definitely maybe i will live to love || Five x Reader/OC ||

you're watching yourself, but you're too unfair

Rock 'n' Roll Suicide

In another timeline, Allison and you drive to the cabin where you suspect you'll find Vanya. Allison thinks she's been kidnapped. You want to agree because it would mean that Vanya didn't leave you of her own free will, that she never suddenly disregarded the years the two of you spent together as best friends, as sisters, as the two people in this world who had each other's backs.

But Five's cynical voice counters that if that were the case, then you wouldn't have the feeling you do in the pit of your stomach. Allison drives too fast. You don't comment on it. You think she feels it, too. It's a little surprising that she doesn't snap at you for letting this happen to Vanya; after all, it was you and Vanya, and if anyone can do anything for the family, it's you. But she saw the desperation and shame in your face when you came to her with your worry—heard it in your typically calm and witty tone. So, despite Allison's tendency to throw barbs whenever she's stressed, she keeps her lips pursed unless it's another reiteration of Vanya's circumstance.

When you reach the cabin, a song, a song, a song pulses through you with such vivacity and passion and power that ribbons of light flare up on your skin—it should have been a joyful moment, seeing what you had not for so long. But the source of the song has an undercurrent of something vengeful, and it sings with tenuous control.

You and Allison find Vanya with powers, and it all makes sense, really. You remembered a song inside her, lost so long ago that you wondered if it had ever been there in the first place sometimes. But even though you grin and say how glad you and Allison found her, how happy that she has powers like them, Vanya doesn't smile back.

It doesn't get better. Vanya blames you and Allison for her life, for making her the way she was for so long and denying her of her rightful power. Allison rumored Vanya into believing she was ordinary—you, though, you kept Vanya ordinary. Never tried to find out if there was something more to her. Always wanted her to be weak, helpless, stupid little Vanya so you could keep being the savior, the better sister.

You say that's not true. Not true!

The song grows more tumultuous, not calmer. Allison and you share a look that you shared when you were in the middle of a fight. That look of being in a dangerous situation. Of being in the midst of a dangerous person.

But that person is your sister.

It's why you and Allison don't restrain her, don't attack her. It's why Allison's voice shimmers with rumor—

Vanya screams with fury. The song coalesces, weaponizes. It is beautiful.

It is deadly.

You shield Allison without thought or hesitation. It's what you do, what you've always done, even to protect one sibling from another.

Pain, pain, pain burns through you, burning like it did when you were young. You try to scream in utter agony, but no sound can come from your breathless lungs, so your face is left in a twisted mask of terror. Blood runs from your nose and ears, endless and pumping and hot—hot like the blood that soaked your pajama bottoms as a girl. It is a testament of pain actualized, materialized.

You collapse. Allison catches you, but you don't feel her efforts. All you can feel is the pain. You want to succumb to it, let the life ebb from you like you tried to force all those years ago in the attic. The song rings in your ears, so loud that it is its own kind of silence, overwhelming and colorful. It beckons and all you want is for Vanya to hold your hand and for Five to be here and for the pain to be gone, but it won't go away it won't go away and the box in you cracks and crumbles and you can't stop it—can't stop anything, anything at all, useless and unworthy—and you try, try, try to scream, but all you can hear is the song and the sound of Vanya shrieking your name in wild, sheer panic. She apologizes over and over, and you want to tell her it's okay, it was just an accident, you can all just sit down over a cup of tea at the apartment and explain everything—