▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅

❛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘ. ᴘᴀʀᴋᴇʀ ᴇғғᴇᴄᴛ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ᴀᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇs ɪɴ
ʙᴀʙʏsɪᴛᴛɪɴɢ ꒱


❝THAT'S WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
 FOR US TO REMIND OUR FAMILY
THAT WE LOVE THEM, EVEN IF
THEY DON'T KNOW HOW
TO SHOW IT TO US BACK  ❞

▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅

[ the fourth year ]

"God, Al," Diego sighed, resting his elbow on the bar top as he rubbed his forehead, "some advice? Never have kids. Or get married. You'll never catch a break."

Alexa frowned at her brother's complaint, both because she knew it wasn't true and the fact he knew that's exactly what she wanted. "Shut up, Go-Go. I know you love Gracie and Coco and Ronnie. You'd kill for them if they were in danger. And Lila, though she can take care of herself."

"Can't you commiserate with me?" he grumbled, taking a swig of his beer. "Of course I love my kids but they can be real pain in the asses sometimes. Lila too, for that matter."

"Well no, I can't 'commiserate with you," the blonde retorted primly, "seeing as how I haven't got a spouse or children."

He cast her a sidelong glance, not moving his head from where it rested on his hand. "That old geezer still hasn't proposed to you? From the way he acts around you I thought it would've been a done deal."

She sighed, noting the bitterness in his tone. "No, he hasn't, but that's okay. As long as we're together that's all I care about. What I want to know is why you don't like us together." She paused, noticing the defiance in his eyes as he straightened to refute it, and she held up a hand to stop his protest. "Don't deny it, Diego. You're not exactly. . . friendly when all three of us are together."

"Yeah, well, maybe I just don't like you."

"Uh-huh," Alexa replied, not at all convinced. "Okay, let's say it is Five. What do you have against him?"

Diego grunted. "He hasn't exactly got the best track record for keeping promises, now does he? First he abandons us— you— at the Academy to prove to dad that he's got a stick up his ass. Then, after he comes back, it was only for a week before he dumped us in the sixties. In the Sparrow timeline, he claimed 'everything was rainbows and butterflies' and then the world collapsed around us like Lila's attempts at assembling an IKEA shelf. Are you really willing to let him have the ability to break your heart for a fourth time?"

Alexa bristled at her brother's accusation. Leaning forward on her stool, she pointed a finger at him. "Hey— the apocalypses weren't his fault. You know that. He never asked to be stuck in the future or abandon his family. Besides, why do you care so much? I happen to remember that you had a very different response to my reaction to him leaving the first time. It was something along the lines of 'we all have our own traumas. Suck it up 'cause you're not special.'"

To his credit, the older man looked a little guilty. In a low voice so quiet it almost couldn't be heard over the noise of the bar, he mumbled, "yeah. I was really angry back then."

"You're angry now," she pointed out bluntly, though she smiled to soften her words. "What's really the problem, Diego?"

"I don't know how you two are so fucking perfect all the time," he admitted reluctantly. "It's disgusting."

Alexa didn't reply for a moment, thinking about what her brother didn't know. He didn't see Five struggling at adapt to normal life. He didn't see the times Five got stuck in his own head, either in broad daylight or waking up from a nightmare. He didn't know about how she sometimes couldn't differentiate between the past and the present, oscillating between the two like a demented yo-yo. Finally, she settled on saying: "that's because we're there for each other. We talk things out— Five doesn't like that part very much, but. . ." She trailed off, smirking slightly. "We make. . . concessions."

"Ugh, gross," Diego huffed, making a face. To rid himself of that particular, unwanted image, he took another sip of his beer. "You better be careful with those concessions because—" He snapped his fingers. "—just like that you can have a kid and the magic is gone. I haven't been alone with Lila since. . . God, I don't even know when."

She squinted at him. "You don't have a babysitter?"

He scoffed. "You think we could afford one? A cop is a step up from a glorified janitor, but it's not about to land me a penthouse suite. We can barely manage the mortgage, bills, utilities, groceries. . ." He sighed. "When it was just Gracie, it wasn't too bad. But with three kids under five, I've started to miss the good old days. The back-alley fights. Making sure justice is delivered. Keeping people safe."

The blonde considered his words. She knew about Diego's vigilantism from the original 2019 timeline. She'd made sure to follow news reports about a masked 'hero' to ensure that he wasn't getting himself into too much trouble. She knew that, during the time he'd been active, there had been less crime, an uptick of predators being put into prison and fewer civilian murders. He'd been good at vigilantism. Lila probably was too, having been an assassin for most of her life. While she'd never been one for unnecessary violence, Alexa could see why he would miss that sort of life, especially being a cop with a pencil-pushing position.

"How about this, then," she began, an idea forming in her mind. "I'll be your babysitter, and you don't have to pay me a cent."

Diego's eyes narrowed suspiciously at the to-good-to-be-true offer. For all her altruism, Alexa was still a Hargreeves, and that meant she had an ulterior, self-serving motive for this suggestion. "What's the catch?"

She smiled cryptically at him and held up three fingers. Ticking down one each time she spoke, she informed him: "one— you use the time with Lila to work out your marriage problems. Two— this is not meant to be an escape from your kids, merely a break— and there is a difference. Three— don't come home with blood all over you. The kids don't need to see that until they have to."

☂︎ ☂︎ ☂︎

On the first night of their arrangement, Alexa brought Five along, much to his dismay. He would be the first to admit that he was one of the kids' more detached uncles. He didn't really spend any time with them; their crying irritated his ears and their high-pitched voices grated on him. It was best if he kept his distance from them so he wouldn't ruin their childhood in some way, which would result in him receiving nasty looks from his siblings.

People always said that it was different with your own kids and they were right, sort of. While his nieces and nephew weren't his by blood, he was more careful— more afraid of them than he was around children he didn't know. Or, more accurately, he was afraid of himself around them. Alexa— and to some extent, Luther— knew his history. They knew he'd been an assassin. The Commission hadn't spared anyone; not an old man who'd retired a week ago nor a five-month-old baby. He'd killed kids like Claire, Grace, Coco and Ronnie without thinking twice about it. He was terrified that that old killer instinct would come back and he'd snap, so it was best that he kept his distance.

When they'd arrived at Diego and Lila's, he kept to himself. As Alexa embraced their family, he stood with his back against the door and his hands in his pockets, a book tucked under one arm. Lila noticed him lingering off to the side and came over to him with an impish smirk. Roughly wrapping an arm around his shoulders so that he had to stoop slightly, she huffed: "stop standing in the corner like a pervert and greet us properly, old man."

He wiggled free of her embrace, glaring at her heatedly. To his relief, Diego didn't move to give him the same 'affectionate' greeting, instead nodding his head jerkily towards the teen. Lila was unexpectedly upset at the thought of leaving her children for even just a few hours and held on to them tearfully. Her husband pried her away from them with gentle force. "We'll see them again before midnight," he reminded her gruffly. "Al will take good care of them."

Gathering her composure, the brunette nodded, straightening to put on a brave face— the kids could tell that their mother was worried about the evening ahead; Gracie's brown eyes were already watching her with concern. She smiled at her eldest daughter. "Don't worry, Gracie. Your dad's right— Auntie Al will take good care of you." She turned to the blonde. "Gracie likes it when you read to her before bed. The twins are, well, twins, so they fight— try not to let them do that. The doctor's number is on the fridge—"

Alexa laid her hand reassuringly on her sister-in-law's arm. "Lila, I've got this. Go on."

She nodded and, taking Diego's arm, they went out into the night, their dark clothes helping them blend in. Turning away from the door, Alexa smiled brightly at the anxious-looking kids. Clapping her hands, she announced: "Right! We've got a fun night ahead of us! Who's ready to eat ice cream for dinner?"

--

As the night wore on, Five was able to separate himself from the fray and find solitude in one of the upstairs bedrooms. He was pretty sure it was the girls' room if the unicorns and tiaras were anything to go by, but he wasn't so stereotypical that he thought it couldn't be Ronnie's room. He sat in the armchair that was nestled in the corner and opened his book. A couple comfortable hours passed that way. Then, he felt a presence in the room.

His natural instincts kicked in at the slightest disturbance. Although his eyes remained on the page in front of him, his ears strained to hear the swish, swish of socked feet on wood. Little footsteps were coming this way. Please don't come in here, he chanted to himself. Please don't come in here. When had the universe ever cared about what he wanted?

Shortly after he'd noticed the noise, Grace stood in the doorway. Sure enough, her feet were clad in yellow socks with chicks on them. Her brown hair was pulled into two braids and her chocolate eyes observed him with interest. "You're in my room, Uncle Five."

He arched a brow. "Do you have a problem with that?"

The girl shook her head. "Why're you up here?"

"I like the quiet," Five replied pointedly. He noticed that, when she wasn't talking, she stuck her thumb in her mouth. He nodded to the action. "Don't do that. You'll mess up your teeth."

"Do what?"

"Suck your thumb. It'll cause a lot of health problems." After Grace had been born, Alexa had forced him to read a few parenting books so he could be a 'well-adjusted family member' (she'd hoped it would give him more confidence, though she hadn't told him that. It hadn't.)

"I don't care." But Grace took her thumb out of her mouth, wiped it on her shirt and left her arm loose by her side. She continued to stare at him.

Sighing at his lost alone time, he asked, "did you need something?"

Grace— and the other kids, though they were a bit too young for talking— were more nervous around their standoffish uncle. She was a curious sort of child, though, and had both her parents' stubbornness and knack for getting in trouble. She wanted to know more about her dad's strange brother. Since he hadn't immediately yelled at her to get out of the room, she took a few shuffling steps closer to him. "What are you reading?"

He showed her the title and she wrinkled her nose at its scholarliness. "Does it have pictures?"

Five grinned slightly. "Actually, yeah."

Even more intrigued, Grace gathered her courage to move ever closer, now near enough that she leaned against the arm of the chair and looked at the book, her head titled sideways. Disappointed by what she'd found, she announced: "there's no color. That's boring. And you're weird."

He huffed, unwillingly amused and impressed by her straightforwardness. He always appreciated someone who didn't mince their words. "Thanks for that assessment, kid." Sarcastically, he added, "Have I answered enough of your questions? Can I get back to my book now?"

"Okay," she agreed. But rather than leave, she wiggled into the nonexistent space next to him.

"Hey! Hey, what do you think you're doing?" he protested. "Go back downstairs to your aunt."

In a move that she had perfected with her father, Grace turned her warm, brown eyes on the teen next to her, widening them into a look of pure innocence. "I don't wanna go back downstairs. Can I stay here with you?"

Five glared— though not as fierce as if he'd directed the expression at his siblings— at her, but she met his gaze unflinchingly. "Fine," he grumbled. "But I'm not going to read to you."

They fell into silence. Grace quickly lost interest in the advanced vocabulary that the novel used and looked around her room instead. Her legs wiggled against him as she moved her feet next to him. The teen became acutely aware of her presence. The warmth of her small body pressed against his. How fragile she was, her tiny fingers a fraction the size of his own— her thumb had gone back into her mouth, too.

He tried not to let it, but Five couldn't control when the past came back to haunt him. He wasn't sitting in a bright pink-and-purple eyesore of a room anymore. It was still a bedroom, though darkened as the child to whom it belonged to was asleep. The weight of the gun in his hand. The spatter of blood against his clothes, his white, collared shirt stained red. He hadn't kept track of the number of children he'd killed over the years but it was enough to get him sent straight to the deepest pits of hell. Even if he'd just killed one child, he would've been sent there, but he'd killed dozens, if not more, all to get back to his family.

He'd told himself that he didn't have a choice. If there was another way, he would've taken it. But that didn't erase the fact that he was a child-killer. He couldn't even allow himself to feel regret for taking a life before it had even begun. If he attached any emotions to his job, it would kill him. There were times— his darkest times— where he thought he'd be better off dead. Why should he have the right to live when he'd snuffed out so many young lives?

Alexa didn't know about the children. She might've guessed it from his answer after Luther inquired about a moral code. We took out anyone who messed with the timeline. Would she still want to be with him if she knew? The answer was no, because no one in their right mind would want to be with a sick, child-killing psycho.

Sometimes, he believed that he wasn't worthy of love at all; if he was alone then he couldn't hurt anyone. He didn't deserve his girlfriend, whose kind heart and warmth was a source of comfort. He didn't deserve to have his little niece sitting next to him, so trustingly vulnerable when, in one quick movement, he could break her neck. He shouldn't be alone with kids. He'd already insisted that he wasn't cut out to be an uncle but his girlfriend's pleas had been too hard to resist and she'd drawn him in. Now, if anything happened, it would be her fault—

—No, he corrected himself. It's my fault. It's always my fault. He remembered the bright red blood that had stained his hands. The cries of the parents at the discovery of their dead child when he'd made the mistake of lingering.

His hands tightened around the edges of his book, allowing the hardcover to bite into his palms. Refusing to look at the girl next to him, he snapped: "get out."

She blinked owlishly up at him. "Why?"

"Get. Out." When she continued to look at him in confusion, he stood up sharply and whirled on her. Pointing at the door, he yelled: "GET OUT!"

Grace flinched at his tone— a reminder of all the times her parents had raised their voices at each other— and sprang to her feet as if her seat was on fire. Her brown eyes no longer looked at him, full of trust; now they held fear. Good, he thought savagely. That's how it's supposed to be. She scrambled away from him, not once turning her back on the teen until she was well into the hallway.

The girl raced down the stairs, back towards safety, back towards her aunt who never lost her temper. Coco and Ronnie were giggling in the bright, golden light of the living room. Alexa looked up from where she was playing with them on the floor, her expression cheerful until the moment she caught Gracie's eyes. "Gracie, there you are! We were just about to—"

She trailed off, her face becoming worried as she took in the distraught girl. Holding out her arms, she asked, "Gracie, what's wrong? Where did you go?"

While she willingly went to sit in her aunt's lap, even going so far as to cuddle against her chest, the brunette shook her head at the older girl's questions. But upon seeing her niece sniffling and the tears shining in her eyes, Alexa wouldn't let the matter go so easily. She smoothed back the child's hair reassuringly. "What's the matter, darling?"

As much as she wanted to tell her aunt, Grace was old enough to know what happened when adults got mad at each other. They fought. Loudly. Her parents did that, yelling at each other enough so that she woke up. She always pretended to be asleep when they came to check on her but she wasn't, really. She didn't want the same thing to happen to her aunt and uncle. Much like Grace, though, Alexa's pleading expression generally made people cave. Finally, her niece whispered, "I don't want you to get mad."

"I won't get mad," the blonde promised immediately. "I don't like yelling at people. It's scary, right?"

Grace nodded, her thumb once more in her mouth. She mumbled around it: "I don't want you and Uncle Five to fight."

The teen sighed, already beginning to figure out the situation. "We won't fight," she told the girl. "We talk things out. Why don't you tell me what happened, then I can show you another way for people to handle a disagreement that doesn't involve shouting?"

After another sniffle, the brunette acquiesced, telling her everything in a shaky voice. "And. . . and then he yelled at me, even though I was being good. And his book was so boring, too! He was just so mad. . ."

Alexa didn't respond right away as she tried to figure out the best way to comfort her niece. "Here's the thing, Gracie. Your Uncle Five has had a very hard life. He went a long time without love so he forgets what it's like to care about someone. It's like when your mom and dad fight: they still love each other, even when they're angry. That's why it's important for us to remind our family that we love them, even if they don't know how to show it to us back."

The brunette listened quietly to her and seemed to understand what she was saying. "So. . . Uncle Five doesn't feel good? You're s'posed to make cards for people to feel better. Can we make him one?"

"Of course! I think that's a wonderful idea."

--

When Diego and Lila return home later that night, their injuries bandaged but happier than they've been in a long time, the kids are still awake. They couldn't even bring themselves to be mad about it since it was their first night without either of their parents. There is another round of hugs as the teens headed for the door, but Five— oh, Five; Alexa's heart squeezed with sympathy— stood on the outskirts again, hoping to blend into the shadows. Gracie wouldn't let him get away that easily.

She shuffled up to him, a new nervousness to her step. He avoided looking directly at her and stared at the floor instead. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her hold out a piece of paper. It was ridiculously colored with glitter and stickers all over the front. (He hated glitter.) She held it out to him.

Feeling his brother's watchful gaze, Five knew better than to ignore the presentation. He took it from her and opened the folded page. In large, childish script were the (very misspelled) words: 'WE LUV U!' and it was signed by Grace, Coco, Ronnie and Alexa (his girlfriend had obviously written the twins' names.)

He swallowed, feeling his throat tighten at the simple words. Coughing to clear it, he managed to get out: "yeah. . . thanks, kid."

Thankfully, no one made mention of the card as they left the house. Five made use of the darkness— and the fact that Alexa walked ahead of him— to fold the card into a quarter of its size. He tucked it into the left side of his suit jacket, right above his heart. He would take it out and look at it whenever he needed the reminder that his family did, in fact, love him.

☂︎ ☂︎ ☂︎

[ the sixth year ]

Five has gotten better at interacting with his niblings over time. There were still moments when he felt like he didn't deserve all the good things that had come into his life, but they were fewer and far between now. Grace was, undoubtedly, his favorite niece. Everyone knew this. All it took was for her big, brown eyes to widen at him as she stuck her lower lip out into a pout and he would cave. Diego ragged on him for turning into a 'softy,' for which Five promptly threatened to punch him in the throat. He still felt awkward being an uncle, though, no matter how much he loved the kids (though he would never admit to having such feelings, at least in the presence of his siblings.) He preferred to let Alexa take on the main role of babysitting while he acted as chauffer to make sure she got to and from their brother's place safely.

Sometimes, however, she was able to rope him in to coming inside with her. He grumbled and complained but followed her in anyway. Five spent his time up in Gracie's room like he usually did, only coming down for dinner. This time once their meal was over, Alexa was busy setting up the kids with a calmer, coloring activity before bed when the phone rang. Rising swiftly to her feet, she announced: "that'll be Derek. I asked him to call me here if he found out anything interesting. Fi, can you watch the kids while I talk to him?"

The young man's eyes widened with slight panic. "Lexa, you know I'm no good with kids!" She ignored his protests and headed for the kitchen where the phone was. He tried to rush after her, his words coming in out in a burst of: "please-don't-leave-me-alone-with—"

She picked up the receiver and cradled it to her ear. Smiling reassuringly at him— and gesturing for him to return to their niblings— she greeted her friend, "Derek! What's up?"

Yet again muttering words of complaint to himself (who does she think she is? Kiss a girl one time and she suddenly thinks she's the boss! Why is she like this?) he returned to the dining room. Coco and Ronnie seemed to not have noticed his distress as they argued over who could use the red crayon first, but Grace was watching him with a too-intelligent gleam in her eyes. Sticking out her lower lip, she asked in a quavering voice, "you don't want to spend time with us, Uncle Five?"

"No! No, that's not it," he replied hurriedly, glancing over his shoulder to see Alexa still on the phone, her back turned towards them. He sighed; clearly she wouldn't be coming back anytime soon. When he faced the girl again, he saw the bright shine of tears in her eyes. Shit, he thought self-deprecatingly, nice going, idiot. You made your niece cry. What about trying to do better around kids, huh? "Fine, fine. I'll sit with you— just, please don't cry. And don't expect me to use glitter, either."

Almost at once, Grace's expression shifted into a beaming smile like she'd never been sad at all. She got that from Lila— being a master manipulator. Five knew he'd been suckered in but since no one was around to see, he couldn't bring himself to care as he sat down on cushion next to her. As became aware of their uncle's presence, Coco and Ronnie stopped fighting, suddenly not at all interested in the red crayon. He gave them an uncomfortable smile. "Yeah. . . hey, kids."

Ronnie blinked at him once, then shoved his paper towards his uncle. "Rai-bow!"

Five looked down and saw something that resembled a rainbow, but only vaguely in its shape. The colors were all wrong; the kid had even used black. "No it's not," he corrected the boy immediately, his need to always be right kicking in. "That's an abomination. Rainbows are ROY-G-BIV, and the B doesn't stand for 'black.'"

Although his nephew didn't understand the word 'abomination' or the acronym, he definitely picked up on his uncle's condescending tone. He promptly burst into tears.

"Good going, Uncle Five," Grace commented, giving him a hard time just like Diego would. She even had her father's 'are-you-stupid' look down pat. "You're supposed to say it looks nice."

"But it doesn't look nice! You don't get awards for mediocracy," Five argued over the boy's cries.

Grace rolled her eyes— something she'd picked up from Claire's teenage attitude— and left her nicely-colored in butterfly to go and comfort her brother. She gave him a reassuring hug. "'S okay, Ron-Ron. You know Uncle Five can be a meanie. He's a real ass."

The brunet gave her an insulted look. "First of all, I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to use that language, young lady. And second, no, I'm not!"

His niece shrugged. "That's what daddy calls you all the time. And I know worse words than that. Mommy taught me; I'm not s'posed to let daddy know that I know them." She grinned. "But daddy also taught me the bad words and I'm not s'posed to tell mommy."

"That's great," he replied flatly. "But what are we going to do about him?" Five gestured to the still-crying boy.

Grace— whom Alexa had already told of her plan to help Five get more at ease with his younger family members— shrugged. "What do you think you should do? You're the one who upset him!"

He scoffed and glared down at the offending rainbow. "Okay, okay, how I about I help you fix this disgrace? We'll make one together and it will be better than this one."

Ronnie's wails lessened so that he was only sniffling, a few tears still trailing down his cheeks. "Promise?"

"Sure, kid. Just stop crying, okay?" Five got up with a grunt and nudged Grace out of the way to sit next to his nephew. Grabbing a clean piece of paper, he held out his hand. "Red."

"Red!" the boy echoed, snatching the crayon up before Coco could get her hands on it again.

"Yellow."

"Wellow!"

They went through the colors like that until a proper rainbow had been formed. Ronnie pressed against his uncle's side to study the picture. "What 'bout bwack?"

"There's no black in a rainbow. I told you that." But the boy's lower lip began to wobble again and Five groaned. "Fine, we'll put the freakin' black in the rainbow, okay? Happy?"

He added the dark color as a thin line underneath the purple. Ronnie shook his head and took the crayon from him, then scribbled a large void until the half-circle became a full one. Coco reached for the 'forbidden substance' and shoved it towards her brother. "Glitter! Makes da black look less sad."

"No glitter," the brunet said sternly.

Ronnie— who had been working on unscrewing the container, his tongue sticking out of his mouth— finally got the lid off. He pulled it off with too much force and sparkles went everywhere. "Oops."

--

"Yeah, yeah, everything going pretty well over here. Oh, wait, no— Ronnie just started crying," Alexa was saying to Derek, who hadn't called to talk about work in the slightest. It had been a part of her master plan to force Five into interacting with their niblings without help. Once she heard her nephew's cries, it took everything in her to not go comfort him immediately. Her boyfriend would have to work this out on his own.

"'Sounds like he's got everything handled,'" the platinum-haired man remarked dryly. "'I'm surprised you haven't gone over there to intervene. Maybe this was more of a test for you than it is for him.'"

They spoke for awhile longer until it was time to get the kids ready for bed. Five was relieved when Alexa was finally available to help, and his glare promised that she would, once again, be paying for this later. (But it was really his own fault— if he didn't make these 'punishments' so enjoyable, then she wouldn't have the incentive to press his buttons as much.) He tried to extract himself from the kids to get some alone time but Ronnie grabbed his hand before he could pull away.

"I wa' U'cle Five to put me to bed!"

Five went to object to the request, but Alexa had already scooped up Coco in one arm and was holding Grace's hand with her other one. "That's a great idea! We'll have a girls' night and you can have a guys' night!"

"That's a terrible idea," he hissed, too quietly for the children to hear. "I don't know the first thing about putting a kid to bed!"

"It's basically just what you do to put yourself to bed." She smirked at him. "Even the diapers, old man."

He flushed and glowered at her. "Only my mind is that old. My body can still make it through the night. You know that."

The blonde just giggled as she passed him on her way upstairs. "You are so easy to mess with."

--

After Alexa had read Gracie her required three books and sang Coco her favorite song, she tucked the girls in for the night. Shutting off the lights and closing the door behind her, she went downstairs to find her boyfriend but to her surprise, he wasn't there. Curious now, she went back up to Ronnie's room. The boy's door had been left open, so she cracked it wider to look in. The sight that greeted her melted her heart.

Five's back was to her as he sat on his nephew's bed, curled towards the boy. She couldn't see Ronnie but she pictured him tucked against her boyfriend's side. Five held his book open in his lap as he read from it, the softness of his voice lulling the child to sleep as he spoke in perfect Ancient Greek. "'Ví r᾽ ímen ek thalámoio, thýrin d᾽ epérysse koróni. . .'"

She watched them for a while, her expression soft and fond. She'd always known that Five had had it in him to be a good uncle, he just didn't believe in himself. (Which was funny, considering how arrogant he was about everything else in life.) He was only proving that he did have that capacity, from the patient way he read to the glitter that shone in his hair.

While she didn't want to put an end to the beautiful scene, she knew that Ronnie had long ago fallen asleep. Walking quietly over to the brunet, she put a gentle hand on his shoulder. Five stopped reading and turned to look up at her. She nodded to their nephew. "He's asleep, Fi. I don't think he heard the last dozen lines."

It took a minute for him to reply; he was captivated by the expression on her face. Alexa had looked at him like that before— it was how she always looked at him, with pure love and adoration— but he had usually done something to warrant those emotions. He'd just been reading to a kid, it hadn't been anything special! But apparently it was something that had struck her deeply. He felt the tips of his ears redden and warmth creep up his neck.

Since her current expression was turning his brain to mush, he quickly turned away to compose himself. In doing so, he saw that she was right: Ronnie was all but dead to the world. He carefully separated himself from the boy, giving him a final glance as he left the room for the night. They made their way downstairs where Alexa plopped down on one end of the couch. He sat on the other side— if he'd moved any closer, they would definitely end up doing something that wasn't kid-friendly— and opened his book, relieved that she wasn't making a big deal about the emotions she's expressed on her face.

A light weight landed in his lap moments later. He shot the blonde a stern look that said 'I am not a footstool.' Alexa, of course, ignored the warning. Instead, she stated, "Ronnie had the right idea. Read to me."

"You can read by yourself," he retorted. "And get your dirty feet off me."

She wiggled said feet. They were clad in purple, fuzzy socks that had a butterfly pattern on them. "My feet aren't dirty! Is it because you don't love my socks?"

Five didn't look up from his novel. "They're inanimate objects. I can't love them."

"Says the man who loved a mannequin for thirty years."

If anyone else had made that observation, they would've gotten a scowl and sharp words in response. As it was, Five only shook his head. "Touché." He paused, then admitted: "I don't like the color."

"Really?" Alexa asked, trying to study her socks from his perspective. "I always thought you'd look good in purple." She poked him with her big toe. "Now start reading, old man."

This time, he did shoot her a dirty look. "Poke me again and I'll push you off the couch."

Five did not push her off the couch. In fact, he began to do as she'd requested, his voice quiet as he started The Odyssey from the beginning again. One hand held his book open while the other rested against the bare skin of her calf. Alexa leaned her head against the back of the couch and closed her eyes. She imagined, just for a short time, that they were married, the twins and Grace were their kids, and everything was perfect.

A/n: whew, this was my longest chapter yet, I think! I wanted to do what St*v* Bl*ckm*n was too cowardly to do: give us scenes with Five and his niblings, and revisit the trauma the Hargreeves have gone through. This WAS supposed to be Five/Alexa/nibling interactions, but it turned into more of just a focus on Five because I wanted to show how his past would affect his relationships. Now that he hasn't got an apocalypse to stop, he can't run from his trauma anymore. We only got one (1) scene with Five experiencing PTSD in the whole series— even when he went back to the apocalypse on the subway, he was entirely unaffected! I was very disappointed about how they brushed over that, so you can be sure it will be different when I write that scene. 

The next chapter will be (mostly) fluffy again to make up for the heaviness in this one :) Which brings me to the other thing I wanted to say— I'm writing two Five Hargreeves ffs at the same time (I know some of you read both, so this will be a recycled joke) and they have VERY different vibes (with the exception of a few of the chapters in this book.) Here's a good representation of them: