{Hazy sunshine over the hill

[deadlycurves]

WHO: Hargreeves + YOU

WHERE: Krakoa; various

WHEN: Varies, specified by thread

WHAT: Varies, specified by thread

WARNINGS: Warnings will be updated where necessary

Comments

[timehit]

"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.

[numberthree]

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."

[timehit]

"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."

[numberthree]

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."

[timehit]

“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.

[numberthree]

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."

[timehit]

"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."

[numberthree]

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.