THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY: FIVE HARGREEVES

CWs: mentions of death

this is strictly an exploration of an existing character, five hargreeves / netflix's umbrella academy / other characters mentioned in these samples do not belong to me 

BEN HARGREEVES:  ❛ If one thing had been different, would everything be different today ? ❜ 

Five makes a derisive noise — or maybe, it was more of a hollowed-out little laugh. 

❝ Ben, I’ve asked myself that for years, ❞ he says. Forty-five years, to be exact — well, it was a long time to run the simulations. The what-ifs. The things you would say, if you could see them again. Of course, none of it mattered, in the end — none of the practice-runs changed the truth; 

Ben died years ago. You weren’t there. And the reason he was here now, was through nothing you had ever done. 

❝ … What would have happened, if I hadn’t jumped. If I hadn’t been so hellbent on proving the old man wrong… I just… didn’t know any better. ❞ He looks down, flexes his fingers and curls them inward — it’s easier than looking up at his brother. Who was decidedly not an alternate reality Ben, Not a ghost. Not a grief-manifestation in a long-dead wasteland  

                   — And yours was a grief that you left under the rubble of the apocalypse, with your family. Old, tired, and without closure.

❝ I guess, some things you have to learn the hard way, ❞  Five says. He knew better than most, that time was a fragile, fickle thing. That he, like the proverbial butterfly, was a domino effect. A catalyst. What would have happened if you hadn’t left? Short answer: You could have done something. You could have saved him. 

                          Or are you only overestimating your own significance to the equation, again? 

❝ … I never did find your body, when I was out there alone in the apocalypse. I guess a part of me always thought maybe I’d find you again, one of these days. ❞ His chest feels impossibly tight, when he finally manages meet Ben’s eyes again. 

❝ I’m sorry, Ben. I never got to say goodbye. ❞

JAYME HARGREEVES:  ❛ It’s too late… Five, what’s the point? ❜

❝ Oh, I don’t know, Jayme. We haven’t been Kugelblitzed into painful evisceration at an atomic level just yet, so I wouldn’t count us out. ❞  Five gestures loosely, offers a thin smile. He’s perched at Hotel Obsidian’s gaudy bar, pensive gaze on the red-orange glow of a newer, much worse doomsday than ever before just outside — one of their own design. And the grandiose lobby is all but empty, after the last Kugelwave had swallowed the remainder of the hotel’s eccentric guests. 

He was hesitant to admit his own entanglement of doubt out loud — let alone air these particular grievances to a near stranger. Of course, they had met their family’s equally unpleasant counterparts only days ago, and Five had made pointedly little effort to extend the olive branch to the Sparrows in that time. But the animosity seemed pointless now.

❝ You know, I always thought we’d stop it. The end of the world, ❞  Five continues, with the same inflection he might use to discuss the weather.  ❝ In retrospect… I should have known it’d take just that to get this family to work together, just this fucking once. ❞  At the very last second, and half-assed as ever.  He picks at his drink with its little toothpick umbrella. 

As if it had ever mattered. Anything you had ever tried to do. You still don’t get to have an ending you want.

Still, it was just as useless to chase the cataclysm of his thoughts into certain insanity. Time far better spent mixing another drink. After a moment, he levels a contemplative look in Jayme’s direction; ❝ I take it you’re not sold on the old man’s big plan either, then. Can’t say I blame you. In which case — ❞  Five makes a small cheers-ing motion with his drink; 

❝ Margarita? ❞ he offers pleasantly.

ALLISON HARGREEVES:  ❛ You don’t have to keep me company, i’m fine by myself. ❜ 

Yeah, right; the saving-face bullshit doesn’t work on him. He may as well of written the book. He knew what it looked like. Five levels a pointed look; 

❝ Well, ❞  he begins,  ❝ it may not really be my department, Allison — but you don’t need to outright lie to me. ❞

With how put-together Allison always was, it was easy to forget she was just as fucked up as the rest of them. Where some of their dimwitted siblings  were open books when something was on their mind — Diego’s entire expression crumbled, Luther looked like a big, mopey puppy, Klaus got impossibly louder and more hysterical, and Viktor sometimes levelled entire buildings— Allison, she was harder. Frustration smoothed out, bitterness withheld in the sharpness of her gaze, daggered words carefully arranged. It had been that way as kids, too  — she  had hardly needed her powers to get her out of trouble with dad. 

Whatever she said about it; she was Number Three — a pressure he had once envied, but knew better of now.

❝ … I'm saying, you can talk about it, or not talk about it. But no one’s going to think any less of you. ❞  And dryly, with a thin smile;  ❝ … our idiot brothers do it all the time, completely unprompted. ❞

He still hasn’t found a way to apologize to her properly. Gaze settles somewhere over Allison’s shoulder, and Five sobers, eases up a touch;

❝ … Maybe you feel like you’re alone, but you’re not. And Allison, you never will be... Even in this emotionally stunted shitshow we call a family. ❞