Luther came downstairs with a baseball bat because there wasn't supposed to be anyone else in the house tonight. Allison was back in California, still trying to glue her family back together (her other family, her chosen one). Diego and Vanya had their own places and he hadn't seen either of them in a couple weeks at least. Klaus was...somewhere. God only knew. He actually saw Klaus more often than the others and his habit of dropping by unexpected and unannounced to raid the family fridge was the main reason Luther didn't run in swinging. (He'd done that once and almost taken his brother's head off.)

They were trying to be more of a family, trying to bury old hatchets and heal old wounds but paradoxically that meant not spending much time together. They'd all come to the eventual conclusion that while they did love each other, there was just too much history. Their shared experience as child soldiers under the thumb of Reginald Hargreeves the only real thing they had in common. That and the end of the world. That and watching their sister go insane. None of it anything they were eager to reminisce about over a game of charades, or whatever it was normal families did when they got together. The water under that bridge was a tsunami and if they didn't get the hell away from each other it was going to drown them all. So now it was the occasional phone call with the even more occasional visit. They'd talked about doing a family Christmas but Luther didn't know how he felt about that. Seemed like the kind of thing that was better as an idea than a reality.

There were some kinds of love that were better nurtured from a distance.

It was almost impossible to sneak around, big as he was but he tried his best, keeping up against the wall where the floorboards didn't creak and trying not to bump into the various bits of priceless junk his father had felt compelled to cram into every corner. There was a light on in the lounge and he could hear someone rummaging around, the unmistakable clink of glass on glass. Whoever it was had found the bar; either his prowler decided to pause for a nightcap or Klaus was back in town. His brother had been clean for awhile - as far as Luther knew, anyway - but old habits died hard, and he might be off the hard drugs but Luther was willing to bet he still liked a good belt now and then.

"Ah, shit," a voice said and Luther blinked in surprise, because that was a voice he recognized very well and it wasn't who he thought it would be.

"Five?"

Five had been the first to leave, muttering half-hearted excuses about the Commission still being after him and not wanting to put everyone in danger. That was probably true, but Luther thought it was only the beginning. One truth out of a dozen, the one that would hurt them all the least.

That was Five attempting to be kind.

Truth was Five had lived his entire life alone - truly alone - and when he returned he wasn't the same. He looked the same (if you didn't look too close) but the brother who'd left them all those years ago had been flesh and blood. The Five who came back was...Luther didn't have the words for what Five was now. "Different" didn't even scratch the surface. "Damaged" sounded cliched (and inadequate). He reminded Luther of those horror movies he'd never been allowed to watch as a kid. The ones where the alien menace went around snatching people's bodies and replacing them with doppelgangers. Dead-eyed caricatures with empty smiles, perfect human mimics. He was still their brother but he wasn't really Five anymore and he could tell as well as anyone that when his siblings looked at him, they were still seeing someone else.

So he'd left -poof- just like that. At least they got a goodbye this time. Vanya and Five had some sort of private conversation beforehand that she wouldn't talk about but she assured them he'd keep in touch with her. Luther didn't know if that was true but chose to believe it anyway because he hadn't yet earned the right to question Vanya's word. But that had been six months ago and as far as Luther knew none of them had gotten so much as a postcard since. Now though-

"What are you doing here?"

Five jumped up from where he'd been crouched behind the bar, rifling through the liquor cabinet and the first thing Luther noticed was that he wasn't wearing his academy uniform. Stupid to assume he would be, there was no reason for it but it bothered Luther all the same. Probably because he'd never seen his brother wearing anything else in his life except the ill-fitting suit he fell out of the sky in, and he'd gotten rid of that soon enough. Now Five was dressed like any work-a-day Joe on the street and it made him look even younger, unsettlingly half-finished.

The second thing he noticed was that Five was upset. The third, he was drunk. A drunk, upset Five wasn't a good combination in any timeline so Luther put the bat down and took a couple steps forward. "What's wrong? What happened?" His hand twitched, that old instinct to reach out and make contact but he didn't because last time he'd done that Five nearly threw hands and he'd been perfectly sober.

That was one of those things that had changed.

"I'm looking for something to drink," Five said as if it was obvious and yeah, it was, but that didn't tell him why Five was here at the academy. If he just wanted liquor he could get it, even looking like a school boy. Five had ways of getting anything he needed. Concepts like locked doors and open hours didn't mean much to someone who could warp through space on a whim.

"What happened?" Luther asked again, because it's obvious something had.

Five blinked at him owlishly and it was a testament to how off his game he was that he didn't immediately start sniping at Luther on autopilot. Just thunked a glass down on the counter and began pouring, a of bit liquor sloshing over the side. His hands were shaking.

Worry pulsed through Luther like a third heartbeat. "Five," he said, trying to summon every ounce of his minimal authority, "talk to me. What's going on?"

"What's going on," Five said, picking up the tumbler and draining it in one swallow, "is that I'm having a drink, and I don't need company." He looked at Luther then, that same superior jaunt to his shoulders but the caustic imperiousness he usually draped himself in was a bad fit tonight. Five's eyes were cigarette burns, charred and hollowed out and it worried the hell out of him.

But Luther was beginning to learn that not every problem needed to be solved by him using brute strength and sheer pigheadedness. That sometimes the gentle path was best and it was okay to delegate. The end of the world had taught him that much. Not that Five responded well to gentleness, but he wouldn't respond any better to being pressured. So Luther did exactly what he didn't want to do and backed off. "All right," he said with a complicit little nod, "just lock the cabinet back up when you're done, okay?"

He turned around to leave, made it as far as the doorway before Five shot an arrow in his back, saying "Tell Vanya I said hi," a drunken, sarcastic drawl to the words.

Luther didn't respond to the jab but he didn't let it stop him either. Of course Five knew what he was planning and of course he'll hate him for it, for dragging anyone else into it but wasn't this sort of thing what being a family was supposed to be about? And Five was a part of their wounded little family whether he wanted to admit it or not. There was a reason he'd come to the academy tonight, the one place he might call home even if he didn't want to. Luther didn't know what that reason was and didn't expect Five to tell him, but there was somebody who might.

He sighed, picked up the phone and called Vanya, fidgeting nervously as he listened to it ring through to voicemail. Damn. "Hey- hey Vanya, it's Luther. Hi. Could um- could you call me when you get in? It's kinda important. Thanks...uh, bye." He hung up and didn't mention anything about Five because that would only worry her. She knew their brother too well not to worry. (It wasn't like Five would ever just drop by for a friendly chat.)

That still left him with the small matter of said brother getting drunk in the other room. He wondered how much he'd had before he got there. Knowing Five it was probably more than was safe for a fourteen year old. For that matter it was probably more than was safe for a sixty year old too. Luther sighed again and squared his over-large shoulders in preparation for whatever vitriol was to be hurdled at him by an angry, drunk old man. Then he went back to the bar because he wasn't sure Five had considered (or even cared) that his fourteen year old body wasn't physically capable of handling the amount of alcohol he was used to pouring into it. Somebody ought to keep an eye on him and well, there wasn't anyone else around.

Time to be a leader.

"She wasn't there, was she?" Five asked, words smearing like ink as they slid off his tongue. Luther noted with a twinge of alarm that Five was already almost halfway through the bottle and he'd only been gone a few minutes.

"Who?" he asked, for once just playing dumb instead of actually rising to the occasion.

Five batted the question away with a careless wave that came perilously close to upsetting the bottle. "Vanya of course. If she'd been home you'd be waiting for her in the foyer instead of sitting in here with me. But here you are, s' that means...no one else is ava-available." He gave Luther a hangman's grin that made him feel sick. "For the record, I don't want to be around me either."

"Yeah," he said, because there was no point in denying it. "Did you go by her place tonight?"

"Nope." He scrubbed a hand through his hair, down over his face and reached for the bottle again. They made contact at the same time, Five's hand locking around the bottle the instant Luther's locked around his.

"You've had enough," Luther said, knowing perfectly well he was about to start a fight. But he couldn't sit here and watch his brother drink himself to death.

Five went still, and for a moment he looked stone-cold sober. "Get your hands off me," he growled, no trace of drunken slur in the words.

"Give me the bottle," Luther challenged, and it reminded him of another time, another battle of wills. "Put her down" "Put the gun down"

He could feel the anger rolling off Five like heat. They locked eyes and for a moment every trace of the brother Luther knew was gone. There was nothing there but the charred husk of a man who'd lived through hell and gotten baked by the flames. In that instant Luther became all too aware he was staring into the eyes of a mass murderer. ("Assassin" seemed far too refined and civilized a word for what Luther was looking at.)

The moment passed, wall like a toll bridge coming up between them, cutting Luther off, Five's eyes flashing out warning signs like a traffic light. 'No Entry', 'Turn Back', and maybe, 'Trespassers Will Be Shot On Sight'. Luther was the first to look away but he didn't take his hand off the bottle. "Whatever the problem is, this isn't the answer."

"Fine," Five sneered, lips curled back in a feral smile that reminded Luther of a wild animal caught in a trap, ready to chew off it's own leg. Then he was gone in a shimmering wave. Luther blinked in surprise because he'd honestly thought Five was too drunk to teleport.

Maybe he was. A flash behind the bar and a moment later Five dropped out, a couple feet or so higher than was convenient. His feet hit the floor but his body kept going, spilling out in an untidy puddle of limbs.