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[rumores]

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everybody get up it's time to slam now;

[weaponizer]

There are a thousand different ways this could end, here on this lonely little farm in the middle of Nowhere, Texas. She's mapped out all the outcomes, paid a visit to each time line, had clueless lackeys compute the variety of errors that could come her way. No one knew what they were calculating, after all— a soldier shot down here, a madman with a grudge there, an asteroid, an assassination, an exploding girl...

She has dedicated time to tracking Five and his merry band of morons and up until this moment, has carefully controlled the view of her hand. Lila, for all her use and power over the years, walks a thin line. She gambled on the girl's fickle heart, gambled on the way she lured in the dopey eyed Diego, but at what cost?

A disappointment, really, that such beauty and talent would have to go to waste. The Umbrella Academy is dangerous— has been from the moment of their very unplanned and chaotic entrance into the world. Having spent years commanding Five, watching the way he works, waiting as his seams slowly loosened, as his lips opened against the ruthlessness of his heart, well. That's when she found it— the soft, fleshy bit that makes him more human than machine. That's the dangerous part.

So she watches from across the field as Lila does her bidding with Luther, and the swell of energy in the barn grows stronger from a boy terrified and alone. The boy could be useful, yes, but what if she had something with a little more subtlety, with a little more bite. Snow crunches underfoot as she paces her way across the field toward the house, where one Allison Hargreeves has square up against her daughter.

There's a brief moment, a change in the air around them, that the Handler all but lives for. The crackle of energy, untamed and unabated, nothing but sheer danger dripping from its edges. To say that she'd wanted Lila for her versatility would be an understatement, of course. Lila is powerful in her own right, put up against the right people, but Allison? With a voice of sonic poison, the Handler could bring the whole of the Commission to its knees, humbled.

Lila kicks Allison and the skirmish begins, but time suddenly groans to a stop around them, just as Allison loops an arm round Lila's torso. Lila goes still, rigid, beneath her touch.

"Now, now," she chides softly as she approaches, suitcase in one hand. She sets it in the snow long enough to delicately peel back the netting of her hat, as though that somehow makes it easier to see her face. "Sorry for the interruption, but I don't think rumoring her is such a good idea."

The Handler smiles, red-painted lips pulled tight. The smile doesn't reach her eyes.

"And if you try any of your funny business on me, then we'll both have a little bit of a problem." She sighs, sitting down her briefcase in the snow to draw out a photograph from the inner pocket of her flared coat. She turns it slowly toward Allison, and a little girl with sweet, warm eyes stares back at her. "She'd be very disappointed I didn't keep my promise. From one mother to another, trust me when I say you certainly don't want to do that."

[rumores]

Allison had been too wrapped up in the fight, in what Lila has been doing and trying to keep track of her siblings to notice the other woman that she had shown up with. As time grinds to a stop, Lila freezing along with it, Allison suddenly becomes too aware of the silence around them and she looks up, alarmed. Almost as if to double check that she’s not dreaming, that this is actually happening.

It’s then that she sees her, sees the briefcase she’s holding but her eyes quickly turn back to her. At the way she smiles, how she’s looking at her. It makes her blood run cold, but instead of looking scared, Allison looks defensive. As if the other woman is a viper ready to strike, and Allison is trying to assess how to proceed - especially as she points out that rumoring Lila isn’t a good idea. How did she know that?

That question is quickly forgotten as the photograph is flipped in her direction, and for a brief moment her emotions betray her as she sees her daughter for the first time in over two years. She looks just how she looked in that magazine - the only other way Allison has been able to see her daughter since the divorce - but it’s not from that photoshoot. She’s in a room she doesn’t recognize, smiling in that sweet way that always makes her heart feel like it’s melting even if right now she feels it almost drop to the ground with dread.

“What do you want?” Her voice is low, dangerous as the fear that had flashed in her eyes morphs into something else as the overprotective motherly instinct kicks in. For a moment she forgets about Lila, and even about her siblings as she stalks closer to the other woman. “Where is she?”

[weaponizer]

If the Handler is in any way intimidated by Allison's sudden prowl forward, she doesn't look it. She keeps the photograph extended, a straw-man of a peace offering held delicately between them.

"If I told you where she is, that would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?"

No sense in forfeiting the bait when she hasn't yet caged the lion, after all. But the protective look in her eye, matched with the danger and power? That is what she'd been hoping to see. After all, Allison Hargreeves has been an ebb and flow of confidence, the control over her ability always clouded by morals, by fear. But not now.

"And you can try to convince me to tell you, but you'll have no luck. Unfortunately, I don't know where she is, either. I would hate to underestimate your abilities, my dear." She sighs and takes a step closer to Allison. "But I assure you she is safe and protected from any possible harm that could befall her darling little head. She has the best nanny the Commission could find. So, are you still interested in ripping my face off, or shall we sit down and talk like very angry, very determined women who know exactly what they want?"

She smiles and tilts her head to one side, something dark behind her eyes. "We have all the time in the world."

[rumores]

There’s a sense of desperation that claws are her, that already puts her at her mercy whether she likes it or not. Whether she realizes it or not. Because Allison is desperate to find out more about her daughter. Because she just wants her safe, she just wants her back. It has been her number one priority long before she and her siblings went through the vortex, long before her father’s death.

Please, she finds herself asking, almost praying to a higher power that she doesn’t even believe in. Please, just let her be okay.

Externally she manages to hide the anxiety she’s feeling, that desperation, but that desire to keep her daughter safe in whatever way she needs to already prevents her from trying to hurt the other woman.

“Alright,” she says, her voice clipped as she attempts to stay controlled, not willing to let her emotions get the better of her yet. “I know what I want. What do you want, and why do you have my daughter?”

[weaponizer]

"I thought it would be obvious but I forget that the Hargreeves family has a particular lean to stupid questions," she sighs, turning the photograph around to look at it again and smile. "But we'll cut to the chase. I'm here to make a deal."

The probability that she could die here, that Allison could refuse and retaliate, is quite high. She's done the math a dozen times over, puzzled out every possible outcome, and it all comes down to the dainty little photograph in her hand.

It had been impossibly easy, collecting the little girl and finding a suitable nanny for her, all tucked away in the same year in the same place. Had Five not been so deeply planted in the Commission, had she not discovered the wonders of his abilities and the strange little family he was so partial to? Well. Things might have turned out very differently as she climbed to the top.

"You have an extraordinary gift that is being underutilized while you play house with your family here across timelines. Five has been unable to restore you to your daughter's timeline, so I thought I would do the legwork for you and bring Claire to you. Claire— french, bright, clear. Apt name for such a clever young girl."

[rumores]

If Allison knew more about the Commission, about the Handler, maybe this wouldn't be so surprising. Maybe she could guess what is coming, but everything she has heard and known has been indirect information, or through what Herb mentioned back in her house. This part... She couldn't have predicted this.

She obviously knows who she is, though, and it makes her feel overly exposed. She knows about her powers. Her weakness, considering the way she dangles Claire in front of her, and she hates that she can't just will her to stop breathing. Considering her daughter is on the line, she can't bring herself to actually try to call her bluff.

"My brother is trying to fix it and bring me to her," she says defensively, frowning. "Don't make it sound like you're doing me a favor. You're using her as a token, so cut the shit before I lose my patience. What deal? Claire in exchange for what? My 'gift'?"

[weaponizer]

"You do realize that your brother has been trying to fix it for the better part of fifty years? Things get a little nebulous in our line of work, so you'll forgive me that I don't have the exact figures for you."

She hums, thoughtful, drawing out the conversation simply because they have all the time in the world. She doesn't want to rush in to this, after all; she needs Allison to know exactly how high the stakes are.

"And for a man who could jump forward to the end of worlds, has murdered thousands of dangerously famous people, and has traveled all across time, he's not exactly made a strong effort to help you, has he?" She smiles, stepping closer to Allison and offering out the picture again. In the frame, there's a blond woman with her back to the camera, just at the edge, and she seems to be talking to Claire, making her laugh.

"If you want to see your daughter, I'll require use of your ability through the foreseeable future. I'm afraid your brother has proven to be quite a threat to the stability of all things, including the little world that Claire calls home. She could have been wiped from existence when your family decided to play God with the timeline, so I did do you a favor, you see."

Because I couldn't stop thinking about it.

[littlepsycho]

"Is it true? What Five said?"

The air is still electric around him from pushing himself to his limits to travel back the last few seconds. To save his family from being mowed down by the Handler before his eyes. He's barely had time to understand that it actually worked before the Handler begins to speak, already trying to worm her way out of the truth. "Well..."

A shot fills the air and Five jumps, his eyes wildly moving to his siblings. It's only when he is sure they're all standing that he sees the Swed as he fires two more shots into the Handler. She falls, lifeless in the hay. Five raises his gun on instinct, ready to protect the others if he can, but knowing that he won't be able to protect all of them. He can't watch them die again. He won't.

Lila has already disappeared with a case. The Handler is dead. And he refuses to play her games any longer. He lowers his weapon slowly. "Enough," he says, trying to reach some kind of peace. Their common enemy is gone. No more lives have to be lost.

The Swed looks at each of them before his eyes settle on Allison. His eyes harden and Five's fingers twitch where they are still holding the gun. "Oga for Oga," he says, staring at her, though he still has his gun trained on Five. "Pick a brother."

[rumores]

Allison is on high alert as it is already, completely unaware of what Five had just done to save them all, but on edge nonetheless because it all feels so unpredictable. She doesn't know if they should be protecting themselves from Lila, or the Handler--

And then the answer comes, from someone she hadn't even expected to see again. She tenses at the sight of the man holding the gun, already feeling like her heart drops right into the ground. Because, even without a word being uttered, she can guess what he's thinking by the way that he's looking at her. She had seen that look in his eyes, after all, back in her house. That intent to kill, but this time it's worse.

She had made him kill his brother, after all.

It comes with a price, she had tried to let Ray know when she told him about her powers, and here is the price tag now. She had rumored him to save Ray and keep them both alive, but now...

"No." Despite the defiance in her voice, she can feel the fear swirling in the pit of her stomach. How can she pick a brother? How can she watch one of them die?

"Kill me. I made you do it, so kill me. Leave them alone."

[wantedtobeloved]

Seeing that face again sends her back to running through a cornfield, her heart in her throat as gunfire zipped through the stalks around her. For a moment the fear from the memory is so immediate that she can't move and then his and Allison's words catch up with her.

"No!" She cries out, raising her hand to send the Swede flying using the sound of the pounding of her own heart in her ears. She can't afford to lose anyone else. Not any of her brothers and not Allison.

She can feel the rush of power as it moves through her, her emotions strengthening it, until it suddenly dissipates as unbearable pain hits her square in the stomach. She gasps in surprise, her hand automatically moving to where she's just been shot. She looks to her siblings with utter shock before the world tilts under her feet and her knees give way.

Five raises his gun and shoots the Swede between the eyes.

[rumores]

It all plays out in slow motion. Allison half expects the Swede to argue with her, to force her to choose, but it doesn’t come. Before she can tell Vanya to step back, before she can Rumor the entire room into not interfering (not because she can, but because she doesn’t want them to step in), the shot rings out.

“Vanya,” Allison says, almost screams, but she doesn’t hear herself. She just rushes over to her, taking her in her arms as her legs buckle beneath her. Allison herself can’t remain standing, though, and she lands hard on her knees as she cradles her sister. She herself is thrown into a memory, that night at the Icarus when Vanya lost consciousness and her power shot a beam towards the moon. Allison doesn’t remember the way it tore through the theatre, the way it made a hole in the moon. Like that night, her focus is on Vanya. How weightless she feels. How terrified she is of losing her.

“No, you’re— It’s okay. You’re okay.”

She’s lying. She knows it’s bad, her hand moving gently to where she’s bleeding and realizing how much she’s bleeding.

No. NO, her mind screams. Or maybe she does, she can’t tell. Her heart feels like it’s roaring in anguish within her, harnessing the power within her to try to alter this. To change it, to save her if she can.

“I heard—“ Her voice shakes, but she clears her throat before the command comes out in full force, the energy in the room shifting as she tries to alter reality. “I heard a rumor you stopped bleeding.” She waits for a moment, but she doesn’t have to look down to see for herself it didn’t work. It won’t work. Just how it hadn’t worked years ago, back in the Academy, and she had tried to save Ben after that mission

“I’m so sorry.” She clings to her shirt as she holds her, as if it’ll make her hang on. “Vanya, I’m so sorry.”

[wantedtobeloved]

She feels Allison catch her and unlike last time she's awake for every agonizing moment of it. She stares up at Allison with wide, scared eyes as she tells her it's going to be okay. "Allison," she whispers, clutching at her sister's arms as if she can keep her from sinking further into this nightmare.

She's not ready to die, as much as she's thought about how the world might have been better off without her in it. As much as she blames herself for the destruction that she's brought on her family and the world. Now that she can feel it slipping away from her, she doesn't want to leave her family.

Her brothers are suddenly there. Klaus's hand is on her ankle, Luther's giant fingers cover hers to put pressure on the wound and Diego is yelling about needing to get her to a doctor. Five kneels beside her as Allison makes her wish. He looks so old for his body.

She loves them all so much that for a moment it cancels out the pain. "I love you," she says between labored breaths, tears pooling at the corner of her eyes. "I'm sorry... I hurt you."

Because she remembers now. The sickening whoosh of the violin strings as they sliced through Allison's throat. The panic and horror that had come afterwards and that she can see mirrored in her sister's eyes now. She tightens her grip on Allison's arms. "This wasn't... your... fault."

[rumores]

“I love you, too. I love you so much.” She doesn’t realize it, but she rocks her a little as if to soothe her, to somehow make this hurt less as she rests her head against hers. She used to do this with Claire once upon a time, trying to help her feel better whenever she would fall and scrape her knee or her arm, but this is so much worse. Her sister is dying, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

At her apology, Allison turns to her as she shakes her head. “No, you don’t— You have nothing to apologize for, Vanya. You never did anything wrong.”

Not before, and not now. Even back in the cabin, Allison still firmly believes it had been her own fault for pushing her. Ultimately Vanya has always been the collateral damage of everything their father and even they have done, and she hates that this is no exception. That she’s suffering the consequences of her sister rumoring the man that shot her, and now here they are. Vanya is bleeding out in her arms.

“We never deserved you,” she says tearily, fighting back a sob that threatens to choke the air right out of her. Please don’t leave, she wants to cry, the pleas that she had cried out as Ben died resurfacing as they’re facing another loss. Another sibling they can’t save, and this one is solely on her.

Please don’t leave me, she thinks as she buries her face in her hair for a moment, but she can’t put that on Vanya. She hadn’t asked for this, she’s not choosing to go.

You failed, Number Three, she hears Reginald sneer in her head. You killed her.

“I love you, sis,” she says before she kisses her forehead, her tears making it hard to see. “I love you so much.”

ɪ ʜᴀᴅ ᴛᴏ ғɪɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛᴇʟʟ ʏᴏᴜ ɪ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜ;

[bookedly]

The movement never stops, a voice beside him shouts, a familiar hand claps him on the back as they move through the march's crowd, and the asphalt all but falls out from under his feet. At this point in his life, Raymond Chestnut is accustomed to strange, unbelievable, almost miraculous things happening to him. Allison, a miracle herself, and her family, had reached their hands into the center of his world and turned it inside out.

But that had been weeks and weeks ago, when time stood still for him and the woman he loved all but disappeared from it. He hasn't forgotten her, sees her in the blanket tucked over the back of the sofa, in the pristine set of hot rollers on the bathroom vanity, in the photos that line the wall, in the mug she cleaned and left in the left side of the sink on the day she left.

Ray is no stranger to confusing, bewildering, unexplainable things, but as the earth shakes underfoot, as the crowd seems to fade into a blur of white noise, as his vision blacks out the edges, he's afraid.

It's the fear that drives him to frantically ask questions at orientations, makes him raise his voice and demand a lawyer, demand police presence (though what the police will do for him is laughable, but they'd be better than these assholes, right?). But they explain portals and time travel and foreign technology, stuff a packet of papers in his hands, and usher him into a car. A car that both looks strange, with its sleek leather seats and bright display in the console. The radio doesn't crackle, the music sounds clean, and the city outside is massive. Screens and lights and cars, people dressed even more strangely (like Allison had been, when she arrived) and he finds he gasps for breath, having held it in disbelief.

"You say this was Florida?"

He's asked half a dozen times and the driver all but ignores him, because how he went from a crowded march on a Dallas street to sitting in the back of a car in Eglaf, Florida, he's got no good idea. Well, he does, but it starts with portals and ends with time travel and he suddenly wishes Allison was here to help make sense of it. If she could. He's not even certain he understands where she went, only that she's gone.

He stands at the gates to the apartments once he's released, staring up at the building in disbelief. Ray adjusts the hat on his head, smooths out the lines of his jacket, and starts toward the door.

[rumores]

For the most part, Allison’s days follow a general routine - she wakes up, walks the dogs, gets ready for the day, and is out the door to go to the gym. Working at the club has added new parts to her routine - rehearsals, practice, and her shifts at the club - but it’s fine. She doesn’t mind it. Staying busy keeps her from thinking about all the aspects of her life that doesn’t necessarily make her homesick for home, but it makes her miss Claire. It makes her miss Ray. It makes her more aware of the holes her heart carries that can’t be filled, so instead she distracts herself with work. With outings with her brother, with opportunities to hang out with her friends. It keeps her busy, and she tells herself that that has to be enough.

It isn’t, of course. There are always things that make her think of them - the music she listens to, the sound of Darcy’s boys laughing, the random dreams that filter in whenever she actually does manage to sleep. They leave her aching for them, wanting nothing more than to see them one more time.

Maybe that’s why, when she sees the man that looks like Ray on her way out, she doesn’t let herself believe that he’s real at first. It’s just someone that looks like him, she tells herself; it’s not Ray. Ray with his warm smile, and those eyes that disarmed her completely. Ray, who made his way into her heart with such a force that she ended up marrying him despite knowing she’d have to go home one day.

Ray, who she still thinks of daily. Ray, who she sings to every night she works at the club, even if he’ll never hear those songs from her.

But then he turns to her, and it feels like she’s back at Odessa’s for the first time, when he noticed her for the first time and all she could do was freeze. As if her heart already knew damn well it was in trouble, and here she is again. Unguarded, unsure what to do for a moment, because it’s as if she’s trapped in time. For a moment she doesn’t know if she’s in the sixties or in the future, and it feels like her voice doesn’t work again. Like she doesn’t even want to move, because if she does, it will make this mirage of him disappear and she doesn’t know if she can bear it.

Still, she can’t help it. Just like back then, she feels herself taking this leap because it’s Ray, and she finds herself silently praying to a higher being she doesn’t even believe in that this really is him. That this isn’t a trick. That she can have at least him back. She looks different than the last time they had last seen each other, in skinny jeans, a t-shirt and combat boots, but the way she looks at him is so unmistakably her that she hopes he’ll recognize if it’s him.

(Please, please let it be you.)

“Ray?”

[bookedly]

Portals, time travel, Florida. He repeats the three words like a mantra in his head, as if the rote repetition will be enough to make sense of it, to clear the fog and answer his questions, simple as that. But he's a learned man and he knows better; life does not offer easy answers in difficult situations, but he doesn't know how he can prepare for a situation like this.

Ray pauses at the front door, opening when he sees movement in the glass beyond, the sun's light on the surface blinding him for a moment, swiping a haphazard, iridescent sunburst across his vision. "Excuse me," he says as he swings the door open, squinting into the cool dark of the complex, the handle clutched so tightly he's impressed it doesn't bend under the pressure. But his smile is easy and warm, even reaches eyes that have questions dancing behind them.

"Sorry, if you have a second, ma'am, I have—"

The woman steps into the sunlight, into the muggy Florida air and all the breath left in his chest rushes out. He doesn't need to see her to know her, doesn't need clothing or hairstyles or the curve of a smile to feel the very sun open up and swallow him whole in light. For the briefest moment a lick of anger courses through his blood, a rush of strangling injustice all but swells in his chest because Allison Chestnut doesn't exist anywhere but his heart now. There may be photos smiling back at him from frames she handpicked, there might be an errant tube of lipstick left in the floor of the car, or even a note scribbled on the edge of an old, yellowed newspaper - I love you. Whatever this is (portals-timetravel-florida), she can't exist here.

But he removes his hat, tucks it against his chest as though beckoning for kindness, when his eyes raise. For all the impossibilities his live has handed him over the last year or so, this one feels the most like torture, like walking barefoot in flames and suffocating in the smoke.

"Allison?" Choked, barely a whisper, and his eyes widen in such disbelief that one might think he was fixing to clear run away. But it's something in her eyes, something in the painful familiarity of her name on the curve of her lips. The door swings shut behind him, loud as it settles into its latch, and he's not sure when he let go of it.

"Allison Chestnut?" Awe, disbelief, confusion, relief, all things that urge him forward, one step then two, with the soft rustle of his hat hitting the pavement below if only so his hands can reach, seek purchase against her arms, fingers curling into the fabric of her t-shirt's sleeves.

Is he dead?

Has he collapses on the Dallas streets beneath the blistering heat after walking for miles? Has his mind created some strange, warped, storybook fantasy for this moment? Stranger things have happened in his life, after all, and Ray is no stranger to any of them.

[rumores]

The way he removes his hat, the way it’s pressed against his chest, it’s a movement that’s so uniquely Ray that it feels like it knocks the air right out of her lungs. Because, even without a verbal confirmation, her heart knows that it’s him. It’s the man that hadn’t minded a woman that was reluctant to share much about her past. It’s the man that had loved her, flaws and all; a man that hadn’t wasted any time in proposing to her with a beautiful ring that she still wears every day. Because even now, even knowing damn well that she’ll never see him again, she can’t let him go yet. Despite their goodbyes, the closure that she tells herself they got in whatever way they could, she still misses him.

She still loves him, so much that when he says her name, it makes a teary laugh get caught in the back of her throat.

Allison Chestnut. It’s not a name that anyone in Eglaf uses - it’s one that she herself doesn’t even use because she’s not ready to really talk about the second marriage she has failed at, but the familiarity of it feels as if it makes her heart skip a beat.

“Yeah, it’s me.” The confirmation is barely out of her mouth before she’s already wrapping her arms around him, holding him close. Because she needs to make sure this isn’t some sort of dream; she needs to make sure it’s him. That he’s real. That he’s here, and she can only hold onto him tighter as if to make sure he won’t disappear.

“God, I’ve missed you so much,” she breathes after a moment, but not pulling back yet. She can’t. She has been longing for this for so long, that she’s not ready to let go of him yet. “Are you okay? Did you just get here?”

[bookedly]

The confirmation in the sound of her voice is all he needs and his arms wrap around her so tightly, drawing her into his chest as though to press her into his very soul. (She's already there, a year-shaped mark curled around his heart in a way that will never fade). He breathes her in, pressing his face against her hair. His wife. The woman he resigned to never seeing again in this lifetime, and yet here she is, as radiant as the day she left.

"Babe, is this real? This can't be real."

He laughs, watery and desperate against her ear, broad palms splayed along her back, traveling the line of her spine until he touches her hair, cradling her as though she might be the most precious thing on the planet. Precious, but not fragile, just as he left her.

"I just got dropped off out front. I'd say you'd never believe it for a second, but I know you would," he breathes and he draws back slightly so the hand in her hair can reach to cradle her face in one palm as he drinks in the sight of her, committing this to his memory as hard as he can because the thought of losing her again damn near takes the heart out of his chest. He knows he will lose her again, be it another year, be it a minute, he knows that, but if he can burn this into his mind just as well as he as committed their goodbyes to the backs of his eyelids at night, then—

"I've missed you," he says finally, eyes burning despite how he desperately tries to keep them at bay. But he leans in and kisses her, desperate and wanting and pleading, because if this is some dream, some wild tale spun by his body giving way in another time, he can't let her go so quickly. He has so many questions, but he doesn't want to waste time, if it's limited, on questions, on what-ifs and hows. A life with Allison is a life of unending question sidled up to bottomless adventure, unending love, a warmth that all but threatens to eat him alive.

[rumores]

Unconsciously she holds onto him tighter, because deep down that's what she's thinking, too. That this can't be real, that he can't be here. He's supposed to be home, in Dallas. He's supposed to be leading the movement, he's supposed to be changing the world. Because, she knows, if anyone can do it, it's Raymond Chestnut. If anyone has the conviction, the heart to do it, it's Ray, and it's part of the reason why she hadn't tried to convince him to leave with her. It's why she hadn't done more to beg him to come with her, why when she and Sirius talked about going to the past, she didn't think about going to the sixties. Ray still had his fight, after all; she had hers. Their life together wasn't meant to extend for longer than the year they had, because that's just how her life and luck work.

But he's here, solid and breathing, and Allison has to fight back the tears that she can already feel in her eyes. Tears of happiness, tears of disbelief, and a sense of fear that she can't quite get rid of because she doesn't know if she can say goodbye to him again. She doesn't know if she has it in her to withstand yet another loss, when the first one had felt like it had knocked her down despite the fact that she has been hiding it as well as she can.

She can feel a few tears spill, though, when he cradles her face and she unconsciously tilts her head in that direction as she closes her eyes for a moment as if to savor the sensation. This way that he has had from the beginning, his ability to help her feel safe. To make her so damn happy with just his presence alone.

Just as she's about to tell him that she has missed him, too, he's leaning in to kiss her and she kisses him back. A hand moves to the front of his shirt, clutching tightly to pull him in closer, to not let him go. It leaves her breathless, but despite it, it also makes her feel more alive than she has been in weeks.

"I've missed you, too," she finally says, moving her other hand to brush her fingers gently along his face. He's here. He's here, and she kisses him again. This time a bit slower as if to savor the moment; that taste of his lips that she feared she would never be able to have again.

When she pulls back, it's only enough to look at him again, to smile at him when it hits her again that he's still here, he hasn't disappeared. "We should get you inside," she suggests, even if she hasn't really made any real attempt to move. Her hand remains clutching at his shirt, her fingers brush gently against his cheek. "I can fill you in on whatever you want. I've been here for a little while, so...I can give you the cash course."

ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏɴ' ᴅᴏ ᴡʜᴇɴ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ's ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀ

[lippy]

The Hargreeves mansion feels both like long lost home and a sinking ship, wrapped up in expensive antiques, dust, and the smell of furniture polish. There's a fire burning in the hearth of the great room, the sounds of Grace's humming from the library, the scuff of boots or music from a bedroom far overhead. The house seems to be stuttering back to life, breathing on rickety lungs where Reginald had left them to rot.

The old man gone, the house is nothing more than a monument to manipulation, a bastion of warning to all things that away them by the end of the week. The end of the world. 2019.

The house might as well be dead and empty when he blinks home, blood splattered on the starched, white collar of his shirt, sticky in his hair, an annoying spot of dried spit on his tie. The last thirty-six hours have been nothing at all what Number Five intended, but then again, he hadn't intended to return to this timeline in the body of the thirteen-year-old willful try hard that his siblings knew all those years ago. Things are different now and the weight on his shoulders bears heavily upon him; the world is ending. The world is ending in five days.

The coffee at Griddy's had burned hours before he'd been served it and he can taste the bitter char on the back of his tongue even still as he paces through the foyer, a tin of coffee grounds tucked under his arm. Hindsight tells him he should have grabbed a donut on the way out, too, but the coffee's a start. (The donut would taste like a different year with a different bite, would speak to late nights huddled in a booth with kids his age, snort-laughing while Number Four tried to blow custard out of his nose).

He's grateful that the house seems quiet as he plods down the stairs and into the kitchen, cracking open the coffee tin on the way in. He blinks across the room, gathering a mug, then filling the coffee maker with water, and then—

"Shit."

No filters. No filters for a fucking coffee machine? He rifles through cabinets, drawers, and even digs behind loose tiles they used to hide things in as children. He comes up empty handed, save for an old set of playing cards with cartoon pinups on the faces, splotched in black mold. Tossing them aside, the pack slapping on the flooring, he plants his hands on the counter, closes his eyes, and breathes.

"Five days left in this shithole and I can't even get a decent cup of coffee."

[rumores]

Despite the fact that Allison has been gone from the Academy for over twelve years, it still feels as if she can't breathe quite right inside the house. It's as if the walls are ready to topple on her, trapping her within them, and this time they won't let her go.

It's amazing, she thinks, how things can be so different now, but so much still feels the same. How no matter how old she is, how successful she has been, she suddenly still feels like a child, waiting for Reginald to reprimand her. It still feels as if Grace is about to show up at any moment to remind her of her tasks to complete for the day (a trick that Reginald had gotten into the habit of doing as she got older, because it's not like she could Rumor a robot). She still feels like she's being watched at every turn, like she can't quite be, and that's what had made her go out on her own as well. As if somehow, by trying to catch her breath, it would change anything. As if that would make this hellhole bearable.

It doesn't work, though. Because the hellhole isn't really the house, at least not really. Allison's entire life has been a never ending shitstorm that she can't seem to escape, and no matter what she does, or how she tries to outrun it, she feels trapped in it. It feels like her lungs are too small for her body; like her heart isn't beating quite right. It's just all somehow more pronounced here, in the house that she has hated all her life, across the country from a little girl that she misses with all her heart, and she finds herself wondering if she made a mistake in coming at all.

Once she makes a pitstop at a convenience store to grab a new pack of cigarettes and a large cup of coffee (because it's not like she's planning on really sleeping any time soon, and only buying the cigarettes make her feel too much like the smoker she tells herself she's not), she makes her way back to the house. And, even without their father in the house anymore, she makes her way in through the backdoor, as if sneaking in how she used to once upon a time. That's when she hears Five grumbling in the kitchen, and once she closes the door the clacking of her heels against the tile floor announce her presence before she actually walks into the kitchen itself. By then, her cigarettes are buried in the pocket of her coat, but the cup of coffee is in her hand as if that's what she had gone out to buy to begin with.

"Hey," she greets, and while her eyes venture over to the playing cards on the floor, she doesn't necessarily mention them. She just turns back to Five, suddenly realizing his collar has blood on it, and she frowns in concern as she walks closer to him. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

[lippy]

The open wound on his arm is cleaned and healing, at the very least, thanks to Vanya, but it doesn't account for the blood on his shirt, in his hair. The men in the donut shop had been sloppy, charging in with guns blazing, and Five can't help but wonder if they sent the idiots first just to give him a warning. A heads up that they were coming.

The Commission does nothing in half measures. And while he knows he can handle this thing on his own, it would have been helpful if Vanya had believed him, if he could trust any of his siblings with what he saw, what he knows. But maybe in the knowing, that's how they all die.

He hears the heels and straightens, pocketing his hands and turning, his shoulders a little more rounded, his head tilted to one side. Number Three, perhaps. Possibly Four, but the footsteps sound too sure, not sloppy. He turns his back to the counter, the tin opened, the coffee pot left full of water, and leans his back against the counter.

"It's nothing," he says almost as quickly as she voices his concern, sounding bored, even tired. "It looks like we had the same idea." He gives a nod to the cup in her hand, though he doesn't acknowledge the failed attempt behind him. "Must run in the family."

Years and years and years span between them, and even though they have all scattered, have all taken to running like chicken with their heads cut off in the wake of the old man's death, it's good to see them. It's good to hear their names spoken by human voices, existing beyond his memory and the dirtied, worn pages of Vanya's book he's carried with him all this time.

He pushes away from the counter and blinks to the other side of the table, the jump seamless and effortless, a hand reaching up to a basket atop the toaster oven. Napkins? He plucks one up, turning it over and back. "I'm surprised you stuck around."

[rumores]

Despite all the years they have spent apart, it doesn't surprise her when Five all but discards her concern. It's ingrained in them to do this, to shrug off blood and injuries, because they hardly mattered in this household. There's an infirmary upstairs for that very reason - taking injured children to a hospital would require care, instructions on bed rest, suggestions for being mindful of whatever ailment plagued them. Reginald, though, always had a different idea. He wanted them to be strong; to shrug off injuries, to disregard the way they felt. They always had to keep going, no matter what, and apparently Five still remembers that lesson, all these years later (even if he still looks just how he looked the last time she saw him).

A muscle in her jaw twitches at his response, a silent 'I don't believe you,' but one that she doesn't voice. Not yet, anyway, since it doesn't look like he's tracking blood throughout the house, so for now that has to suffice.

Looking down at the mug, she nods. "Yeah. You were right, there's no coffee in this house, so..." Never mind the cigarettes tucked in her coat. Not that she thinks he'll care, exactly, but her dirty little habit is not exactly something she likes to boast about, either. As he cleans himself up with a napkin, she glances towards the coffee maker but notices that nothing is brewing. She walks over to it, as if to check if it's missing something, but when she notices the lack of filter or coffee in it, she removes the lid of her coffee and pours half of it into the mug that Five had left behind. She hadn't touched it yet, after all, and while it may not be the quantity either of them wanted, at least it's something.

"It's not doctored up," she assures him as she offers him the mug of, before pulling up a chair so that she can sit. Going up to her room feels as unappealing as being anywhere else in the house, so for now she'll just stay here before she ventures to her usual hiding spot to smoke.

"And, yeah," she agrees with a sigh. "Me, too. But I couldn't get a flight out of here sooner than tomorrow night, so I'll be sticking around for another day." She can't help but worry about what that will mean, considering it's causing her to miss a therapy session, but it had been due to her father's funeral. Patrick would understand this was out of her control, won't he?

She takes a sip of the coffee, focusing on the way it burns as it goes down her throat as if that will somehow distract her from those thoughts.

"How are you?" Before he can respond with his usual I'm fine, she gives him a look. "Humor me a little. You just time traveled, and now you're here with blood on your shirt. I won't ask about the blood, but in general. How are you holding up, with all this?"

[lippy]

The thing about his line of work is he can see the imperceptible even if he doesn't draw his attention to it. The way the muscle in her jaw moves: irritation; the way she quiets when she drinks from the coffee: savoring; the look when she questions his wellbeing: sisterly. He can't help the analytical side of his brain, can't help but wait for the next blindside, because he knows it's there, lurking around the corner in the dark.

But he's read. Oh, is he ready.

"Thanks," he says as he takes up the mug, tossing the dirtied napkin aside. Hindsight, the napkin would have done for a fine filter, but he won't turn down her offering, and he hums, genuinely grateful after he savors the first sip. "Glad to see someone else has good taste."

He rounds the kitchen, considering taking a seat opposite her, joining her at a table he hasn't belonged at in nigh fifty years. Vanya hadn't believed him, not really, thought the time travel just addled his brain. But what did he expect? From the looks of things, everyone in this family had moved on in some way or another, no longer tied to the strange world their father tried to build. Unlucky for him, he's been dealing in time since the moment he Handler sunk her teeth into him.

It's the pool table he stops at, mug handle clutched in one hand, other swiping at a stray, striped nine ball, delicately placing it back in the frame with the others. He doesn't quite expect her question and he drinks deeply from his mug, letting silence settle between them as he chews on his answer.

"I'd be better if I wasn't trapped in the body of a thirteen-year-old, but I've seen worse." He turns with a non-committal tilt of his head, leaning back against the pool table and watching her from across the kitchen. "What about you? Looks like I missed the heartwarming family reunion by a few hours."

[rumores]

A smile crosses her lips at the compliment, not surprised that he approves of the coffee. "Couldn't let you be the only one," she quips playfully, almost smugly even if it's all really just a tease.

As he walks around the kitchen, Allison just drinks her coffee. Partly curious if he'll actually answer her question, but also trying to follow his cues. It has been a long time since they have last seen each other, after all, and while they had been able to 'catch up' earlier, it hardly felt like it. Everyone had been in the room, shocked questions being spewed from everyone at every turn. It hardly felt like a reunion. And, while neither him nor Five are the sentimental type, the love she feels for him is still very much there. He's still her brother; she's still his sister. No matter how much time has passed, that has not changed.

At his response, she nods slightly as if saying 'fair enough.' She can't imagine how that must feel like, and there's hardly anything she can do to help about that other than maybe offering to take him shopping for some new clothes.

Before she can suggest it, though, he's suddenly turning the tables on her, and she lets out a chuckle under her breath even if it lacks any humor. "Yeah...consider yourself lucky. It went as well as you can imagine." Five had missed the bitterness that followed after his disappearance, the way they all fell apart after Ben died. He had been there as they all established the cracked foundation of their lives together, so she's sure he has an idea of how fucked up it all turned out to be, but still. He hadn't gotten a chance to live it, and she half wonders how much he knows from his time in the future.

"A lot of things happened after you left," she continues after a moment. "Left a lot of things unsaid. Caused a lot of things to also be said, that created a lot of problems. Everything went to shit, basically, so being back here isn't exactly my favorite thing. But hey, apparently no matter how old we are, Sir Reginald Hargreeves still has quite the reach to grab us all and come back, even in death. So...here I am."