eating nearly enough during meals) gets swallowed whole, no chewing, no tasting, just gulped down like it would vanish if he didn’t. Anything more elaborate than butter on toast is too much flavour at once, and texture beyond soft and squidgy or the crunchy outer shells of insects makes Five uncomfortable.

Again, Ciel only spend a month in hell, so he was able to recover quicker than Five. Here, Sebastian has to learn how to take things slowwww, realising that if they’re going to achieve time travel and stop the apocalypse, he’s going to need to gradually bring Five to better health first.

I wonder if Sebastian offers warm milk with honey, and when Five accepts it, snickers at his own private joke...

The first time Five tries a coffee, he ends up experiencing such a rush that Sebastian legitimately thinks that Five might teleport six countries to the left. After that, they take their time introducing things like sugar and caffeine back into his diet.

Also, picture the interaction:

“Sir, please don’t.”

“Huh?” Five glances over at Sebastian. “What?”

“You are not an animal, sir, you are a man of considerable power, and technically considerable wealth.”

“Right, and?”

“Just...Please put the bug down, sir. If you are hungry, you need only ask.”

idk I just think it’s funny how unnerved Sebastian might be with some of Five’s habits. Whenever Ciel talked about the lengths he would go to while achieving his goals, most of the time that was theoretical, or just talking about joining a contract with Sebastian.

Five however it literally showing the lengths he would go to, and they’re gross! He’d survive off insects for his family! He’d live surrounded by rotting corpses! He’d eat canned dog food if it came his way! 

Ciel would do those things, but Five actively does.

I’d better leave this here before it really turns into an essay, but lord above, these boys are giving me much to muse over!!

#asked #thank you!! #book of the apocalypse #tua #kuroshitsuji #number five #sebastian michaelis #my post #long post

[timerainseternal]

Who’s your favorite character of tua and why

I enjoy most of the characters in Umbrella Academy, but my favorite is Five! As for why, there are a lot of reasons, but I think, writing-wise it's because I don't know what he will do at any given moment, but I trust where he's going. This is a difficult balance to pull off, but I'll try to explain exactly what I mean and why I feel that way.

Firstly, I don't know what he'll do, which makes him interesting to watch. He's full of contradictions in many ways, he's very resourceful, and he's written as someone who is extremely smart. (Though another thing I find interesting is that unlike with many other "genius" characters, intelligence--as in knowledge or ability like with his scribbling-on-the-walls math--isn't his primary trait, at least not to me. Before that I would say that he is at least determined, as well as resourceful in a way that isn't linked strictly to book smarts. Instead, he's driven on sustained desperation that "geniuses" never seem to get in media, and even though he's so smart and generally competent, his plans often or always fail, which I actually made a whole post about. Even further, we know he's 58, so his knowledge is based not only on natural ability, but also a lot of work and time, which is also not the general presentation. We know he's smart, but figuring out time travel took him a whole lifetime.) Anyway, even his power set is...fluidly defined. I don't know what plans he will make, or what side effects will follow--only that, based on past experience, side effects will follow. As such, I'm very entertained watching him constantly pivoting and coming up with new ideas and plans, especially since I think he gets more plot turns than anyone else in the series, or at least is a more active force in those turns.

His choices also showcase the desperation that is at the core of him, and the moral greyness that comes from it. He's not bound by normal considerations like most of the others are; often, he doesn't even consider them. What might be off-limits to others isn't off-limits to him (which is like his powers in a funny kind of way). But really, it all stems from the fact of having lost everything with his 45-year stint in the apocalypse and the loneliness that comes from that. It's an interesting philosophical thought experiment. What are morals in a dead world? What are a few thousand people compared to the end of humanity? What are we if everything else gets stripped away?

And for Five, the answer is not in the violence we've seen him commit, but instead the love he shows. He was presented as a prickly genius who is smarter than everyone and knows everything (like he says to Allison in ep 1) and who is also a time-travelling assassin hardened by decades in a wasteland. We expect competence, cold calculation, and a near-complete lack of empathy. But then we meet Dolores, and we learn that he's doing everything for his family, and we see that everything he does is for love of other people. Specific other people, sure, but love nonetheless. And he isn't cool about it, isn't aloof; he's lost it all before, and he's desperate, and nothing he does--despite what most shows tell you about geniuses--really fixes any problem completely, and especially not the relationships that got broken when he left.

Yet even despite all that, he's also predictable in a way that lets me trust him. Obviously, as an audience, we see how pressing and devastating the apocalypse is. It's the end. Yet none of the other characters understand that the way we do, or the way Five does. His ultimate goal is to stop that from happening and protect his family, and given his life experience, I know that there is nothing that will stop him as long as he's around. I trust that his character will make decisions towards an end goal that I agree with as the audience, and that as long as that remains true, I know that even if I don't know where he's going with a plan, I can at least trust his intent. Even with the Commission, where he worked as an assassin and presumably murdered innocents, the end goal is great enough that it makes sense. Moreover, though, is that once we see that his motivation is for love and to protect, not from a place of sadism or superiority, and that he will even listen to others to find a less violent workaround (as with Luther in s1), I trust his intentions even more.

That's part of what makes the murder of the Board, and then the aftermath, so interesting: it's a study in contradiction, the urge to be violent and feel seen and effective and successful, contrasted with a sense of guilt and remorse and an understanding that it's not the best version of himself. He's warring with those instincts, but the writers have portrayed him in a way that allows for understanding and sympathy.

For another thing, as I think @the-aro-ace-arrow-ace mentioned, given his unique standing as both 13 and 58, he can't really have a romantic relationship to pull him away like the others can, nor do I think he would if he could, considering the timespan the show tends to give him. He's not really in the mindset for romance at all, and especially not a romance that would distract him from his goals. Not only was Dolores an extension of his own mind for a long time, but also was one he was willing to abandon, first going with the Handler, then again towards the end of season 1. Not only does this make his goals less likely to be swayed from what I, as an audience member, consider to be important, but also romance as the sort of "love at first sight, I will prioritize you over everyone else without any real merit behind it" is always a bit flimsy to me. Maybe I'm a little too aromantic to get it, but I generally find it a bit distracting at best unless done really well. (I did like Raymond and Allison as a couple. I thought that was done really well, where they had time and chemistry and respect for each other, and I enjoyed the time they spent together. It doesn't hurt that Allison is my second favorite, but it stands well even besides that. It's just a good relationship.)

Finally, all of that plays into Five's relationships with others. He isn't good at being a social creature (understandable), yet that's what he values most: his family. He wants to be empathetic--and in many cases he can be--but he's battling his own inability to be understood. He doesn't even fully understand himself in the world he left when he was a child. In a very real sense, he can't do what has become most important to him--not that his siblings are the best role models for communication. It makes sense, then, that he was able to seemingly connect with Reginald. Five wants to connect with the people he missed and felt like he wronged, no matter if he actually was in the wrong or not. He so often gets ignored/misunderstood/considered crazy that even as someone just watching that conversation, it felt cathartic for him to be listened to and taken seriously, even if I think Reginald is the absolute worst and that the best thing for him to do would be to stay dead. Five thought he was being the most rational of his siblings in that supper, but he didn't realize that his biases were as strong or stronger, and just had a different root. His relationships with others are his strongest desire/goal/motivator, but he has such a distorted perception of the way the world works on a daily, interpersonal level and also who he is in that world, that he can't really make it work right, and that's really neat to watch.

In my mind, also, what Five is looking for isn't actually his family from 2019. It isn't even his family from 2002, or at least not just them. I think that what he wants is to be who he was when he left, before he got stuck in the apocalypse. He wants his family because he loves them--I don't doubt that, and I don't want to discredit it--but also because I think in some sense he believes that if he can just be with them again, he can make things the way they used to be, the way he used to be. He's kind of like Luther in that regard, except that Luther is beginning to move on, and Five is stuck in it. The tragedy in this, of course, is that he's the time traveller here, and no matter what time he goes to, his only choice is forwards for himself. He can't go back, even if he reaches the exact moment he left. This, of course, is speculation--or analysis, if we use the kinder term--but I think it shows how much can be read into his character based on his choices and narrative arc, and that in itself is interesting whether it was intended or not.

So, that's an overly long answer to your question! It's Five because I think he's interesting, and I think he's interesting because the writers have backed themselves into a corner where he kind of has to be. I hope that was what you were looking for!

#asks #tua asks

[neuronary]

I want to hear about your klaus as queer rep points

i mean. okay so on reflection a lot of this is influenced by the wider fandom’s perception of klaus because like. noah fence but this fandom is definitely fucked up in a casual way.

so for starters, i do think klaus was pretty good queer rep for the first few episodes of season one. especially with the casual mention of a previous partner when talking to five about dolores. if they’d expanded on that more with, say, diego asking after klaus’ ‘dirtbag boyfriend’, for it to be revealed that they’re no longer together and then dismissed in the same way it would be as a casual reference to an ex-boyfriend of vanya or allison’s, i think it would’ve been a great example of casual queer rep. klaus also benefits (in terms of queer rep only) from the fact that he’s a blatant self-insert character for gerard way from the original comics. he’s very heavily based off of a real-life queer person, so he as a character feels authentic to us.

(more under the cut because this got long.)

it all falls apart when he goes to vietnam. i have so many fucking questions about this decision in the writing because it is so out-of-place in the wider narrative and dear god does it ping on my ‘hey this is maybe not the most sensitive writing choice’ radar badly. (why send him to vietnam and not the somme? wouldn’t it make more sense to have dave as an outsider in klaus’ life that has tried but ultimately failed to support him through rehab? seriously why the fuck would you use time travel like this??)

so, the general idea that drives the plot forward in the umbrella academy is that the siblings are all alone, in one way or another. luther and five literally, having spent years entirely isolated on the moon/in the apocalypse. diego has patch but that relationship is clearly strained and al (from the gym) doesn’t like him much. allison’s lost her daughter and doesn’t seem to have many friends. klaus has ben and vice versa, but despite familiarity with the people at the rehab centre/the paramedic in episode one, he doesn’t seem to have a close connection with any of them. vanya’s most meaningful relationship outside of leonard is helen cho, who roasts her in a bathroom and then gets murdered.

another really key feature of season one that fuels the plot is that none of the characters really change. why? because they’ve got one week. no meaningful character growth can happen over the course of a week, especially when they don’t talk to each other.

so why the actual fuck would you try to shoehorn ten months of relationship development into this situation with use of, let me be very clear, one single fucking montage?

dave isn’t even a character. he has no lines, appears for less than half an episode in terms of overall screentime, and his last name had to be extrapolated from his dog tags.

and what exactly is the purpose of this character/relationship? to convince klaus to get sober? seriously??

let’s compare and contrast with vanya and sissy, which i firmly believe is an excellent example of organic relationship development and good queer representation.

vanya’s relationship with sissy leads her to stand up for herself for the first time because it gives her something to lose. we see them go from close friends in the earlier episodes to lovers later on. there are several scenes (barn and hands off the top of my head) dedicated to showing their relationship blossom and, although we don’t see all of this development onscreen, it is set up in a way that makes us believe it. on top of that, there are some much-appreciated (by me) nods to common tropes from lesbian pulp novels of the fifties and sixties, which is an incredibly significant piece of queer history and culture.

klaus and dave? one (1) montage of some dancing and substance abuse, klaus’ character development could have been gotten from... literally anywhere else. ben, maybe? patch’s death? affection for diego? i don’t know, and i honestly don’t care. we see none of their relationship development. klaus’ abrupt change in goals/objectives is off-putting and defeats the entire purpose of season one’s ‘the siblings don’t have enough time to heal before the apocalypse happens’ narrative. it has fuck-all to do with the overall story??? and we could have instead had some gags where klaus bops about for a bit, popping up in some famous photos/portraits, before returning to the present (entirely by accident) and having the briefcase stolen by five to use as a bargaining chip with hazel and cha cha.

and it set up the hands down worst queer story line i have ever seen in fiction. there is an entire fucking stereotype about queer men preying on young men/boys and you decided to have klaus (33) stalk and harass an eighteen-year-old??? f u c k   t h a t .

anyway i have now spent way too fucking long thinking about a character that i hate. i’m gonna go back to writing about allison and vanya being ace/lesbian solidarity. peace.

#anti klaus hargreeves #fuck that guy #the disgusting little trash man does Not spark joy

[dadsbongos]

Hargreeves Kids in Order of Their Problems (and do i have a problem?)

No secret that the Hargreeves children are all fucked up, but as I was re-watching I was like damn - what if we ranked them? So here we go, I’m ranking all the Hargreeves’ spawn by their pain; taking into account their trauma with and without Reginald (mostly for Five/Klaus) and how bad it messed them up. I’ll be sticking mostly to the first season because that’s where a lot of the meat is, but I might include a tiny peek into season two.

Also, I will be directly addressing the frequent question I ask myself “Am I attracted to trauma when it comes to characters?” by looking at my favorites and if they’re all deeply scarred.

S Tier Pain - Five Hargreeves:

Not only was he forced to endure Reginald’s abusive training regime (at least until the haha moment), but he also got stuck in the future after a miscalculated time jump. You’d think that’d be bad enough, what with no longer being able to see your family, but no. Well, technically he did see them when he found their dead bodies but that’s just more to Five’s suffering. He also got jammed into a post-Apocalyptic life where he was the sole survivor and had to live all on his own (though he had Dolores, which is a whole can of sad, loneliness worms we don’t have time for). Then to make matters worse he was taken into the Commission where he was turned into as assassin for years, to which he quit early to save his family from the Apocalypse. After the first one - yes, the first - and arriving in the 60s, Five got to see a glimpse of his siblings dying to the second one. All he ever does is for his family’s survival, even if it means his misery. In season one (and two) he makes a deal with the Handler, who he can’t stand, just to

maybe

 ensure she’ll protect his loved ones from the end of the world. He willingly works with a woman he hates and likely doesn’t trust so his family would be safe. And who could forget that redheaded lady in the bowling alley, like gosh, she really ruined his life by assuming his age like that... poor guy.

A Tier Pain - Klaus Hargreeves:

Unlike Five, he got to stick around for the entirety of Reggie’s cuck ways of abusing his kids physically/emotionally/mentally. From a young age (if that episode two lunch scene is anything), Klaus has been using drugs as a way to cope with his family life and his power. His addiction has led to a rather sad life, as evident from the first episode and some of his own dialogue - he’s not used to staying in one place, if anything his visits to rehab centers are the longest homes he really has. He’s not expected to stay sober long by the counter employee, indicating he’s been there before multiple times. When talking to Five outside of the prosthetic department, he outright admits he hasn’t been with someone for longer than about two weeks. He’s never shown to even hold down a job unless you count supplying local pawn shops - or, you know, the army. He served in war, straight up war, he likely has PTSD and to make things better, note the sarcasm, he lost his boyfriend in that war. Dave, the one person he’s described as loving more than he does himself. Klaus is constantly brushed under the rug as this crazy, attention-seeking junkie for most of season one by his family, but he’s more likely just calling for the help he clearly needs. Speaking of his family, I just wanna throw in that Klaus was kidnapped and tortured and not one person seemed to notice or even care.

B Tier Pain - Vanya Hargreeves:

Neglected by her adoptive father and siblings her entire life, Vanya was left out of the loop of even her own powers until she discovered them fucking decades later. She wrote a book trying to air out her father’s awful deeds and rather than finding solidarity with their shared agony at least a little, her siblings pushed her even further away. Quick mention, during the argument on whether or not to turn off Grace, she was immediately shut down on an opinion until she was shown to agree with Diego. Her vote didn’t matter until she sided with another sibling. Vanya grew up so starved for attention and love that when she got into her first relationship with Leonard (that bitchy murderer) she mistook it for a real love. Stayed with an abusive, gaslighting killer against all her sister’s warnings. She was betrayed by her own brother (fuck Luther, me and the homies hate Luther) after coming home, sobbing and pleading forgiveness, just wanting to help into being locked back in that vault Reginald used to keep her in. Vanya snapped, felt there was no other outlet and truly there possibly wasn’t for her, and ended the world. She was in so much pain, so angry with her life and how it was ruined by her own family that she blew up the moon. And honestly? I’m not even mad at her for it.

C Tier Pain - Diego Hargreeves:

Dude found his ex-girlfriend’s - and probably his potential love interest’s - corpse. He’s aching inside at least a bit. His spot as Number Two fueled a deep need to prove himself, whether he admits it or not, it’s why he’s a vigilante. Diego functions off of stopping crime and it’s only different from his childhood because he does it alone. He feels the need to validate what he went through, as if his suffering needs to be explained in some way. Speaking of childhoods, who gives them to us? Moms. Grace is his robo-Mom with no real sentience (well, before Cha-Cha and Hazel raided the place anyway, reboot Grace has some weird independence complex going on). She read to him, put him to bed, and fed his Mama’s Boy fixation - even going as far as to help Diego with his stutter. He put her down, in the robot sense. Diego was the first person to speak against shutting Grace down and yet he did so himself - knowing it’s what had to happen.

D Tier Pain - Ben Hargreeves:

He’s dead, so I’m not sure what he’s gone through other than having “The Horror” in his stomach and Reginald as a dad. So there’s not much to say about his trauma other than having to sit through watching people die horribly by his power’s hand. But again, he’s dead, and dying is one of the most traumatic things I can think of. That’s why he’s higher than the others but still lower than the previous four Hargreeves’ kids.

E Tier Pain - Allison Hargreeves:

She’s known as a “Daddy’s Girl” how that’s possible with Reginald, I’m not sure, but she is. Not to excuse any of the torment she got as a child or give the abuse a pass, at all. It’s just an inference that as Number Three and someone who easily got what she wanted with her power, she probably didn’t feel out-casted like Vanya. Nor was she left to survive on her own and then kill to live like Five. Allison, in all fairness, was viciously attacked by her sister after revealing she “Rumored” her memory away. Unlike Ben, she survived and went on to be the peaceful one of the family and her power didn’t directly kill, especially in ways that “The Horror” did. So I must rank her pain lower with a sad bob in my throat, nervous that all the Allison lovers will scream at/cancel me for putting her at E.

F Tier Pain - Luther Hargreeves:

Fuck Luther, me and the homies hate Luther. This little fuck found something out of proving himself to his father. So far up his dad’s ass that he was cool with being a monkey space boy for years until he realized Reginald didn’t give a shit about him. And honestly? Same. No but really, he did become a monkey man purely out of Reginald’s need for a hero to do what he said - and Luther couldn’t fill that if he was dead. I do recognize that his life was essentially wasted by his years spent on the moon, blindly following Dad’s orders but to be honest, he’s too in the background. He had nothing other than his father and therefore lost nothing other than his family, it’s hard to feel bad when you know he had no intention of doing anything other than be by Reginald. No plans unlike Klaus who had his life decimated by his drugs dependency or fuck, Five! Five had absolutely no life other than living through the Apocalypse for decades. Overall, I hate Luther but even though I can’t stand his gorilla guts, I do recognize that he has trauma.

~~~Do I Have A Problem?~~~ Considering that Five and Klaus are my favorite characters and they are the most traumatized? Yes, I am unnecessarily in love with characters in pain. I didn’t want to be a mannequin before I knew about Five, and now I crave to morph into Dolores (or at least combine with her like a Power Ranger)

#the umbrella academy #tua #number five #five hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #diego hargreeves #ben hargreeves #allison hargreeves #luther hargreeves #five the umbrella academy #klaus the umbrella academy #vanya the umbrella academy #diego the umbrella academy #ben the umbrella academy #allison the umbrella academy #anti luther hargreeves #fuck monky space boy

[princesssarcastia]

the day that was(n’t)

edit 4/9/20: now on ao3, if you’d prefer

Allison buys two tickets for Luther and he still hunches his shoulders in, trying to make himself that much smaller.  She hasn’t let go of his hand since they left the park.  Everything is balancing on a knife’s edge in her mind, and if she loses him as an anchor right now she’ll crumble.

Her ears pop as they rise, rise, rise, and she clenches Luther’s hand and finally lets herself wonder if she can do this.  Wonder what words she can say to Patrick to make him understand that this isn’t a trick.  Allison only has two days left on this Earth to see her daughter.  (her daughter only has two days left on this Earth.  this Earth only has two days left) what if he says no what if he calls the police what if five is wrong and she destroys her last chance what if what if what if what if—

Luther pulls her hand to his chest and splays it flat, letting her feel the steady march of his heartbeat and the slow pull of his breath, in, out, in, out. Hers is coming in short, quick (quiet, always quiet don’t let him hear number three) bursts; panic like she hasn’t felt in years is rising in her. 

But.  But Luther is here.  Luther is here, and he’s holding her hand, and he’s breathing.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.

Allison lets her eyes close and focuses on him, for a little while.

                                                               —

Klaus shudders and sobs and smiles because he did it.  Dave is here.

“Klaus,” Dave smiles at him (Dave Dave Dave his heart beats).  “What are you doing to yourself, sweetheart?”

He crosses the attic, floorboards creaking in time with his footsteps, and crouches down next to him.

“I had to see you,” Klaus sobs and smiles and it’s all tangled up inside but it doesn’t matter, because Dave is here.  Dave died in his arms and Klaus scrubbed Dave’s blood out from under his fingernails, but he’s here.  It’s okay now.

“So you tied yourself to a chair?” He shakes his head.  “Wait, are you sober?”  A hesitant look takes over Dave’s face.  “Klaus, does this mean you can see—can see all the others, too?  You don’t have to—not for me.”

Klaus shakes his head.  “No, no, Dave, you’re—you’re worth every second of it.  I love you, Dave, so much.  I missed you so much,” he sobs again.  And oh, this won’t do; his eyes are so watery it’s hard to make Dave out.  He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to ward off more tears.

Dave runs a hand gently over Klaus’s forehead, pushing his hair away from his eyes.  Memories of nights spent memorizing the way Dave’s warm, calloused hands felt against him flash in Klaus’s mind.

Wait.

Klaus opens his eyes and jerks back a little.  Hands.  Floorboards.

“Dave,” he breathes, shocked, and finally manages to pull his own hands free.  The space between them is illuminated with pale blue light.  He reaches up, shaking, as Dave leans down, and their foreheads collide somewhere in the middle.

They press against each other, just savoring getting to breathe the same air.  Figuratively.  Except, well, maybe not?

“How is this possible?” Klaus murmurs, trying to pull Dave even closer.  “Is this you?”

“No, this is all you, sweetheart.”  Dave smiles at him again (hasn’t stopped smiling at him, actually, not that Klaus is any better).

“Hmmm.  Sounds like a problem for tomorrow, don’t you think?”

Dave laughs, and it’s the greatest thing Klaus has ever heard.

                                                             —

“I won’t lie to my children anymore,” Mom says, and lifts her chin ever so slightly.

Diego feels something ease inside him.  It is the first time she has ever called them hers; Sir Reginald never allowed her the attachment.

But his father isn’t here anymore.

“Mom,” he says softly.  “Mom, whatever it is, it’ll be okay.  I understand, I promise.”

She doesn’t smile and says, “Sir Reginald killed himself, in the hopes that it would bring you all together one last time.”

She doesn’t smile and says, “Pogo has been sabotaging my programming to arouse your suspicions, to keep you all investigating and focused, as a team.  As long as I was a suspect, you children would stay.”

She doesn’t smile and says, “Do you remember when I first came to stay with you, Diego?”

He sucks in a breath; it’s—what?  It’s too much at once, but also not enough.  “Why would.  Why w-w-would he kill himself?  What could possibly m-m-m—”

“Diego,” she cuts him off.  Something in his chest curls up; she’s never interrupted him when he was struggling with a word, not once, and it hurts.

Mom reaches out and grasps his shoulders. “Diego.  My sweet boy,” and now a smile flits across her mouth, as she’s looking into his eyes.  “This is important.  Do you remember the nannies you had before I came to stay?”

Something vague drags itself from his memory.  “I.  Yeah, one of them spoke french, right?”

She smiles again, but this time it’s one of Reginald's. He can always tell the difference; this one is meant to be encouragement for answering a question correctly.  “That’s right!” 

And then it slides off her face.  “They were human.  But humans are,” she pauses, “breakable.  Your father stopped employing human nannies after you all turned four.”

Breakable.  “Did we,” he swallows, “did we hurt them?”

She doesn’t smile and says, “You didn’t.  But Vanya did.”

                                                        —

Vanya presses her father’s journal to her chest with one hand and grips her case with the other as she walks the length of the city.

After Ben—when she first moved out, the only thing she could think was away.  Far away.  And Leonard’s house is close—was close—

There’s blood on her face.  There was blood everywhere, my god what have I—

No cabs.  No friends to call.  Just Vanya, making her way to the house she ran away from twelve years ago.

She is a liability you have to have powers to go this is a family matter I heard a              r u  m  o   r

But she loves them.  She loves them.  It’ll be okay.  They can help, her family can help her.  Her family will help her.  Sisters.

Time collapses.

Vanya knocks quietly at the manor’s front door, but nobody answers.  Late.  It’s late.  Her family isn’t ignoring her, they’re just asleep.  She could knock louder, but—(he beats his fist against the book until it’s the only thing she can hear, until it fills her mind and she  s c r e a m s).

Through the kitchen.  Her key fits into the lock and the door creaks open and she’s in the kitchen.  There are dishes in the sink, why are there dishes in the sink?  Mom always puts the dishes away before bed.  (the new nanny cracks as she hits the ground, and doesn’t get up again)

Maybe they’re in the living room.  They were meeting there earlier, maybe they’re still—

She’s in the living room, and she’s alone.  Just Vanya.  Some of the lamps are still on, casting a warm glow on everything.

Late.  It’s late.  Her family is probably asleep.  Vanya could call out for them (she  s c r e a m s) or Pogo (did you know?) but. 

Vanya can wait here.  She can sit here, and wait for them to notice her.  Then they can help, her family can help her.

She perches on the edge of the cushion, journal pressed to her chest in one hand, case gripped tight in the other, and waits.

                                                           —

Seven seconds from the time he drops the grenade to the explosion.  Just enough to get the year, the month the day, but his hands are too goddamn sweaty to fix the hour.

“Shit!” He grinds his teeth and flips the catches anyway.  Two days is better than nothing, which is what he’ll be if he stays any longer.

The heat of the explosion reaches him just as he slips into the void, and gets unceremoniously dumped onto the unyielding oak of his father’s wet-bar.

He gives himself two seconds to lie there and groan.  God, that hurt.  He’s thirteen years old, but you wouldn’t know it from all the aches and pains littering his body.  This is what fifty felt like the first time around. What he wants, more than anything, is to sleep for the next sixteen hours and then drink a gallon of coffee.

What, are you going to sit there and whine all day? Dolores says in the back of his mind.  Get up.  We have work to do.

Everything hurts as he pushes himself to his feet, and there’s a particularly stabbing pain in his right side, but that’s irrelevant right now.

Coffee.  He can give himself one out of two, and then round up his idiot siblings to stop the apoca—

“Five?” Someone croaks.  He recognizes that kind of voice; that’s the voice of someone who’s screamed their vocal cords to shreds.

His eyes land on Vanya, of all people, sitting alone on the couch.  Why would she be—nope, doesn’t matter.  Apocalypse first, issues later.

“Good.  You’re here.”  He marches across the room.  “The apocalypse is in two...” his voice trails off.

She’s covered in blood.  It’s splattered across her face, her chest; her hands look like she dunked them in a vat of it.  There’s a familiar looking book clutched to her chest like a life-line.

“Five,” she croaks again.  Her eyes.  The look in her eyes...Five notes distantly that it’s a wonder she can speak at all, if she’s that shell-shocked.

“Vanya,” he says warily, “what happened?”

“I didn’t mean to,” she says dazedly.  “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t.“

“It’s okay, I know you didn’t,” he says quietly, and takes a slow step closer to her.

“I just...” she looks down and seemingly pries her arm from around the book and holds it out to him.  “I found it.  Under his bed.  He had it under his bed the whole time.”

Another step, and another, and gently, he lifts the book from her hand.  He hesitates for a second and replaces it with his own hand, letting her clutch at him instead while he examines the book.

It’s dad’s journal.

A slow, uneasy feeling stirs in his gut.

Vanya blinks, and turns her head to look up at him.  She looks fragile, and not all there yet, but it’s progress.

“Vanya, where is everyone?”

“It’s late,” she says dully.  “I didn’t want to wake anyone up,” she continues, and then shudders. 

Right.  He’s pretty sure even Diego would have gotten up to help Vanya if she showed up looking like this, but there’s clearly something else bothering her about the idea.

“I was waiting for them to notice me.  They can help me. They can help me,” she repeats, and sounds a little stronger.

“Of course they can.  I can help you too, Vanya.  Just,” he sets the book on the end table and sits next to her, “tell me what happened.”

She starts shaking.  “I think—I think I killed him, Five.  I killed him.”

There’s enough blood for her to have killed several ‘hims.’

“Who did you kill?”

“Leonard.  It was an accident,” the word start pouring out of her, “It was an accident, Five, I didn’t mean to, but I found dad’s journal and he’s been reading dad’s notes about me, manipulating me, and he wouldn’t stop hitting it it was so loud I couldn’t help it and I screamed and he was,” she gasps, “He was dead, I killed him, I killed him!”

Vanya keeps gasping at shorter and short intervals until she’s crying, sobbing.  Five throws his other arm around her shoulders and pulls her into him and feels helpless against the onslaught of tears; he’s never seen her this emotional before.

Then again, to his knowledge, she’s never killed anyone before.

“it’s okay.  It’ll be okay, we’ll fix this.  I mean, do you have any idea how many people I’ve killed?”  He tries for levity and then immediately regrets it.

But somehow, it works.  At least a little.  “You’ve killed people with your powers, too?”

He blinks in shock.  “Powers?”

Dad’s journal, the one he took notes about their training in; it’s bound to be full of dangerous information about all of them.  This “Leonard” had their Dad’s journal.  He was manipulating Vanya with it.  There’s information about Vanya in it.

Vanya has powers?

She jerks her head in an imitation of a nod, but doesn’t say anything.  Five doesn’t say anything either, just absently pulls her a little closer while he mulls this over.

His equations were always off.  It all makes sense now, though, because he was missing a crucial piece of data.  Vanya has powers.  How could he not have known?  How could any of them have missed this?

She still has tears running down her face, which is a step above shock, but not great.  All it means is he can worry about the details later.  He can feel the pieces of their lives slowly coming together in the back of his mind, but Vanya can’t wait until he figures it out.

“Alright.  Here’s what we’re going to do.”  He pulls away from her enough to help her sit up.  “You’re going to wash all the—take a shower,” he awkwardly switches tacks when he sees the look it gives her.  “And then we’ll find the others and figure out what happened.” 

And then he and Diego will go hide the body, he adds silently, but even he can tell Vanya is in no state to hear that.

“We can help you, Vanya.  We will help you.  Everything’s going to be okay.”

#umbrella academy #allison hargreeves #luther hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #dave katz #diego hargreeves #grace hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #five hargreeves #fic #umbrella academy fic #fanfic #umbrella academy fanfic #snippets #i was inspired y'all #this is the most i've written in WEEKS #there may be more to come in the next few days but idk yet #after five gets Vanya calmed down #diego bursts into the house like 'vanya has powers!!!!" #and five deadpan snarks at him 'one step behind as always number 2' #and then they're both suitably concerned about vanya #and after a while ben finally gets through to klaus and convinces him (and dave) #to go check out what the fuck is going on with their sister #allison's situation gets complicated fast but she's trying so hard #the day that wasn't #long post #no readmore sorry i'm not feeling it #they're all having mental breakdowns simultaneously #though klaus is having a happy one

[frunbuns]

Dolores

How could he be so naive to think they’d take back a broken mannequin riddled with bullet holes? He’s such an idiot.

Read on Ao3

Five isn’t exactly sure how he got roped into this. Actually, that’s not true. He does know. He needs new clothes. He just wishes he wasn’t here right now.

He only agreed because Allison and Vanya had been so insistent on getting him normal clothes. And they were right. He was getting pretty sick of the school uniform. And it helped a lot that Delores was at that store. He misses her. A lot.

He did however, not agree to all the other siblings tagging along as well. He’d rather be without that circus. But it was too late now. It could be worse. And they could probably use some family bonding time anyway. Even though he can’t stand them sometimes, there is nothing he wouldn’t do for them.

The store isn’t too crowded. Thank god. It has to be strange to see all of them walking in together though. They’re a bit of a mess, to put it lightly.

This wasn’t exactly the place Allison had in mind, but Five might not have agreed if it wasn’t here. At the store where Delores “lives” or whatever he called it.

“C'mon, let’s go,” Allison says, basically dragging him after her. “Boy’s section is over here.”

Five sighs as his sisters drags him through the store and dozens of clothing racks before he even has time to think about seeing Delores. He’ll just talk to her afterwards.

“Maybe we’ll find something that fits Luther?” Klaus ponders out loud, making the others (except Luther) snort in amusement.

Five rolls his eyes, but smiles nonetheless. He’d never admit it, but he really missed this. Even if it was annoying sometimes. This was what he had spent the last 45 years of his life working to get back to. He wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world.

They come to a halt at the 13-15 section, bordering adult and 10-12, or whatever it is. He hates everything he sees.

“We could probably get stuff from the adult section, but I think we’ll have the most luck here,” Allison says, oblivious to his attitude towards the array of clothes. Vanya nods examining their choices.

“I doubt you’ll find anything that fits there since he’s so small,” Diego says, earning a light shove from Five.

“I’m not that small!” He retorts back. “I’m taller than Vanya!”

Diego raises his hands in mock surrender, a smug smile on his face. “Barely.”

Klaus laughs, making the faintest of smiles appear on Five’s face.

“See anything you like?” Vanya asks, bringing them back to what they came here for.

“No.”

Vanya blinks, looking a bit dumbfounded by his statement. “Nothing?” She asks.

Five shakes his head, stuffing his hands in his short’s pockets. He glances around again, but finds that nothing catches his attention, just like before.

He’s never been clothes shopping before. At the academy they just wore their uniforms and in the apocalypse he took what he could find to survive. The winters were cold and the summers full of ash and a burning sun. He spent time worrying about heatstrokes and hypothermia. What the clothes looked like never mattered.

The sweltering summers and freezing winters is defintley not something he misses.

Vanya pulls out a blue tshirt with some text about playing video games on from one of the racks and looks it over before showing it to Five. “What about this one?” She asks, cocking her head.

He raises an unimpressed brow as he looks at it.

“If you think I’d be caught dead wearing that you truly are the dumbest member of this family,” He says, gesturing to it with his right hand. “Which says something because Luther here–”

“Okay, we get it!” Luther sighs, expassarated.

“Aww, don’t be such a grump, Five,” Diego says in a teasing tone. “You can go see your girlfriend afterwards.”

Five shoots him a death glare, but doesn’t say anything. Diego grins at him innocently before sauntering off claiming he needs to get some stuff for himself.

And suddenly it’s just Five, Vanya and Allison. They find some clothes for him eventually. It’s not much, but it’s a start at least.

He’s just glad he doesn’t have to wear the uniform anymore. People have called him a little school boy too many times. Delores would be happy that he didn’t have to wear that stupid uniform anymore too.

He wonders if she misses him as much as he misses her.

Allison pays. Of course she does. She’s the one in the family with the most money, even though their father left them all a pretty hefty sum after he died. It might be the mother in her. Even though it can be annoying at times, he appreciates it. In her defence he does look like a child.

Five is excited to see her. He wonders how she’s been. Of the store workers have been treating her and her friends well. He wonders what she’s wearing. He’d told them she liked sequence.

He wonders if they listened to him.

His feet take him there pretty much automatically. Like muscle memory. He walks with practically a skip in his steps, like a child. Allison and Vanya behind, struggling to keep up with him, but not complaining either.

They’re talking and smiling and Five realises that they’ve never actually met Delores. All his brothers have, in one way, shape or form. He hopes they like her. And that Delores likes them.

He comes to a sudden halt when he spots the podium she usually stands, breath hitching in his throat. Vanya and Allison almost crashes into him. Their chatter dies off.

His heart sinks. Arms falling limp to his sides and the smile he wore just seconds ago, dropping.

“Five?” He feels a hand on his shoulder. “Is everything alright?” He looks up only to be met with the concerned faces of his sisters. He shakes his head in disbelief.

“She–” He starts. “She’s not–”

“What?” Vanya asks.

“She– She’s not there!”

Delores isn’t there. This is her spot, but she’s not here. And neither are her friends. Instead, 3 white, faceless mannequins stand in their place.

His breath catches in his throat.

“Are you sure?” Allison asks. “Maybe she’s just somewhere else?”

He shakes his head, blinking away the stinging sensation in his eyes and swallows thickly. This is her spot. He’s 100% certain this is her spot. If she was somewhere else he would have seen her. His shoulders slump.

They try to find her anyway, searching every part of the store, Five growing more and more upset for every second. In the end the trio ends up at the same place they started with no promising results.

Five looks up at the mannequins seething. Traitors, his brain says. How dare they? This was– is her spot.

“What’s going on?” It’s Diego. He’s holding a packet of black socks in his hand.

“It’s Delores.”

Diego’s expression falls. “Oh,” He mumbles then. “Oh no.”

“Yeah,” Allison replies, sadly. “We’ve looked everywhere. They must have thrown her out or something.”

“That sucks,” Diego says, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, bro.”

Five sniffles, his face crumbling. He can’t stop his lips from quivering and when Allison sees that she’s quick to envelope him in a firm, motherly hug. The bag of his new clothes dropped to the ground by her feet. Five doesn’t fight her, instead choosing to wrap his arms tightly around her and bury his face in her shirt.

In the apocalypse, when he’d found his siblings buried in the rubble he’d had no one. He’d cried for what felt like a week straight. Until his voice was raw and barely usable (not that anyone was there to hear him though). And then he’d found her. And suddenly he wasn’t so lonely anymore.

He’d been so young and scared then.

“I’m so sorry,” She says, stroking his hair.

At that he completely crumbles. It’s as if the dam breaks, choked sobs muffled by the fabric of Allison’s clothes.

How could he be so naive to think they’d take back a broken mannequin riddled with bullet holes? He’s such an idiot.

It’s frankly quitw embarrassing. This whole ordeal. They way he’s just bawling his eyes out in the middle of a store for everyone to see, but he can’t help it. He’d blink out of the store, but Allison’s embrace is so warm and comforting and he doesn’t want to be alone. So he stays.

It doesn’t take long before Klaus and Luther to notice something was up and come over to them as well. In Klaus’ hand was a huge knitted sweater. No doubt something he had found for Luther. It’s soon forgotten as the scene unravels before them.

“What happened?” Luther asks, looking worriedly over his siblings.

Vanya puts her hands in her jacket pockets and looks up at him with sad eyes. “It’s Delores.”

Luther’s eyes widen, eyebrows raising, in surprise. He looks down at Five who’s currently soaking Allison’s clothes with his crocodile tears and then looks back at Vanya, mouth opening in the form of an ‘o’.

“Oh, Buddy,” Klaus coos, patting his back as a means of comfort. “I’m sorry.”

For once Five doesn’t care about whatever stupid nickname Klaus has called him.

His sobs subside eventually, turning into small sniffles. His hold on Allison slackens slightly, but he doesn’t let go.

“Excuse me, is something wrong?”

One of the employees has come over to them. She looks concerned and a little bit uncomfortable as she greets them.

Vanya shakes her head, but Diego interreups her before she can even speak. His protective nature taking over. He’s always felt like he needed to protect everyone. Even when they don’t need it.

“Actually,” He says, crossing his arms. “You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to the mannequins that used to be here?”

The girl looks at him baffled. “Uh, I think we threw them out.” She answers, looming more than just a little bit puzzled at his strange question.

Diego sighs dejectedly, but nods. “Thanks, that’s all,” He replies with a smile, albeit sadly. She smiles at him and leaves. Once she’s gone he pats Five’s back. “Let’s go home, huh?”

Five nods and they all leave the store. Five with tear stained cheeks and red-rimmed eyes, Allison’s arm around him.

“It’s gonna be okay, Five,” Allison says. “Just think about all the good memories you have of her.”

Five sniffles, but nods.

At least he’s not alone. He has his family. And they care about him just as much as he cares about them. He’s not alone.

#mine #fics #my fics #the umbrella academy #tua #umbrella academy #number five #luther hargreeves #allison hargreeves #diego hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #fanfiction #whump #angst #dolores #tua dolores #number five hargreeves #five hargreeves

[in-tua-deep]

13, 14 and 15 for Five!

man y’all are feral for these ones let me see what they are...

13. What gets them flustered

HMMM well flustered means to make (someone) agitated or confused.

Which means... calling or insinuating that Five is either a child (tagging a ‘little’ onto brother, young man, etc.) or incapable - unfortunately he can perceive several different things as calling him incapable/weak such as... insinuating that he needs sleep or to take a break

Anyone expressing any kind of soft emotions or that they care about him makes him... a little confused to say the least. He’s spent a really long time alone, and while he has some vague success at having heart to hearts where he’s the one talking (telling Klaus about Dolores, talking to Luther, etc.) as soon as the tables turn and they try and express any kind of appreciation or concern for him he has to brush it off, or jump away into a cab, or get defensive and yell (he is not an addict, Klaus)

He doesn’t know how to handle anything soft or considerate. Nothing like that was really present during his childhood - he was never especially close with Grace, not like Diego was at least. Certainly there wasn’t room to be soft in the apocalypse, except on occasion with Dolores, but his focus was primarily on the duel purpose of survival and saving his siblings. And certainly not at the Commission. 

So it does make him agitated and confused and flustered when people care about him. He’s not used to it. He’s used to being the one caring. Even Dolores - she was a reflection of himself and there’s a reason in the comics she was more than a little mean to him at times. There’s a reason why the Handler liked to try and unsettle him by caressing him face and complimenting him so sweetly.

14. Ingrained habits/forces of habit

oh I think Five has a LOT of ingrained habits left over from the apocalypse and fending for himself since he was a small child

Food hoarding and resource guarding would be big ones tbh, he’s had food insecurity for a long time and in season one I never saw him eat so he might just generally be uncomfortable eating in front of other people - a strong sense of this is mine and protectiveness that comes from having very very little

Most of that protectiveness is centered around his family tbh but if his siblings tried to make him give up... his old battered copy of Vanya’s book, for example, I doubt it would go very well. Luther threatening Dolores was not taken very well to say the least, and Luther was only saved by the fact that Five loves Luther and would rather die than hurt him

(though threatening a bit is possible, which I think is what happened with Vanya at the end as well - Five couldn’t bring himself to follow through on hurting her otherwise his jumping would have been so much more precise at the end, he was demonstrably very deadly )

Five is used to going at things alone, so leaving his siblings behind isn’t even him being an asshole or trying to protect them by leaving them behind... he literally just forgets that he has backup but also forgets that like... his siblings talk back to him? So he’ll just say his piece and then exit out of the conversation 

His siblings find it inconsiderate and rude but sometimes it’s literally just Five forgetting that people can have input to conversations and that they aren’t just one-sided things, and since Five is... kind of sensitive about his lack of social skills he just lets them think he’s rude rather than admit that his social skills are really just that bad

There are plenty of other things I think might result from his years of isolation. Five’s habit of talking to himself, because for a long time there was really no one else to talk to (even if he addresses those thoughts to Dolores absently, despite the fact that he’s returned her to the store). An inability to relax because there’s an inexplicable feeling of guilt that occurs whenever he tries to.

Issues sleeping because he’s used to basically total silence. Can you imagine going from no sound at all to living in a house with other people, in a city where there are cars and sirens and people walking down the street? Being generally jumpy around other people

Five has a lot of social issues that his siblings probably put down to him being rude and unsociable but are actually just a result of Five genuinely not knowing how to interact with people, even when he’s really actually trying his best

and part of that is that they’re used to Five being terrifyingly competent, they remember him being praised by their father for being adaptable and good at what he did, even when he caused trouble. They’re used to Five being above it all, and so they don’t perceive it as Five having difficulty so much as they perceive it as Five purposefully being an asshole

If Five was trying he wouldn’t fail, because they do actually perceive Five as being exceptionally capable, which means that Five’s actual struggles... kind of go unnoticed or are criticized as him not trying hard enough

and of course Five hides how he feels and lets them go on thinking that, because it’s an ingrained habit to hide weaknesses - both thanks to Reggie who pit the kids against one another and used their weaknesses against them and because of the Handler who can scent weakness in the water like a shark with blood oof

15. What it takes to make them cry

I think I have a post somewhere about how the Hargreeves are very good at digging right into each others weaknesses and twisting the knife. It happens with all of them tbh. Diego hurls Allison’s failures as a mother in his face, Allison snaps at Vanya that she’s the last person she would ask for advice, even Ben snipes at Klaus. It’s ingrained. It’s common. They’re used to hurting each other with words, used to finding each others softest parts and using those weaknesses against each other

but Five hasn’t really experienced that since he was thirteen. And the Handler, brilliant as she is, is no match for the siblings in their ability to locate and use each others weaknesses.

So I think there’s going to come a day when Five pisses one of them off, and they lash out in the way they know how. The ‘acceptable’ way, with words instead of fists. They’re going to find Five’s softest parts and dig right in

Words like ‘abandon’ and ‘run away’ and ‘should have stayed away’ and ‘fault’

And Five knows how to defend himself, physically. But he’s so very out of practice against verbal attacks, he’s out of practice when he can’t attack back physically and shut someone up. And he loves his siblings. He couldn’t even bring himself to hurt Luther when Luther was threatening the one person who kept him sane, someone that he loved. He couldn’t bring himself to hurt Vanya when she was about to end the world. 

So Five can’t attack physically, has to just stand there and listen. Has to take those words, and take them into his heart, and stand there bleeding from wounds that no one can see

and he’s Five. So none of them would expect it when their words actually hurt him, actually make him stagger back as if hit by a physical blow, none of them expect their venomous barbs to actually make their brother cry

but them not expecting it just makes it easier to hide. He can jump out of a conversation and just be considered rude and inconsiderate and he can hide away while he shakes apart at the seams and has to rebuild his walls from scratch

(what a useful power, right? what a useful escape)

i think there might eventually be frustrated tears, brought about by accusation that Five... doesn’t care about them and everything piles up and just - 

the idea that his siblings don’t know, can’t know, about everything he’s sacrificed for them. Every time he sees them dead behind his eyelids when he goes to sleep. Every second he thought about them, every moment he tried to get back to them. Five is shit at expressing how much he cares about his siblings to his siblings, but don’t actions speak louder than words? Hasn’t he shown them how much he loves them? How much it would kill him if he had to go through losing them ever again?

I imagine at some point there’s a breakdown, Five howling about how he thought about them every single day, that he worked tirelessly to get back to them, to save them. Fuck the world. He was never interested in saving the world. His entire world is his family, and he shaking and shuddering and yelling at them because they don’t understand

he probably doesn’t even realize he’s crying until someone points it out, honestly

tbh five kind of deserves his breakdown, and his siblings deserve to witness how much he actually does care about them and maybe then he’ll finally get the hug he deserves

#ask game #heacanon game #tua #the umbrella academy #five hargreeves #number five #and that's all i have to say about that i think #siblings just be like that tbh #when you know someone well you know what they're sensitive about and know how to dig in and hurt them #and the hargreeves have a bad habit of wanting others to hurt when they're hurting #:/ #Anonymous

[momoyomaki]

Could Five realistically be autistic based solely on what we see on the show?

I stumbled across the theory that Five is autistic, and as someone with autism I find that very interesting. I’m not yet convinced he does have autism, but I’m not convinced he doesn’t either.

So let’s take this apart. :cracks knuckles:

First off, a couple things to keep in mind:

-No two autistic people are exactly the same.

-I am drawing on my own experience living with autism, and what I’ve witnessed from my sister and the kids I work with.

-Disabilities that affect the brain overlap. Many different things can affect the same areas of the brain, and we just categorize things for ease of assigning coping mechanisms. For example, if you were to take a brain scan of my brother who has PTSD, my sister who has brain damage from childhood trauma, and myself with autism, the scans would look very similar.

-Whether or not Five has autism, he most definitely has PTSD.

-Please chime in with your own theories and experiences, I’d love to open this TED talk up.

Ok here we go:

Klaus calls Five addicted to the apocalypse and he’s not wrong. Through an autistic lens, obsessing and hyper-fixating is like our bread and butter. My hyper-fixations have driven me to all sorts of extremes, like staying up for 24 hours, and giving myself heatstroke by hyper-fixating while outside. Whether Five is autistic or not he can obviously relate. His obsession with stopping the apocalypse drives him for 40+ years. He carries an eyeball around the entire time. His fixation on returning to his family keeps him going through his career as a hitman, something he makes clear he didn’t enjoy. On that note, he spent an episode walking around with a goddamn bullet wound. Talk about mind over matter, and also another tick in the hyper-fixation column. Again, when he checks on Klaus after he time travels to the Vietnam War, he’s clearly concerned for him, but gets sidetracked once again by his need to stop the apocalypse. Which is honestly valid, I mean, it’s the apocalypse.

Dolores. Anybody whose seen a decent therapist will probably have been told “yeah I know it sounds crazy, but try talking to yourself.” Being your own sounding board is a very healthy thing believe it or not, and Five uses Dolores for this purpose. Those with autism in my experience have crazy good imaginations. If I try hard enough I can fabricate fake memories to the point where I can’t quite remember it’s not true. I think this has a lot to do with the way autism thinks in pictures. Imaginary friend anyone? So Five finding Dolores and talking with her as if she were real for so long that he actually sees and hears her as a person? Totally believable and something I could see having happened to myself under the right circumstances. That being said, I feel he’s probably perfectly aware that she is, in fact, a mannequin. Dolores can be seen as a sign of Five having snapped or as a brilliant way of keeping his sanity while isolated for decades.

Coffee. Five’s caffeine addiction is probably not related to autism in anyway whatsoever, but boy can I relate. Coffee is my holy grail because it calms my personal blend of brain chemicals down enough for me to focus on things like driving. Of course that’s my ADHD talking. It’s not uncommon for those with autism to also have ADHD, but that’s a whole other post. So let’s just say Five’s relatable and leave it at that.

Sarcasm and Snark. Possibly the most common coping mechanism ever for any problem in existence. Probably just a part of Five’s glorious personality, but let’s say he developed it the way I did. As a way of taking on the world, sarcasm makes everything more bearable. It’s also a form of humor and nothing is as good as humor to cover social missteps. It takes you from being a weird outcast to being the Funny/Sarcastic Friend™️.

Five and routine. The first thing Five does when returning to the past is make his signature sandwich. Here he is, back with his family after all this time, and he doesn’t allow himself to bask in that, because the count down to the apocalypse has started. There’s no way he isn’t thrown off though, come on. 13 years old again with his family alive. When feeling shaken, most people with autism will absolutely fall back into routines even if they’re old ones. And who wants to bet he drove past at least one other perfectly serviceable shop with coffee on his way to Griddy’s and ignored them in favour of familiarity? And of course he works to get Dolores back right off the bat. When upset over the lab getting blown up he returns to what we can assume was home during the apocalypse; the library.

Five and his ability to take people at face value despite his overactive paranoia. From my experience working with those with autism, autistic people are some of the most forgiving people you will ever meet. This doesn’t have to come from a place of kindness. It’s more our black and white nature. Something used to be this way, and now it’s that way. We tend to just accept it where others might have a million questions. This goes hand in hand with our people sense. Oh we suck at reading social cues, but our instincts in regards to a persons trustworthiness are generally bang on. You see this in Five’s chat with Hazel. He doesn’t seem to have a problem buying what Hazel’s selling. Same with Klaus, who he acknowledges more then his other siblings even if it’s in a snarky manner. (He didn’t shoot Klaus down when he talked about conjuring their dad unlike Luther, and despite his angry reaction he took Klaus’ point about being addicted to the apocalypse seriously.) He gets angry when Vanya doesn’t believe him about the apocalypse but when it becomes clear that her disbelief is not malicious he doesn’t take it out on her. In contrast he doesn’t buy the Handler’s bullshit. To sum it up, Five is a practical people person, with good instincts but an outdated copy of Social Cues for Dummies. Is this autism or an effect of 40+ years alone? Both?

Five, the pragmatist. As the Handler says, Five is a first rate pragmatist which fits how a lot of those on the spectrum are very blunt, black and white thinkers. Where my family can debate politics for hours, my opinion is always the straightest path to whatever outcome I’m arguing for.

Five and clothes. Those on the spectrum tend to be hypersensitive, and clothing can be a Thing™️ for us. Certain materials feel like they're made of needles as opposed to just itchy, jeans are too tight, turtlenecks feel like a noose, etc. This is common, but sometimes it’s less about comfy sweatpants and more about familiarity. I have an undercut and if I don’t have time to get it shaved at the usual point, I get panicky. My hair feels slightly different, it looks slightly different, and it all just doesn't feel right. Five grew up wearing the academy uniform, and while he didn’t have the luxury of a suit and tie in the apocalypse, wearing a suit was clearly important to him during his time with the Commission. Even the Handler took notice, and gifted him a suit. And the second thing he does after making a sandwich in the past is find a suit that fits him. Ok, he didn’t have any options, but he didn’t have to wear the whole outfit. He could have mixed and matched. He could have stolen something from the department store. But no, he’s got to wear a suit jacket and tie. He even grabbed his tie off the guy he strangled at Griddy’s before he took care of the last dude. (Badass power move btw.) So I find it believable that the uniform was partially about appearances and partially about Five’s comfort zone, physically speaking.

(But wait, I hear you say, how can you throw in hypersensitivity when back up this post you claimed Five could have ignored his bullet wound via hyper-fixation? Here’s the thing, hyper-fixation basically mutes the notifications our bodies send us. We can be uncontrollably hypersensitive and still not clue into our bodies screaming at us while we fixate on something. But boy, we sure notice when we snap out of it.)

Five is all or nothing, ride or die. Oh boy is he ever. And most autistic people are too. We put our all into everything we do. Doesn’t always translate to doing it well, but we definitely give it our all. (In fact, we tend to over do things and need some serious recouping time after.) This can cover things already in the hyper-fixation section, like his obsession with the apocalypse. But going all in for something is different from the magnetic pull of hyper-fixation. It’s a conscious decision for one thing. The biggest example for Five is his commitment to his family. The Hargreeves are a dysfunctional family, and Five didn’t escape this by jumping to the future. He’s hardly the perfect brother but he’s the most invested in his siblings nonetheless. He became a killer for them, threw morals out the window for the slim chance he might be able to save them. And as is established pretty quickly, he put his all into being a hitman, becoming the best there ever was. That fight scene in the diner speaks for itself. And slicing up his own arm to get at the tracker? Well, it’s pretty clear that when Five commits to something he doesn’t mess around.

Five and math. Here we hit a stereotype about autistic people and their ‘special interests.’ Yeah, it’s really common, but what most people don’t know is that the majority of those on the spectrum are not math geniuses, or geniuses of any other kind. My sister’s ‘special interest’ is still relatively useful, being science, but she’s not a genius. Mine is ‘stories.’ Books, movies, theatre, music, etc. I can devour fiction forever. It’s basically useless to society though, because I’m picky af. But okay, Five fits the stereotype and is a math genius, or at least where it applies to time travel. We see this in the flashback already. Ok, time travelling didn’t work out as he’d hoped, but he managed it at 13 when even Reginald didn’t think he could. This makes me think that his tendency to spend hours working out equations didn’t start in the apocalypse.

Does Five stim? If so, we don’t really see it. That doesn’t rule out autism though, because, well, it’s a spectrum. I only stimmed as a toddler. Some people don’t stim at all.

Vanya. Another theory I’ve seen thrown around is that Vanya is autistic. I’m not going to address that here, but I do want to say that if she is, that wouldn't affect whether or not Five is autistic. Autism is not personality after all, and they are very different people. Again, autism is a spectrum and nobody displays all the same traits. If you’re thinking it would be unrealistic for Reginald. To have adopted two kids with autism, think again. That one autistic sister of mine? Adopted as a baby before we had any idea that she was a mini me.

Five doesn’t appear obviously autistic. What most people don’t realize is that autism is at the end of the day an invisible disability. Most people will know someone at some point on the spectrum and never even realize it. Because sure, sometimes you’ll see us rocking under the table or otherwise displaying what movies have stereotyped as autistic behaviour, but most of the time you won’t notice. We’re the slightly overly bright cashier at Walmart, the quiet bookworm at school, your favourite author that writes emotions so well, the person at comic con who can recite their favourite movie line for line, that kid that gets along best with those older or younger then them. If Five is autistic we may never know, because he’s perfectly functional, but that's hardly and argument against autism either.

And finally; people relate. Nobody knows autism better then those with autism themselves, so I’m inclined to take all the posts I’ve seen about Autistic!Five as a pretty big point on the autism column.

To summarize; none of these points taken alone indicate autism, but together well.... it’s an option at least.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, I will now open the stage to audience input before this monster grows any longer.

#my asshole husband #five hargreeves #tua #umbrella academy #the umbrella academy #autistic!five #autistic!5 #number five #number 5 #five #the boy #netflix #autism #autistic #ua #the hargreeves #ted talk #fandom #musings #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #alison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #autistic!vanya

[chickenfriedawesome]

okay, but i’m rewatching the umbrella academy for the third time, and number five uhhhh Breaks My Heart

(more under the cut because this accidentally turned into a novella, oops)

alright so. number five? he absolutely punches the shit out of my emotions. because this man-boy (boy-man? Literal Man Child) loves his family so much  — suffered through 45 years alone in an apocalyptic wasteland just so he could have a chance to save these dumb idiot losers  — but when it comes to his own wellbeing, he’s pretty blasé

i mean, obviously he has the self-preservation skills that you would expect to see in someone who MacGyvered their way through the end of the world. boy can survive, and boy can do it well. but when it comes down to it, five is ready to mcFucking Die if that’s what it takes to save the world (read: his family), and he won’t hesitate bitch

episode 5. that scene with luther as they’re waiting for hazel and cha-cha. first of all, props to aidan gallagher, because the way he manages to sound like an actual 58 year old man who has been to hell and returned from it with a souvenir is a gd miracle. ugh, the talent. we stan. ANYWAY. while the conversation five and luther have is funny from a straightforward perspective  — Small Boy tells a Grown Man to live a full life —  it’s actually fuckin sad when you think about it. five has no idea if this plan is going to work. it could go great, yeah, but it could also blow up horifically in his face. (almost does, actually.) and if it goes south? guess he’ll die. he’s “lived a long life.” terrible, and stressful, and for the most part Not Good — but long. if this goes sideways, he wants luther to live, but five himself? doesn’t matter. if he has to die for the mere opportunity to save his family, so be it. tell dolores i’m sorry.

episode 7. five has a name. he has a target. he has a mission. (he has a shrapnel wound, too, but that’s irrelevant until it’s not.) five is so close to saving his family — so close  —  and he’s desperate to do it. he’s so fucking desperate to put a stop to this nonsense that he limps around for hours until his body Literally Cannot Do That anymore. then, while he’s actively bleeding out in some incel creep’s Murder Cabin, he tells his siblings to keep going. (it’s his shrapnel wound, diego. step off.) five is, at that moment, dying. there’s blood on his sock that used to be in his abdomen. but it doesn’t matter. he wants his family to save the world. he wants his family to save themselves. “you have to keep going.” you. that’s all that what matters in the end.

then, there’s episode 9. Episode Fucking Nine. harold jenkins is dead. as far as five knows, the apocalypse is cancelled. five spent forty-odd years trying to figure out how to stop this thing, and he,,, did it??? it’s over. (he didn’t, and it’s not, but he doesn’t know that yet.) and now, five doesn’t know what to do with himself. stopping the apocalypse has been his goal for so long that he doesn’t know who he is without it anymore, (and klaus is the one to clock him for it, which. klaus is obviously fantastic, but, he’s a Hot Fucking Mess. man probably smells like woodstock. five watched him eat a bagel from out of a dumpster a few days ago. for KLAUS to be the one to tell five that he has a problem? that’s gotta hurt.) five completes his mission, and the first thing he does for himself is drink heavily. 

then, there’s a knock on his door, and hazel is there.

i think this is where i realized that five genuinely doesn’t give a shit about himself At All. because hazel’s not here to kill five, but five doesn’t know that. hazel has a gun drawn, and this 58 year old infant doesn’t even flinch. “do you have my sister? if not, would you like a margarita?” that shit’s funny, but also, Jesus Christ.

maybe five is waiting for an opportunity to strike. maybe five is confident that he can take hazel in a one v one. (one of his many charming character flaws is his prideful arrogance. he once teleported successfully across the room and thought that the logical next-step to his training was time travel, after all.) maybe five doesn’t react because he knows that he can claw his way out of the situation. god knows he’s done it before. 

but i don’t think that’s it. five is lounging at the bar, margarita in hand, when he asks hazel if he’s there to kill him. five isn’t fighting it, and i’m almost damn certain that he isn’t about to start fighting it either. he’s ready to just. let hazel finish his mission. take the fucking shot. the apocalypse has already been averted. if five needs to die now  —  if his blood is the final sacrifice needed to ensure that his family can live in peace  — then that’s fine. that’s okay, because everyone that he actually cares about is already safe, and there is nothing that hazel can do to change that. 

i could go on for decades more, but i should probably uhh stop doing that. this was meant to be a short text post lol sorry

tldr; five loves his family, but he’s pretty damn careless in regards to himself. and that shit hurted

#sorry i needed somewhere to rant about my emotional support assassin #the umbrella academy #tua #long post #number five #murder child