Allison Hargreeves doesn't believe in miracles. She'd spent the last decade and a half of her life living what most people would say is the dream, but she'd lived through a failed marriage and about a hundred failed projects, so she knows that it's anything but. You'd think that Allison Hargreeves's world would be full of miracles, but it's just a barren, chaotic life like everyone else's. She doesn't believe in miracles. But it's going to take a miracle for her family to cross off anything from today's to-do list.

"This is the fifth time he's said Diego was the best in training. Are you serious? Is he blind?" Luther exclaims, nodding at Klaus to turn the page of their Dad's journal ("I'm not your slave," Klaus had said, and Luther had leveled him with a death glare.)

"Maybe I just outdid you," Diego says, quirking an eyebrow. Allison can't help but grin and lean back. These guys are better than any of the movies she's been in.

"You're insane." Luther says. "Now he's saying I contributed nothing in that last mission, but that you were exemplary. I remember that day; all you did was throw your knives once! I was making sure Klaus wasn't a useless ninny like usual."

"Hey, I thought we were friends!" Klaus whines. "I was turning the pages for you and everything."

"I—sorry, Klaus."

Allison appreciates the effort Luther's taking. It's all small things, but she's noticing them. A few days ago, he would have dismissed Klaus, called him an idiot. It seems to satisfy Klaus, anyway, who shrugs and turns to the next page.

"I seem to remember you running off to hide as soon as the bad guys turn up," Diego says, raising his eyebrows.

"Klaus fell! I was making sure he wasn't hurt."

"Wait a sec, I don't remember this," Klaus interrupts.

"You don't remember what?" Allison asks.

"Falling," Klaus replies. "I never fall."

"That's bullshit," Diego says, "you're the clumsiest person I know, and I'm friends with a lot of clumsy people. But you're right, shockingly." He turns to Luther. "Klaus was in the infirmary with a broken jaw during that mission. So why exactly did you run away?"

"Um."

"C'mon Luther, spit it out."

Luther looks at Allison, and she says, "I'm not helping you here, Luther. I want to know what happened too."

"Fine. I was—I panicked."

"You what?" Diego cries, and there's laughter in his voice.

"Wow, the great Luther Hargreeves, our Number One," Klaus says airily. "Never thought I'd see you stoop so low."

"In my defense, their guns were really big."

"They were just guns, normal guns," Diego says, grinning.

"You all know we have things to prepare for," Allison says. "Remember Vanya, our sister?" Luther ignores her, predictably.

"Shut up, Diego," he says.

"Yeah, shut up, Diego," Klaus says. "If Luther here has a fear of guns, we won't judge him for it, right? I mean, we all know about your thing with needles." He bats his eyelashes innocently.

"What? We don't all know about that," Luther says, sitting up.

"Yeah, Diego. What thing with needles?" Allison asks.

"You said you weren't gonna say anything about that, bro."

"I didn't say that, bro."

"Tell us, Klaus," Luther says.

"Well, Diego came into my room—without knocking, I'd like to add, so rude—and caught me, uh."

"Were you shooting heroin?" Allison asks, incredulous. She'd known it had gotten bad, but she didn't know it was that bad.

"It was a short phase, okay? You're not my mom."

"Klaus, you were shooting heroin?" Allison repeats.

"Yeah, I heard you the first time," Klaus grumbles.

"How did we not know about this?"

"It was one time! And besides, it's not like you checked in on me all that often. Bit late to be a caring sister now."

"Klaus—"

"The point—the point of the story, which I'm trying to desperately hard to get to, even though you all keep rudely interrupting me, is that he saw the needle on my shelf and fainted."

Luther lets out a bark of a laugh. "Really, Diego?"

"Okay, okay. We've had our fun. Luther, continue the book."

"Hey, I want to hear about the needles," Allison says.

"Klaus," Five says, coming over the hill.

"Aw, sorry," Diego says. "Guess you can't hear about the needles after all."

"Yeah, brother?" Klaus calls, rolling languidly over.

"It's time."

"Oh. Oh. Well." Klaus looks around at all of them, and Allison can swear, though she's not a superstitious person, that the sky darkens a little.

When Vanya finally appears, it's all of a sudden, and almost like she was there the whole time. It's as if she appeared out of nowhere, except that Allison can't pinpoint the exact moment where she started existing. Allison's never seen Klaus's powers in action, so this is new.

Although, thinking about it a little more, she really has seen his powers in action. Every time he yelled at nobody, or talked to himself. Every time she saw him staring at an empty patch of air. Everyone had always assumed he was high, because no one ever truly believed that the ghosts were always there, like he'd said. But she'd seen the, herself, over the past few days. She'd seen the mangled, walking corpses clamber into the shelter. She'd seen them walking around on the horizon. She'd seen the fear and horror, the recognition on Klaus's face every time. The academy had been bad for all of them, but she can't begin to imagine how awful it must have been for him.

The sight of Vanya makes Allison's heart hurt. She's still wearing the same white suit as before, but it's mangled and torn. There's an ugly scratch along one side of her face, and all of her exposed skin (which isn't a lot, even with the tears) is dark with dust and dried blood. Allison does think of her as a little sister, even though they're the same age, and seeing her like this is awful. "Vanya," she says, horrified, and Vanya starts.

"Where the hell am I?" she asks, the panic clear in her voice. She turns around to see Klaus reaching out cautiously, seemingly forgetting that he can't touch her. "Get away from me!"

"Hey, hey, Vanya. Calm down," he says, his voice to frantic to be calming. She just looks around at all of them and starts breathing hard, crying out again.

"Vanya, come on," Allison tries. "It's us. It's not Leonard, you're safe from him now."

"Safe from Leonard? You're the ones I need to be safe from. Don't touch me!" she adds, when Klaus reaches out again. Allison glances at Diego, who's looking at her. His eyes say what the hell do we do now? and Allison shakes her head.

"Vanya, I think you're a little confused," Luther says.

"Don't try and do anything. I'm powerful now. Did you know that? I'm special, just like all of you, but I'm more powerful than any of you."

"We aren't going to hurt you," Allison says, and her voice breaks a little at the end.

"How do I know that?"

"We're your family, Vanya. Why would we do anything to you?"

"Well, it's a bit late to act like my family now. You had thirty years for that."

"Vanya—"

"Where the hell am I? What happened?"

Diego speaks up for the first time. "The world ended, Vanya. I don't know if you were there, but we were."

"Diego—" Allison exclaims, shocked at the venom in his voice.

"Diego, can you shut up?" Luther asks at the same time.

And suddenly they're all erupting, Klaus with "Hey, guys, calm down."

Diego with "You were there too, Luther, you saw the shit she did—"

And Allison is yelling and trying to argue over everyone, but then Vanya just screams "SHUT UP!" and they all freeze.

Allison gives Luther a did you feel that? look, and he nods. That thrum inside of her. The ruins are still semi-standing, and the ground didn't shake, but they felt something.

Vanya's shaking, tense and looking around. "Why didn't—what the hell is going on?"

"Vanya—"

"Just—let me, Luther," Allison interrupts. She's grateful he's trying his best, but she doesn't trust him, not really, with something this big. "Vanya, do you remember what happened?"

Vanya just stares at her, eyes wide.

"The night of your concert, something happened. Do you remember?"

"I—we had a plan. We were going to—"

"What, destroy the academy?" Luther interrupts.

Vanya visibly flinches, then nods, slowly.

Allison looks around at the ruined landscape, and then asks, "Was it a mistake?"

Vanya holds her gaze and nods. "I didn't mean—I couldn't control it. I learned how to make it stronger, but I didn't know how to control it."

"That settles it, we have to—"

"Luther!" Allison snaps. "Just—wait a moment." She turns back to Vanya. "You wanted to destroy the academy? Why?"

Vanya's gaze hardens, and she doesn't answer.

"Vanya, please. I swear, we don't want to hurt you. We love you."

"If you loved me, you wouldn't have shunned me for thirty years. If you loved me, you would have played with me when we were kids, you would have helped me when the Academy split up. You would have come to the hospital when we called you!"

"Vanya—wait. The hospital? What are you talking about?"

"After the incident! Leonard called you, and you never even showed up. I was scared, Allison. I needed my sister."

"Vanya, I—Leonard never called me."

"What?"

"I hate to say this, but maybe he lied, Vanya. I would have come."

"Leonard wouldn't lie to me," Vanya says, shaking her head rapidly.

"You didn't know him, Vanya," Allison says. Vanya doesn't reply, just continues to shake her head.

Allison opens her mouth to say something else, but she can tell that Vanya's gone, retreated into herself. They aren't getting anything. She reaches out to put a hand on Vanya's knee, as some sort of comfort, but Vanya cringes away.

What have they done to her?

Eventually, they go back into their little shelter, leaving Vanya huddled outside. Allison is itching to do something, anything, for her, but since they're ghosts, they can't touch anything. In any other situations Vanya would be piled up with blankets and hot chocolate and maybe a bottle of wine, and it hurts Allison that all she can do is sit and wait for Vanya to speak up.

"So, what are we doing? I mean, what is the point of any of this if we can't convince her we don't want to hurt her?" Allison asks. Five is in his corner as usual, scribbling away in Vanya's book. It makes Allison feel a little pang—their Five, the sixty-year old one, had already filled all the margins and white spaces in the autobiography. The Five she's meeting now is on his way to becoming the one she knows, and she can't tell if that's a bitter thing or a sweet one.

"I mean, what can we do? We treated her like shit for years; it's not like we can just rewind."

"That's exactly what we're trying to do, Klaus," Five says, deadpan, from his corner.

"Okay, you know what I mean! We need to know her side of the story, but I'm not sure we can get her to talk."

"Something must have happened," Diego says.

"We know what happened, Diego," Allison says. "Vanya said it, Klaus said it. We treated her like shit."

"Yeah, but she was fine until last week. What did Leonard tell her?"

"How can we even know?"

"Allison, you have to talk to her," Luther says. "You're the only one she trusts."

"That doesn't really mean anything if she doesn't trust any of us. And I don't want to scare her, crowd her."

"So—" Luther says, but he's interrupted by a soft voice.

"Why can't I touch anything?" Vanya's walked into the shelter without them even noticing.

Allison's mouth falls open. "I—Vanya!"

"Why can't I touch anything?" she repeats, more urgently this time.

"Vanya, we're having a family meeting. Do you want...to join?" Allison asks, cautiously.

"Why are you all alive? What's going on?"

"We're not alive, Vanya," Luther says quietly.

"What?" Her voice is soft, stricken.

"We all—well, we all died. In the end of the world. A week ago."

"Klaus, are you—" she asks, letting the question trail off at the end. Klaus nods.

She looks around at them all and then turns, walking shakily back outside.

"Wellllllll. Anyone up for some refreshments?" Klaus asks after a moment.

"Not the time, Klaus," Luther snaps, and Klaus huffs.

"Klaus, can you translate this?" Five asks a time later. The siblings have been too agitated to properly work for the whole day, sitting inside and working silently on different things. Klaus has been working on the food stash, and Luther and Diego are quietly discussing the logistics of Vanya's experience of the week leading up to the apocalypse. Allison hasn't been able to focus on anything other than the image of her sister sitting on a rock outside, staring listlessly at the horizon.

"Sure, brother," Klaus says, turning slowly away from the piles of cans. "What's going on?"

"It might not work, and I don't have all the calculations ready, but we have to be ready in case Vanya talks." He pauses while Klaus repeats everything.

"Okay," Five continues, "so I've got the bare bones of a plan. It's not much, but it might just do something.

"Vanya arrived at the St. Pluvium orchestra at seven o'clock that evening, right before the concert itself, which was at seven-thirty. Leonard came with her. It was only at about seven-forty-five, some time into the concert, that she started using her powers, at least if I've got my data right. That's irrelevant though, there's nothing we could have done. We could, however, stop Vanya from getting first chair."

"What? What do you mean?" Allison asks.

"A pamphlet and a pile of newspapers. You'd be surprised what you can find under the rubble." He continues. "There's an article a couple of days ago: Helen Cho, renowned first violinist for the St. Pluvium orchestra, gone missing." He holds up the headline, letting them all see the picture. "We—"

"Wait just a second," Diego says, leaning forward, "that's the lady from Jenkin's house. In the attic. Allison?"

The paper's got a chunk torn out from the bottom and it's crumpled and ash-smeared, but Allison can see it. "Yeah, actually," she says, squinting. "She was in a body bag."

"That's surprisingly helpful. Means Jenkins must've killed her," Five says, clenching his fist around the article. "All we have to do is make sure Helen Cho is safe from Jenkins, and then we're good to go. Vanya won't perform at the Icarus Theater, and there will be no Armageddon."

"Okay, but wait a minute," Diego says. "How do we know she won't just destroy the world from her own home?"

"We don't," Five says. "But odds are she chose to do the deed in the orchestra instead of in her bedroom for a reason. She probably needs the extra input from the other instruments in order to channel the amount of energy necessary to destroy the whole world. If we stop her from getting that spot in the orchestra, none of that will be possible."

Klaus relays it to everyone.

"You have the calculations worked out?" Luther asks, and Allison feels a small rush of relief that he isn't balking at the idea of Five taking the lead.

"Not yet, but I'm this close," Five says, holding his finger and thumb a centimeter apart.

Allison speaks up. "Okay, are we gonna be part of this plan? I mean, can we go back in time?"

"In theory, yes," Five says. "According to my calculations, in the event that we do successfully travel back in time, our current consciousnesses will be placed inside our bodies in that timeline."

"That makes...no sense," Diego says.

Klaus relays it to Five, who raises his eyebrows and says "Try thinking harder.

"Basically, your consciousness will enter your bodies on the twenty-ninth of March, two-thousand-nineteen. My consciousness will enter what I suppose is also my thirteen-year-old body, if what Klaus told me is correct."

"And what happens to our old consciousnesses?" Allison asks. "The ones that should've been there on the twenty-ninth of March?"

"They'll be temporarily gone."

"Gone?" Luther asks incredulously.

"Wait," Klaus says, "but wouldn't that mean we're not here? I mean, if I hadn't done what I did on March twenty-ninth, then maybe the future would have happened differently, right? Which means that we aren't here, which means that we don't go back. Like the grandfather paradox thing, or, or Back to the Future, or something."

Five looks at him in disgust. "Back to the Future? It's a little more complicated than a kid's movie, Klaus. Every time we travel in time, it creates a new timeline. Otherwise we'd never be able to change anything."

There's a pause as they all process this, and then a small voice behind them. Allison nearly jumps out of her skin.

"Jesus, Vanya," she cries, "can you not sneak up on us like that?" But then she sees Vanya's face, and she softens. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"Did you get Leonard's call?" Her voice is shaky, wavering.

Allison breaks a little inside. "Vanya, he never called me."

"You didn't get it?"

"What did he tell you?"

"He said," Vanya says, and she takes a breath, "he said that he called you. That he said I was in trouble and I needed your help. That you hung up on him."

"Vanya," Allison says, horrified, and stands up.

"He said none of you loved me," Vanya says, and her face crumples. When Allison pulls her into her arms, Vanya only stiffens for a moment. Then she relaxes, and returns the hug.

"Vanya, I'm so sorry," Allison says, holding her tight.

"I'm sorry too."

The rest of the siblings watch in silence, Five probably wondering what the hell is going on.

thank you so much for reading!! as i said on my tumblr, this was kind of a weird and emotional chapter to write for me, and took me so much longer than usual to write, but i hope it worked!!

next chapter is from the pov of...try to guess. see you then, and please leave a comment and/or kudos if you liked the chapter!!!

(side note: as someone with a sibling i KNOW that no one calls their brothers "bro" but it's canon so fight me)

And sorry for the chapter vomit. It's difficult for me to upload on because of...certain complications, but I'll try to get the next chapter up on Monday as usual!