I immediately recognize the song playing in the house. It was a childhood favorite of ours. Klaus, who's still lost in the music finally spots me. He drops the urn in shock, it doesn't break but the ashes spill to the floor.
He quickly gets over his shock, and smiles at me, his arms raised, wide. "My favorite sister!" He exclaims.
I smile at him. "My favorite drug addict."
He slightly nods his head as if agreeing with his new nickname. A thought seems to pop in his head, he squints at me. "So are you...?"
I raise an eyebrow at him, catching on to his thought process. "Do I look dead to you?"
"Well, you look exactly how you did when you disappeared. One can only assume." He picks up a broom and starts to methodically sweep up the ashes on the floor before putting them back in the urn. He's probably done this before.
I sigh. "Yeah, well-" A loud rumbling noise comes from the back yard, cutting me off. What is that? Me and Klaus's eyes meet, he looks as confused as I am too. Curiosity overwhelms me, and I rush to the courtyard.
A blue portal of energy hovers above the courtyard. The energy emulating from it feels like a strong wind.
"What is that?" A woman shouts.
"Don't get too close!" A woman with curly hair warns.
"Yeah, no shit!" A man who I think is Deigo yells in response.
"What the hell is that?" I ask. My family turns to me, momentarily forgetting about the blue hole in the sky.
"Y/n?" Deigo asks.
I face what I can only assume in my adoptive family. "Miss me?"
The blue hole makes another loud noise, bringing our attention back to it.
"Looks like some sort of temporal anomaly, either that or a miniature black hole!" A tall and bulky blond man analyzes the situation.
"There's a pretty big difference there, Paul Bunyan!" Deigo shouts. Judging by how Diego responded, I'm guessing the tall man is Luther. Some things never change.
"Everyone, get behind me!" Luther shouts.
Deigo looks at us. "Yeah, everyone behind us!"
Klaus comes running out with a fire extinguisher. He tests it and shouts. "Out of the way!" He runs past us and throws it into the portal. What the hell?
"What's that gonna do?" After looking at them more thoroughly, I realized that the curly-haired one was Allison. She shouted over the noise.
"I don't know; you have a better idea?" Klaus answers.
I look back at the portal. A blurry figure of an old man appears. Five. The portal distorted him as he went through it. Falling to the ground.
"Does anyone see little number Five, or is it just me?"
The portal did something to him. He looks just like he did when we first left. He sits up and looks at his hands in disbelief. "Shit."
He gets up and brushes himself off. His eyes scan our faces, finally landing on me. He raises an eyebrow. "So you're alive."
I roll my eyes. "Try not to sound so disappointed."
"Am I supposed to be happy?" Wow-what a great family reunion.
~☂︎~
"What's the date? The exact date?" Five asks while making a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich. All of us were standing around the wooden table in the kitchen. Except for Klaus he was sitting on it.
"The 24th," Vanya answers.
"Of?"
"March," I say. Five looks at me, finally taking in my appearance.
"Why do you look like that?" He inquires. Crap. How the hell am I supposed to explain this?
"Why haven't you aged?" I dodge the question.
"I could ask the same of you." He is not letting me avoid this question.
For once in my life, I'm actually grateful for Luther. "It's been seventeen years." Luther interrupts.
Five goes back to his sandwich. "It's been a lot longer than that." He spacial jumps around Luther to the cupboard and then back.
"Still haven't missed that," Luther mutters.
"Where did you two go?" Allison asks.
"The future it's shit by, the way." Five tells us.
"You can say that again," I mumble. Five glances at me.
"Called it." Klaus giggles.
"Where did you go?" Five asks me. Oh, so now he wants to know?
"Well, your stupid spacial jumps teleported me halfway around the world. I ended up in Australia." I complain. "Do you know how fucking hot it is over there?"
He shrugs his shoulders at me. "I'm sure you can tell me all about it." He says.
"You should've listened to the old man. Jumping through space is one thing, jumping through time is a toss of the dice," I tell him.
"How the hell did you get back anyway?" Five questions.
Damn, he is really not letting this go. "Turns out I can time travel. So I spent like a year in Australia before I was able to time travel back." I lie. What I said isn't totally unbelievable. My power centers around time. What they don't know is that no matter how hard I tried I was never able to time travel.
Everyone looks at me. "Since when have you been able to do that?" Allison asks.
"It was really traumatizing, so I don't like talking about it." I try to look distressed.
"How long were you there?" Deigo asks Five.
"45 years give or take." Five answers. "I feel like 45 years is worse than Australia." Five gives me a pointed look.
Before I can insult Five, Luther asks a question. "So, what are you saying? Your 58?"
"My consciousness is 58. Apparently, I'm in my 13-year-old body. Delores kept saying the equations were off. Bet she's laughing now." He answered sarcastically. Delores?
Five glances at Klaus. "Nice skirt."
"Oh, well, Danke!"
"How did you get back." I figured it was time for me to grill him.
"In the end, I had to project my conscious forward into a quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time." He answers.
I try not to seem impressed because, in reality, I am. Everything he's saying makes perfect sense. As much as I hate to admit it he's always been better at me with equations. It's terribly frustrating.
"That makes no sense." Deigo states.
"It would if you were smarter."
Deigo was about to lung at Five, but Luther stopped him. Wow, Luther, way to ruin the fun.
Five picks up a newspaper from the table. "Guess I missed the funeral. Heart failure huh?"
I totally forgot that dad died.
"Yes," Allison answers.
At the same time, Luther says "No." Yet another example of how dysfunctional this family is.
"Glad to see nothing's changed." Five says before walking off.
"That's it? There's nothing else to say?" Allison calls after Five. He doesn't respond, so I walk after Five. If I'm going to figure out his plan, I have to follow him. Yay.
Vanya walks after us.
"Nice to see Dad didn't forget us." I enter the living room to see Five observing a painting over the fireplace.
It's a painting of me and Five sitting right by each other. I can tell it's fake because the two of us would never agree to sit by each other for a painting.
"Yeah, I know, it's gross." Five says after seeing my reaction to the painting. The one thing we can agree on.
He turns to Vanya. "I read your book, by the way. Found it in a library that was still standing. I thought it was pretty good, all things considered. Though it was definitely ballsy, giving up the family secrets." Five remarks. At this point, I was sitting on the couch, a book in hand.
I had no idea Vanya wrote a book. She gave up all the family secrets? Damn. "Sure, that went over well," I remark while still reading.
"They hate me," Vanya tells us.
"There are worse things that can happen." Five reassures her.
"What happened to Ben?" I ask Vanya without looking up from my book. "Was it bad?" Ben was probably the best out of all of us. I hate that he was the one to die.
Vanya glances down, not answering my question. I take that as a yes. Vanya walks out, joining the others downstairs, an awkward silence follows.
"So..." I start. "Your 58."
Five sits down on the other couch and sighs. "What do you want, Y/n?" He asks.
I roll my eyes. "Stop being so paranoid. I was just trying to start a conversation."
"When have you ever wanted to start a conversation with me?" He argues. He has a point there.
"You're going to try to stop the apocalypse, aren't you?" I guess. He gives me a look. "As much as I don't want to, I know how you think, Five," I explain.
He sighs in defeat. "Not right now. I'll talk to you about it later." He spacial jumps away, leaving me alone to read my book.
~☂︎~
Two chapters in one week. I literally have nothing better to do.
-S.J.