𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐆𝐄━━━━Five Hargreeves

14

❝ the eye ❞

If there was one thing Five openly admitted to being his flaw, it was that he didn't like being wrong. And most of all, he didn't like being treated like a child, like he was delusional, as if he hadn't spent decades alone getting rough around the edges.

He didn't like the way Vanya was staring at him. Patronizingly.

All she saw when she looked at him was a child. Five hated it. Hated that he had gotten the equations wrong, hated that he had blood on his collar from the five men he had killed without remorse only to have his sister stare at him like he'd lost his mind.

"You think I'm crazy."

"No," She stammered, "It's a lot to take in."

The alcohol burned his throat as he downed the glass. When he was younger, Reginald Hargreeves had stomped nervous ticks out of each of them. Now, as much as Five wanted to tap his foot, he physically couldn't. 

As a direct contrast to him, however, was Alexander. The guy never stopped moving. Even when he was on a stealth mission or at a desk. He'd hum along to a song or bob his head or drum his fingers or have his leg bounce. 

It was annoying and infuriating. Except, at the moment, he was fast asleep and it was as still as Five had ever seen him. He looked in his glass and then back at Alexander on the couch, face buried in a throw pillow, blood on his collar and underneath his fingernails.

"Exactly what don't you understand?" He asked Vanya. He felt ridiculed again, not taken seriously enough. maybe Five could wake Alex up and make him make Five look older. If he could do a variation of age regression, surely he could make Five look a little more respectable. 

"Why didn't you just time travel back?"

Sixteen year olds didn't have an aura of authority. No one looked at sixteen year olds and thought of murderers or leaders. Five wanted to strangle everyone.

Five scoffed, "Gee, I wish I'd thought of that."

Vanya still looked like she had her reservations.

"Time travel is a crapshoot." He went on. "I went into the ice and never acorn-ed. You think I didn't try everything to get back to my family?"

His jaw was starting to hurt from clenching it so much.

Some sort of understanding seemed to pass over Vanya's features. Finally. Five relaxed just a little. Time was of the essence. He understood he was a little fixated on the Apocalypse, but he needed Vanya on his side as quickly as possible. But perhaps he'd overestimated how intelligent his siblings were. Powers or not.

"If you grew old there," She said, "you know, in the apocalypse, how come you still look like a kid?"

Five scoffed, he was going to need a lot more of the drink. Moving past her, he started toward her kitchen counter where she had kept the bottle. "I told you already" he lifted the bottle and turned back to her. He didn't have time to repeat himself over and over again. If his siblings were this idiotic, maybe Five put too much faith in them. Finding them buried under rubble unable to stop the apocalypse made a lot of sense. "I must have got the equations wrong."

"I mean, dad always used to say that... time travel could mess up your mind."

Five poured himself a generous amount. Then he downed it as if he needed it to survive such a fruitless and idiotic conversation. How had it come to be that the most intelligent person he could talk to was Alex? The guy that punched his superior. The impulsive idiot. And somehow he was still far better company than the Hargreeves.