|Doppelgänger| Five Hargreeves

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟒𝟔

I heard the footsteps getting even closer to me, and realized they were all starting to surround me, wanting to check on me, get a better look at my face, like they didn't believe my presence. Like they thought I was someone else.

_"...It's getting a bit hard to breathe."-I mumbled to the man. If it was anyone else, I'd probably be screaming by now, throwing punches and all, but I simply couldn't raise my voice to Ben. Or...someone that had his face.

_"Oh."-He immediately let go of me, and I could finally look at him straight again. My emotions were all over the place. I couldn't figure if I should act scared, sad, happy, confused, or all at once, if that was even possible.

I looked around me, and saw all those 6 people looking at me. And the cube. I couldn't tell if "it" was looking at me, but it felt like it, so I'll consider.

_"...How is this possible?"

_"Are you actually Y/n? I swear, if this is some kind of sick, twisted joke-"

_"But how? How is she still, y'know...a kid? We all saw what happened that day."

_"It's been so long..."

_"Calm down, all of you, you're gonna scare her."

_"How would we? She knows us.

She's our sister!"

They all spoke to each other and to me at the same time. It made me even more confused, especially that last part. I couldn't process so much information at once, but, slowly, it was all coming together. Yes, I had already got the memo that we messed something up in the timeline, and Reginald probably didn't adopt us, and instead, got all of those strangers. I mean, he had more than one reason to do that, I'm not gonna lie, but it did kind of hurt.

Or it would hurt. Because those strangers knew me, and I could only think of one possibility of why that was.

Dad adopted "me" again. For the third time. This timeline's "me". But where was "she"?

_"Hey! Get the hell away from her, dickheads."-Five decided to intervene after seeing me surrounded by a bunch of "strangers", and rapidly grabbed my hand and pulled me towards himself. I got out of the circle that was formed around me, and was now closer to my actual family again. The one I knew, that is.

_"Okay, then, everybody else can see Ben, right?"-Klaus checked, just to make sure. Can't blame him.

_"...Cute hat, sundance."-Ben cleared his throat before speaking. Seemed like he was back to his "bad guy" facade. Maybe he realized I wasn't the one he thought I was. Or maybe he cared more about the way he looked rather than solving the puzzle that his mind probably was right now.

_"They call themselves the Umbrella Academy, a group of scheming perfidious malcontents, who accosted me in the fall of 1963 when I was away on business in Dallas. Be warned, they claim to be my spawn."-I see that dad was back to being 1989's dad, not 1963's "kind of nice, tolerable" dad. A shame. I really wanted to keep the memory of him treating me "normally" as my last one of him.

_"Claim? Look, Five, what the hell is going on?"-Allison decided to express her discontentment and, again, confusion. She looked at Five accusingly, and he could only sigh before answering.

_"I don't know yet, but it's concerning."-He said it like it was a minor inconvenience. Well, Five was the type to not jump to conclusions so quickly, so, maybe, he was considering that this problem was an easy one to deal with. I had my doubts.

_"Is he telling the truth? Y/n?"-The guy in the middle, who took Ben's spot, spoke. He was a tall man, the tallest amongst all of us, except for Luther, maybe.