#five h.

Well, Allison wanted to say, technically you are twelve. But maybe her eyes already said it for her as they swept over her brother who still didn’t quite manage to reach her eye level.

It wasn’t just the height that made her elderly brother twelve at heart. He’d missed out on so much time might as well have frozen in mourning of all of the things he hadn’t ever gotten to do. So maybe Allison was simply making up for lost time. Even though she was halfway sure that Five would have rolled his eyes and continued on his ‘sleepovers are stupid’ tirade regardless of what age they were supposed to be for. 

“You don’t get to make that decision until you’ve actually had one. So go on, get your PJs and report for duty. If you don’t, Vanya and I will find you.” 

“You’ve always been exceptionally hard to shop for,” Allison lamented as she set an overly tissue paper stuffed bag on the kitchen table. It was true. Of all their siblings Five’s gift was the one she had hemmed and hawed over the most. She’d probably driven Vanya up the walls with all her questions. And when it had become a forbidden topic of conversation among them, she’d gone to Luther who’d merely shrugged at her. How was he supposed to know, he’d said. 

They were supposed to have been the adults in the room. Supposed to have been. But at the moment Allison was pouting in a very un-grown up way, having to fight the whine out of her voice. 

“I don’t want to be a dick about this. That feels like stooping to their level.” She waved a hand to the distant part of their living room where Luther and Diego were arguing, the words clearly heard across the space while Klaus offered a sports commentator style commentary. “Isn’t there something else we can do?” 

((five + allison))

She had to get used to silence. She knew that. And after they’d managed to complete their biggest mission yet, she had all the time in the world for it. But for now, she found it painfully awkward. Especially considering that since the time they were teenagers she had never sat across from her long lost brother one on one. Her fingers tapped on the wood of their kitchen table before she slipped out her notebook and ripped a page out of it. 

((allison + five))

Allison had been watching him for a while now through the door frame and he still hadn’t noticed her. It had taken over a week for her to realize it, but now that the world wasn’t going to fall apart at her fingertips, it was painfully obvious. She didn’t know anything about the boy...- the man who still had his back turned to her. 

Looking down at her notebook she frowned before flipping to a clean page and scribbled down some words. Then she ripped it off of its rings as quietly as she could, crumpled it up equally as quietly and tossed it at her brother’s head. 

You saved the world and yet you’re still moping. What a sad, strange little man you are, it read.

Allison scoffed a little as she stared at the blank wall in the hall in front of her, her arms crossed over herself. “Well, that’s definitely going to hold up in the Hargreeves’ court of law.” 

She couldn’t even begin to say why she was helping her brother with his sacred mission. The Hargreeves’ court of law was known for one thing and one thing only: an infuriating cacophony of voices that usually drowned themselves out until they became nothing more than the incessant buzzing of a bunch of angry bees. And if her family court caught wind that she was even lending Five a hand by acting as lookout for him, she’d be caught right in the middle of it. Yet here she was, looking bored as she stared out at the nothing in front of her. 

“I still don’t get why you don’t just ask Diego to give back whatever it is you’re looking for.” Even Five hadn’t told her what he was turning Number Two’s room upside down for and at this point Allison was guessing she probably didn’t want to know. But there was something unspoken in her words that she hoped he would catch, and maybe she would be spared the rest of his long crusade: you know, ask him, like the adult you so like to call yourself. 

“Actually, I think I did.” 

As his sister, Allison couldn’t very well let Five continue to walk around in his old Academy uniform day in and day out. She was surprised it wasn’t getting on his nerves as much as everything else did. So she set the large tissue stuffed bag on his lap and waited. Honestly, it was more that she was doing him a favor rather than giving him a Christmas gift. Even if she had to suffer the slight embarrassment of looking through things that were decidedly old man enough for her brother. Sweaters and slacks in sensible colors and a gold pin in a velvet box that she had thought reminded her of Dolores when she had seen it. Five would have been proud of her, she also thought, for finally thinking like him. A slight smile crossed her face as she watched him look at the bright paper of the bag, wondering if he knew what exactly to do with it.