#traumaetic

thank you! instead of sending to so many people i’ll tag instead!

          “I guess I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Sometimes death seems better            than the migraine in my head.” Five’s nursing a coffee with vodka            as the condiment, stirred into it. He’s obviously exhausted, but not            ready to face the nightmares with it. He shrugs and takes a gulp of            his drink that most certainly wasn’t aggravating the headache, no.           “I’m not as fine as I seem.” He snorted and gave a bitter noise, looking            up at his knife wielding brother. He didn’t expect much from Diego,            so maybe that was why he was being open. “But whatever.”

  “  uh,  well,    let’s  see.  “   dave  starts  listing  it  out  on   each  digit  of his  left  hand.     “  he’s smart.    doesn’t take  any  bullshit.    i  feel  like  i can  relate  to  him   –   you know,   in  a  weird  way.  “     considering  they were both  veterans  in  one  way  or  another,    both  sometimes  shared  that  same  haunted   look.     “   plus,    and  don’t  get me  wrong,    i don’t feel like  i have  to  act  in  front of  any  of  the  hargreeves,    but  i  dunno.        i  like how,    around  five,   it’s  like  it doesn’t even  matter  if  we  talk  or  not.      i  can  appreciate  that  kinda  relationship.      he’s  kind of  like  the  little  brother  i  always  wanted   …    in  a  very  strange,   he’s  fifty - eight  and  i’m technically  over  seventy kind of way.“

   “ -- will they even do anything? ” The boy’s complaint was pretty valid -- he had dealt with people not taking complaints seriously and it ended up being terrible in the long run. He didn’t want this to be like that. “ A lot of ... cops don’t listen to complaints from teens. ” He adjusts his backpack, looking at the girl with a frown. Peter trusted her ... but at the moment he wasn’t sure he could trust the cops.

" alright, assholes. my family and i were having a nice night, but now i've got to come clean up this mess to make sure it stays that way. you've put me in a position where i need to do something i don't wanna do. "

five's legs dangle from the roof of the restaurant he's perched on, and seven guns swing upward, barrels pointed directly at him. a thin, cold smile stretches across his face, despite the heavy sigh directed out his nose.

" shhh. don't bother with the whole not wanting to shoot a kid thing, " he lifts a finger to his lips, almost playfully, to shush the man about to speak. " besides, it's not like you'll be going home, so you won't have to worry about going with that on your conscience. "

he blinks, appearing crouched in the shadows beside the dumpsters behind the building. he can hear the men whispering, can hear their footfalls -- he watches two round the corner, and then --

another blink, and he's on the man's shoulders. as he fires in a panic, five wrenches his weight to the side, the gun pointing directly at the man's friend -- a quick snap of the neck and five blinks away as the corpses fall.

he feels alive, and the rational part of him hates it. the other part missed it.

Caught, again. Her own fault, her own stupidity, leading to this. To sitting hunched in a kitchen chair, blue eyes darting nervously around the room as her social worker spoke with the woman who would apparently be taking care of Charlie now. At least, until the girl figured out how to run away again. She’d never stayed more than a month in a foster home before, and she didn’t plan on sticking around long this time either.

She tuned out as the adults talked, catching only brief familiar phrases like severe trauma, unidentified, likely abuse. Daddy never hurt me, she wanted to tell them. He loved me, he died for me. But if she said anything she’d have to tell them what did happen, and then she wouldn’t be sent to live with some well-meaning redhead, she’d be locked away and studied again. If she told, her father died for nothing. So she waited until the social worker left, and then looked up at the woman who was meant to be her new guardian. Beverly, that’s what she’d said when they met.