knife_bender | Hargreeves Mansion | Unnamed City

Diego wasn't fuming after the family meeting. He was just...whatever the step is before fuming. He wasn't sure what that one was, but he was currently it. He was just trying to get it together before Annie noticed.

Annie	"Hey." Annie found Diego once it seemed like the family meeting was over, laying a hand gently on his arm. "Are you doing okay?" She could tell perfectly well that he was absolutely not okay, but she was giving him a chance to actually communicate with her so she didn't have to push him to talk.
Diego	"Oh yeah, I'm fine," Diego said. "Luther just wanted to gather us all around to insinuate one of us killed Dad."
Annie	Yeah, see, he was doing great. "Wow," Annie said, eyes going wide. Like, on the one hand...she would not exactly have blamed any of them, if they had. She took a step closer, dropping her voice. "So, that sucks. Um -- is there somewhere we can talk a little?" Like, without any members of your huge family interrupting, Diego.
Diego	Diego gave her a look of concern, but took her hand and led her into the sitting room. There were a lot of dead animal heads on the wall, a full bar, and...a huge portrait of Five for some reason. It was a weird room, he knew that. "What's going on?"
Annie	The dead animals were weird, but the portrait of Five was weird. Especially, you know. Knowing Five. "That's what I wanted to ask you," Annie said softly, giving his hand a squeeze. "Don't tell me you're fine. I know you're not."
Diego	"I don't like being here. I don't like being around them," he said. "It makes me feel like a kid again."
Annie	"You're kind of acting like it." Annie kept her tone gentle, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles comfortingly. "Like, do you know you're being kind of mean to people?" Pretty much everyone who wasn't Annie herself or his mom, actually, but especially Vanya.
Diego	"Yeah, I know." He wasn't exactly going to be sorry for it, but he did feel a little shame when Annie called him out. "It's not like they don't deserve it. Luther wants to have a memorial by Dad's 'favorite tree', wherever the hell that may be. Like, are you fucking serious? We should just pour his ashes down the sink."
Annie	"I mean, no arguments from me," Annie said lightly. Honestly, she was pretty sure that Reginald Hargreeves was burning in Hell, like, right between Hitler and John Wayne Gacy, and that it didn't really matter what they did with his body, anyway. But that wasn't exactly helpful, just now, as far as contributions went. "But -- I don't know, I just feel like it might...feel not as bad if you went easier on your siblings?"
Diego	"I'll just ignore them." Which was not only unhelpful, but also not feasible! "I just want to get this over with so we can leave."
Annie	"I know," Annie said, and now she was just going to hold that hand with both of hers. "But ignoring might be the way to go?" In absence of being nice, anyway, and she wasn't going to ask that of him. She was, however, going to try to continue to be nice on his behalf. "It's been kind of wild meeting everyone, actually. No one's been quite what I was expecting." Leading examples of that would be Vanya and Luther, but hoo boy talk about things she wasn't going to bring up directly.
Diego	"Yeah, sorry, I know it's a lot," he said. "If I had my choice I would have introduced you one by one." Or not at all.
Annie	"It's fine," Annie said quickly, smiling. "It's kind of like being thrown in the deep end, but luckily, I'm a really good swimmer." It was a good metaphor, she thought. "So since you can't actually give everyone the silent treatment the rest of the time we're here," she added, "can we at least -- like, how can I help make this better for you?" Because no, straight-up ignoring everyone was not actually a feasible plan of action, but Annie didn't think acting like a jerk was a great plan, either.
Diego	Diego shrugged before going to pull her into a hug. "I honestly have no idea."
Annie	Well, she could do this, at least. Hugs were a good start. "Whatever you need," she offered, carefully running her hand along his back, mindful of knives. "You don't have to do this by yourself, okay?"
Diego	"Thank you." He really had no idea how he was going to keep things civil around his siblings. There was too much bad blood there, and the silence between them over the last decade hadn't helped anything. He pulled away after a moment, looking over at the door to confirm it was closed. "Hey, I've got to tell you something about Mom."
???	Well, he could do that, or he could notice there was a commotion going on outside of the house now that was pulling all of his siblings out to check on it. Because who didn't like a giant, glowing portal appearing in the sky?
Annie	Annie was totally here to hear all about whatever was going on with Mom -- hey, she'd spent more time with Grace than with any of Diego's siblings so far and was already getting kind of attached to her -- but it did look like it was going to have to wait. "Hang on, what's --" Annie reared back as a candlestick flew past her towards where there was apparently a storm going on outside, suddenly? Or something? "What the hell?"
Diego	"I have no idea." The room didn't usually do this! He took Annie by the hand and headed towards the back where the storm seemed to be coming from. "Come on, out here."
Vanya	"What is it?" Vanya asked from behind them. Had they noticed she was there? Probably not. She was pretty good at blending into the background by just existing.
Allison	"Don't get too close!" Allison said, tugging on Luther's shoulder where he was next to Diego. Because Luther.
Luther	"Everyone stay behind me," Luther ordered. "It looks like some sort of temporal anomaly." Great, they identified the problem. Now what the fuck were they going to do about it?
Annie	Annie was not going to get behind Luther, no, though she wondered if that was what she sounded when she bossed less-bulletproof people around. The temporal anomaly looked kind of familiar, anyway, even if things were kind of more dramatic than usual. Maybe it was just the way teleporting or whatever looked in their universe across the board, though.
Klaus	"Out of the way!" Klaus shouted, shoving his way on through with... a fire extinguisher. Which he promptly fired at the 'temporal anomaly'. It did nothing at all, so he ended up just chucking the thing at it instead.
Allison	"What was that supposed to do?" Allison asked, pausing her little side eye of Diego's girlfriend for not stepping back like a sane person would. Then again, she was dating Diego.
Klaus	"I don't know," Klaus admitted. "You have a better idea?" Which was, of course, when the 'anomaly' decided to get a little more aggressive and made him skitter on back with the group.
Diego	Honestly, Diego was with Klaus even if he wouldn't admit it out loud. It was better than standing there looking like an idiot like Luther was currently doing. "Come on, Number One, aren't you supposed to have a plan for this?" Nope, even a temporal anomaly wouldn't stop him from being an asshole.
Five	Well, would the fact that the anomaly was showing an old man falling through it, shifting back and forth between the very familiar figure of Number Five before he managed to fall through it, very much looking like he did when he left. Or, more accurately, like he did when Diego saw him last back in Fandom.
Klaus	"Is it just me or is everyone else seeing little Number Five?" Klaus asked, peering over Diego's shoulder hesitantly. Because maybe the drugs were wearing off?
Five	Five looked up at them, pushing himself up onto his feet. And maybe he squinted a little longer at Diego and Annie for reasons they did not need to share with the rest of the class. "It worked," he said with a nod before pushing past them all to find the kitchen. He was starving after all that work getting here.
Diego	"Oh, fucking great." That was just what they needed. And was he going to explain why he was nonchalant about seeing Five? Absolutely not.
Annie	Annie was very much taking her cues from Diego on this one -- and she saw that look, Five, like, whatever, so apparently she was supposed to act surprised to see him? Okay. "This is weirder than I'd expected," she noted casually, glancing back up to where Five had come from. (And been his actual age, temporarily? That was weird.)
Luther	Luther gave both Annie and Diego a look for that before turning to follow Five into the house. He wanted answers, you little shit.

Five	It was a new level of strange and comforting to find that everything was just where it had been the last time Five had been in the kitchen. Though that might have more to do with mom's programming than anything else. "What day is it? The exact date," Five asked, grabbing the bread as he talked.
Vanya	"It's the 24th of March," Vanya said slowly. "2019." She wasn't entirely convinced she hadn't accidentally eaten one of Klaus' cookies instead of Mom's and was hallucinating all of this.
Five	"Good." Oh, were you all expecting an explanation for everything? Good luck there. Diego hadn't gotten one in the months he'd put up with Five.
Luther	Yeah, no, Luther wasn't going to accept that answer. "So are we going to talk about what's happened?" he asked. "It's been sixteen years."
Five	Five teleported around Luther's massive form to get to the peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. "Been a lot longer than that," he corrected dryly.
Luther	This was already annoying. Both the teleporting and the non-answers. "Where did you go?" Don't say the moon, he knew that wasn't true.
Five	That was just Five being Five, though. "The future," Five said, glancing up briefly at everyone as he slathered the bread with way too much filling. "It's shit, by the way. The one I've seen." The last part was muttered under his breath because, well, technically Diego and he had been a version of the future.
Klaus	"Called it!" Klaus chimed in.
Diego	Diego sighed. "Yeah, I know, I'll get you your money later." What? Didn't everybody bet on the fate of their missing brother?
Annie	Yeah, Annie was just going to stay quiet here for a number of reasons, not the least being that she was totally from the future, you guys. Just like...two years. (Also she had access to future technology, like cell phones.) Though, also, this kind of made her nervous, given what she'd been told about the apocalypse, already? And how according to Five, the siblings were all together when it happened? ...you know, like they were right now?
Five	"I should've listened to the old man," Five said, pausing mid-sandwich making for a rueful sigh. "You know, jumping through space is one thing, jumping through time is a toss of the dice." Obviously. He got stuck in a future with Diego for a while there. Five paused and focused in on Klaus for a moment. "Nice dress."
Klaus	"Oh," Klaus said, clearly very pleased with the compliment. "Well, danke." Just sibling things here, Annie.
Allison	Hey, that was her skirt, you little shits. "Wait, how did you get back?" Allison asked, trying to keep this on the topic at hand.
Five	"In the end, I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time," Five said, rewarding his ingenuity with a bite of that utterly disgusting sandwich.
Diego	That was the first time Diego had heard Five actually explain how he got into the future without being an asshole about it. To him it just sounded like a bunch of stuff Five was pulling out of his ass. "That doesn't make any sense."
Five	Now you were just asking for him to be a dick again, Diego. "It would if you were smarter."
Luther	Luther automatically threw a hand out to keep Diego from jumping across the table at Five. Those brotherly instincts never really went away. "How long were you there?"
Five	"45 years, give or take." That time spent in high school didn't even count.
Allison	"So what are you saying, you're 58?" Allison asked, somehow incredulous despite, well, him being there in front of them again after all this time.
Five	"My consciousness is 58," Five confirmed. "My body is 13 again, apparently." He sighed and muttered, "Dolores said the equations were off." Before continuing louder, "Guess I missed the funeral?"
Five	"You're not that lucky," Diego said. They were all going to have to suffer through this, god damn it.
Five	"Heart failure, huh?" Five asked, mostly to see what he'd get out of his siblings.
Diego	"Yeah," Diego said. At the exact same time Luther said, "No."
Five	Ah, just as he assumed. "Glad to see nothing has changed here."