metalogs | {This world is not made for you

Entry tags:

{This world is not made for you

Who: Number Five Hargreeves

forasecond + Various
What: Threads for 2022
When: The year of 2022
Where: Various Locations
Content Warnings: Five comes with a bucket of warnings, including:
• Mental-physical age discrepancy (he looks 13, he's mentally 58)
• Well-hidden trauma and PTSD symptoms, potential depression/anxiety descriptions, some obsessive behaviors being exhibited at times
• Alcohol-as-a-coping-mechanism which technically presents as underage drinking
• Casual references to child abuse/neglect
• Violence, liberal use of violent threats, potentially flippant talk about murder and references to his time as an assassin
• In general, he can be aggressive, incredibly reactive, and generally come off as an asshole. These are risks in tagging with him that aren't feasibly curved without being untrue to the character.

All other warnings will be posted in comment headers where appropriate.

these golden ashes turn to dirt

2022
March April May June July August September October November December

March

↪

Arrival - Confluence #3
New arrivals fall from the sky in Excelsior, Washington as part of a new confluence. The Vlog Squad are a set of newly empowered townspeople who are part of a streamer/vlogger/influencers, who decide to terrorize the town with their newfound abilities. Chaos ensues, and metas new and old are asked to help apprehend them.

Five plays no part in helping with this, as his concern is focused on figuring out what's going on, where he is, and if his siblings are here.

Balthier

The first contact Five has with someone in this world, out on the streets in the chaos of arrivals;

David

Getting a basic rundown of what's happening in the Alliance's depowered room; they also touch on the ideas of time and interdimensional math and the validity of psychics.

Laurie

Laurie is curious if Five is "used to this sort of thing".

Harry {CW: underage drinking}
Sometimes getting drunk about your new, shitty situation is all there is; Five steals from a liquor store using his spacial-jump powers.

Gwen
Discussions of timelines and the multiverse.

Venom
Discussing what the alient blob things qualifies as evil.

Alina
Five tries to recruit Alina in ditching school to work on solving the issue of being stuck here.

Starting fires wherever we go
Five finds Luther and Allison and immediately pops in on them in their hotel room, barreling straight into the business of what's happened, and how they're going to fix it;

A magical mishap - Disney's Haunted Mansion
Stephen Strange reaches out to any/all metas for help rescuing some kids from a magical mishap.

April

↪

General
For any threads that don't fit within the other categories available. HMU with a wild card, or PWM on plurk[/discord] @ loyalwolf[#3540] or at his HMD so I can toss us up a closed starter.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Please keep all general threads under here!]

This place? It's a mess. But at least his interactions so far have slightly proven it (probably) isn't he and his sibling's fault. He's still keeping an eye out for anything that might signal that isn't true, but for now he has a room number in hand and that's enough.

Since he's already been to the hotel, it's easy enough to get to the right place. Takes a few tries to get the right hallway. "Finally," he mutters to himself before he steps into a portal in the middle of the hall, and out of one in the middle of the room inside.

Were they busy? Is he interrupting something? Too bad, so sad. "Do you know if any of the others are here?" he asks, with absolutely no segue at all before he starts rummaging for a mug and making himself a cup of coffee from the pot that's conveniently already been made.

Edited 2022-03-12 21:03 (UTC)

Luther yelps. His hand spasms in surprise, he accidentally shatters the mug of coffee he'd been holding, and warm-ish coffee splatters all over his shirt where he'd been sitting in an armchair, reading a book. He looks down at the stain, crestfallen, grabs a napkin and tries to dab the spilled liquid away, but then his gaze jerks back up to his (older? definitions are strange) brother, as if he's uncertain what to focus on.

David had relayed the headsup to Allison that Number Five had arrived, but the timing of him just popping unannounced into existence in the middle of their hotel room is still a surprise. The room itself is lavish, clearly a luxury suite. There's only one bedroom — the harried Diadem organisers had assumed, not entirely unfairly, that the two Hargreeves with no physical resemblance were a married couple — but since it's the middle of the day, it's unclear if Luther's been using the pull-out sofa in the living room to sleep or not.

The blond rises to his feet, grabs a plastic bag, and starts sweeping up the broken pieces of ceramic. Some people and some combinations in their family are the type to fall into each others' arms for a crushing hug hello after so much time apart; Number Five is not one of them. Luther fairly imagines his own hand might be literally bitten off if he tried.

"They're not," Luther says. "Morning, Five. It's good to see you. Can you get me another mug?"

He tries to sound just as businesslike, but some unavoidable warmth creeps into his voice nonetheless; some invisible vise in his chest loosens.

"-has to be here somewhere. He can't have just have disappeared into-" Allison is standing there, hand in the air, pinched expression, as the air warps, Luther yelps, and Five produces himself from thin air instead of the other way around. There's a startled half step back for her, but she's already looking over at Luther mopping up his coffee that's gone everywhere.

Then, back to Five, who is already muttering to himself, and it flips in the bare beat of Luther's words.

"No need for a hello?" Allison says to the miniature gremlin of their youngest 'looking' brother, even as something in her chest snaps -- hard -- loose. It makes it easier to breathe, to shift from a voice that only seconds ago had been rising concerned and instead now eschews annoyed ludicrousness. "Just making yourself at home?"

Even as she says it, she can't look away for him. She can't.
It's so good just to be able to see him. Even months were too long again.

Five is utterly unphased by Luther's reaction, despite the yelp and the shattering glass. There's barely a passing glance at the mess as he gets his own mug. He grabs and pours a second mug before he sets the pot back on the hot plate and turns to actually face his siblings as he takes a sip of the god's nectar.

A beat passes.

"Jesus, Allison, I think somehow landing in an entirely different universe takes a little precedence of a 'hello'." He sounds as annoyed as ever, but.

Adds.

"Hi, how are you? As terrible as I am? Great. Okay, now that's out of the way, can we get to the important part, here?" He glances between them for half a breath and barrels on. "How long have you two been here?"

And there it is, sharp as knives and comfortingly familiar. The corner of Luther's mouth flickers in a near-bitten-back smile at Five's mouthiness — and then he gets that thoughtful, distant expression on his face which means he's rolling back the weeks and counting the time, and even he looks a little surprised when he realises how much has already flown by. After a moment, he concludes: "Two months. My turn for an important question: do you remember anything about a city called Nonah, in North Carolina? A house we shared there? Or an island called Krakoa? Or Dallas in the 1960s?"

He's instantly going straight for the throat, timeline-wise, trying to gather his own notes and figure out where they overlap and where they don't. Because the last time they'd actually seen Number Five, it was somewhere a step between Nonah between Krakoa between Dallas. And you'd think they would all remember the same things, but—

But Ken Kaneki, right here in Central City, already showed that that isn't always the case. Hargreeves had lost memories back in the other universe, too. Time travel and gnarled continuity timelines are messy. So— god, he's glad the resident time travel expert is back.

Luther finishes gathering the pieces of the broken mug and then hunkers down to wipe off the floor, although he glances back up to listen to the others.

Allison doesn't do chagrined, or more than a continuation of that pointed stare downward at Five as he rambles around, manic as though he's already had five or ten cups of coffee. The acidic bite back is a burn that is so much better than any over-abundant amount of warmth could be. It just proves even more that it is him.

Allison crosses her arms, but leans against the table with the small coffee unit set up on it, waiting for the answer to the sensible questions Luther manages to get out between the two of them. That's all there in the questions here, after all. Whether Five remembers any of the last world. Whether he's ever been to Dallas. Where he's from before near everything that happened that first week.

It's only been a few months for them. Since Nonah, a few more to Dallas.
But has all of this, like Dallas, set them even further adrift from each other.

He looks at Luther, face screwed up in confusion at what he's asking, which is as much of an answer as his rapid-fire, "No, no, and yes," each coming in turn with a point of his free hand. "You asking me that implies we could be showing up from different points in the timeline, right? Not good. Not good at all."

"At least this world doesn't seem to be as objectively on fire as our own," it's a blithe bite of gallows humor. "I've had an incredibly long two weeks, maybe I can get some real sleep." Said even as he's sipping caffeine. Baby steps. Sleep can come later, these are important conversations they're having just now.

No, no, and yes — which means Five must be coming straight from Dallas, those headlong panicked two weeks without any rest, no punctuation, no (still-wrenching, awful) breather like the others had gotten in the 1960s.

Huh.

Luther moves into the kitchenette, dumps his bag into the trash, and then takes the mug of coffee with a grateful nod to his brother. "Not as literally on fire," he concedes, and that was mostly their fault, whoops, "but it's got its issues. On what looks like a monthly cadence, so far. But you can at least get a nap in before the next thing comes around the pike."

Dallas. But not just Dallas; only Dallas. Allison feels that like a brick dropping through her, even though she doesn't move in the smallest amount, she doesn't shift from where she's leaning effortlessly in her heels. Even the easy macabre reminders of both of them don't dust the weight that settles somewhere between her spine and her shoulders.

"So far, that seems to be exactly what places like this are always full of both of --

time all mixed up and problems that come almost as if they were punctually scripted."

He casts a barely-there nod in return to Luther with the coffee now in his brother's hand, but a frown creases his features at that comment, and Allison's to follow which only seems to back up what Number One is saying.

"That's...strange," it's the only thing he could think to say about it at all. No amount of experience with The Commission gave him any headstart on anything like that. Multiple worlds were, surely possible with all the divergent timelines when changes were made to history, but... it wasn't confirmed. It wasn't a certainty, still just theoretical. And that doesn't even begin starting to untangle the way anything like how he entered this place could happen on a monthly script.

He snaps his fingers and points vaguely at nothing and no one in particular. "David said they've got psychics that predict it. Which does nothing to explain how it's so aligned on a time schedule like you're saying, but... maybe there's a connection, somehow."

He downs the rest of what's in his mug and hastily sets it on the table, grabbing a hotel paper pad and pencil and scribbling something down. Don't bother asking, just a note for himself for later. "So, two months. And you've been in some...other universe before this, and... after Dallas?" He wants to make sure he has the timeline right in his head.

"Maybe it's the moon," Luther says thoughtfully aloud, and then at the predictable Look™ from Five (not everything has to do with the moon, Luther!!), he adds defensively, "Monthly cadence. It could be a really, really messed-up lunar cycle, maybe."

He leans against the other side of the kitchenette, a counter separating him and Allison, as he mulls over how best to answer Five's actual question. How to explain all their time spent in that other universe? (Time both turbulent, but also— surprisingly peaceful. It had been good. He'd felt guilty about how much he hadn't even minded being there.)

"Both before Dallas, and after," he says, although that doesn't explain much. He shoots a look at Allison, a silent imploring for Number Three to find a better way of laying it all out. They'd been there almost two years. The timelines have gotten so far out of sync.

Allison suppresses most of her reaction to Luther's sudden potential connection of things to the moon, too, but she doesn't miss his reticent uncertainty about how to handle the rest of it. Which is basically a spotlight that begs for some help. A look from Luther asking for her help coinciding with that lingered pause after his unclear words make her thought only a step ahead of his.

"David's calling it imPort Earth," Allison starts as the byline for scooping up the reigns. "We -- all of us," pauses, adds, with a gesture in the air, a vague circle with her hand. The three of them. The seven. (Ben.) "We ended up there after you tried to teleport us from the concert hall into the past. For years."

"Then, somehow, we still ended up scattered in Dallas. Then, back there, again, after we tried to leave Dallas." It was like being someone's yo-yo. Everything kept pushing forward and pulling back, but always with more time on this side than that.

Five doesn't suppress anything about his reaction. His eyes roll and he groans, "Ohmygod, Luther, please find something else to obsess over for the next three decades."

Both. Sure, why not? Since it's right there, he sinks down onto the edge of the bed, leaning over his knees as he listens to what Allison explains. Strange, actually. Luther was usually the one he'd assume for a debrief, but he supposes Allison might be better at not getting caught up in unnecessary details.

"That..." he shakes his head a little, trying to process it. The words make sense, but the rest doesn't. "You were never gone." A beat and his face scrunches. "I mean– you were, but...not... I mean, once I found all of you, you never..." He squints and grabs the pad of paper again, flipping to a blank piece, where he draws a rough diagram.

"These lines," he points to the first ~~(blue)~~ set he'd drawn. "are you guys going back and forth from home, to the other world, back home, and moving forward from the timejump to the 60s and back to the other world, then here–" He points to the ~~(green)~~ circle that merges their imPort trip and the 60s with a different ~~(red)~~ line. "Here is where you're simultaneously in the 60s like you remember, and in this place at the same time," He points again to yet a different ~~(red)~~ line, "Which means even though we're all here, we're also here," he points to the last ~~(purple)~~ line. "doing... whatever comes next in our proper timeline, back home."

He abandons the diagram and lets them puzzle over it themselves and instead starts to pace. "It was bad enough when I was in the same timeline as my older self, if we were to all end up in the same timeline as our alternate selves?" He lets out a laugh, but it's mirthless and bitter. "I can't possibly stress the ramifications this could potentially have if a single thing goes wrong in us getting home."

Which means he needs a lot of paper, and a lot of time, to figure this out exactly. And maybe a second set of eyes. David is intent on getting his people home, and Allison and Luther seem to know him. It isn't a reason to trust him, but it is a step in the right direction. Just in case. His mind is whirling with equations to start looking at already.

Edited 2022-03-13 03:11 (UTC)

Luther leans closer and stares at the illustration as it's brandished at them. He makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat and sets the coffee aside, reaching for a thick black-tipped marker to annotate it further — but then he cocks his head, squinting a little closer at the arrows as he tries to parse them.

"Actually, that's... a pretty accurate diagram, yeah." It seems all Luther needed to explain it all along was visual aids. "You've got it. Although if it's any consolation, in all these jumps we never encountered duplicates. We were never actually in the same place at the same time as ourselves. It's more like... our consciousnesses transferred across universes into our own bodies, maybe. So paradox psychosis didn't come up."

And, oh, he remembers that psychosis far too well.

But then a thought occurs to him and he reaches for that marker after all. "If you want to get really technical about it," he starts scribbling on the paper, adding some extra annotations, and then slides it back across the counter towards where Five is frantically pacing. Then: "Huh. Allison, apparently we've done this nine times."

Allison doesn't ever happen to understand everything that comes out of Five's mouth when he gets to like his. She didn't when she was the same age as him, and that she's even further removed from that; even with appearances being as deceiving as they are, she won't pretend it makes the slightest bit more sense now. She can line up the what-when, but that doesn't make it sense.

He still sounds like a raving lunatic, and she still has to live with it all.

The only thing she's sure of as Luther and Five pass the page with the scribbles back and forth is that she'd much rather have a drink than coffee with this conversation. She doesn't move to get one, but the urge is permanently wedged into the answerless topic. Luther's actualizing it into a number just nettles a jab too hard, even though he likes precise facts, numbers, and it's not against her.

"And yet still here we are. Stuck. Again." Fourth place. Fifth place. Do the numbers actually count?
They're so far off the path it's a wonder that they believe in much other than the woods now.

“Well, at least there’s that.” Is isn’t much to give him hope, but it’s a tiny sliver of something almost like it. He rips the paper off the counter and looks at the edits Luther has made. “Jesus, you went to pocket dimensions inside a parallel universe on top of all of the back and forth?” He scoffs and shakes his head, tossing the paper down— it might just float to the ground if no one else bothers to stop it.

Stuck.

Again.

Allison’s words wedge like a blade between his ribs. They are only a little above a throwaway commentary on her annoyance at the universe. A rightful and earned one, because it all keeps keeping her from her daughter and he’s not stupid, it’s that more than anything else she hates about it all that brings the venom into her voice. But they strike Five sharply in a place he doesn’t dare allow his siblings to see.

”You don’t know what being stuck even is,” he doesn’t say.

”Better stuck than dead,” he swallows down.

He feels it in his chest, like his ribs are the only thing holding back a tsunami wave, like the cold press of steel against his throat, but this time it’s coming from the inside, pressing out.

His face never betrays a second of what’s beneath the surface. He turns sharply on his heel to look at the pair of them again. “She’s right. How we got here isn’t important, at least not right now—“ he puts nothing above suddenly mattering in the right set of equations later, “what matters is we don’t belong here… and I’m gonna find a way out of here for us.”

He could have left it there, ended on an uplifting note, but that’s not really who Number Five is. “And it shouldn’t take me as long as it did before because I’ve already done it, and I know what I did wrong.” He shoves a hand through his hair, “But it has to be tweaked because now it isn’t just a time issue, but an inter-dimensional one.” He doesn't feel like he has to spell out how much that changes everything or how it amplifies the chances of something going wrong.

The paper flutters to the floor, and Luther predictably stoops down to pick it up — stop littering their hotel room, Five — and he transfers it to the wastebin. The look that he shoots his brother, then, is a little doubtful, a little pitying, a little wearily fond.

That's what you said before, he thinks, but doesn't say.

"You're gonna personally fix it. People have been stranded across multiverses for literal years, but you, out of everyone, are gonna be the one to fix it," he repeats. The comment isn't as snide or cutting as it would've been coming out of Diego's mouth, but he sounds skeptical nonetheless.

He's probably grown too tired and complacent. Too comfortable. All of this is like a familiar hamster wheel, which they've been over again and again. Luther and Five have been down this time travel theorising rabbit hole before, back in Dallas; Luther and Allison have been trapped in these worlds for literal years by now.

And even then, while Luther doesn't catch the sudden sharp twinge buried deep in Five's non-reaction (not a clenched jaw, not a blink, not a ripple on the surface), but he does notice Allison's. That flat voice, her unhappiness, is like a rusty saw whittling away at his nerves. A thorn in his paw. If it weren't for Allison and Claire, Luther would probably be fine staying here. Somewhere without the long shadow of the Umbrella Academy's fame and his childhood reputation; somewhere without a Reginald Hargreeves; somewhere they didn't end the world; somewhere he could just be with his family, end of.

(But there's Allison. And Claire.)

Allison, indifferently unaware of the suppositions being made about her by everyone else in the room, added just as easily, "You'll probably find there's a long line of people who think that, too. Just watch the Network."

Beat. "OurPowers. Whatever it is."

It sounds so stupid calling it that.

"If it's anything like the one from where Luther and I were a month ago, then people will start up conversations with new ideas about how to try and get around it all the time." A small half-roll of her eyes followed with the tilt of her head the same following direction. "And everything else. Be prepared to basically watch everyone drop everything about themselves on it without much filter most of the time."

"And what should I be doing, Luther? Sitting back and pretending I'm okay with it? Treat it like a vacation? Sign up for their Deluxe Superhero Package?" he scoffs and shakes his head.

He turns his attention back to Allison. "Really? Well, at least it'll make info-gathering easy," he says with a shrug.

Just live your life, Luther thinks and almost says, but he bites back the words at the last moment. "Depends on what's in the Deluxe Superhero Package," he says instead, a dry ghost of a sense of humour. But he goes back for his coffee, and then sits down at the little dining table with a little grunt. His whole body feels heavy, tired.

"You're right, though. It's all worth a try." He's lost some of the shine on his motivational speeches, but he tries to put a gloss on it now. At least Five scribbling his equations is one way to keep busy, and avoid falling into that trap of listless helplessness. But there is one thing which still piques his curiosity about his brother's arrival—

"Did you really just come from Dallas? The fight in the snow?" he asks, intrigued. "That was like... eight months ago for me and Allison." He shakes his head. "Time travel's weird. I'm never over it."

Allison knows that tone. The pause that comes before it.

The one thing she and Luther most disagree on. His readiness both pre- and post- Dallas to simply settle down on one of these worlds and forget what was behind them. Luther is fine staying here. But she isn't. There are at least 8 billion reasons for it. Sure, maybe there is one that sticks out more for her, but even the chance to live here with Claire wouldn't be a good enough reason to leave their planet a fireball of incinerated corpses stripped of all life in seconds because of them.

That that alone isn't a good enough reason for him. Well. It's ... something.

Maybe it matters more to her because, even if she can't seem to stop making the same mistakes over and over, she's done pretending they aren't there. Maybe it matters because she had to carry it every mute day in Dallas for months. The cost of both overreacting to the return of Vanya's powers and being ignored by all her family in handling Vanya like a villain and not their sister. Maybe it was the therapy. Civil rights activism. Being married, twice. A parent.

Are you still a parent if your child died four years ago?

The voice of well-worn rut of a question
(never asked for two years)
whispers familiarly.

It's something, and it does sit between in the space between them.
Something that can't be solved so long as the doors between worlds are closed.

Allison stayed where she was leaning, looking to Five for the answers to Luther's questions.

"Idiot," he snaps in an almost knee-jerk reaction to that dry attempt at humor.

He snatches up a pad of paper and a pencil and flops back on the bed, pad against a drawn-up knee, scribbling only Five and God knew what on that paper. "Yes, we were supposed to be going home. Everything was supposed to be set right again. Instead," his face scrunches up in his annoyance and he pauses in his scribbles long enough to glance up and spread his hands in presentation, "here I am."

The insult just glances off Luther's shoulder, and he barely even notices it. They've all called each other worse. Idiot is practically a term of endearment when it's coming from Five.

"You were close, though," Luther offers; a feeble kind of consolation, like the world's worst second-place prize, but he's trying to hold it up anyway. "You did successfully move us out of Dallas and that timeline. We just landed... somewhere else."

It's happened so many times now, and yet it could be so much worse. (He still remembers sleeping in an alley, his threadbare pockets empty, his rumpled clothes reeking from weeks on the street, climbing off a bus—)

"This one's not bad, compared to Dallas. At least we're not homeless. There's a support network. And this." He waves a hand, gesturing to the suite around them.

Five's TL

Balthier

David

Laurie

Harry

Edited 2022-03-12 20:47 (UTC)

Gwen - Multiverse/timeline chatter

Venom - ???

Alina - Ditching school + finding a way home

Stephen - A call for help and a cast of doubt on the concept of 'magic'

Harry - A very sad birthday post. Starts anon, but Five puts it together after a point.

Josh - A discussion of the normalcy of "metas" in other worlds + the reception of them.

Eddie - Defining dreams.

Offering tutoring services.

Edited 2022-03-29 18:43 (UTC)

[Please keep all general threads under here!]

Notes in Five's handwriting litter the house. On the kitchen table. On the end table by the couch. Pinned to the corkboard they use to let each other know if something is going to keep them away from home later than usual. All of the notes are in various stages of completion, some clearly abandoned part-way through, equations left open with no solution. Others with heavy scratches through sections of equations and tiny corrections scrawled in place above. Still others were harder to discern either way if they were useful or trash. There are envelopes with diagrams on them, newspapers with vague half-notes scrawled in corners, and quantum physics books with things noted in the margins.

His own room is an absolute ruin of post-its stuck to every flat surface that could hold them and notes pinned directly into the wall. One of the walls he'd completely re-done in chalkboard paint, and it held what seemed to be the most certain or concrete parts of what he was doing with his days.

Five isn't typically a messy person, but this desire to find the way home easily set up camp in him. Clawed its way in and burrowed into an empty space in the cage of his chest. It was a pet project at first. Something to pass time.

Then Luther disappeared on them.

His efforts doubled.

Tripled.

He'd even gone to the network to get other people's ideas on it. Only a few he'd actually shared anything important with– Spock, who definitely knew what the hell he was talking about, and Peter, who knew less of the technical bits, but had practical dealings with the concepts Five needed to toy with– but ideas had gotten tossed around. More notes made. More books bought. More science journals borrowed from libraries.

Though not many knew him at all– Five had never been great at socializing– if people around here knew him for anything, it was as the guy that was obsessed with finding a way home. What had started as an idle time-passing project had quickly become... his entire focus, purpose, and reason for being. It was such an easy cliff to fall back over, all too reminiscent of how he'd spent so, so many years of his life before The Handler had found him that fateful day so long ago.

Maybe it was all pointless. Maybe all the effort was futile. Maybe it would never work, because of the nature of how things worked in this place. In other universes. Like the one Allison and Luther had told him they'd been in before this one. But he didn't know what else to do. He couldn't do anything else. Fixing things. Finding a way back. Those were all he knew how to do anymore.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

{This world is not made for you

{March 2022

{Non-Event Threads

{Starting fires wherever we go » Diadem Hotel » Allison + Luther

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{Confluence #3 - DO NOT REPLY

{Network - DO NOT REPLY

{May 2022

{Non-Event Threads

{Fear and Loathing in Excelsior - DO NOT REPLY

{Network - DO NOT REPLY

{June 2022

{Non-Event Threads

{Looking everyday for a way past this wall » Allison