Chapter 1
Little Vanya Hargreeves had never been special. Not once in her thirteen year old life could she recall being described as anything other than ordinary.
She was always stuck half a step behind. No special powers, like her siblings. Not as pretty as Allison. Not daring like Diego or Luther. Not charming like Klaus. Not nearly as smart as Five, not even as smart as Ben really. Just… ordinary.
But, Vanya did think she knew how to read her father, and she could tell he wouldn't budge on this. So, in a rare show of certainty, she shook her head at Five as he argued with their father about time travel for the third time that month. Vanya normally wouldn't be this decisive; breaking through the haze of numbness that permeated her every moment, both waking and sleeping, was no small task.
But Vanya didn't want Five to get in trouble. He was the nicest to her, even though she wouldn't exactly describe him as nice. He would sit with her while she tried to navigate her way on the violin - he said the music helped him work on whatever calculations he did in his book. They may not talk all that much, but he still spent more time with her than any of her other siblings and he didn't actively attack her like Diego, Luther and, occasionally, Allison did.
So, she tried to stop him. He glanced at her, their eyes meeting. Then promptly ignored her. Vanya knew enough from reading books to know that she should have been annoyed at that. Instead, she only felt a dull waver from the numbness that might have been something, but was definitely not intense enough to be called anger.
And then, suddenly, Five was running out of the room. Vanya instinctively knew that he was heading for the front door. A cold shard of ice struck her heart. Five was running away.
Her heartbeat sped up as she felt the closest thing to an emotion that she had in a long time. In fact, the last time she remembered feeling something this intense was the day she ran away. Around two years ago, when she was eleven, Vanya had been feeling depressed, had been having nightmares for the past few months about dark rooms and being alone and had had been made fun of particularly viscously by Luther, whilst none of her siblings came to the rescue. So, figuring no one would miss her that much, she had run away.
Diego, who she had been quite close with at the time, since the boy suffered from a nervousness that often earnt him their father's scorn, had found out about her plans, and decided to join her.
She didn't actually remember much about her punishment; she imagined it involved a lot of yelling and long lectures from her father and disappointed looks from Mr Pogo and Mum. No, the only she could accurately recall was the haze that followed her little escapade. She hadn't wanted to do much of anything since then. She wasn't as upset by her sibling's teasing and it didn't hurt as much when they dismissed her to play without her. Some days she didn't even want to play violin, and ever since her father had allowed her to touch the old instrument, it had been her favourite thing to do.
Vanya knew her father would not be easy on Five when he caught him. She didn't want to see him get punished. So, she ran out of the room after him.
She followed Five out of the door and caught a hold of the edge of his blazer just as he made his first jump.
Vanya faltered when the scenery around them suddenly changed, the sky brightening and the trees changing colour. In her shock, she allowed Five's blazer to slip through her fingers. He kept running on, apparently not feeling her behind him, and Vanya was forced to sprint to catch up, just managing to brush her fingers against his back in time to go with him on his next jump.
The cat and mouse game kept up for a few more jumps before Five abruptly stopped, causing her to crash into him.
He spun around, his eyes widening when he saw her.
"Vanya? What-"
He gave a small gasp. "This is your fault!"
Vanya frowned, looking around at the fallen buildings and wreckage around her.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice straining as her mood approached somewhere near distressed. "Where are we?"
Five scowled as he walked over to a newspaper stand.
"We should be exactly where we started. It's what time we are that you really should be wondering."
Vanya quietly thought that they must have gone a very long way into the future if they were in a time where the world looked like this.
Suddenly, Five jerked, sprinting off in what Vanya thought was the direction of the Academy. Or where the Academy used to be. Vanya frowned, suddenly worried as she jogged after him, but not before glancing at the newspaper that had so upset her brother. When her eyes flitted to the date, Vanya knew why he had been so panicked.
She started running after him, eventually finding him standing in the rubble of their home, staring at the bodies of most of their siblings.
Vanya walked up to them, studying each of their faces, which were so different, yet so similar.
The first she identified was Allison. As the only woman, it was easy. Her sister had only gotten more beautiful as she got older, and was wearing finely made clothes that must be designer. Vanya wondered if she fulfilled her dream of becoming a movie star, but silently thought that she would have. Number Three could do anything, or, more accurately, she could make anyone else do anything.
The next Vanya recognised was Klaus. He was the only one of her brothers that would dare wear eyeliner, and she couldn’t picture any of the others getting that many tattoos. He was still thin, and, from the bags under his eyes, not taking care of himself. She hoped that he hadn't fallen too far down the hole of addiction, but knew that it wasn't likely that it hadn't happened.
Luther caused her to pause, his body having grown to an almost grotesque point, his shoulders and arms weirdly shaped in a way that made Vanya uncomfortable.
She moved on quickly, her eyes landing on Diego. The sight of Number Two, clad in leather, a scar one side of his head, his body cold and lifeless deeply unsettled her. There was a time when he was, perhaps, her favourite sibling, maybe even closer to her than Five. Then, the events of two (or was it nineteen?) years ago had changed that. Some distant emotion tugged at her, causing her gut to twist. Her hand spasmed towards her pill bottle, downing a few, frowning as the remaining ones rattled loudly. Hopefully Five could get them back quickly. Then she wouldn't have to look at them.
There was only one missing…
"Where's Ben?" she asked, looking around.
Five didn't answer, a muscle in his jaw twitching as he continued to stare straight ahead.
"How could it have only been seventeen years?" she tried again.
"I don't know!" Five yelled back.
"Can we go back?"
Five just glared at her, storming off down the street. Vanya didn't follow him, instead sitting down and continued to stare hollowly at her fallen siblings.
Her brother returned ten minutes later, two shovels in his hands, one of which, he tossed unceremoniously at her.
"We should bury them."
Vanya hesitated, but eventually nodded, standing up.
That was the last time they would talk for almost four hours.
Once they had finished the morbid job, Five had snapped at her to leave him alone and had plonked himself down on a rock, pulling out a few pieces of paper and a pencil he had managed to scrounge up. That was when she started to consider that he might not know exactly how to get them back.
Vanya had wondered back a few metres towards their house, beginning to shift the rubble and see if anything from her childhood (which was simultaneously two hours and almost two decades ago) had survived.
When the sun finally went down, Vanya returned to the little space Five had carved out in the mess. She dragged over a few blankets and cans that she'd managed to find from a nearby building that hadn't completely collapsed (but there had been a tipped over vending machine with a body underneath and a knocked over fridge with an arm poking out, neither of which she had been brave enough to go near.
Five had gathered a few dozen unopened water bottles and started a fire during her absence and Vanya used a knife to open her can of soup, and slurp it down cold, too tired and hungry to bother heating it up. Five did the same with his own food, holding his paper to the light, squinting as he looked over his equations.
Vanya curled up in front of the fire, a few feet away from Five, who looked over at her, frowning.
"What are you doing?" he asked,
Vanya furrowed her eyebrows.
"Come over here," Five ordered. Vanya did so, still confused.
"We need to conserve body warmth," Five told her gruffly, and Vanya just shrugged.
He made sense, but she was mostly glad to have someone with her. It was too quiet here.
She noticed that Five didn't protest when she slung her arm around him.
----
On day three, Vanya ran out of her pills.
She was sweating and pale by the end of the time the sun went down.
On day four, she started throwing up and didn’t stop.
By day seven, thankfully, she was mostly recovered, and able to resume her self-given job, of trying to find something valuable in the remains of the Academy.
On day eight, Five decided to leave.
He said he was just going few jumps to see what the rest of the world looked like. Vanya actually argued with him over that one. They had their first fight. There was tears (from Vanya) and shouting (from Five), but in the end, he left.
He didn't return for over two hours, and, when he did, Vanya strode up to him, shoving him before he could even get his bearings.
"You said twenty minutes, you…you asshole!"
Five glared at her.
"Don't yell at me! This is your fault. You messed up my calculations. I would have been fine without you."
Vanya felt her cheeks heat up as tears stung her eyes. "Father said you weren't ready! You shouldn't have even attempted it! I was trying to stop you."
"What would you know? You don't have powers. You're not one of us! You're just normal."
Five looked like he immediately regretted his words. He took a half step forward, reaching out towards Vanya, but she drew back, a few tears falling down her face.
She backed up a few steps, her sadness quickly turning to anger as she stared at Five's face. It was like her hearing tunnelled, only focusing on Five's stuttering apologies, and how mad they made her. The sound rattled around her head, pushing in around her until she let out a furious, wordless, shout. Coincidentally, a building behind Five collapsed, the very foundations crumbling in a loud bang.
Five jumped, spinning around to face it, before he glanced back at her.
"We should probably think about moving," he suggested. "It might not be safe camping near this many old buildings."
He reached out to grab her arm, no doubt to start steering her to wherever he wanted to go, but Vanya tore out of his grip.
"No! You don't get to just brush that off!" she yelled.
"Out of all of them, I thought I could trust you," she accused, feeling her breathing speed up as she got more and more angry. "But you're just like them. You never-"
"Vanya!" Five shouted, interrupting her.
"What?"
But Five wasn't looking at her. Instead, his gaze was swivelling around them. Vanya followed his eyes, floating as she saw everything in their little camp floating about a foot off the ground.
"Vanya. I think you have powers."