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The blood is filling her chest with a pressure that she can't quite comprehend, something that feels more like (almost) how it feels when the rain freezes around her, when her feet lift off the ground and it feels more divine than anything that death could be related to. Perhaps, that's exactly what death is, a divine sort of fulfillment, her body that has always wanted to move, now wanting to stop and breathe for a second. She wonders if this is what Klaus always feels.
(She wonders if this is how everyone always feels. Because, even with the muddiness of the drugs that had always clouded her mind, there had always been a sort of buzzing underneath her skin, like she was too much to be contained in a body that was so mortal and small. -that was also what drove her to think, maybe, if desperate enough, she could feel it louder, it would echo more and perhaps tear through the dampening layer that laid between her emotions and her mind. That had been what had caused her to step off that roof, after all (a week later, in the med bay with a dislocated shoulder from where Five grabbed her and a bruise resting on her cheek from the slap that echoed in the room after father reached his limit, she knew that she'd never be worth more than ordinary)-
And despite how it almost feels like too much in too little, she never found proof that her other siblings feel the same, not even five, who is perhaps the most well versed in his powers and abilities, always pushing further in search of an unknown that he never seem to reach, because he never stops. (Vanya doesn't think she has that sort of power to go on, endlessly, even when everything else has failed. Not anymore. Not alone. -under the cover of the night and the guiding late of the moon, she sometimes dares to think that's what family is for-
In the end, all she has is a power that's always pushing at her so she uses it, a body that feels too frail, battered and exhausted to hold it in, and something that always ends up tearing at the body so it can't contain, not anymore. (Until... Well, the moon hadn't blown up out of nowhere, after all.)
(But lately, she feels better. Maybe, the process of healing has some merit, after all. She feels freer than she has in a long time, and she hasn't felt free since she was four and the world was ready to rise and fall at her command, since her every word was infused with life, since her sister would let her lay next to her on the bed when the wind was too loud, since Luther would give her a boost so she could reach the book on the upper shelf, since Diego would sit next to her and sometimes lay his head on her shoulder as she hummed the melodies that always echoed in her mind (always, until the pills. She thinks she'll have an aversion to anything that's an empty white, forever), not since Klaus would come to her and ask her to read to him when he was upset, not since Ben would join them from the doorframe and it would end up as a sibling pile that had always gotten them scolded for. -not since Five was with them and willing to see her, even after everyone else had stopped, one by one. Children tended to follow the leaders, after all, and father had never wanted her to find out anything about herself. Allison's eyes had slipped over her, the first. The next week, Luther had stopped asking her if she was alright. Diego had never found the courage to look at her after his knife had slipped and cut her forearm open (she thinks that was what had been the catalyst to the rest). Klaus never quite stopped, four, five, six and seven, the ones that had never been what their father had wanted them to be, the ones that had never made the first three... But five was gone, and so was six. Klaus was already so burdened, so tired, under all that bluster, and well, Vanya had always been a little too good at blending into the shadows.
It makes the last few days so much more precious. The way her body felt energized, the way that she felt like she could walk a mile and not keel over, the way happy felt a little bit easier, with each smile. -she thinks that's why she never stops smiling, lately. Happiness is an addicting feeling, and she has been missing it for too long.-))
Her lungs are filled with something that feels like living and dying at once, like red as Allison choked on her own blood, like red as she screamed.
The pressure is suffocating and endless, and Vanya, even with all her practice when it comes to pressure, can't find it in herself to stand it. As she thinks so, a different heaviness settles over her shoulders, and she knows this feeling.
Next to her, the Handler is speaking to Lila, the woman that they had been fighting against minutes ago. A wave of crushing pain and grief hits her, and she sees the crumpled forms of her brothers and sister laying on the ground.
No , she thinks. Not this time, not again. Never again.
The gentle blue of her powers start to come to life as her blood seeps around her, sticking to her fingers like the chocolate of the doughnuts that they used to sneak out to eat.
There , she thinks. The warm glow feels like coming home.
Her chest lights up in a flash of blue, and her body gently lifts itself off the ground right as the Handler twitches (she has a feeling what it was for. That gun is too conveniently placed for anything else, after all. Not this time. Lila has gone through the same things as they have, has had the same burden of never reaching a certain level in someone's eyes. If that doesn't make her their responsibility, then she doesn't know what does.)
It's over before anyone else knows it.
Her hand lifts gently, and the wooden planks all around them disassemble themselves in a flash, their tips wickedly sharp and brutal as they slam into the Handler, aided by the force of her fury.
She doesn't regret it one bit.
This woman tricked her brother, Five, who was left alone and without his family, who had been lost without a way back home, never allowed to learn and teach what it felt like to be near your family as they decided that they would stand by your side no matter what, and she had tricked him after letting him rot there for decades.
That's unforgivable.
The next man entering the place with a gun and about to shoot is unexpected, but not important. She is unwilling to be lenient, today, but perhaps, there is merit in mercy for crimes not committed. This is the same man that had tried to shoot her, but failed. (She knows that there had been three of them. She wonders where they are, the others, before she realizes. And oh, she had never expected to feel kinship with her would be murderer. -Ben is gone permanently, after all, this time. (And doesn't something in her shrivel up and die when she thinks about it, when she even dares to think about the hug, the hug that felt like all the hugs that she'll never have with him, because her brother is gone, and unlike the ones laying around her, he isn't coming back . The grieving process of years feels like waste now, now that the wound has been torn open again. Her brother is dead and gone, and Vanya isn't going to see him ever again.) And even when he wasn't, he was gone from them. (She refuses to think about the siblings laying dead around her. She'll cross that bridge in a minute, and not a second earlier.)- )
A second passes when they lock eyes, and she can see Lila staring at the dead form of the Handler in shock from her peripheral.
The man slowly backs away, perhaps spotting a fight he is going to lose, or perhaps also tired of this continuous chase. She doesn't care. Her brothers and sister are laying dead around her, and she isn't willing to see this scene again.
She doesn't quite understand what happens next, when she kneels down next to Five, closest to her position. (The one that always has a plan, because right now, she doesn't have any, and she can't let this continue.)
(She does notice that the bullet wound no longer aches, and that the blood seems to have dried up already. She notices that the same way she had noticed that her cuts had always healed up faster than everyone else, and the way that she had never gotten hurt in a way that had lasted longer than a week, and the way that she never got sick. It had been the reason that her doctor had always wondered why she had to take the pills, and god, how she wishes she had listened and questioned the same things.)
Five is laying silently, and she'd think him dead if not for the way that his eyes are open, and his chest is going up and down stutteringly, about to stop any second. A panic grips her, the same panic that had consumed her when Allison was laying the same way, blood on her, and when Harlan had been on the ground, chest unmoving and heart stopped.
It's perhaps the way that feeling consumes her, or the way that she can feel the fear drumming against her ribcage louder than anything else ever had, she isn't sure.
But her eyes have turned a beautiful purple that she can't see, doesn't even know yet, but can feel, instinctively. Five stares back, his eyes not even surprised. (Vanya has a tendency to pull powers out of herself every time they think it's all. It's a running joke, lately.)
His hand reaches up to hers, barely, and he tries to move his mouth.
She leans down, pushing the fear away, because Five will solve this. Five always has a plan, and Vanya has always trusted him more than anything else in the world, and he will fix this.
Blood is sticking to her cheek as she lays her ear next to his mouth, and still, she can barely hear the word.
"Seconds." She pulls back to a sitting position, her eyes confused and questioning but. A plan.
Five tugs at her finger lightly, drawing her attention to the way they are glowing.
She feels it click a second later. Seconds. Five. Power.
Time travel.
But, doubt is making its way into her mind, because Five is almost dead and certainly too weak to do anything but barely breathe, and such a feat of power would most certainly drain him of all that he has left. But she has no plan, and Five needs power, and she comes to a decision.
Recalling the feeling of taking her power from Harlan, giving it to him, and everything in between, she clutches at the small cluster of stars that rest inside her ribcage, and pulls at their energy, pushing it out, out, out, until she no longer can.
Her eyes meet with her brother's, almost dead where he lays, exhausted and tired from years spent trying to fix the one mistake that started everything, and she knows .
The time itself unravels around them as Five pushes through the universe, fighting, always fighting.
Vanya follows, because this time, he isn't alone.
(He'll never be alone again, not if she has a say in it. And heavens witness, she does.)
(The Handler dies before she even enters the shed fully, her body pierced by a thousand sharp planks and all the tools in the shed. Lila stares at them all, her eyes wide, and Diego gives her a soft smile that he reserves for when his sisters are upset. The other man doesn't even come in, perhaps deciding that he can't win. Vanya smiles towards her siblings softly and steps out into the field, tilting her head back to gaze up into the skies.
Maybe, they can rest, now.)
...
They part ways with Lila, promising to see each other soon, because there is so much to unearth about what has transpired.
(Diego sits at the porch of the house that Vanya has spent a month living in, playing in, feeling alive in, and he stares at the skies. Vanya slowly sits next to him, and lays her head on his shoulder.
When he lays his head on hers, she knows everything will be fine.)
And then they meet Ben in their future.