Number Five (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
forasecond) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
unhingedchaos2025-12-03 04:11 am
forasecond) wrote in unhingedchaos2025-12-03 04:11 am
{Don't wanna call you in the nighttime, don’t wanna give you all my pieces…
⏳Number Five
It had started easily enough, digging through old notes and trying to recall some specific pieces of information that were long-buried in the steel trap of his mind. One thing took him in a new direction and he followed it down the rabbit hole while the rest of the world around him could have been as good as non-existent. The only mission he had, the only mission he had EVER had was: save his siblings, save the world.
It’s unfortunate, then, the way he stumbles onto a familiar form sticking out from behind a nearby dumpster. He feels the pressure in his chest, the need to get out, to run increasingly worrisome.
But he tries not to panic.
Tries not to, but oh god, how he fails.
He tears through a portal from one end of the alley to the other and starts throwing other trash and debris out of the way. He has to reach her, has to get to her. If she’s here…
If she’s here, what does that even mean? She shouldn’t be. She’s an anomaly to the highest degree and he left her back in the original 2019 timeline.
He finally frees her from the rubbish, just glad to get her out of the trash bin. She wasn’t trash, and this was not even sexy trash like Klaus, just… dirty, stinky, rotten meat smells and leftover sticky sodas everywhere. Not anymore. Not ever again.
Whatever he had been planning to do is abandoned now. He makes a trip to the liquor store and quickly pops in and out to grab what he wanted. He slipped an arm around the mannequin that had once been his only connection to the world and slipped from that alleyway to the middle of the living room in an apartment above a bar in Manhattan.
….
The glass slipped. He wasn’t fast enough to catch it, and it simply… shattered. The pieces scattered and spread, thick chunks and nearly invisible splinters all alike in every direction.
It was a perfect analogy for how fractured he feels as he drops to his knees in the middle of the mess.
He can pretend it’s so he can pick it up, but he knows it’s only another lie he can’t convince himself of. How many are there now? How many threads does he have in his hands, and more keep being added. He can’t let go of any of them, but his hands ache from the tight clenched fists he’s been making for so long. Maybe they’re simply stuck, frozen this way. Maybe it is his Sisyphean Task, and his Trolley Problem.
If no one is insignificant, how is he supposed to make that choice? He can’t choose— no one should ever have to be the one burdened with the literal life and death of their own family members.
But it happens all the time, doesn’t it? Everywhere around the world, people die every second. It’s an unfathomable number before you even hit a whole minute. He doesn’t like to think about it further than that. Enough atrocities haunt him behind his eyes.
Viktor…
I can’t
I can’t fix it
I don’t
I can’t
It’s all in pieces
Im
But that’s all it says.
Nothing else comes.
At least Viktor actually knows where Five stays…
…don't wanna hand you all my trouble, don't wanna give you all my demons…
…you'll have to watch me struggle from several rooms away
But tonight I'll need you to stay
But tonight I'll need you to stay
It had started easily enough, digging through old notes and trying to recall some specific pieces of information that were long-buried in the steel trap of his mind. One thing took him in a new direction and he followed it down the rabbit hole while the rest of the world around him could have been as good as non-existent. The only mission he had, the only mission he had EVER had was: save his siblings, save the world.
It’s unfortunate, then, the way he stumbles onto a familiar form sticking out from behind a nearby dumpster. He feels the pressure in his chest, the need to get out, to run increasingly worrisome.
But he tries not to panic.
Tries not to, but oh god, how he fails.
He tears through a portal from one end of the alley to the other and starts throwing other trash and debris out of the way. He has to reach her, has to get to her. If she’s here…
If she’s here, what does that even mean? She shouldn’t be. She’s an anomaly to the highest degree and he left her back in the original 2019 timeline.
He finally frees her from the rubbish, just glad to get her out of the trash bin. She wasn’t trash, and this was not even sexy trash like Klaus, just… dirty, stinky, rotten meat smells and leftover sticky sodas everywhere. Not anymore. Not ever again.
Whatever he had been planning to do is abandoned now. He makes a trip to the liquor store and quickly pops in and out to grab what he wanted. He slipped an arm around the mannequin that had once been his only connection to the world and slipped from that alleyway to the middle of the living room in an apartment above a bar in Manhattan.
….
The glass slipped. He wasn’t fast enough to catch it, and it simply… shattered. The pieces scattered and spread, thick chunks and nearly invisible splinters all alike in every direction.
It was a perfect analogy for how fractured he feels as he drops to his knees in the middle of the mess.
He can pretend it’s so he can pick it up, but he knows it’s only another lie he can’t convince himself of. How many are there now? How many threads does he have in his hands, and more keep being added. He can’t let go of any of them, but his hands ache from the tight clenched fists he’s been making for so long. Maybe they’re simply stuck, frozen this way. Maybe it is his Sisyphean Task, and his Trolley Problem.
If no one is insignificant, how is he supposed to make that choice? He can’t choose— no one should ever have to be the one burdened with the literal life and death of their own family members.
But it happens all the time, doesn’t it? Everywhere around the world, people die every second. It’s an unfathomable number before you even hit a whole minute. He doesn’t like to think about it further than that. Enough atrocities haunt him behind his eyes.
Viktor…
I can’t
I can’t fix it
I don’t
I can’t
It’s all in pieces
Im
But that’s all it says.
Nothing else comes.
At least Viktor actually knows where Five stays…
no subject
It's not as if he doesn't have his own problems but they're easier to deal with, filtered through such a gaze. Maybe that's why Mike's such a damn stalker? Someone to learn from.
He was out in his taxi on a nearby block, a place and a car he hasn't left in awhile. Don't worry about it. It doesn't take long to hurry over, not long at all. He doesn't bother knocking. Will the door be open to him?
no subject
"Shit," he grumbles from the kitchen. This night is really... fucking great. If Viktor follows the sound of his voice, he's easy to find him still in something of a heap on the floor. The blood from a sliced finger for his clean-up efforts–– really, Five, get a broom?–– makes for an interesting mosaic splashed against the glass surrounding him.
He, decidedly, hasn't realized anyone has shown up yet. Preoccupied with... everything else still roiling violently in his mind as he tries, still, to cling to something... normal. Banal. Mundane.