𝐖𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 ━ five hargreeves

20│EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH SURELY DIES - AU

An alternate universe that answers the question "what if Lola Gimble died before The Handler came to collect Five in the apocalypse?"




"Only know you love her when you let her go"

Five Hargreeves lands in 2019.

Alone.

✧✧✧

"What's the date? The exact date?" Five demands the answer from his siblings who are arranged haphazardly around the kitchen table.

"The twenty-fourth," Vanya replies.

"Of what?"

"March."

Eight days, he thinks. "Good."

"So, are we gonna talk about what just happened?" Klaus wonders, sitting cross-legged in front of him.

Five barely pays attention to his siblings; they look too similar to the lifeless bodies he'd found in the apocalypse. Eight days. He methodically makes a sandwich though he hasn't been truly hungry since—

"It's been seventeen years," Luther asks as he tries to be the leader.

It's too easy to blink around him. The boy scoffs. "It's been a lot longer than that." Too long.

"Where'd you go?" Diego puts in.

"The future. It's shit by the way." In more ways than one.

"Called it!"

You have no idea.

"I should've listened to the old man. Y'know, jumping through space is one thing, time travel is just toss of the dice." Don't get attached. He looks up and does his best to diffuse the heaviness. "Nice dress."

"Oh. Well, danke."

"How did you get back?"

"In the end I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time." Dolores would scold him for his pretentiousness.

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Well, it would if you were smarter." He could almost hear her rebuking him.

"How long were you there?"

Too long, yet not long enough. "Forty-five years, give or take."

"So, what? Are you saying you're fifty-eight?" Luther's tone is full of disbelief.

"No, my consciousness is fifty-eight. Apparently my body is fifteen again."

"How does that even work?"

"Dolores kept saying the equations were off. I bet she's laughing now," he adds.

"Dolores?"

He could have answered that she was his wife or that they'd been together for fifteen years. He could have said he pictured her somewhere up in the clouds surrounded by stacks of books as she read and re-read them. He could have said that he could hear her cackling at his mistake.

"Guess I missed the funeral," he replies instead.

Dolores would always be his, protected in his memories when he'd failed to do so in life.

✧✧✧

Thinking of Dolores was always a doom loop.

He missed her constantly and relied on memories of her to keep him going. Yet, the thought of the memories made him miss her more. It had been years since he'd last seen her, surrounded by the rubble and dust of the apocalypse.