Chapter Text
Five had been through hell and back. Quite literally. He survived an apocalypse alone for 45 years, saw his siblings die, murdered so many lives, saw his siblings perish, was stuck in his thirteen year old body, went through two weeks of hell to save his family and the world, and oh, did he forget to mention that he watched his siblings die?
It didn’t matter anymore. He had resurrected them and safely brought them back to the future. They managed to get there without a hitch. The timeline was safe and everything was peaceful. Or so Five thought…..
“Dammit Five, no more time traveling.” Diego growled as the siblings groaned in pain from being flung just short of 56 years into the future.
Time traveling was a pain in the ass, especially if you weren’t used to it. They all looked a bit pale and drowsy, except for Five who was used to it.
Five glared at Diego, his jaw was set tight and his eyes squinting into a glare. He had done so much to protect them and to keep them safe, and this was the thanks he got?
Five opened his mouth to tear his brother a new one when Vanya decided to speak up. “He just saved our lives Diego.” She scoffed. The siblings slowly shuffled into the living room area, glancing around to make sure they were really home.
“Yeah, not to mention this is-” Luther looked upward thoughtfully as he counted on his fingers, “his second time saving us.” He held out two fingers.
Oh no it wasn’t. However what’s done is done so there was no sense in telling them about the barn.
Diego just rolled his eyes. “Oh you’re going to act like you liked it here, Number One? Your life was shit in the previous 2019. You were better off in the sixties. You had a job and you were a damn good fighter." He whirled around and pointed an accusatory finger at Vanya. "And you! Don’t act like you won’t miss Sissy and Harlan. Harlan really needed you, and he probably still does. They’re probably both under a lot of stress now that they have to run away.”
Vanya looked down at her feet.
He was right.
“I’m starting to believe we were all better off in the sixties. Allison had a loving husband and became a respected activist, Luther didn’t have to hide his body, Klaus was being his pervy self but amplified and managed to travel the world, and I had a partner in crime, a girlfriend. It all went to shit when you showed up, Five.” Diego paced around the room and slowly turned to face Five.
Five couldn’t believe this was happening. “I saved your lives.” Five spat out through gritted teeth. “Do you not remember that there was another apocalypse?” Five tilted his head and glared daggers at Diego.
“How about the Commission almost killing all of us on that ranch?” Five now had his finger pointing behind him to gesture to the past where they had just came from.
“I’m sure we’d all rather die living our best lives than to be thrown back to our shit lives with a little controlling asshole. If anything you ruined our lives, Five.” Diego was now standing face to face with Five, challenging his smallest brother to fight back.
“Diego, that’s enough. He saved us. He was trying his best to stop the apocalypse.” Luther piped up as he took a step forward to his raging brothers.
“Ray might have been the new light of my life, but I’m glad to be alive.” Allison stepped forward and put a hand on Five’s shoulder. “Diego is just sad because his ‘girlfriend,’” Allison threw up quotations with her fingers, “escaped from him.”
It was Klaus’s turn to give his two cents. “Yeah the sixties were okay for me, but I’m proud of Mr. Baby for saving all of us. My cult was shit and Dave still volunteered for the war, so…. y’know.” Klaus gave a sad chuckle and twirled his hands in the air as a ‘what can you do?’ gesture.
He strolled over to Diego and slung an arm around his shoulders. Diego quickly shrugged Klaus’s arm off of him.
“Don’t take his side. You got to meet Dave again. He was alive. I could have saved the president. This little shit ruined that. He ruined history.” He gave Five a hard shove to his chest, which caused Five to stumble backwards into Allison.
“Diego! That’s enough.” Vanya joined in on the sibling circle that had begun to form around Five and Diego. Five could feel the rage inside of him beginning to boil.
If that’s what Diego wanted to believe, then fine. Five only needed them alive, to be safe. He didn’t need them to love him back-
Five felt tears forming in his eyes. He quickly turned away from his siblings and began to head to the lobby of the academy.
A muffled shout was heard as Five stepped away. “Oh great, now look what you did!”
He didn’t want to hear their arguing. He was a grown man who hadn’t cried in years. He just wanted them safe, why couldn’t they get that? Everyone seemingly argued against Diego, but did they actually believe Five saved them? He knew Luther already was questioning him if he actually knew the second apocalypse was coming. They all did get to start new lives. When he arrived they were all very happy, unlike they were in the previous 2019.
Five made his way to the main staircase that lead up towards his room.His idiotic siblings didn’t need to see him have a breakdown. He didn’t need to have a breakdown.
Fuck teenage hormones.
“He dillydallied, having a blast jumping through space and time before he came to save us-”
Five heard Diego screaming at someone followed by multiple people screaming back at Diego. He froze at the bottom of the steps.
“He didn’t save us, he ruined us! He should have stayed where he was. At least we would have died happily.”
“He should’ve just rot in the apocalypse and never came back!”
“He doesn’t love us. If he did then he wouldn’t have interfered with our lives.”
“He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Some sad old man who had lost his way, lost his family, and now he resides in the body he left them in. He’s a killer.”
“He doesn’t belong here, he left us while we grew up without him. We tried to start over with our lives and we did it without him. He doesn’t know us. He doesn’t want to know us.”
“He doesn’t know how to love us anymore. He only knows how to fuck things up to get his way, to make sure the timeline follows his rules.”
“We’re just pawns in his game of chess. Replaceable pieces he can crush and replace. He killed anyone and anything that threatened the timeline. Mothers, fathers, children. How are we any different from them? He knows how to destroy families. He was ready to kill his own sister to stop the apocalypse. He’s ready to kill any of us”
Five shut his eyes and threw his hands over his ears.
No, no, NO! He did love them. He- he promised he did. He did all of that for a reason. All the killing, all the threatening, all the coldness. They don’t understand. They meant the world, no, the whole universe to him.
They don’t understand.
They will never understand.
All of the screaming suddenly funneled into an awful ringing. He blinked open his eyes to discover an alarming flash of stripes.
Tigers.
They somehow got into his house. His jungle.
He ripped his hands off of his ears and stormed over to the tigers.
They were going to pay for what they did to him.
What they made him into.
Five grabbed an arm of the closest tiger within his grasp and quickly twisted their arm to face upwards. He quickly brought his knee up and struck the elbow. With a sickening crack, the elbow was now bent in the opposite direction.
With the tiger bent over and yowling in pain, he reached up and gouged their eyes out before he gave their head a quick tug to the side and they fell to the ground lifeless.
He heard through the ringing that a tiger had begun to roar at him.
“Shut the hell up!” Five roared back as he punched the throat that was making the noise. They stumbled backwards as Five teleported behind them and swiftly kicked the back of their knees, causing them to fall.
Five punched them in the face, which caused them to fall onto their back. He took that as an opportunity to stomp on their chest a few times. Their ribs gave way to an explosion of sickening cracks. He hoped that a vital organ puncture would finish them off.
He was about to stomp on their face when he felt a sudden pain in his shoulder. He reached back to find a knife lodged into his shoulder.
Perfect, a weapon.
He quickly pulled the knife out and swung it high up into the air, slicing deep into the belly of the tiger who had lodged it into his back as Five swung it upwards.
Ahhhh, it felt good to be back doing what he knew and love!
Blood was splattered all over Five now. It was in his mouth, hair, and navy blue uniform. The heat of it mixed with his boiling rage. He grinned widely and let out a little giggle.
He’s much too fast for these tigers to stop him.
The tiger in front of him had stopped its charge as blood gurgled from its mouth. It was looking down at the entrails that were spilling out of the abdominal cavity, struggling to hold them in their hands as they slipped around.
With that serving as a distraction, Five quickly brought the knife down into the face of the tiger. He felt the crunch of the skull as it caved away from the force of the impact.
He wanted more
He began to continuously bring the knife in and out of the skull in rapid jabbing movements. .
Crunch.
Splat.
Crunch.
Squelch.
Crunch.
Five stopped when the brains and blood of the tiger covered the stripes on their face. He let the tiger fall to the ground with a sickening splat and crunch as the knife that was lodged in its skull performed one last incision.
Five tensed up as his keen sense detected another tiger was approaching.
That was a mistake.
He dropped himself to the ground and suddenly propelled himself up and to the left. His left hand stayed on the ground as his right leg pushed off the ground. He brought his right leg up and into the side of the tiger with a loud thud. He used the moment of his kick and pushed off the ground with his left hand to bring himself to a standing position.
He took the chance of the tiger being a male, and kicked them in their crotch. The tiger quickly bent forwards, hand occupied with holding the hurt area.
Bingo you fucking bastard.
Five savagely brought his mouth up to the side of the neck of the tiger and bit down hard. Five felt the steaming blood violently squirt out all over his face and body. Some of it trickled down his throat.
A nice coppery tang.
As an added damage bonus, he knew he crushed some tissue with the amount of force he bit down with.With that, Five jerked his head back from the fur of the tiger and punched them in the face, letting them fall over. They would be dead soon judging from the amount of blood violently spraying out of their freshly severed carotid artery.
Five stumbled away, breathing heavily. Through all of the ringing in his ears he could hear whimpering from behind the bar.
Someone was hiding. Someone was afraid of him.
Five grinned at the thought of another kill. These tigers had invaded his family's home. They weren't going to get away that easily.
Five stalked over to the bar and found his prey. A tiger was huddled on the ground, crying to itself. Five’s grin stretched into something primal as he pulled a bottle off of the bar. He crouched down and slammed it over the tiger's head, leaving a nasty gash that instantly began to flood with crimson blood.
Five wasn't done though.
He took a piece of the glass bottle and slowly gouged out the tiger's eyes as it let out a guttural scream of fear and pain. Five slammed the glass into the side of their neck. He brought his foot up and violently slammed it down on the glass, shoving it deeper into the tiger's neck.
It was his jungle.
His fucking home.
Home……..
Home....
Home?
The ringing in Five's ears dissipated and were instead filled with his deep panting. He began to rapidly blink his eyes free of the stripes. He saw his home.
Home.
He was home.
Five finally willed himself to look around and was met with a truly gruesome sight. He was in the living room at the Academy with the bodies of his dead siblings scattered around him.
The tigers..
Five frantically stumbled backwards and hit the wall. His eyes were opened wide in shock and horror. Tears began to roll down his cheeks, making little paths through the blood on his face. His hand came up to cover his mouth that was opened wide, but he quickly jerked it away when he discovered it was covered in blood and gore. His mouth already had coppery blood and flesh inside of it from partially ripping the tiger's throat.
Five had the overwhelming urge to vomit, but nothing came out. Nothing would come up to free the flesh stuck in his teeth.
The sins in his teeth.
He opened his mouth to scream out of fear for what he had done, and out of sorrow for his siblings who didn't deserve to die like that. At the hands of their own brother.
At the hands of a monster.
"AARRAAAAAAAGHHH!"
Five jumped awake and found himself finishing the scream from his nightmare.
Shit, it was just a nightmare. Okay.
He was sweating profusely and was..... standing in front of his bedroom door with his hand extended to the knob….?
He heard the hurried footsteps of his siblings running up the stairs to his room.
"Five? Is everything okay in there?" Luther's frantic voice boomed from the other side.
"Five?" Vanya called groggily.
"Five? Did you have a nightmare? What's wrong?" Allison fretted in the hallway.
"C'mon little mannnnuh." Klaus whined. "You interrupted my beauty sleep." He pouted before there was a thump and a loud "Owwwwuh!"
"Shut it, Klaus. Five if you don't answer us I'm going to break down your door." A frustrated yet concerned Diego called out in a sing song voice as he began to jingle the door knob.
Five raised both of his hands out in front of himself and looked at them in horror.
What would have happened if he hadn't woken up before he left his room?
Luther began to knock on the door.
What would have happened if he had left his room?
Flashes of his nightmare vividly ran through his mind.
Would that have happened?
Five looked up from his hands to his jingling doorknob. He slowly began to back away.
No.
"Five!" Diego was getting angrier as the doorknob began to twist erratically.
Five looked from the doorknob to the door. To where his family was behind the door.
Not them.
He hit his cold window as he stared at the door with eyes widened in fear.
I- I wouldn't hurt them.
"Five, four, three- Luther had begun a countdown.
I was going to hurt them.
Five whirled around and looked up into the sky to see a bright full moon staring back at him.
Oh shit. He hadn't realized….
"One!" Luther and Diego simultaneously kicked Five's door in just as Five had teleported away.
Somewhere away from his family.
"Shit, the little bastard escaped." Diego huffed as the rest of the siblings stepped into Five's room to assess the situation and their brother.
Somewhere where he wouldn't be any danger to them.
He had landed somewhere in a dark alley deep within the city. He was gasping for breath as he righted himself against a cold brick wall. He exited the alley and looked back up at the cursed moon that was staring back down at an equally cursed being.
His aggression cycle had begun.