Archive of Our Own

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They were in the living room, arguing over something dumb again. Allison was ignoring them all trying to read a book, Klaus’s leg tossed across her lap as she balanced her novel on his knees, him watched the argument like a tennis match. Vanya had given up on intervening a few minutes ago and was looking quietly annoyed at the whole family as Diego snorted in laughter at the image it made of Luther, a giant, fighting with Five, who looked like a child. Presumably Ben was someplace close, judging from the way Klaus looked into thin air every now and again as he listened to commentary no one else could hear.“I’m just saying - ” Luther was booming before Five cut him off.“It’s not my fault you don’t have two brain cells to rub together.” Five spat, furious, “In fact I’m pretty sure I took all the brain cells with me when I left!” Luther scowled, “That’s not fair, Five - ”“It’s not fair that we have to keep telling you that Dad was an asshole!” Five exclaimed, “He was a bitter old man who wouldn’t know how to be a good parent if the entire universe converged to try and impart that knowledge upon him! He was a fucking prick who didn’t care about us, didn’t love us, and only saw us as experiments instead of people!”Five made a gesture as if he was about to jump, and Luther reached forward to stop him, and that’s when it happened.Five flinched, raising his hands up to shield his face.Luther froze in place, hand still reaching out between them. Diego straightened up, and Vanya looked alarmed.Five, for his part, realized what he’d done and slowly lowered his arms back down to his side, looking like he'd give his left kidney for everyone to forget what they'd just witnessed.Five’s movement made Luther move, snatching his hand back. “Did you think I was going to hit you?” He asked, horror in his voice. Which was kind of hypocritical, to be honest. In the first hour Five had been back he’d seen Diego and Luther have a go at one another when they were literally at a funeral. Plus, Klaus had called Luther out on hitting him when Luther was drunk. Just because Five looked like a kid didn’t mean he was a child.But that wasn’t why Five had flinched. It went much deeper than that. It was a learned response. He shrugged, not quite looking Luther in the eyes as he sneered, “Well, you’re always the one trying to be the most like Dad, right?”The snap of a book being closed had the whole family twisting to look at Allison. There was something fierce on her face that made both Five and Luther feel smaller somehow as she stared at them levelly. “Are you saying that Dad hit you?” She directed Five’s way, anger (but not at Five) coloring her voice. They should remember more often that Allison was a mother who had a whole new perspective on their childhood through the eyes of someone who would never even think about letting anything that happened to them happen to her own child. Klaus, still reclined on the sofa, let out a snort, “Are you saying he didn’t hit you?”And that sparked a flurry of activity as half the family was absolutely horrified by the notion and the other half was just resigned. Because why bother treating your children evenly, even in matters of abuse? It's not as though even now they knew the full extent that each of the others had gone through at the hands of their father. It felt like there was something new being revealed as a new layer of horror every day.“Dad wouldn’t hit us!” Luther insisted, voice the loudest of everyone.Five shook his head, “Oh, I suppose I just imagined all the bruises then I guess. Yeah, fuck that.”“I can vouch for that!” Klaus waved a hand in the air as if he was a schoolchild waiting to be called on by the teacher, “Me ‘n Ben totally helped Five out when he was too fucked up to walk a couple of times.”Five bristled, “It’s not like I didn’t help you losers as well! It's not like your training was sunshine and daisies!”“He’d beat you until you couldn’t walk?” Vanya cut in, horrified. She’d thought she’d known everything about the family, the unseen observer, but she’d clearly been blind to many things in her own way. But it was easy to be blinded by your own pain in a situation like with their family. So easy to forget that none of them had escaped their childhood unscathed. “No!” Five denied, cutting off Klaus’s ’yes’ with a scowl, “I couldn’t walk because I jumped too much, not because he hit me, dumbass.”“Five,” Allison’s tone brooked no argument, “Explain. Now.”Usually being ordered to do something made Five bristle and snarl and do the exact opposite, but with so many expecting faces he backed down a bit. He looked almost puzzled at the concern, which was a small tragedy in of itself. “I mean, what Klaus is talking about is something different. Him and Ben only helped me out when Dad was trying to work with me on precision jumps.”“And that training involved?” Allison prodded.Five shrugged, “He’d get his cane and swing it at me. I had to jump to the other side of it before it would hit me. Sometimes I wasn’t very good at it, is all.”The memory of pain and the bruises the bloomed across his arms and sides from the thwack of that cane when he was too slow was a visceral thing that had Five rubbing at his arm uncomfortably from the memory. But even then, he didn’t understand why his siblings were looking at him with horror in their gazes. It was in the past. He hadn’t trained like that since he was thirteen - his siblings had been stuck with Dad far longer that him anyway. Yeah, he'd been in the apocalypse, but the very best thing about the apocalypse was the knowledge that Reginald Hargreeves was already dead.(Sometimes he wonders if that's the real reason he jumped to the day of the funeral, that it wasn't an accident, that his very being was so unwilling to exist at the same time as Reginald Hargreeves that he could only jump to a time that the man was dead for. He wonders.)Klaus winced, “Fuck, dude.”“He only did it to help you get better.” Luther justified, but he didn’t seem too sure of that and it showed on his face. He wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, even as Diego squawked in outrage.“Five,” Vanya got her smallest brother’s attention, “You said Klaus was talking about something different. So, what did you mean when you said Dad hit you?”Vanya’s face was like stone, staring into Five’s soul as he rubbed at the phantom bruises on his arms a little harder. But hey, bluster and spite was pretty much all he had on a daily basis so he summoned that up, rolling his eyes at his sister’s question.“Well, Dad didn’t like to be challenged. You know that. And I’ve always been a mouthy little shit,” He ignored Diego muttering 'you can say that again' in favor of continuing his train of thought, “And Dad wasn’t always appreciative of that." Try never, "So he’d, you know, hit me to shut me up.”It wasn’t anything big in Five's mind. Just a smack every now and again, cuffing Five around the head with his hand if he was feeling particularly irritable and didn't want to reach for something, but most of the time giving him a quick whack with the cane or something to make him yelp. Or, you know, most times they were alone together. Five had always challenged things, challenged Dad. It was practically written in his DNA to challenge, and Dad had always hated him for it.Klaus pointed at Five in solidarity, “Uh, yeah. Ditto. If I was crying ‘n shit he’d hit me and tell me to man up or whatever. Stop being afraid. Always with that scowl and those eyes.” Klaus demonstrated by using his fingers to pry his eyelids apart to look at his siblings.“Mmhmm.” Diego hummed in agreement, “He’d swat me when I stuttered during private training. Thought it was a sign of weakness or something. Shouldn’t surprise me that he never hit his golden boy though.” He sneered the last part in Luther’s direction.“It’s not like Dad needed to hit us to mess us up anyway.” Five pointed out in an attempt to be the voice of reason, “Like, when he’d make Luther hold weights up until his arms were shaking. Or when he’d make us run laps until we puked in the name of fitness, Vanya included. Or when he let Diego break his hand hitting the punching bag as an example to the rest of us on what not to do. Or when he shaved Allison’s head when she didn’t want to get a haircut that one time when we were eight. Or, how about when he branded us like his own personal property?” Five pulled his shirt up to show his wrist to the group, the ink dark against his skin. “So Dad hit some of us himself, so what? He still was an abusive monster to all of us. People can drown in two feet or twelve feet of water, they’re still dead. Stop comparing our fucking trauma.”Diego looked abashed, even muttering a quick apology in Luther’s general direction.“Okay, but you know I wouldn’t hit you, right?” Luther seemed uncomfortable with all of the dislike hurled towards their father in the current conversation, even if he at least looked like he understood it a bit better. As least he wasn’t defending their Dad, instead trying to change the subject.Five shrugged, “It’s not like you have issues hurting us. You and Diego fought at Dad’s funeral. You messed up Klaus while drunk. You kind of knocked Vanya unconscious before locking her away. If that doesn’t scream Dad, I don’t know what does. Luther looked horrified, and Five took pity on him just a little. “Don’t worry, you aren’t smart enough to be Dad anyway.”Funnily enough, that didn’t seem to comfort him at all, and instead his face took on an offended expression instead of just the sad gross one. Five still counted it as a win.“What Five means,” Allison cut in, trying to be the peacemaker, “Is that he knows you aren’t Dad. And he knows you’re working to get better on things. Right, Five?”After Allison had dragged Luther to a few of her therapy sessions, Luther had signed up for his own so. Five shrugged, “Yeah, I guess.”An awkward silence fell upon the group as they reflected before Klaus clapped his hands, getting everyone’s attention. “Well! As much fun as finding out about how much shittier Dad was than we thought always is, let’s watch a movie!”The whole family clutched that like a lifeline.“I want to watch the new horror movie,” Diego claimed, as though he wasn’t the biggest scaredy cat in existence when it came to horror.“Five isn’t old enough to watch that,” Klaus waved off, knowing that it would make Five bristle and start insulting him, “Besides, Ben says he wants to watch a Disney movie.”“No I didn’t.” Ben deadpanned, completely unheard by the rest of the family.Well, sweeping big revelations under the rug was practically a Hargreeves family tradition at this point. So perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that they moved on so quickly, Vanya shyly suggesting Lilo and Stitch as Allison vetoed Big Hero Six.They rearranged themselves to face the TV they’d bought during their redecorating spree, Luther standing up to dig through the DVD collection and hold them up for the rest to cheer or boo.Five still rubbed gently at his arms, Luther’s brow was still knitted in discomfort, and the atmosphere was still somewhat tense. But they were taking it one hour at a time.One day at a time.