five-fucking-hargreeves:

Here’s something for my post on the Handler regularly sticking Five in the apocalypse as a punishment :))

Warning for trauma

How many times can a toy be broken before it’s useless? Indefinitely, if you know exactly how to put it back together. And to say they broke Five was an understatement– but not in the way one would expect. 

There was no amount of training they could force him through that would crumple his legs underneath him. No amount to bones they could break that wouldn’t mend. The punishment of smaller portions on his plate did not deter him; not when he’d spent years rationing pebbles of food through entire seven day weeks. 

Indeed, it was pathetic to try to scare Number Five into submission, because Number Five didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. He’d been through hell. Lived through hell, nearly half a century of it. He stood like a brick wall, as unwavering as a mountain, and it seemed as though every muscle in his body had forgotten how to flinch. 

How do you scare a man who’s looked into the eyes of fear itself?

Easy, the Handler would say. You make him look again. 

And again. 

And again. 

The Commission liked to say they lead a neat and tidy operation, headed by the finest executives they could dig up. The Handler was no exception; infamously sly, yet impressively efficient in her work nonetheless. She promised the Board of Directors that she would create the ultimate killing machine– an attack dog to guarantee the smooth run of the timeline, from its beginning in the creation of the earth, all the way to the fantastical boom that was the end of it all. 

Number Five was beautiful. An anomaly that tripped right out of thin air in schoolboy shorts, right after the world had already ended. Every second he spent in the hellish future was a second added on a dead timeline; his being in the future could not change history when history was already over. For all accounts and purposes, his life was completely and utterly useless.

And yet. 

He was gifted in ways she couldn’t describe, demonstrating not only an outstandingly high IQ and impressive survival instincts, but the actual ability to bend and fold space-time. In a blink, he could step through walls, down stairs, across entire fields– a shortcut through thin air. It was simply poetic; a space-time assassin with a space-time power. He would be the weapon to end wars… or start them, if the Handler so wished. And he would be all hers. 

The trick was getting him to behave. So like all dogs, the Handler would reason, this one needed a bit of discipline.

Forty-five years at the end of the world is a hell of a resume, and it was one that Number Five was not proud of. He never spoke of his life there, and smoothly derailed any conversation headed to it. And for all that he asked questions about the apocalypse, he avoided secondary reminders, such as the heat that rose from the fireplace, or the smell of ash from a cigarette. It tormented him, often, and to the trained eye it was almost too obvious. 

That made it the perfect tool. 

A briefcase in one hand and a pocket watch in the other, the Handler grew to find mirth in her little trials; the ones she set up for her precious experiment whenever he started acting out of hand. 

One hour in the apocalypse for talking back, dear Five. Oh, maybe we’ll make it two, just for the fun of it. Four days for sneaking off to meddle at the infinite switchboard– any protest will double it, mark my words. Two weeks for eyeing that briefcase wrong. My dear, sweet Five… when will you learn? 

And oh, he learned. Because once every so often, the Handler would leave him longer than she said she would. Sometimes so long that he’d never be sure if she’d ever come back for him. And that… that is what scared him more than anything in the world. 

How many times can you break a toy before its useless?

As many times as you wish, the Handler would say. As long as to know exactly the right pieces to break.