Just one interesting tidbit for film enthusiasts / TUA lovers / Five x Lila shippers out there: a while ago, this particular frame caught my attention. It bore echoes of something I had already seen in the past, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Then it came to me: of course, the poster for the movie The Graduate!
Notice how both Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock and Five are sporting the same tan shade of clothes, how both are positioned in the door frame, with the leg of their seductress / love interest / nemesis hovering starkly in the foreground.
Both female protagonists are caught as they are performing a gesture of an intimate nature: Mrs Robinson is rolling on her stockings in The Graduate, post encounter with Benjamin, while Lila is shaving her legs, pre run-in with Five.
And, of course, there’s the much debated “age-gap relationship” in common, hanging in the air – explicitly stated, in the case of Benjamin / Mrs Robinson, and subtly hinted at as far as Five / Lila are concerned (and yes, time travel factors in all this and is - as Lila so aptly put it - "a massive head trip").
I find this homage to be such an interesting, cheeky, apt visual foreshadowing of what is to come between the killer duo (pun intended) in the following season.
This is one of the many reasons why I respectfully disagree with TUA fans saying that the relationship was "unexpected" or "sprung upon" the viewers. Was it rushed and wanting proper development? Yes. Were there signs of where things were heading, well before the subway storyline, even prior to season 4? Hell yeah.
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Synopsis: On Christmas, Five and Lila manage to return to their timeline after seven years of living together, lost. Izabela notices that something is strange, but it is only when Diego and Five engage in a discussion with confessions that she realizes that she has been betrayed. While everyone heads to the van to prevent the end of the world, Izabela asks for a few minutes alone with Five to settle things, dot the i's and cross the t's;
Word Count: 3.2k
Tags: spoilers, angst, cheating, fluff, slightly canon divergence (but Lila x Five/end of S4 still happened)
Note: It's been years since I tried to write something (and I never tried to do it in English before), but I hope it worked out! You can listen to the FANFIC PLAYLIST HERE and here you can read about my OC, but it's perfectly enjoyable to read it knowing nothing about her, or imagining youself in her place! I wrote thinking that they both look ± 20 years old. Please enjoy and tell me what you think! ♡
CLICK TO PORTUGUESE VERSION
Something was off, Izabela could tell as soon as her eyes fell on Five. The boy had never been the really outgoing, smiling or affectionate type, but at that moment he didn't even seem present in Diego's living room. His unstable and lost look, the worried wrinkle on his forehead and a tense and insincere return of affection when Izabela welcomed him into the kitchen with a hug put her on alert.
It had always been easy for her to read him, but a hint of confusion seemed to be beeping in her mind now. Keeping her distance and giving him space — at least until he could organize his own thoughts —Izabela was sitting on the arm of the sofa next to her husband, without touching him, just with her senses attentive and worried as she observed him like an enigma.
A tired sigh escapes her mouth as she foresees that Five's anxious restlessness combined with Luther's comments about the apocalypse could only result in nothing good. It was Christmas Day and, from the bottom of her heart, as unlikely as it was, Izabela was wishing that the end-of-the-world problems had magically resolved themselves — or at least been paused, as the previous moments of tranquility seemed to suggest. Not unexpectedly, they were not, so sure enough: as soon as she gets up and heads to the kitchen, mentally using the excuse of taking the Brazilian mayonnaise salad out of the fridge to get away from the depressing subject, she hears Five's stressed voice picking a fight with his brothers.
Escaping the realization of the apocalypse as an existence in her mind (for the fourth time) was her goal as she grabbed the tray and the dishes, trying to distract herself from Diego and Five's argument. With the kitchen right in the next room, the attempt was naive and failed: Izabela could feel the anxiety rising up her spine. She had never seen her husband so hopeless, but not even for a second found this behavior strange among the others. She herself couldn't take it anymore and, good heavens, she hated loud noises, hated missing Christmas, hated her brothers fighting — even though she wasn't much less temperamental than them —, hated not understanding what was happening to Five, and, most of all, hated the end of the world.
She opened and closed the drawers of that house that wasn't hers on impulse, more as an outlet than really interested in finding cutlery to serve the mayonnaise, when she felt her body freeze at the sound of Diego's voice cutting through the air.
“Is something going on between you two?”
Below her, the sought-after steel spoons and forks gleamed, reflecting her pale face and no longer showed interest in any meal.
“Diego…”
“Holy shit!”
In her ears, Five's silence pierces more than any of those sharp knives could. Refusal is the modus operandi that Izabela's mind immediately activates, only retaining strength amidst the shock to slightly shake her head in denial to herself. She thinks she must have misunderstood, sharpens her ears, holds back her despair. But no.
Five and Lila were having an affair.
To Izabela's anguish, Diego and his wife's voices were the last things she wanted to hear, but they were the ones talking, talking, talking amidst the suffocating silence that settled over the house like a funeral, squeezing her chest and leaving her breathless. Five and Lila were together.
Why? Was that why Five was acting strange? How had she not noticed before? When had she lost her husband? At what point had Five stopped being the person she trusted most in the world? In what world had she stopped being the person he trusted most? Why hadn’t he told her himself? Had she done something wrong?
“Yeah. You think I’m gonna buy that bullshit?”
Not even noticing when it began a state of near hyperventilation, Izabela's breathing only catches when Five's voice finally silences her thoughts:
“She’s telling the truth, all right? We got lost. We couldn’t find our way back.”
“We were searching for seven years, Diego…”
A gasp. No. No, no, no — it is horror what gradually fills every cell of Izabela's body, like blood spreading across a carpet.
Seven years. The pieces fit together almost in slow motion in her head, with her mouth half open, wanting to cry, but unable to emit even a single sob. It is towards the open door that her body turns without even needing an order, but it is her own steps that seem to weigh a thousand tons, and it is on the threshold that she stops once again. Leaning on the doorpost, without the courage to step outside and face her husband. Her husband, from whom she had lost seven whole years.
“We were chased, attacked, shot at…”
Each of Lila's words of explanation numbs her from afar as they settle into her diaphragm like stones. As if 45 years without Five hadn't been enough. As if the imminent end of times wasn't enough. It all sets up a scenario so desperate that it turns all sadness into apathetic disgust on her tongue.
Claire’s interruption comes like a ghost that straightens her posture and wipes away the moisture that escaped as it pooled in her eyes. Pursing the lips in bitterness, the information of Ben’s location is an almost physical reminder to Izabela that, whether she likes it or not, she will have to be part of the Umbrella Academy once again, so repressing all this futile conflict is her only option at the moment.
Swallowing the feelings, however, doesn't take away the agony in her heart and, with a shaky sigh trying to regain her composure, she fails to maintain the cool when her eyes meet the back of Five's figure as she enters the room. More than ever, Izabela wants to be practical, to go prevent the end of the world once and for all while stifling any thoughts about this terrifying situation playing with her head, but she knows she would never be able to win any fight like that. In a mirror of her unconscious distress, she exchanges glances with Klaus, the only one on the couch who noticed her in the corner of the room. "I just need a few minutes. Please." he doesn't need words to understand and, with a certain pity, he doesn't hesitate to stand up and encourage the rest of the family towards the van, distracting them with some Klaus-style comment that Izabela honestly can't process.
Feeling her presence as he had for so many years in his past, Five turns around, meeting Izabela's gaze, who mentally catalogues the worst nausea she has ever been condemned to feel when looking at her husband and wondering if she finds a stranger there. The eyes trying not to run over every detail of that face only now notice how much sadder and tired it seems compared to the last time she outlined his features. The silence traps them in a trance in which she finds herself unable to think of anything to say, until she hears the living room door slam, looking away at it and noticing that it was closed. The boy sighs and purses his lips; they were alone.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Is it true? Everything Lila said?” going back to stare at him, the words slip through her mouth, almost like an escape “Did I miss seven years of you?”
“All this time I tried to come back, Izabela…”
A quick shake of her head, Izabela crosses her arms in a tic. What he tries to justify, with such a cautious voice, had never been the question for her.
“I believe you.” pause “And… even if it’s not true, Five. It’s been seven years.”
“Yeah.”
That wasn't the tightness in her chest. She knows Five well, she knows her brother and husband well, and knows how he had spent decades trying to return to his family before. Even if, at any time in these seven years, he had hesitated, Izabela would never have the arrogance to judge his willpower in the face of emptiness. No, her cholera is another. Trying to keep her voice serious, she feels that what she wants is not to fight, that unlike her brother Diego, her anger is not against Five but against everything in essence. She finds herself unable to rid herself of a deep desire to slit her throat, she bites her lip.
“Do you love her?”
“Bela…”
“Please.”
After so many years of the tradition of emotional constipation that has branched out in the family with half-truths and poorly spoken subjects, when Five holds his wife's gaze, he already knows that she would not accept him doing the same thing that Lila did to Diego. Avoiding the subject is the easiest thing to do, but Izabela, so emotional, has also always been the most logical Hargreeves in dealing with emotion, so he knows very well that she, while staring at his green irises so dejected and hesitant, prays for an honest answer.
“I do. I love her a lot, Bela.”
It is no less painful to hear what she already imagined she would hear: the mind seems to be in standby mode, slowly assimilating what so quickly pierced her heart. Trying hard to accept the new reality rationally, the only disturbance on her face is her eyebrows furrowing for just a second, struggling to suppress the urge to cry that rises in her throat, her gaze scanning the wall in the background and then turning back down.
“So you don’t love me anymore?”
Five perceives more of a statement than a question. He opens his mouth to try to answer, but then closes it, his face saddened and his voice not found before himself. It is when she does not hear a response that the so-called new reality hits Izabela, surrounding her in fear, making her look at him with a neutral voice and expression contrasting with her trembling pupils.
“Five… you don’t love me anymore?”
“That’s not fair to you…”
“No… Look.” her voice is dually firm, but by a thread, shivering him “Don't lie, but don't let me die without having that answer.”
If before the tension between the two could be described as funereal, it becomes even more so. The prospect of an imminent death coming out of Izabela's mouth is so strange to Five's ears that it hurts as if he were the one who lost seven years of his wife. Even in the midst of all the daily hopelessness in her life, when finding herself facing the end of times Izabela used to at least pretend to have faith. The lack of such works as a disillusionment for him. Despite having lost his own a few years ago, he only embodies this in himself when he realizes that not even Izabela thinks it is worth believing that she will have another chance to say what was not said.
“I couldn't.” the answer simply comes out of him due to the disturbance of perception “I couldn't stop loving you, even if it were a centenary, Bella. I've never stopped thinking about you, not for a single minute of these seven years.” Five shakes his head, lowering it, scared to finally verbalize anything at all about the subject, especially to the person he was most afraid of doing. He barely feels room to hate how he stutters, lost like just a boy. How he hesitates. “But… when…. when my heart started loving Lila… I had so much fear of coming back to you, precisely because not even for a moment I stopped loving you too.” his cheeks begin to get wet with the tears that throughout his life he has always repressed, but that only ever escaped in the presence of the girl in front of him “Coming back to you meant concretize it, and that's not fair to you, you... you know I'd rather rip my heart out with my own hands than hurt you. But I couldn't help myself…”
His greenish eyes, now so moist, return to Izabela and are surprised to notice what Five identifies as tenderness amidst the restrained and painful crying that accompanied his. Not that his wife wasn't towards him the most tender human being he had ever had the fortune to live with, but precisely because he had failed her so much, he knew he deserved her anger. What he receives, however, is the anguish in his chest intensifying when Izabela approaches and puts her forehead to his, cupping Five's cheeks in her hands and sighing a lament:
“Please. Tell me you still wanna stay with me.”
Silence, he gasps in agony.
“I don’t mind, Five.” Izabela feels as if she is short of breath, so much she longs for confirmation of her request. Any attempted neutrality was lost when the words of the husband, who's always so strong, made it clear how exhausted he seemed in the face of his own feelings. Five had been her weak point for as long as she could remember, and, knowing every comma of what once shaped his pain, being able to see it now makes her desperate, above all and any problem. “I lost seven years of you, Five, I… I almost lost you forever… Please. Maybe the world will end today, but if it doesn’t… Stay with me.
It shouldn’t be Izabela the one asking for anything in this scenario. But if Five still loves her — and, God, she can see that he does —, she finds herself willing to fight the feeling of humiliation tingling in every part of her body. More than anyone, she knows how much the boy believes in his core that he doesn’t deserve any mercy or love as payment for his countless past sins. Izabela sees his affliction before her and, as she has done all her life, she could never give up on her husband like that. He gasps with his brows furrowed, trying to hold back his tears, when a sudden flash illuminates the girl’s mind, that finally sees the edge of the inevitable abyss in which she finds herself.
“Even if… even if you stay with her too… Just… don’t leave me…”
Such insensate words being uttered set up the exact moment when Five breaks, nodding his head in despair and wrapping Izabela's waist in a frightening fragility — which she herself would never have expected to witness in him on a day and in a mood like the one they were experiencing —, marking the beginning of a salty, bereft and hasty kiss, with neither having any idea on who did it.
The bodies of each spouse, once accustomed to kissing for hours on end, this time witnessed an emotional suffocation that soon left them short of breath. Five finds his reason trapped in Izabela's incongruity, who even facing a scenario like the apocalypse and the most logical devastation of what she should feel for him, still thinks and utters such an altruistic and utopian possibility. It is uncomfortable. Hiding his wet face in the girl's shoulder, he hugs her tightly and she immediately clings to him, wrapping her arms around his nape and trying to find in the fingers that intertwine in his locks any physical difference that would mark the years that have passed in him.
“I shouldn't do this to you.”
“No. No. Five.”
“Izabela, it's not fair” he tries to repeat it for the third time, but she interrupts him and repeats herself too:
“And I don’t mind. Damn, Five... You survived. You came back to me. And if loving her kept you alive... That’s… that’s okay with me.” If Izabela is honest with herself, she admits how every word she utters never fails to sound absurd to her. Jealous since she was a child, she deeply hates finding herself in this scenario and, yes, she wants to at least scream in rage. The truth, however, is still intrinsic to every sentence she is saying, no matter how strange it may sound to herself. Faced with this situation, greater than all the rage she feels is the memory of her husband alone for 45 years with the only trace of what he believed to be love coming from deliriums about a broken mannequin — this is what makes her sicker than any unusual situation of infidelity. The realization that Five saw himself once again in front of the horror that has endured his entire life fades any absurdity in the impulsive words she has been speaking, because it is replaced with the relief that at least this time he was not alone. He, in reflex, hugs her tighter, fearing this being a lie. It is with the man she loves most so fragile in her arms that she reaches the certainty that, if in order to survive in the midst of despondment, Five needed to find love — human, real —, her love for him can indeed overcome any other feeling she may feel in the face of it. Izabela pulls away from the hug, connecting her eyes with his and guiding her hand from his hair to his cheek, in a sweet caress accompanied by the melancholy of a weak smile. “When we save the world… Tell me about her. Tell me about you both.” in immediate reaction he frowns, a slight protest as if he assumes that this would only hurt her, but she continues “Five, I love your heart. And this… is part of it now… Let me know. We'll find a way.”
Five hesitates. Izabela is very good to him, always has been. He sees in the affectionate look she gives him the pain his wife is feeling, but he also sees how genuine she is in everything she says. The suffocating dilemma makes him want to die, hating to cause such displeasure to someone he loves so much, but it also makes him wonder if he has gone mad and is just trapped in a dream, so Kafkaesque was the dread he has felt of this moment for the last few years. He kisses her, briefly, leaning in with a sigh and praying in gratitude before joining their foreheads, nodding in agreement, agonized.
“Fuck, I missed you so much…”
“Good to have you back, Five.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Like the misfortune of flowers burning in a fire, Izabela, however, never gets to have Five lying with his head on her lap in a moment of affection, reciting about how much he loved her even from a distance. She also doesn't hear her husband's cautious voice telling her about the dangers that left his life hanging by a thread countless times during those years away, or about the unplanned feelings he experienced. She never had to get used to how their marriage would adapt when he sorted out his pending love with Lila, because such plans never came to fruition, just like the ones to sort out with his brother Diego.
The existence of this love, — of these loves — intertwined by the knots that constituted its universe, was eternally erased in two marigolds that, I like to believe, only survived the rebirth, the wind and the storm due to the hope and lull watered shortly before the end on the vestige of cherish that fought in the hearts of the two lovers.
Five and Izabela Hargreeves.
N/A: What do you think? I'd love to read your opinion!
IF FIVE AND LILLA HAD TO HAPPEN.....I just wish it was better written. The 7 years started and ended in like 10 minutes I would have liked an entire episode dedicated to this if it had to be a thing. I want to see the years see them suffer and grow close and fight that urge to take the plunge. The show could mirror her time with five with flashbacks with diego and show the cracks start to form as her bond with five grows. They show a huge fight lila has with Diego where she realizes she wants a break and she storms out and Diego does not go after her cut between Lila and five having a big fight and lila storms off and then maybe lila finds a book her kids loved or something her kids love and breaks down as five finds her because he went after her unlike Diego at the end of the episode they kiss its desperate and sad but its love thats grown from their solitude and mutual experiences. Next episode is Diego with Luther at the CIA. Instead of being dumb they work together to uncover the keepers. Diego vents to Luther about Lilla and their marriage. Luther lets him have it and he breaks down about Sloane and reveals how broken hes been since loosing her. Diego realizes how much he messed up. The fight at the CIA happens they go home and Diego realizes lila isnt there. Cut to Lila and Five finding the note book together. They have to go back because of course they do. The world needs saving and Lilla loves her children. "But what about us?" Five asks. They kiss. Scene cuts episode ends with them on subway ambiguous.
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Finished watching the last episode of the Umbrella Academy yesterday and no, I didn't have an ick, watching Five and Lila romance. Yes, they have a huge age gap, Five being around 70 years old at the end of those 7 years which makes him about twice Lila's age. After the age of 25-30 human personality and mind stay about the same, so is this gap that huge, really?
Five and Lila were gone and together for 7 years. This is a long time. Enough time to lose hope and make the best of what you have. BUT LILA HAS CHILDREN! So what, I say? And a husband! From whom she took a break before starting anything with Five. I see no problem whatsoever with their relationship. She got bored with family life but living on the edge with Five she was never bored. It's my opinion only but I think that if she and Five hadn't got lost and but for the end of the world, she'd have got a divorce.
How would you feel if person you feel in love so many time but you can't be near presently. Lila so much was confused when she saw five. If you look at it she did love him but she didn’t know what to do once they got back.
