Shadows & Mirrors // f.hargreeves fanfic

:::: Forty-One ::::

Nova's driving was reckless and dangerous. But at least she got them back to the hotel in record time. As soon as she pulled up to the hotel, hitting the curb slightly, she quickly tossed the keys to the valet before sprinting into the lobby. Klaus and Five were not far behind. During the drive back to the hotel, Five worked tirelessly on his calculations while Klaus flipped through the pages of the notebook the Amish woman had given him. Their theory was that all of their mothers, minus Nova, had died before they were even born. 

"Ok, gather round, people!" Five exclaimed to his other siblings when he noticed Viktor, Allison, and Diego sitting at a booth in the bar area. "Where is...Where is everyone? Where's Luther?"

"Haven't seen him," Allison responded from her place at the bar.

"Who knows?" Diego shrugged while he and Viktor rose from them both to gather around the bar.

"Anybody know where..." Five began before Nova quickly interrupted him.

"Five, we can fill him in later. We really have bigger problems to worry about right now," Nova urged and Five nodded while he unwrapped the binding string from around the thick notebook.

"Like what?" Allison asked but her tone told everyone she really was not interested at all.

"This," Five said while flipping through the pages showing the others the mysterious and concerning news articles.

"We believe that these are your guys' mothers," Nova explained before Klaus interrupted her by slamming his hand on the picture of his mother and touching it gingerly.

"That one's mine," Klaus said quietly.

"The point is, they're all dead. They all died on the exact same day, October 1, 1989," Five further explained.

"That's our birthday," Viktor pointed out.

"Not anymore. Now it's only my birthday. You guys were never born in this timeline," Nova butted in. "Your mothers died before you were born."

"That's dumb. If we weren't born, how can we exist?" Diego asked confusion filling his tone.

"Exactly," Five pointed out.

"So, what are you saying?" Viktor asked.

"We're saying, when we jumped here, we created a time paradox. All right?" Five asked and the others nodded slowly so he continued, "Not just any paradox. This is the grandfather paradox."

"What the hell is a grandfather paradox?" Klaus asked.

"It's bad it's really, really, bad," Nova pointed out.

This was before she felt a wave of energy pulse through the lobby. She froze and so did Five. The two looked at each other uneasily before glancing around the lobby frantically searching for any more disappearances. When they realized no one was missing they noticed the other patrons in the lobby were watching them.

"Maybe we should take this somewhere more private," Five suggested, and the others nodded.

Quickly the group made their way up the stairs towards the more private billiards room that overlooked the lobby. They found Diego's son, Stan, already up there messing around with one of the billiard sticks. Once they were sure no one was eavesdropping Five began to explain to the others what a grandfather paradox was and why they should be worried.

Meanwhile, Nova had stayed in the lobby searching for a coffee maker. She found one near the buffet area that was now empty considering it wasn't meal time yet. Now Nova had never actually made a cup of coffee before but she figured it couldn't be that hard, right? A frown found its way onto Nova's face as she stared at the basket of coffee pods in front of her. Nova had no idea there were so many different flavors of coffee. In the basket alone she saw, vanilla, hazelnut, and caramel, she even saw a donut-flavored one. That didn't even include the many different types of roasts and countries that were printed in bold letters on the coffee pods.