#aidangallagher

“Don’t do it.” 

Five Hargreeves stood in front of the mirror in his room, his back to the door. The bell for breakfast was going to ring soon, but his mind wasn’t on a healthy start to the day. Minimal morning light entered his room through the edges of his curtains, his room remaining dark and motionless. He hadn’t noticed her pass by his room and turn around after catching a glimpse of his still figure in the corner of her eye. He hadn’t noticed her retrace her few steps and lean against the doorframe. He only noticed her presence once she announced it with solemn discouragement. 

He had been contemplating for days. He knew he was ready for this. He told himself so. He couldn’t back down at this point, he had already set his mind to it. Backing down would look weak. He wasn’t weak. 

His expression was stoic as he stared at himself for a moment longer, then turned to face her at the door. 

Without her domino mask, her face remained impassive. She rarely displayed any emotion, except for the fact that her face at rest made her seem constantly angered. But as of right now, she showed no frown, no furrowed brow, not even a blink. 

They stood a few feet apart. Once he looked directly in her eyes he could see a sliver of something. He knew she didn’t want him to leave. He just thought she underestimated him, that she didn’t believe in him, that she was envious of him. But that look in her eye told him a different story. Something he’d never seen in her before, not that he ever paid too close of attention to her or anything like that. They had never gotten along. They never cared or looked out for each other, so why was she pulling this now?

She watched him intensely, almost staring through his soul, trying to reach though him to his conscious and convince him not to make the biggest mistake of his life. 

But they wouldn’t know it. Not then, anyway. 

The breakfast bell rang and the doors of the other children opened up swiftly as they filed through the hallway in a swift, orderly fashion to get to their assigned places in efficient time. 

Neither Five nor Eight moved. They stayed staring into each other's eyes trying to communicate something through their unintelligible irises. They’d played this game before. Intense staring contests in hopes of the other backing down, awarding a feeling of eminence to the victor until the next time they decided to face head to head. 

This time, her eyes weren’t challenging. They were pleading, vulnerable to his attacks in the hopes he’ll stand down and listen to her for once. His eyes were defensive. He trusted himself and that was all he needed. His stature grew colder until he walked over to her position against the doorframe. 

She shuddered as he got closer. He seemed so lost yet so certain. She could feel it in the darkness that morning that something was about to go horribly wrong. She heard it through the shadows. 

Five would never understand this interaction. Not until years later. He never knew how she could have known, especially since she hadn’t been trusted with his plans for time travel. 

He stopped in front of her less stoic, more distraught face. He looked through his angered eyes into hers. 

“Watch me.” 

~

She never went down to breakfast that day. Knowing exactly what happened after he rushed to his place behind his chair. They sat and ate, he stood up, played his cards, failed, and ran off like the scared child he was. 

She watched him though the velvet curtains that obscured her normally pitch black room from the outside world. The light was let in, casting her face in a warm haze as she watched him run off. Free. Arrogant. Until a flash of blue light took him away. 

Letting go of the curtain, the sunlight vanished from her room, leaving her in her usual darkness, feeling her usual repugnance. She knew she would be reprimanded by her father for not going downstairs. She didn’t want to face him, not while knowing her own failure.  

She could have tried harder. She could have done more. That’s what everyone would tell her. 

She could have cared more. But she didn’t. Not at this moment in time anyway. 

She could’ve made him fall into his own shadow, leaving him no possibility of escape. 

But she didn’t. 

There was no arguing with Five. His thirteen year old self was difficult. He was so prideful that there was no chance he would ever back down from whatever he set his mind to. He would never admit being wrong or at fault.

He would come to regret this. 

He would regret the fact that he never listened to his father. How he never listened to Eight as she tried to stop him, to help him for once in her life. 

Once Reginald Hargreeves realized that Number Five had lost himself in time, he did what he could to retrieve the child. He also decided to double this rescue mission as a punishment for Number Eight. 

~ 

“You will not leave here until you find Number Five and return him to this time.” 

They were in the basement. The cold, dark basement that gave each of the Hargreeves children nightmares for weeks after they’d been escorted here. Their powers tested in ways that messed with their minds and fears. 

If Number Eight was afraid, she didn’t show it. She was however, without a doubt. 

She hadn’t been down here for years. She had learned to manage her fear of the dark at a very young age. With her power, she had to, otherwise she’d be utterly useless. 

She had to control the voices echoing in the void. The whispering, screaming, threatening, comforting voices that escaped the darkness to haunt the one child who could hear them. 

Reginald opened the chamber door, made to withstand the powers of the children, and instructed Eight to enter. 

She did as she was told, but as Reginald recited his desired outcome, concern overcame her. 

As Pogo shut the door and secured it, the room was completely dark. Of course she was used to the darkness, she thrived in it, but she couldn’t handle being trapped in here forever.

During her trainings, she had been told to practice traveling through the void. The void was the term her father used to describe complete darkness, or a very large shadow. She could enter the void by disappearing into her own shadow, someone else's shadow, or shadows made by objects. 

Her father had made her practice entering one shadow, traveling through the void, and exiting through another. It had worked, but navigating in pure darkness is not as easy as it may seem. 

Once her father and Pogo had returned upstairs, the basement light was shut off. With no one around to witness. She screamed. She yelled and cried on the floor until she became tired and dull. While she lay on the cold cement ground, she figured to herself that Reginald Hargreeves couldn’t possibly leave her here. To starve. To freeze. But he did. Not intentionally. 

Reginald Hargreeves did intend to let her out within 48 hours, however when he returned to the basement with Pogo holding out a small flashlight against the window of the chamber, they noticed it was completely empty. Number Eight had vanished. Lost in darkness. Lost in space. Lost.

Just like Number Five. 

She wouldn’t be found for many years.

Her body dormant in the conditions of the void, her mind wide awake. 

Light never met her eyes. Not a drop of sunlight met her skin for decades. 

She knew she shouldn’t be alive. She hadn’t eaten, yet she could feel her skin wrinkle with time. 

Without any idea how long she had been trapped, she just assumed she was dead. 

Until she heard clicking amongst the voices. 

It was often that a shadow nearby had some sort of ambience behind it. Whether it was the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, with its smells and sounds of Paris, or the shadow behind a TV, letting her hear the yells and cheers of football fans during a big game. 

She would often linger around those noises, to feel a sense of familiarity for a normal life she’d been imagining in her head, the darkness as the perfect blank canvas. Never getting too close in fears of everything becoming too real. 

Until these clicking noises grew closer. 

The clicking of high heels against a smooth floor.

Suddenly illuminated through the flick of a zippo, a tall, well dressed woman came into view. Number Eight jumped and hid behind her hands, not expecting to be blinded by such a small flame. As she brought her hands in front of her face, she saw just how wrinkled they were, how much she had aged. 

“I’ve come to offer you a job, Number Eight.” 

☂︎

𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒘𝒐 series masterlist.

authors note: thank you so much for reading! i appreciate it sm :) if you want to be on the taglist for upcoming chapters please let me know ! also if you have any ideas for upcoming chapters or other fics my inbox is open i'd love to hear your ideas!