anamoons

Welcome to the Commission!

Summary:

Number Five arrives at the Temps Commission at fifty-three years old, fresh out of the apocalypse, with one good suit and approximately zero social skills. She was there before the Handler, running the Commission longer than most operatives have been alive.

A slow burn inside a bigger slow burn, across timelines and wrong bodies.

This story will be divided by eras, the first one we're covering is Commission days, pre canon show. We'll get to love Five in a different ways, and try to understand him from the deepest end.

A very, very long, heavy on psychological analysis Five x OC story.

Era 1. Chapter 1. 
For this specific chapter: references to prolonged starvation and malnutrition, body image thoughts, chronic pain, grief, and one unfortunate cockroach.

Chapter 1: Plant a seed 🌱

Five stared at the stranger in the mirror. He was fresh out of the apocalypse, to say he felt weird, is not comprehensible in any way. How do you name a feeling when you spent years, decades in the wasteland?

For the first time in a while he got a fresh haircut, not the one he gave himself poorly in the broken mirror.
Shaved with a fresh razor, that activity was long forgotten because he had once used a rusted one and his face was in so much pain he decided the beard full of germs at least doesn't bleed out. He left the mustache, it felt appropriate for a man in his fifties. Was he fifty-two? Fifty-three? In the application form he wrote 53. Give or take a few weeks he skipped on marking in his "Extra-Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven" book copy. You know, it was hard to track the days when they all blend into a mess of trying to act human in the circumstances that were anything but.

What he knew for certain - all this time he was drowning in shame. Everyday he'd wake up, he could hear his father's voice "I told you so". He said, "A spatial jump is trivial when compared with the unknowns of time travel. One is like sliding along the ice, the other is akin to descending blindly into the depths of the freezing water and reappearing as an acorn." He told him so. Five had stepped. And he had drowned.
The amount of times Five rolled this phrase inside his head... In the beginning, Five thought, maybe if he accepted the fact that he was wrong, and the whole rebellion was stupid, maybe Reginald would come for him. He knew about time travel, maybe he just wanted Five to admit it was dumb. Basic logic of a child - my dad always knew better. Five just had to live through it so he'd learn to never disagree with his dad again, and he will always listen from now on.

Days passed. Weeks. Maybe, Five assumed, dad is paying him a lesson. Still. Reginald told him so. Five wasn't going to repeat that. He didn't practice time jumps, and the more time passed, the harder it was in his weaker state. Even if he managed to jump back, it was no more than 15 minutes. He counted, watched the wind, the trees, the cockroach running across the path.

He'd jump back again, this time 13 minutes.

Again, 9 minutes.

He was getting tired fast, it was so much effort for a young body without nutrition, like running for the small distance as fast as possible. Five got dizzy, the black covered his eyes, as he leaned forward on some rails. He saw the cockroach run across the path again, even quicker than Five anticipated this time. Meaning, he'd spent the last few hours on the same spot, like taking one step forward and two steps back. And then three steps back more. He was so pissed, he stepped onto the cockroach with a full force, yelled "WHY!!!!!!" and regretted it almost immediately because he felt even dizzier from it.

A year passed.

Five was slowly growing out of his Umbrella Academy uniform. In a way your body all of a sudden begins to grow, no matter what you do or what you eat. Five found himself some cargo pants, with many many pockets, it was convenient. He could carry around much more stuff now, not that there were a lot of things he wanted to keep... But at least his knees started to heal from many days of searching for something in the ruins. There were still bruises, but much less of cuts. Or maybe he thought so because he couldn't see his own knees in cargo pants anymore, unless they ripped eventually and he had to look for a new pair. Not much bigger than the previous one.
He was in the constant loop of looking for pants or water. Sometimes shoes.
At some point, Five stopped hoping he's gonna get out of here. He didn't even realize it, it wasn't a "huh. no one is coming for me." this landed bit by bit and settled into the core of Five's mind. His nervous system already treated it like a baseline, among the thoughts like I'm always hungry, I'm always tired, and at least something always hurts, and there's nothing I can do with it, frankly. and no one is going to help me."
No one was coming for him. He thought, maybe I should have been more grateful. More...

A knock

"Number Five?" The Handler's voice chirped.

Five snapped back to now. He looked in the mirror.
Yeah, there he was.

Shaved, fresh haircut. Maybe he should get the hat, he thought. He was ashamed to admit he’d started going bald before he ever got a proper shower after puberty hit. God, it was weird. No amount of equations could calculate the percentage of embarrassment in his body right now. Who was that man staring at him back in the mirror? Delores kept saying it's the long beard that makes him look old enough to be her father. She tried to lift his spirit up, teasing him, never in the mean way. And now, Five felt like he betrayed her. After so many years of being side by side, he just left her there alone, and it felt like he threw a half of his own heart out in the wasteland. He was aware enough to understand, he hallucinated at least half of it. And If he'd grabbed the mannequin when the Handler told him to “pack the essentials” she'd probably change her mind about recruiting him...

Another knock. He snapped back again. He didn't like to be pulled out of his thoughts like that at all. He also didn't know what to think of her - the Handler. She was weird, and so...loud. But honestly, Five didn't remember if the world was this loud in general or the volume grew higher from the last time he was within people.
He cleared his throat, creaked the door open, silently inviting the Handler into his small operative dorm room.

“Looking good!” she smiled. Five noticed her teeth. So straight and so white. He briefly remembered how his teeth were taken care of in the academy. He nodded and gave her a small polite smile.

“Come on,” she said, waving him forward. “Let’s get you on board. I’ll introduce you.”

Five felt his throat close. Meeting people didn't seem so terrifying in theory, until now. Until it wasn't theoretical anymore. But then again, time travel seemed exciting in his childhood, and the idea of someone recruiting him straight out of the wasteland was... He tried to focus on Handler's heels clicking on the marble floors.
They reached the specific glass walls room, Five assumed it was used for the conference meetings. He stood upright, like a soldier, as much as he could keep the posture with the constant inflammation in his body.
There were thirteen of them. Men and women. All in suits, this specific corporate style of the fabric, even the threads seemed expensive, whispering “corporate chic” a term he remembered from one of the books.
One by one, the Handler introduced them. Didn't try to remember every name right away. They all nodded in greeting. One woman, Dot, confirmed Handler's words, about Five being somewhat a celebrity in the Commission Head Quarters. Five immediately felt like a Guinea pig one day from dying. Running around the cage in agony, knowing he'll pass away before someone would actually ease his suffering just for a little.

“And last but certainly not least...” Handler's expression was still the same. It reminded Five of Grace. But she was a robot. He never met anyone who could keep a visible grin for that long. “...Head of the Management. The one who taught me everything I know today. Moons, please.”
The thirteenth person stood up. Immediately reached her hand to Five for a professional handshake.
Five didn't look down, but his eyes blinked. He didn't know if he was already overwhelmed by so much of social interactions on his first onboarding day, but her face made him pause. Everyone kind of reminded him of someone he once lost. She looked younger than him. Which, he thought, didn't mean anything at all. He was in early fifties. Felt two hundred years old, from the pain and everything else he'd experienced. He was cut off the reality at thirteen. How old was he? He had no idea what to even say if anyone asked. And he didn't see a lot of people in different age groups to separate them like that. This thirteenth woman reminded him of something, not a person from his past childhood, more of a feeling. And the way he froze on the spot felt embarrassing for him. Five was still fixated on her face, not even registering Director held out her hand. He opened his mouth, hesitant.

“Have we… met?” he asked. She smiled, and he wanted to fall through the floor or blink away from here. He still could do that, by the way, blink a spatial jump. Even though it didn't feel like a flex anymore. Why the fuck did he say that? She made it worse.

Moons raised an eyebrow, amusement flickering across her face.
“Wow,” she said, chuckling. “Didn’t expect you to flirt fresh out of the apocalypse.”
To her, it was clearly a joke, not even an evil one. Just a natural reaction to a cliche wording in the first meeting.
But Five felt heat rush to his face. Crimson. Mortified. Mouth went dry. That's it, that was more than enough action in the first day, he thought. He held onto the last thread of his dignity. God, what an idiot.
“I was not-...” he started, but the words died in his throat.
The Handler cleared her throat softly. Moons gave his hand one firm, professional shake, her expression turning slightly apologetic.
“Nice to meet you, Five.”
Five managed a stiff nod, he was done with talking for today. He also didn't trust his voice.
The Handler placed a hand on his shoulder, said something about how nice it was to see everyone and steered Five out of the conference room, muttering something about being careful around that Director in the future. As if he wasn't careful around anyone right now.

Extra Notes: