SECRETS ↳ FIVE HARGREEVES

2: SEVEN

Episode Two: Run Boy Run

Part Two.

I don't own the Umbrella Academy.

Percy didn't let Five drive, but he didn't protest. Vanya had been right about one thing—he was exhausted, considering he had just taxed himself about an hour ago with his rapid spatial-jumps. Percy glanced over at him, mouth already open to ask a question, but found him curled up in the passenger seat, sleeping. A small smile of amusement found its way to her lips as she turned back to face the road. Five might've told her that they needed to find out where the eye was manufactured, but right now, he needed to sleep, and Percy could figure it out. Because she was sure that it was going to be a long eight days.

Well, now that she thought about it, it was more like seven days.

As she waited for a red light to turn green, she thought about how her older sister (despite the fact that they had been born on the same day, and in the same hour, the Hargreeves children had always thought of themselves as being born in the order of their numbers—except in the case of Vanya and Percy, because Percy had always seen Vanya as an older sister simply because Percy had met the Hargreeves much later) had brushed off Five's concerns and words, and Percy understood why Five must've been so frustrated. Still, she did understand Vanya too—her brother was trying to tell her that the world was going to end in eight days? Honestly, if Percy didn't know Five as well as she did, she would've thought him insane too.

Except... she did think he was a bit insane—just not in the way Vanya did. Because there was something off about Five—like he was now more dangerous, darker, more ruthless. The scene in the diner had been enough evidence of that. Although she did have to admit—she had brutally murdered the men alongside him with no trace of regret. Sometimes, she wondered how she could've been so casual about taking someone's life, but it was just how her life went—how all of the Hargreeves' siblings' lives went. Their father had trained them to be rid of those pesky little emotions that could get in the way of their missions. Unfortunately, that had only led to Percy developing almost an on-and-off switch for her emotions—she could suppress them and keep her face emotionless—and she almost always kept them off. Until now.

Now, what you're thinking is that perhaps it was because of Five that Percy was beginning to change. While Five's appearance was certainly a factor in Percy's reconnection with her emotions, it wasn't just him. It was her entire family. Because being with all of them again, and seeing their pain, just like hers, seeing their trauma, because they were all still little kids, weren't they? They didn't understand the world, not really, and they never would. They never grew up as normal kids. They spent their childhoods, all the way to their adulthood, learning how to fight, how to kill, how to be the most dangerous people on the planet. And they would never fit into the world.

And being with her family made her break. The cool demeanor she always kept couldn't still stand when she was with her family. Because they knew her best, knew what she had gone through the best—after all, hadn't they all experienced the same abuse? And if she couldn't be herself around them, if she couldn't let herself feel around them... then they weren't her family. She couldn't call them her family. And if she couldn't, then their father won. And if there was anything that Percy vowed to never let happen, it was letting their father win.

She glanced over at Five again, an amused quirk upon her lips. He looked so innocent, so much like a child that she could almost believe that behind that mask wasn't a ruthless killer that would do anything to get what he wanted. He had said he was fifty-eight too—and it was strange, hearing a thirteen-year-old kid say, with malice and insistence in his voice, that he was really almost a senior citizen. But perhaps it wasn't as strange as it could've been to Percy. After all, she was nearing thirty in a thirteen-year-old body too. She couldn't judge.