#five meta

So today I present to you:

Why I think that Number Five can still be aroace and have loved Delores

An essay on comphet by me, a bisexual who is procrastinating the work he actually has to do and stayed up way too late for this

So I’m going to be talking about Five’s sexuality, a very controversial topic of which I could end up pissing off at least one person whilst discussing. So a little disclaimer: y’all don’t have to listen to a word I say. We can all have different headcanons. I just request that you please read the entirety of this before you reply

Anyways

Five does not have a canon sexuality as of when I’m writing this so it is therefore entirely up to interpretation

Here’s mine

A lot of people who argue Five can’t be aroace often point out that he had a romantic relationship with Delores or feel that saying Five is aroace undermines the relationship that he had with her. I’m here to say that that isn’t necessarily true. In fact, in my opinion, it could make their relationship more faceted and interesting if it wasn’t a romantic relationship

To me at least

Firstly, I don’t think Five ever explicitly states what his relationship to Delores was other than saying they were ‘together for over thirty years’ when Klaus has a brief discussion with him about romantic and sexual relationships. Now, this does heavily imply that they were in some sort of romantic relationship however, it could also be taken as them being partners in a more platonic sense because Five mentioning it seems more prompted by Klaus claiming him to have been alone (and Five feeling semi comfortable enough to take that as an opportunity to open up to him) more than anything else.

Secondly, (and here’s my main argument) their entire relationship will always be based off Five’s perception of how certain relationships work. If Five believes that him and Delores were in a romantic relationship then that can only be based on the way he perceives romantic relationships or more accurately, the way a sheltered thirteen year old perceives romantic relationships. And as Delores is an extension of Five himself, she will always have the same subconscious values and feelings that he has, as well as with him being trapped in The Apocalypse, he couldn’t have been told differently by anyone else.

All of how he sees romantic relationships is going to be based off the limited knowledge of what he saw around him. Majority of this would have been from late-nineties/early-2000s media as well as (and mostly) older literature that he was taught in class or burnt up books, magazines and newspapers in the wreckage of The Apocalypse.

Five didn’t have a very good model of what a healthy, loving, romantic relationship looked like, growing up. And he didn’t really have anyone that he could have fallen in love with other than his siblings (eek.) His two real life references for what a romantic relationship could look like would have been his father and robot mother; and his brother and sister unhealthily projecting their repressed puberty feelings onto each other due to their isolation from the rest of the world

Robot Grace was essentially a maid to Reginald and not a real romantic interest so I highly doubt that he ever saw them as being in a romantic relationship despite them both being his ‘parents’. This is backed up by the way that Diego reacts to finding out that real Grace and Reginald were dating in the 60s

Reginald (although I doubt that he would have wanted the Hargreeves to fall in love and distract from saving the world) seems like the kind of man to have very old-fashioned values that a man and a woman fall in love and then they get married. And all of the Hargreeves would have been influenced by that somewhat by what media he let them consume. As well as this, we have a very heteronormative society and back in 2002 the access to information wasn’t void but it wasn’t excessive either

Five, having a curious mind and always striving to understand everything, probably did have some idea on different relationships and sexualities but he still would have had limited access to those resources. He could very easily be aroace (or any other sexuality for that matter) but during his years at The Academy, had such little eduction on the matter that he couldn’t truly figure himself out. I doubt he would have known about sexualities other than being straight, gay or bi and could have had the thought process of ‘I’m not attracted to men, so I must be straight,’ or ‘I’m not attracted to women so I must be gay,’ or even ‘I’m attracted to both equally (equally not attracted) so I must be bi.’ He could have also had such little interest in romantic relationships that he just didn’t put that amount of thought into it/thought that everyone had the same internal nonchalance about it but that some people were just more externally excited about the prospect than others

His access to this kind of information would have decreased when he landed The Apocalypse, partly because there was no one else there to give him the information and partly because a lot of books containing said information would have been destroyed. That’s not to say they would have all been destroyed because obviously Viktor’s autobiography survived, but a large amount of them would have been destroyed.

Now, Five, as we’ve seen, is often described by the fandom as being a magpie in the way that he mimics the behaviour of those around him as a survival mechanism. Five, obviously knows what love is, and I have no doubt that what he felt for Delores was love, but for someone who, was separated from society at a young age and has a tedious reference for what romantic love looks like, it could be quite difficult for him to distinguish between romantic and platonic/familial love. Delores was very much created by Five as a coping mechanism to slow his impending insanity. It wouldn’t be far fetched for him to have created Delores and as he slowly slipped into believing she was real, he ended up developing a love for her -which could have been platonic/familial love- but based off of his knowledge of ‘when a man and a woman are in love they must be in a romantic relationship’ he analysed his own feelings of love and went ‘hey, this must be what romantic love is!’

And Delores wouldn’t be able to say any different because she wouldn’t know any different because she lives inside Five’s headspace

Essentially what I’m saying is that Five spending his teens (and entire life) in isolation with his only companion being a person who he made up, would realistically hinder his own sexual exploration and due to limited resources, could cause him to misinterpret his own feelings of platonic/familial love for romantic love. Meaning that with Delores he could have ended up subconsciously or maybe even intentionally mimicking the traditional heterosexual romantic relationship with his own interpretation of what he’s been taught is what happens when man and woman love each other, as a way of experience some semblance of the life he was missing/be able to live semi-in-denial of his suffering on occasion. Therefore, Five (and Delores by extension) could still be aroace and have been in a relationship

Five clearly loved Delores (and we know that he does love people in a platonic/familial way because his entire character/motivation is based off his love for family) and he clearly needed her but it’s never specified what their love entailed, and therefore their relationship could have been based off of a child’s misunderstanding of how romantic relationships work. They could have still been life long partners without loving each other romantically. Five could still love her deeply and strongly and in a meaningful way without loving her romantically. They could have still technically been in a romantic relationship if both parties (singular party technically) believed that they were.

Five could still not experience romantic or sexual attraction and still have loved Delores. He does it with his family every single day

And obviously this logic of Five not being able to explore his sexuality and having limited resources for that could also apply to him having any sexuality. I’m not denying that. I’m just using it as a way to show that him and Delores could still have loved each other and had a relationship that was just as important as a romantic one without it actually being romantic

I’ve seen the “Five and Klaus are twins” theory and I love it. I’ve seen the “Klaus and Vanya are twins” theory and I love that too.

But what if they were triplets?

god bless their poor mother, three unexpected babies would be hell to deal with

Okay:

I love the mirroring of their arcs. All three of them were socially isolated throughout their childhood/life. Five was stranded in the apocalypse, Vanya was excluded for being ‘the ordinary; sibling, and Klaus was shunned because of his addiction issues.

Addiction issues that they all share! Klaus leans into hard drugs and alcohol, but all of them have a dependency on something, especially in season one! Vanya has her prescription, which we’re shown she uses regularly whenever her anxiety acts up and Five retreats into alcohol as well on various occasions! Not to mention his caffeine dependancy (someone get this boy a cup of coffee) and - in Klaus’s own words - his addiction to the apocalypse. 

So their trauma and trauma responses are all incredibly similar. All of them are shown to lash out when they’re stressed, anxious, or upset. They love their siblings and get frustrated by them in equal measures, all of them feeling like outsiders in their own family.

Not to mention the colour coding of their powers! All of them are glowy blue-white. And all of them struggle with their powers - yes, even Five! Boy got stuck in the apocalypse for 45 years!

Now to get into the sticky stuff

Vanya as a representation of life! In season two we see her bring back Harlan from drowning using her powers! Klaus as a representation of death - this one is pretty self explanatory. So where does that leave Five?

Five’s powers are about movement, they’re about existing and traversing time and space.

Five is the journey between life and death that all people have to overcome. He is the child and the adult at once; he exists to bridge the gap between them-

And Five is already the bridge between all his siblings! His leaving is the start of the Umbrella Academy falling apart. In season 1 it’s Reginald’s death that brings the Academy into one place but it’s Five who makes them stay! 

Not to mention in season two, none of the siblings find each other until Five appears in the timeline. He’s the drive of the story, he’s the journey, the person trying to stop the apocalypse.

Klaus is a representation of death but he can bring himself back to life? You can’t kill what’s already dead.

Vanya is a representation of life but she (repeatedly) brings about the end of it.

Just! Vanya causing the end of the world vs Klaus as a representation of death saving it - in the comics at least, something I wish they’d kept! But even in the show it’s Klaus who notices the moon coming towards them, kick-starting the plan to save them and the world.

And again it’s Five who bridges the gap.

Not to mention in the pilot script Five says that the only people he trusts are Vanya and Klaus (the floating idiot, lol).

And this moves off of Vanya a little but I love how Klaus is a doorway between two realms (life and death) and Five traverses doorways in space and time

Not to mention both Klaus + fives powers have intricate links to time (what is a ghost, but a soul misplaced in time? stuck but never moving on. What is Five but a ghost?).

Bear with me here, the last time Five really saw his siblings before he had his two very long, very bad weeks, was when they were all 13. Since then, he's had an extremely rough time bringing himself up in an isolated apocalypse and then manipulated into an assassin. Sure he's had a book Vanya wrote, but reading about someone and watching them grow up are two wildly different things. And from their dynamics, we can tell even if they were born within seconds, there is a clear line between Luther, Diego, and Allison who holds themselves as the eldest, and Vanya (lesser extent, Ben) who are treated as the youngest (although without the usually favoritism). So Five left at 13, last seen his family of 6 brothers and sisters at 13, and they were all kids, but he grew up fast, and he's grown old

Now, I moved away with my parents when I was 11, I've seen my grandma twice in the 17 years since. Despite having seen me at 17 and 20, my grandma still treats me like I'm 11 when I call her. My cousin, 5 years younger, have somehow aged older than me in my extended family's eyes despite that being impossible, they routinely forget I got 5 years on her, because to them, I'll always be the 11 year old they last spent a lot of time with

(Pt 2) seems different than as an adult in canon. And Five just wanted to chill when he thought the apocalypse was over and he wasn’t in constant stress mode from the world ending deadline. Without a threat he is a very different person. He also had zero interest in fighting Hazel when he showed up. I think he wants to stop fighting and killing and just get to know his family but isn’t sure where to start. I just find his personality without the apocalypse interesting(Pt3) because it seems different than how the fandom portrays him because that’s how he is in the show (and under massive stress). I think he was more carefree as a kid and kinda wants that back now. I enjoy reading your metas and was curious about your thought. Thank you 🙂

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoy them. ^_^ 

I tend to think Vanya got that one right in saying he was prone to arrogance, based on how he’s the only one brazen enough to not only speak during a meal, but outright challenge Reginald despite his growing anger. Vanya only stands up and shakes her head as the rest of the kids look down and try to make a show of being compliant—all of which says a lot about how very much you are not supposed to do what Five did. 

However, I do agree that he’s changed a lot since he was a kid. He’s still convinced he’s the smartest one in the room, although he’s now under the impression that he’s also the most well-adjusted of his siblings (despite there being much evidence to the contrary). But he doesn’t see time travel the same way at all. When he was a kid, it seems he saw it as not just an adventure, but a means to prove himself, based on the way Reginald’s assertions that he’s not yet ready only sharpen his resolve to do it anyway. Furthermore, after his initial jump is a success, he doesn’t go back to the Academy to show off; instead he jumps ahead a little more, only stopping when he reaches the apocalypse and can’t go back. 

Compare that to his adult self, who only time travels without a briefcase after he’s done 45 years’ worth of calculations to make sure he got everything right and wouldn’t end up in the distant past or somewhere equally bad. He’s still arrogant, telling Diego that “It would [make sense] if you were smarter,” still showing off with his powers by zipping around the kitchen; but he’s a lot more cautious about things he isn’t 100 percent sure he understands. He might not show it outright, but the fact he covers his room in calculations before deciding to kill a random gardener shows that he’s not nearly as impulsive as he was when he was a kid. 

I think he’s also tired, too, based on the way he makes himself a margarita once he’s convinced the apocalypse has been averted. It’s been his motivation for almost 50 years, probably the only thing keeping him alive for a while; but once it’s over he relaxes and tries to decide what to do with the rest of his life. I think you’re onto something, that he wants to get to know his siblings but doesn’t know where to start; I’d add that he probably sees them as emotionally stunted enough that he’ll have to work at getting to know them carefully—although this ignores the fact he’s stunted in completely different ways and that too will interfere with any icebreakers he attempts. 

(Pt2) probably weren’t quite as emotionally stunted as adults. Plus they were all each other had. Unlike his siblings Five never got to grow up and form any sort of connection with another person until he was well into his adult years and suffered from isolation and a dive to save his family. I imagine there must be some kind of good memories to keep him going, and not just of Vanya. In the show it’s been 17 yr since Five left so his siblings don’t remember him(Pt3) perfectly either with memory being funny. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that it’s funny that the fandom always writes Five as a kid the same way he is on the show and I don’t believe he was exactly the same. He was 13, still carefree, childlike and he loved his siblings more than anything in the world. Maybe seeing them dead gave him a reason to hang onto that love to survive while his siblings have more yr of hurt to break them apart? What do you think?

I definitely think Five lost a lot of his innocence during those years on his own. He was certainly more fun-loving and carefree in the bank flashbacks—toying with the robbers, taunting them, blinking from one end of the counter to the other just because he could. It’s kind of tragic, comparing teenager!Five and adult!Five, because when you do you see how all of that playfulness has been sapped out of him. Teenager!Five probably would have joked around when trying to find the owner of the prosthetic eye, engaging in playful back-and-forth with the secretary with a smirk on his face. Adult!Five is all business and loses his temper the second the tide turns, but you can see that anger brewing, simmering beneath the surface when she calls him a “thoughtful young man.” 

And he definitely wasn’t as emotionally closed off back then. He doesn’t even try to hide his horror or panic when he gets to the apocalypse, and the first thing he does is yell for Vanya and Ben. His grief and despair upon seeing his siblings’ bodies is palpable. As an adult, all of that is still present, but it tends to slip behind a mask of grit and determination, if not outright anger—as in the scene where Luther dangles Delores out the window to keep him from assassinating a random gardener, or when Vanya’s questions about how he can look the same as he did back then provoke his irritation. It’s possible to see his getting drunk as a moment when his mask slipped, since trying to drown the pain proves there was pain to drown; but even when he’s drunk and Luther is carrying him back to Diego’s place, he’s not sobbing or ranting. He just says “I drank the whole bottle, didn’t I? Well, that’s what happens when the world you love goes bye-bye.” 

Having his siblings close as a kid definitely kept him from becoming emotionally closed off, I think. Kids who grow up in abusive households might have complicated relationships well into adulthood (because there’s a ton of envy and misplaced resentment simmering beneath the surface) but they’ll often vent to each other because they’re the only ones who see the parents’ abuse. Abusive parents are masters at putting on a friendly face for the rest of the world, getting them to think that everything is peachy behind closed doors, and Reginald was no exception. Five probably complained about Reginald to many of his siblings, not just Vanya, and that would’ve given them a sense of camaraderie that’s difficult to explain. Shared pain, perhaps. When he was left stranded on his own, he was left with no confidants, no one to share his pain and let him know that, yeah, it’s as bad as you think it is; or no, maybe it’s not as bad as you think. Being left with only his own thoughts clearly warped his perspective—but knowing his siblings had died in the apocalypse he landed in gave him the will to survive, just so he might have a chance at getting back to them. (It might even have stoked his arrogance to some degree, as guilt over “if only I’d been there, I could’ve tried to help stop this” became “they would have survived if I’d been there.”)