f2020 | {Hazy sunshine over the hill

Luther and Allison's house often becomes the family gathering place of choice here on the island. A home away from home in some respects; it's not the sprawling estate, for however much they've renovated and built upon the original framework. But unlike that restrictive backdrop of their childhood, this feels...different. Filled with the sort of love and care a child needs to thrive.

Like Claire. His niece.

So it's earned Five's respect; he fixes what he can around the house, piping in with his opinions to Luther whenever something looks askew. He's not as open with his affection as maybe some of the others but he shows up just as much. Their presence in his life is a constant comfort. A reminder that he's no longer alone, regardless of the dreams that still haunt him at night. Of that other timeline, a future gone wrong.

This afternoon, he's baking peanut butter cookies. The coffee pot is going strong, as one would expect, and the kitchen is filled with warmth and life. Let's not call it mirth — Five hardly cracks a smile, save for when Claire peeks around to corner to check on the cookies.

Taking the first batch out of the oven, he calls back over his shoulder without looking, "Don't touch them until they've cooled."

Allison never minds it. You'd think they might have all minded after being semi-split up for half a decade in White Tower, might have carried the cracks from it with them. But if they're carrying anything with them, it's more the almost two decades before they came to this world at all. Being underfoot of each other, almost always running into someone in the doorways, being prodded, poked, living in each other's shoes, is more normal than anything else is.

Her brothers let themselves in and out, at really any and all hours. As much as it was her house, and then Luther's and hers, it's more communal than all that, too. It's grown too much, they've all put so much work into what it's become, has open-ended invitations for all the extra bedrooms, the couch, the hammocks swaying in the breeze outside. She's never entirely surprised to wake up to an extra person in the house who wasn't there when they went to bed, or to help carry people there who may have drunk a little much or simply stayed long enough exhaustion won over reason.

So, getting out early from a Council work for a day, to find Five already in her kitchen cooking what smells entirely too perfectly like cookies, fresh and hot and semi-sweet, is a kind of perfection she can't buy, purer than anything she could rumor into existence.

"Does that count for all of us who are old enough to decide to burn our fingers, too?"

“Someone wise must’ve said to never get in the way of a woman and her ambitions,” Five says wryly. He pushes the towel in his hands up across one shoulder and gestures for her to do as she will. “There’s fresh coffee if you want it, Allison.”

The kitchen isn’t in as much of a mess as one would expect after coming home to a scene like this. Priding himself on being efficient, he’s spent time cleaning as he goes. The countertops boast a glossy shine, and the only real mark of evidence that he’s been banging around in the kitchen is the warm, inviting smells of peanut butter and coffee.

While the others are just as guilty as coming and going seemingly at whim, it’s likely evidence enough that they haven’t been around yet to steal the rest of the cookies and make a bigger mess. More often than not, this house finds itself filled with laughter, commotion, and every reliable proof of their devotion to one another. Five makes his rounds just as Diego and Klaus, only that he can, at times, be a pinch more quiet or subtle.

In and out in a flash, sometimes reorganizing Luther’s dubious piles of books spread around the house, sometimes to fix a leaky faucet, always to make sure his family is present, accounted for, safe. While their collective happiness has grown over time, Five is perhaps not as faithful to the belief that this blessing will go on forever.

Content in his work in the kitchen, he reaches up to the cabinet and takes out a mug for himself. Which means, at least, he’ll stay around for a little while longer. “How’s work at the Council?”

That it's still clean really is nice as Allison comes over to where the cookies are resting, and before actually reaching for one, looks toward the doorway of the room, but there's no one, small and smiling, yet, to see her exhibiting bad habits that can be mimicked because but mommy did, just Five, who is sometimes the easiest to be around after Luther.

At least since coming here and making the decisions she's made here.
Had to make. What they've had to make of her. The weight in lives.
Those saved and those possibly sacrificed for those already here.

But for a moment she can forget that. The work. The staying on her toes trying to be a good parent. Steal a cookie off the cooling rack and wince a little shifting it from hand to hand, because it is fucking hot but she knew that when she did it, and even her fingers telling her what her mind already knew, doesn't stop her from taking a bite of it immediately, too.

Hot on her tongue, but rich, part sweet and part salt. Perfect after her day. Groaning happily, into her cookie, like she was the four year old, as she let herself lean against a counter. "You're my favorite person on the planet."

"Third, maybe, but that's fine too I think," Five says, not bothering to bullshit around about it. He loves Allison, and of those siblings still with him at this island, he tends to prefer her company. At least, it's the easiest way to keep himself from...whatever it is Five and Klaus tend to devolve into when they're in a room together.

Order instead of chaos, that's what he appreciates. With Vanya it was like — a nightlight at the end of the hall, a warmth to guide his way back home. With Allison it's more of a torch, a strong and swift flame that will protect you but also singe your fingers if you aren't careful enough.

Five can admit to appreciating the difference.

"Claire's supposed to be working on the project I gave her," he explains without prompting. Five catches the way she looks down the hall. "Building blocks are good for the mind." Once he has a fresh cup of coffee in hand, Five takes a seat at the kitchen table and gestures for her to join him.

There's an mmm sort of sound through the bite of her cookie, that has far less to do with the warm meltiness or the flavor of the cookie itself, and more to do with an ironically played up thoughtfulness debating in her mind about that first statement. The one no one in the family or on the island would argue with, as to what Allison's first two favorite things in this world were.

Especially since neither was here offering her up the mana of coffee and cookies.

Picking up a second cookie and some of the aformentioned coffee, Allison follows after Five to the table. "What is she making this time?"

"A rocket ship," Five says, quite seriously too and without an ironic smile. "Admittedly sparse on details, but it's a fair place to start."

He takes a sip of his coffee and, while it's hard to imagine him giving off the same carefree body language as Klaus—no one would dare call Number Five whimsical, he does at least seem to settle in. Somewhere hidden deep inside his chest, in that secret and complicated heart of his, he understands this feeling of warmth. The comfort of being home.

"Maybe next time, a unicorn?" He doesn't smile, but his eyes shine, even if just a little.

Allison was half-distracted, slipping out of her heels and turning herself a little diagonal in her chair so that she could put her feet up on the chair to the other side of Five. The day done. A reprieve of cookies and coffee and Claire still playing somewhere, happily, quietly. She'd go pop in on her soon enough, but not yet.

"That could end up looking like anything." Either one. But she's, honestly, grateful for how much Claire gets of everyone. All of them. Every bit of their help, and the way she knows it has far more to do with Claire herself, than her even. "Do you think it'll be rainbow colors or pastels this time?"

Beat. "We should make her keep it up until Luther is home."

"They'll never leave that room once she gets him talking about rockets."

"Worst case scenario, she'll be the founder of Krakoa's first real space program," Five says, knowing too the can of worms he's opening. Gazing down at the steam rising up from his coffee mug, he thinks of it not just as a joke from one sibling to another.

After all, being exceptional isn't just about having powers, or maybe he's only thinking again of Vanya. But it's true that everyone has importance, and Five is willing to bet it all that his niece has in her endless potential. More than being built into a rich old man's personal army. More than tattoos and clever outfits.

He looks down the hall, where Claire's room is. He still remembers Luther's room, just as well as he remembers the rest of them; that brief time spent at the end of the world saw Five attending to those memories like well-worn photographs. The model tanks and bomber planes, the telescopic diagrams of the moon and planets distant enough for a prodigy Spaceboy to reach his ambitions toward.

But unlike the rubble and ruins of that future he was ported from, they'll each leave a legacy on this world. This nation they're supporting, and Allison especially. Just like this house, stretching its original foundation and growing out, growing bigger with the love they've all pieced into it.

A labor of love, a legacy of their choosing. Children with a future that's brighter, bigger; they could buy and build Claire a telescope and let her look at the stars. Why should she be limited to anything less?

"You know once Luther starts his space talk I'm out the door," Five says, giving Allison another wry expression. "I'm counting on your good sense to talk him down from building any rockets in the backyard."

It definitely wouldn't be the worst thing Claire could do. There was a whole precarious universe full of opportunity Allison wished for her daughter, even as it hinged on all the things every day that drove her, and every other member of The Five, to distraction. The promise of a golden future and freedom, even as they grasped the threads in their hands still trying to tie them together for longer than seconds.

Some of them staying, but most of them in jeapordy in their owns ways, too.
The White Tower made sure of that. That Krakoa stayed in its place.

Allison ate another bite of her first cookie even as she grimaced. "Don't even joke. It would be higher than all of the island's current towers. We don't even have the supplies, and somehow he'd come up with them. Give people that look and suddenly they'd be piling up, from out of nowhere, in the yard for him to use."

"On second thought, we'll just have to demolish. Someone can accidentally trip into it, or knock it down and help with learning to put her things away."

“Diabolical but smart,” Five agrees, veering close to a laugh. He leans forward and rests against his forearms, holding onto his mug with both hands; he allows the smile on his face to linger. In every moment like this, he can recall each sharp memory of the past; standing at attention behind their chairs, less like children and more like pieces of chess. Carefully lined in place and all according to an ugly design.

Remembering this, feeling the warmth now that he couldn’t back then, Five tilts his head to the side. “You know, motherhood looks good on you,” he says, a more serious observance. Was it so much of a surprise when she first found Claire? And quickly turned direction in her life soon thereafter — in all their lives, for where one goes the rest will follow. Not because a man with a monocle orders them, but out of loyalty. Because of family.

Fierce and fiery Allison, a flame of warmth and a fire to protect; no, it wasn’t too strange to see. Luther and Allison both have fought for and earned this time of peace. “If I haven’t said it. I’m happy for the three of you.”

Not exactly known to gush over sentiment or wax poetic, the words fall out straightforward and serious. As if it’s just a number of facts, an obvious equation with only one answer. He shrugs and takes another drink of his coffee.

She loves doing that. When Five actually relaxes, nearly gets to laughing, and it clouds up his face in different ways. The smile that he leans into as he leans into the table and the conversation, showing it. He's always still there. In himself. Of himself. Even for all he's been through, and how he still carries it in himself, and everything all of them are still carrying -- but especially him and that terrible apocalyptic future they all somehow sidestepped.

(Except for Five. He's with them now, but he still lived there for too long. Even if it had been a few weeks, she'd still say it was too long. And part of that, like all of their pasts in the Academy, lived on inside of them, too. Just finding new ways to orient itself with their new life, lives.)

There's a crooked tilt to her mouth, only halfway to smile, even as she shakes her head, lifting her coffee at that comment. She's proud of those things -- possessive of them, perhaps, even more than she ever knew she could be balanced by them -- but still there's no end to the fact for a moment she can slightly put it in parallel with anything five years ago, ten, back home. "Whoever would have pegged that one? Really, any of this."

It makes her think of what she asked Klaus, and how he answered.

"Allison Hargreeves." Beat. "Mom."
The flick of a smirk. "That was definitely never in my fan mail."

"What, it's not glamorous enough for you?" His eyebrows raise, and Five lifts up a hand to gesture about the room. His tone is lightly teasing; of course, he's spent all of these years watching the rest of his family grow with him to maturity, grow into themselves and into this strange new life. One might say from a distance, but not a far one, only a slight remove from one who found himself castaway after an apocalypse. Maybe not for good and maybe not for a lifetime as he feared, but the reality, that possible reality, is something that's difficult to shake completely.

Allison, in all of her possibilities, could-be and might-have-beens, has always been the most natural under a limelight. Five considers her the best representative of not only Krakoa's interests but the family's as well. But what his time alone taught him — none of that is fulfilling in the end. He had his arrogance and his pride, and what did that buy him in the end?

What is he without those he loves most, what are any of them? A fragment, incomplete.

"If it's come as a surprise, Allison, well, I guess some old lessons are just hard to forget. Maybe you've simply found out how to adapt." He taps his fingers against the porcelain of the mug, a steady rhythm like the ticking of a clock. Tick-tock. "No, that would be settling for less than the best. To thrive."

The thing is: it's not. Glamorous.

If she tries to see it through the eyes of the girl who at eighteen was biting at every cuff and collar except Luther -- the only single reason in the world she would standstill when she'd hated everything about her father for almost six years at that point -- none of this is glamorous. There're no bright lights. No fame. No vision of being recognized and getting awards.

But that girl wouldn't see what she sees either. She can still remember the day the leaning floorboards got put in, all of her brothers laughing and doing it, while Claire kept trying to steal and test taste the nails for them. The way the dinner successively fell into having more extended hours. Having people underfoot stopped being a chore and started being a comfort that meant no one had to do anything truly alone.

"I hope so." It slides out of her mouth after a few seconds, lost in between the two. "I think I like this version of me better than any of the ones I spent forever trying to convince myself I could become." A small pause, barely half a second, and her mouth tips a little crooked. "Besides, I may be just a little preferential to the things it gave me, and all of us, back, that we might never have gotten before."

If she means the family, and she does, it's also incredibly clear from her smile and the way she's looking at him, that she very much means him, too. Having a life where he got to be back in it. That was better than glamour ever could have been.

Edited 2020-09-27 03:39 (UTC)

You see, the warning most certainly is for Claire, and arguably would have comes seconds too late on deaf ears anyway. Perhaps it would have taken a miracle for Klaus to actually heed the words. Klaus, who's patience and self control should be measured in decimals, who comes flitting in and out of the house same as the rest of them, with no exception to be found here. He pads along the floor barefoot, toenails glittering because Claire liked that nail polish the day before, in a flowy wrap and most certainly coming from the beach rather than lessons. That he may or may not have been needing to teach.

"They smell amazing," he hums. "Don't they, ma choupette?" No, he still doesn't know french in anything that resembles fluency, but it makes their niece smile and that may be the important thing here.

He doesn't even pause to reach over Five (risking life and limb, no doubt) to pluck a piping hot cookie from the tray. It's mere seconds later that he yowls, promptly drops it, his telekinesis swooping it up in the last minute before it can actually splat anticlimactically to the floor. "Okay, ouchie? Five, do you - what - cook them on the sun?"

Klaus, it seems, needs more of a warning than a toddler does.

Diego is sitting at the table when Klaus flounces into the room, making the most ridiculous, showy, fuss about the cookies. He’s checking headlines for anything important in the world outside of Krakoa and doesn’t even glance up as he mumbles a quiet, “He warned you,” practically sing-song, and then his eyes lift just slightly to look at Klaus. “Idiot.” But there’s no heat to it, just amusement, and a smirk hidden in the corner of his mouth.

Ah yes, there's as few things as reliable across the endless scope of time and space as his brothers and their ever-constant need to be total idiots. Fast but not fast enough to catch Klaus in the act, Five whips a dark look over one shoulder at Diego. "Off by a few thousand degrees," he argues, moving full-body between Klaus and the stove (in annoyance or as an act of protection, take your pick). "Now get out of the way."

With a spatula now in hand, he lifts the cookies carefully onto a serving plate. You could say, from the look of these cookies — perfectly pressed for even baking, sprinkled lightly with sugar, that Five gets a little obsessed with precision and details. Or maybe he just likes sweets. Either way, even with a single cookie already stolen and almost lost to the floor, he’s still done a nice job.

“Why don’t you pour a cup of milk and have a seat, and then maybe you’ll calm down,” he hisses through his teeth, offering up the plate to Klaus and telling him, in his own peculiar way, to sit down and behave. Not that he expects him to listen, but that won’t stop his efforts in trying.

He loves Klaus. He’d step into gunfire for him in an instant. Both are inarguable truths, but so is the fact that Five is a tightly-wound bastard in any timeline. Giving a distrustful look over to his brother, he very slowly reaches around for his coffee cup.

"Alright, alright, geez," there's never any real heat to that, either, nor in the very mature hiss he throws Diego's way. Five blocks the stove, armed with a spatula and Klaus laughs, maneuvering away to let the maestro do his work. "So I wasn't really off by that much."

It's an easy song and dance between them, a habitual raport that likely never quite changed since they were kids - Klaus doing something stupid, and the rest there to watch the fruits of idiocy unfold before things settle back to another lull. And so it goes, across existences.

It's easy to forget the outside world in the span of these moments, with a hot serving of cookies, plated as though for a show and warming his palms. No Synod, no White Tower, no past or ghosts.

Catching Five's distrust, he winks, scooping Claire up to her seat before perching on his own. A second's pause of staring, before jumping back up with an 'oh, the milk!'.

"Okay so," he hums, setting the glasses out. The milk jug floats precariously behind him. But don't worry Five, he totally has it. "Last night I had the strangest dream. You ever have those - like, they feel like a memory, but you definitely know you haven't been to any of it?"

"Like a deja vu, except without the - ugh," a vague wave. "- deja?"

They’ve been like this for years, so much so that it would be easy for Five to stay in the habit of ignoring whatever gibberish comes out of Klaus’ mouth. But he allows for a patient moment to take in the details of what he says, trying to puzzle out something near to legitimate in the question. Why ask him something so strange, of all people, if he just means to dick around and maybe entertain Claire with their usual hijinks?

Five looks suspicious but he sits down all the same, reaching over to take a few cookies for himself. All of the kitchen work takes energy, after all, and he’s going to need more of it for this conversation, however it decides to slice out. “It’s possible,” he says with a cool air. He’s not sure this isn’t going to end up with him leaning over the table to block Claire’s ears. “Why, what did you dream about?”

Once the milk wiggles closer to the table, Five stops taking chances and snatches it out of the air. He looks over the top of it while pouring himself a glass, giving Klaus the same stern expression he usually does. “Please, whatever it is, keep it child-appropriate. I don’t want us to sit through another lecture from her parents for being bad uncles.”

These two, setting a bad example for a sweet, innocent child? Who could even imagine.

A part of Klaus had kind of expected Five to tell him to shut up and eat the cookies, which, you know, fair. But Five listens instead, with all the caution of someone who has been on the receiving ends of one of the fabled, mentioned lectures. With Klaus in tow, naturally.

So Klaus hums into his milk, and smiles at Five and Claire with the most innocent grin he can muster. "Okay, first of all, that was just a few times, and most of them were completely out of context!"

"But," he slides back into a chair, folding a leg under him. "I don't know - it's all vague, dreamlike, you know? First I was just dreaming normal stuff, like talking to a three headed elephant. Then I was falling. Then -," he makes as though to say one thing, hesitates; Klaus has never been good at straight-to-the-point honesty. It takes a few somersaults, and dodging the real issue. Still, he isn't lying here. "- then robots. Yeah, there was definitely robot fighting. At an awards show?" He stuffs a cookie into his mouth, another one floating over to Claire. "We were mostly all there," sans Vanya, and of course Ben, and he doesn't stay too long on that. Can't. "You were there as your lovable, adorable prepubescent self, no less. Which was weird, because the rest of us were adults. Maybe even older?"

He shrugs then, jovial and care-free as ever. Because that's what he does, and who he is, and it's easy to be that. Or something like it. Still, he throws a tentative look over at Five. "I don't know, double-oh-five. It just felt weird." And he knows weird, to be fair.

“A weird feeling,” Five repeats slowly. There’s a moment where it appears, perhaps rightly so, that Klaus’ brother will turn a cheek and dismiss the story. Maybe it’s his deadpan stare, the way the words seem to roll off of him like Teflon, because reaching through all of his doubt and suspicion can sometimes be impossible — Five takes a few bites of his peanut butter cookie, however, carefully working his way through the details before he tries to respond.

Maybe it’s Claire’s presence, wide-eyed and innocent beside him. Maybe it’s his lighter mood from making cookies with a houseful of family, those he loves and those who love him. Whatever circumstance flips fortune favorably over to Klaus’ side, Five leans forward on the table, resting his palms and forearms against the surface.

“So you’re saying this felt like a memory of some kind? And you said this isn’t the first time you’ve had these dreams?” Five does, however, sigh to himself. “Just...ignore the elephants, Klaus, I’m talking about us in another world.”

He levels a narrow stare at his brother, but it isn’t his usual peeved expression — easy to tell with how much he employs it. Instead, this is the sort of sharp, calculating stare that he uses most often during work hours; all of those days spent teaching space and time theory, poring over math equations and the multi-splintering possibilities of what was, what could be.

{Hazy sunshine over the hill

number five + ota

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