iselinde

[iselinde]

The Garden

A Five Hargreeves OC seven-chapter story (14k words)

She’s tending her lonely garden in the apocalypse when he shows up, starving, desperate, and—she has to admit—gorgeous.  His powers are impressive, but he’s got a companion who’s not exactly a person.  Can she trust him enough to tell him about her own powers?  Can she trust him enough to let him stay?   Warnings: smut, mention of Five x Dolores, erotic encounters with elemental beings

Just a few more buckets of water and the trench will be full. She cranks the bucket down into the well and cranks it back up.  She unhooks the heavy, brimming yellow plastic bucket and carries it, straining, over to the irrigation trench dug in the earth.  She pours in the water, and it runs down the trench, watering the potatoes and the carrots and the scraggly raspberry bushes at the end of the trench.  She breathes for a moment before repeating the process.

She’s been living here alone for years, ever since the moon exploded and the earth died, and all her family was killed along with everyone on earth.  Everyone but her. She wandered for a while, trying to find living people.  Then she gave up.  She found this place, on a hill, and she dug a well for water.  Over time, she repaired the walls and roof of the house, and made the garden. She lives on foraged cans, packages and boxes from the dead towns all around, and also on the crop of vegetables and berries she’s able to grow here from precious seeds she found in abandoned farm markets and florists’ shops.  At first the crop was meager, but it’s getting fuller, season by season.  She’s been careful.  There have been a few disasters, but she’s always kept enough seeds back to start over if need be.  The water is key.  Without it, she’d be dead.

She’s lonely.  She talks to the plants, the berry bushes, the moon, and the water. Especially the water.  It flows into her garden and through her body like a lover, intimately entwined with her, keeping her alive.  She asks it for advice when things get hard.  She’s even slept with her hand in an irrigation trench, just for the feel of it—something moving, like her.

She fills some bottles from the well-bucket, says goodbye to the water and the garden, and walks back to the house.  It used to be a small farmhouse, she thinks.  It’s got several rooms, and a kitchen with an actual fireplace, which makes cooking possible as long as she can keep the fire going.  She does have matches, from a raid on a half-buried drugstore a while back.  The toilet doesn’t work, of course.  She’s dug a latrine outside, away from the house.  At night, she uses a chamberpot.

She’s cautious, very cautious, about the fire.  If she got burned, there would be no one to help her.  If the house caught on fire, it’d be gone, and probably the garden with it.  She feeds kindling into the small fire on the hearth and pours one of the water bottles into the big pot, thinning the thick soup that’s in the bottom of the pot.  That’s going to be dinner. 

The door creaks.  She must have forgotten to close it.  She looks up and freezes, thinking she’s hallucinating.

There’s a man in the doorway, a young man, close to her age, lean, taller than her, with long chocolate-brown hair, an angular jaw, and wild, intelligent eyes.  He’s relatively clean-shaven. He’s staring at her with a harsh expression, and pointing a gun, a revolver, she thinks, right at her chest.

She has a rifle, of course, but it’s by the fireplace, several feet away. In her mind, she curses herself.  But she also can’t believe she’s seeing a human being.  It’s been a decade.

“Are… are you real?” the man—the boy? no, the man, she decides—says.

“I might ask you the same question,” she says, her voice croaking a bit out of stress and disuse. 

“What’s that smell?” he asks, looking around. He looks desperate, and he’s so, so thin it hurts her to look at him. 

“Are you hungry?” she queries.

He looks scared, like she’s the witch in Hansel and Gretel and might shove him into her oven while he’s not looking.

“You must be hungry,” she says, patiently. “I’ll feed you.”

She knows he could kill her and just take the food.  She racks her brain what to say to stop him from doing that. If she tells him she has a garden, he can just take it from her.  And if she tells him about her well, and that he needs her in order to maintain it, he likely won’t believe her.

“You’re the only other person I’ve seen in ten years,” she finally says. “I can’t believe there’s another human.”

“Do you have any water?” he asks.  She slowly picks up one of the full water bottles from its spot by the fireplace and sets it on the table.

“Here,” she says.

He grabs the bottle, opens up the cap and sniffs the water.  Then he gulps it down in seconds, holding the gun in one hand while he holds the bottle to his lips with the other. 

She slowly picks up the last bottle she’s got and puts it on the table too.  He glares at her suspiciously.

“Why would you be giving me so much?” he asks. “Water’s hard to come by.”

“I have enough,” she says. “Also, I don’t want you to shoot me.”

“I… don’t want to hurt you,” he says, though he’s clearly conflicted.  He looks like he hasn’t had a decent meal in months, and if he’s been wandering to find food, he probably hasn’t had much shelter either. Her setup here is bound to look good to him, and he may be thinking it’s safest for him to eliminate her.

“Let me get you some food,” she says steadily.  He nods.  She takes a bowl, spoon and ladle from her work area and goes to ladle up some vegetable soup.  She puts the bowl on the table with the spoon.

 “Careful,” she warns. “It’s hot.” 

He clearly doesn’t care.  Still standing, he picks up the bowl one-handed and guzzles the steaming hot liquid and the bits of potato and cabbage and carrot, not even wincing at the heat of it.  She dips him up a second bowl, but it’s clearly not going to be enough for him–his belt is cinched tight around his waist because he’s so skinny. 

“How do you have vegetables?” he asks after he’s gobbled it all.  “This tastes so good. I haven’t seen fresh vegetables in years and years. How are you growing anything?”

“I’ll show you how if you want,” she says. “Are you still hungry?”

“I’m eating all your food,” he says, and for the first time he shows a bit of remorse for barging into her house. “I don’t want to take everything you have.”

“I do have something else I can spare,” she says, calculating he needs more calories than a few carrots. He follows her with the gun as she goes to the pantry.  She gets one of her precious, precious packages of ramen and brings it to the table.  She rips opens the package.  She puts the noodles in the empty bowl, tears the packet and sprinkles its contents over the noodles.  Then she ladles up the now-boiling vegetable broth at the bottom of the pot and pours it over the noodles.

He tries to take the bowl. “Wait,” she says, and grabs his hand to stop him from burning himself.  “Just wait a few minutes.  Just two or three.” 

She’s feeling the touch of another human being. She can’t believe it.  It makes her want to cry for all the people she’s lost.  She looks into his face, into his eyes as green as the leaves in the garden, and she feels as if she’s falling into a well.  He stares back at her, not pulling away from her touch.

“Please,” he pleads. “I’m so hungry.”

“One more minute,” she tells him. “Just one.  It’s better if you eat slowly.” She knows that when people got out of the concentration camps, they died from eating too much, too fast.  “You have to wait.”

He looks at her as if he’s drowning and she’s a lifeboat.  She holds his eyes another minute and then lets go his hand.  “Okay,” she says. “Now eat. With a spoon.”

He moves to pick up the bowl and she shakes her head and points to a chair. “It’s not good for you to gulp it all down.  You’re starving.  Your stomach has shrunk.  Take the spoon.  Eat slowly.” 

He reluctantly sits down in the chair.  “You sit too,” he says gruffly.  “Stay where I can see you.”  She sits down in the other chair, which she usually uses to put up her feet.  He puts the pistol in his belt, and he starts to eat, a little more slowly. More like a person.  He has grace to him, she thinks, even in his disheveled state. 

“The noodles are old but they should be okay,” she says.  “I’ve eaten lots of them and they haven’t done me any harm.”

He nods, and keeps eating, steadily but not too fast, until the noodles and broth are gone.  He wipes his mouth and sighs with relief.

“I have one more thing,” she says.  “If you let me get up.”

He looks at her with distrust, but he says, “Go ahead.” He keeps his hand on the gun while she goes to the covered bowl on the counter.  She brings it to the table and uncovers it, revealing the mound of red, nubbly shapes beneath.

“Raspberries,” he breathes.  He grabs one, and puts it into his mouth. He makes a noise of pleasure, and she sees tears come to his eyes.  She smiles at that.  He eats several more, one by one, slowly, his eyes wide, his wiry body finally a little calm.  He looks at her, and it seems to her he doesn’t know what to do. “Okay if I have one?” she asks. “I worked hard to grow them.”

He nods, looking embarrassed again.  She eats one.  He gestures to the bowl, as if he’s the host. “Have as many as you want.”

“How did you survive?” she asks him, taking another one, bemused by his gentility in the midst of holding her hostage in her house.  He takes a handful of raspberries and scarfs them down, as if he can’t help himself.

“I.. just did,” he says after he swallows.  “I ate bugs and old canned food and took things from dead bodies.” He’s shaking, maybe with shock from eating so much, or because he’s talking to a person. “My family’s dead.  How did you survive?”

“I found water,” she says. Which is true, but not the whole truth.

“So you’re just… living here?” he asks. “Growing things?”

“Yes,” she says. “As many things as I can.  I want to help the earth be alive again.  Even if there can’t be humans any more.  I want there to be life.” 

He frowns at that.  “That’s an impossible task,” he says. “There’s a better way to fix this. It just has to never have happened.”

“What do you mean?” she asks. “How could it not have happened? I mean, I want that too, but it just can’t be.”

“If I can get back into the past, I can change it,” he says. “I can undo all of this. I’ve been trying to figure out the right calculations. It’s just taking me a while.”

Oh God, she thinks.  He’s crazy.

Of course he’s crazy.  He’s been alone for ten years.  So has she.  But if he’s really crazy, she can’t trust him not to kill her in her sleep.  Her heart sinks.  It was so good having another person to talk to. 

She gets up from the table.  “Want more water?” she asks. He eats another few berries and nods. 

She backs toward the bench by the fireplace.  The rifle’s tucked away under it.  She leans down.  She grabs the rifle, raises it, and cocks it, and points it into the handsome young man’s face.  He looks up, dismayed and angry.  His pistol’s on the table.  He’d let down his guard for a second—lucky for her.

“You can’t be here,” she says. “I’m sorry, but you’re not making sense and I don’t trust you. Leave the gun, go outside and walk away from here.  Don’t come back or I’ll kill you; I’m a light sleeper and you won’t creep up on me. I’m glad I fed you, and I hope you make it, but you’re not safe for me.”

He disappears from his seat by the table, as if he really was a hallucination.  She can’t believe her eyes.  And before she’s finished a thought, he’s right next to her, grabbing the rifle.   She screams and tries to wrestle it away from him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he tells her, his voice trembling, as he holds tight to the gun’s barrel. “I don’t want to hurt you.”  His strong hands pull the rifle away from her. “I’m taking this away, but I don’t want to hurt you.  Please.”

She’s crying now. “I’ve lasted so long. I don’t want you to kill me. Not now, when everything’s growing.”

“I’m not crazy,” he insists, his speech overlapping with hers.  He’s holding the rifle down by his side, his words coming very fast. “I’m not.  I just have powers. You saw what I did just now. I’m not delusional.  The reason I survived was because I blinked here from the past, and now I can’t get back.  I never meant to come to a time like this.  It just happened.  Please believe me.  I’m not crazy. And I didn’t come to steal from you.  I just saw the firelight…”

She pulls away from him, shrinks back by the fireplace. “What do you mean, blinked?”

“I can move in space and time,” he says, with a guarded look as if he knows she still might not believe him. “Mostly in space.  Time is harder.”

She thinks for a moment.  She knows about this. “The Umbrella Academy.”

He looks almost ashamed.  “Yes,” he says. “That’s my family.  Or it was. I’m… alone now.”

He sounds like that’s not the whole truth.  She doesn’t know what to say. It’s wondrous, what he can do, but dangerous, too.

“You must need help,” he goes on, his voice shaking. “I’ll help you grow things.  I’ll sleep outside.  I have a tent I can pitch.  It’ll be good for both of us if you let me stay. You need someone else here. I need the water and the food.  I need for things not to be so hard, so I can try to figure out how to get back.  If you help me, I’ll take you with me when I go.” 

“Into the past?” she asks.

He nods.  She’s uncertain about that. But what has she got to lose by giving him a chance?  Only her life and her safety, but she does have a lot to gain, with a strong young man helping her.  He could kill her, or enslave her, once he knows how everything works.  But maybe he won’t. He’s going to need her cooperation.  Tomorrow, she’ll show him why.

“You have to help in the garden,” she says. 

He nods.  “I will. And I’ll shovel snow and things like that.  I’ll forage. I’m good at it.”

“All right, then,” she says. “But you can’t sleep outside.  It’s windy and cold most of the time.  There’s a room I use for storage, and books and stuff.” She points across the kitchen to the door of the little room that must have been a study or tv room once.  “We can put a bed there.” 

He nods, his eyes relieved. “Thank you.” 

“I want my rifle back,” she says carefully.  “If we’re going to work together. I won’t harm you, as long as you don’t harm me.”

He reluctantly hands her the rifle.  He’s got such long fingers, she sees, like he’s a pianist. And such sadness in his eyes.  She reflexively wants to hug him, but she doesn’t in case it makes him angry.

He takes his pistol from the table and steps outside the front door, and comes back with a few duffel bags and what looks like a store mannequin in a polka-dot blouse.  She knows better than to ask.  She hugs her father’s old sweatshirt at night, and she’s been imagining the wellwater as her lover for years.  In situations like this, people do whatever they have to.  Although the term “people” is silly.  As far as she knows, it’s just her and him.

She puts the rifle in her bedroom and bustles around clearing the room so that there’s room for him to put his bedding down.  He looks so grateful to be warm and inside walls.   She points outside to where the latrine is.  He goes to use it.  Then he puts down his bedding, which is distressingly stained, in the space she’s cleared. She lends him two extra blankets from her stack. She can see from his posture that he’s exhausted. But they’re both terrified to go to sleep.  She can feel it. 

“Who’s this?” she asks finally, gesturing at the mannequin.

“Dolores,” he says shortly, and doesn’t seem to want to say any more.

“And… who are you?” she asks. 

“Five,” he says. “Five Hargreeves.”  She sees a quick flash of tears, before he manages to hide them.  It’s been years since he’s introduced himself to anyone, she’d wager.  She does recognize the name. 

“I’m Lily,” she tells him.

“Thank you, Lily,” he says with a serious look. 

“Good night, Five and Dolores,” she says. 

She goes to the latrine and then to her own bedroom, where she puts her dilapidated dresser in front of the door, curls up in her blankets with her rifle next to her head, and cries, terrified he’s going to break in and blow her brains out. 

But when she remembers him tearing up from eating a raspberry, she think he’s a sensitive person. Not a bad person.  Maybe he won’t kill her.

She feels something for him.  Of course she does. He’s attractive, under the grime and tangled hair, and he’s the only man she’s seen in her adult life.  And those eyes…  haunted but so, so alive. 

She calls out to the water in its lair under the well: Watch over me.  Please, my love.

Sleep, says the water.  I’m here.

2.

Five wakes up with his cock hard.

“Shut up,” he says to it.  “Don’t ruin things.” He stares above him and can’t believe there’s a roof over his head that isn’t falling in.  He unwraps his arms from Dolores. “We’re going to be okay now, mi amor,” he whispers to her.

Just be careful, darling, Dolores says to him.  Lily seems kind enough, but you’ve unsettled her, and there’s something strange about her.

“Obviously there is,” he replies.  “Why is she alive after all this time?  How did she manage it?”

There must be more to find out, Dolores says. But at least we have a place to rest.  We need that, mi amor. We were at the end of our rope.

“I know,” he says. “We may have a real chance, if we stay here.”

A real chance to go home?

“Yes,” he says.  “I’ll have more time and energy now to work on the calculations. Maybe this time I’ll get them just right.”

I know you can do it, mi amor.

He may as well make himself useful and not act like a parasite. He gets up and goes into the main room, stokes up the fire, goes out to the well, draws water, boils it in the kettle for “tea.”  Lily might have tea, actually.  When she does wake up, she comes out of her room, uses the latrine, then puts out bowls with handfuls of dried oats, and cups with handfuls of dried herbs.

“I found these in a supermarket a while back,” she says. “They’re shriveled but edible.”

She’s a really good forager, he thinks. I thought I was doing well, but she’s got her shit together. Using a ladle, he pours boiling water into the bowls and cups.  He feels like he’s playing house, like this can’t be real.

“I so wish I had milk, but the oatmeal’s okay like this,” Lily says, awkwardly avoiding his gaze. “It helps that I don’t have to travel around so much. I can store things.”

He nods. He feels badly not to have anything to offer her.  Then he thinks of something.

“Hold on,” he says, and goes out to his wagon and gets a packet of sugar. He found a few of those in a gas station store not long ago; this is the last one. He was saving it for emergencies. He brings it and puts half of it into each bowl of oatmeal. 

She nods her thanks.  “That’s welcome,” she says. “Thank you.”  They eat in silence.  He notices her long hair, her thoughtful expression, her womanly figure, her quick hands.  He remembers her touching his hand yesterday.  His mouth goes dry, even with oatmeal in it.  But he keeps spooning up the food.  His belly fills, and he’s grateful.

When they’re done eating, she takes him to the garden. She shows him the well with its crank and its bar and hook to hang the bucket on.  Then she cranks up buckets of water and he pours them into the irrigation ditches. 

“It makes it so much easier that you’re here,” she says.

“I wish my brother Luther were around,” Five murmurs.  “He’s got extra strength.”

It’s physically demanding, the work Lily needs from him, and he’s still weak from starvation, but he does the best he can.  He wants them to work together. He doesn’t want to kill her or frighten her with threats.  She seems kind and sensible, and talking to her—he just needs it, to hear a gentle, human voice.  He knows Dolores would be upset if she knew he was feeling that way, but he can’t help it.

“Did all your siblings have powers?” she asks.  “I think I remember some of them, but not all.” “Most of them have powers,” he says. “My brother Diego can hit any target if he throws a knife at it.  And my brother Klaus can see the dead.”

“Oh, he’d have so, so many to talk to if he were here.” She shakes her head. “I spent my first few years burying people.”

“Why?” Five asks. “You couldn’t possibly bury everyone. I buried my family, and then I tried to survive.”

“I know,” she says, “and it took so much out of me, but I felt I had to. At least the ones nearby.  I did stop after a while.  There were too many.”

Now he understands the dug-in field he saw on the way here.  It was her cemetery. 

She shows him how to weed.  “But don’t pull vegetables and eat them, please. We have to let them get to full size. There’ll be a decent lunch, don’t worry.”

Five nods, a little ashamed that she thinks he has no self-control.  It’s weird to be worrying about what someone else thinks.  He worries about what Dolores thinks, but that’s different.

She shows him which plants are which, and how to pull the ones that crowd the vegetables.

“But even the weeds are useful,” she tells him. “I eat most of them, or use them for medicine. My mom was an herbalist, so I know a few things.” She points to the basket where she puts weeds to dry.

“You haven’t gone mad here,” he says thoughtfully. 

“Oh, I’m mad enough,” she says. “I talk to myself.  But I do have the plants for company. And the water and the wind.”

“I have Dolores,” he says, his cheeks suddenly flushing. “She’s gotten me through all this.”

“I understand,” she assures him. “However you’ve gotten through, I’m glad you did.”

They talk a little more as they work.  Not a lot, but a little.  He learns that her father was a woodworker and that she grew up in a forest.  He tells her how he defied his father and jumped into the future, and ended up in an apocalypse.

“I have to save my family,” he explains.  “Maybe I could save everyone.  If I could get back.”

She thinks about that. “I wish I could see my parents again,” she muses, her voice trembling.  “I wish I could see trees.” 

When they break for lunch, Five stops by the well.  He glances at her.

“That well doesn’t really go deep enough to draw water for all the years you’ve been here,” he says.

She nods. 

“So what’s the deal?” he asks harshly. “Where’s the water coming from? What are you keeping from me? ” 

“All right,” she says. “I’ll show you.”

He expects her to reveal some hidden machine, but she just goes to the well and puts her hands on the ledge.  She starts to sing a wordless melody.  It’s a lullaby, really, nothing special, as tunes go, but her voice is pretty.  She sings for a while, as if trying to put a child to sleep. 

He stares at her.  Maybe she’s crazier than I am, he thinks.

But then he startles as he hears a burbling sound.  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the water in the well is rising toward her voice. Dark depths, pushed deep into the earth when the apocalypse hit, are burbling all the way up to the top of the round stone structure.  He can’t believe his eyes, but it’s happening.  She sings and sings, and the water rises and rises. He’s feeling a feeling he can’t quite identify.

Awe, he thinks.  That’s what it is. Awe, like when Dad took us to the planetarium and we saw what galaxies are like.

When the water’s brimming, Lily stops singing.  She puts her hand into the water and plays with it, petting it like an animal.

“Thank you,” she says to the water. “Much appreciated.”  Which he finds weird, but who is he to find anything weird at this point?

Lily turns to look at him. “That’s how I survived. I called water to make a bubble around me and protect me when the apocalypse hit.  It got hard, like ice.  I tried to call more water, to protect my parents, my neighborhood, but it was already too late.  It was just me in an egg of water, trying to breathe the little bit of air that was left in there, and a few minutes later when the water flowed away, everyone and everything was gone.”

He doesn’t know what to say.  It’s a crazy story, but so is his. 

“When were you born?” he asks.

“October 1, 1989,” she replies.

“You’re one of us,” he says. “The special kids.”

“Yes,” she says. “My mother wouldn’t give me up, even when your father came many times with more and more money.  Somehow, she hired someone to take us forward in time, so your father couldn’t find me.  She brought me to a little farm town and did her best not to come to anyone’s notice.  She didn’t want him to try to take me away.  She married my father, who lived in the town, and we were a family.”

“And your power is that you attract water?  That’s your superpower?” He’s still wrapping his head around this.

“I don’t attract it,” she says sternly. “I call it. I don’t like the term ‘superpower.’  I identify as a water witch. Water and I work together.”

“If you say so,” he shrugs.

“You and time and space work together. No?” she asks. “Or does reality do whatever you want?”

“No,” he chuckles. “It sure doesn’t.”  He looks at her with chagrined respect.  Of course she has powers, or how else could she have survived?  And she sees hers differently than he sees his.  That shouldn’t surprise him.  She didn’t grow up with Reginald fucking Hargreeves. 

“Come back to the house for lunch,” she says.  “We can’t keep stuffing our faces like last night”— she barely ate anything, he knows, but she’s being polite— “but I’ve got cabbage and we can have a potato or two. Shall I set a place for Dolores?”

“She’ll… eat in the room,” he answers.  He knows he should eat with Dolores, that he’s neglecting her, but he also knows if he brings a mannequin to the table he’ll look crazy.  And this woman makes him feel cared for, and she’s got such soft hair—he wishes he could stroke it. 

Stop it, he tells himself.  Don’t ruin everything.

They trudge to the house. “This afternoon I have to work on the math,” he says as she serves them each a roasted potato and a mound of cooked cabbage.

“All right,” she agrees. “I’ll go foraging.”

“No,” he says, too loudly, as he munches the food. She looks at him, confused.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he says.  “There’ll be no well without you.  We’ll forage tomorrow. I’ll go with you.”

“If you like,” she says stiffly. He can see she’s annoyed, but he’s not taking any chances. When lunch is over, she gets what looks like a mending basket and sits down to sew. 

Five goes outside to get the chalkboard from the wagon, and brings it into his room.  My room, he thinks to himself.  So strange. Dolores smiles, happy to see him.

Five!  How was your day?  Did you learn more about the garden?  And…Lily?

“I did,” he tells her. “I learned she has powers. She can call water.  Attract it, I guess.  But that’s not all of it.  She’s… plugged in here somehow.”

Plugged in?

“Yeah. She… talks to the garden.”  He doesn’t know how to say any more. “There are irrigation trenches for the plants, and there’s a well.”

So there’ll be enough food that you can work on the equations?  And bring us home?

“I think so,” he says. “Maybe.”

Do you want me to sing to you while you work?  Dolores often sings to him while he thinks. It helps him, when he gets stuck.

“I..” he begins, unsure.

“It’s crowded in there,” Lily calls.  “Work in here, if you like.”

He does need more room, and he doesn’t feel like having Dolores sing, anyway.  He nods goodbye to Dolores, takes the chalkboard, and goes back into the kitchen.  He props the chalkboard on a low table against the wall, takes out some chalk.  He finds his tattered notebook, with its list of failed attempts.

Lily watches him work.  She has questions.  Good ones, really, about what exactly he’s calculating, and why he can jump from one place to another without making calculations, but can’t jump in time without a lot of figuring.  And what happens if he jumps to a spot that’s taken by an object? And so forth.

He explains, as if to Dolores, that his body has a reflex that moves him out of the way of any objects when he blinks.  And that moving in time is much more difficult than moving in space, and if he gets it wrong he could end up in an era with no oxygen, or something like that. Space calculations he can do in his head. Time calculations… it’d be better if he had a supercomputer.

“So you can’t just retrace your steps, so to speak?” she answers.

“I wish I could,” he says bitterly. “I was young and stupid, trying to prove something to my asshole father, and I just jumped, without any care for what I was doing.  I was trained to always pay attention during a mission, but I was high on my own power, and I just didn’t pay enough attention. I have no idea of the way back.”

He sighs. “But I have to get there.  I have to save my siblings, and stop the apocalypse. I’m the only one who can.”

Lily looks like she’s thinking about that.  “Maybe you can,” she says.  “I hope you can. But I’m going to keep trying to grow things here, in the world as it is.  That’s the only world we’ve got for sure, as far as I know.”

He shrugs. “You may as well try,” he says. “It keeps us fed.”  They’re already an “us” to him, he notices. “But as soon as I can, I’m going to erase this terrible place.”

“You can erase this place a thousand times, as far as I’m concerned, if if will bring all those people and plants and animals back,” she says.  “But… that will erase me too, won’t it?”

“I’ll take you back with me,” he says. “I said I would. You’ll see your family again.”

She nods, her eyes welling with tears. “I’d like that,” she murmurs. Then she looks down and goes back to her sewing. 

A feeling rises up in him that he doesn’t know how to name. He wants to embrace her and tell her things will be all right. He tries to ignore the feeling and concentrate on the math and he just can’t.  And he doesn’t want to see Dolores right now.  He puts the chalk down and stomps outside. 

From the high hill, he can see the crumbling remains of the ruined town below, the plains around it, and everywhere the sand-brown desolation he’s been living with for ten years.  I’ll get back to you, he promises his siblings, wherever they are. I’ll save your lives, if it’s the last thing I do.  Only that will make all these years of suffering worth it.

But it’s hard to focus on his mission right now.  He’s thinking of that raspberry he ate.  Of a life in the present.  A woman by his side.  Food.  A warm bed.  Fewer nightmares, maybe.  Someone to care for him when he hurt himself or ate something bad and got sick. Could he have a life like that?  Would Lily accept him?  Why should she?  She’s got a power that’s actually useful in a post-apocalyptic landscape, and he’s just a feral kid from a fucked-up family, kidding himself that he can somehow get back where he came from. 

He tries to shake these thoughts out of his head. He should go spend time with Dolores.  He owes it to her.  But he can’t stop thinking about Lily’s soft hair, her strong, graceful arms, her hazel eyes.  He wonders how it would feel to kiss her, to run his fingers through her hair, to thrust his dick inside her. Then he hates himself for wondering.  How could he ever betray Dolores? 

Though even he realizes that thought doesn’t completely make sense. 

He can’t go hitting on Lily. If she thinks he’s trying to rape her or something, she’ll find a way to kill him. He can’t let her know about these fantasies he’s having. He has to stay focused on what’s really important, which is surviving and getting back to his family. 

He wants a drink. He pulls the most recent wine bottle he’s foraged from its box in the wagon, uncorks it, and takes a swallow. Don’t pay attention to how you feel, he says to himself.  Don’t act on impulse.  It’ll lead to your downfall, just like it always has.

3.

When he comes back inside, Lily asks: “Do you want a bath?”

“A bath?”  He stares at her as if she’s offered to resurrect Julius Caesar.

“If you’re willing to help me pump and carry water, we can boil some of it and pour hot and cold into the bathtub. That would make it nice and warm,” she explains.  “I had a bath a few days ago.  You must want one.”

“You think I smell,” he says. He feels deep shame rising up.  He must look like a monster, he thinks, with tangled hair and stained fingernails.

“I think it doesn’t feel good not to ever get to wash,” she answers gently.  “You don’t have to have a bath. I don’t have an issue with how you smell. But do you want to?”

He nods, feeling stunned.  Maybe she does want him, if she wants him to smell better.

They both bring buckets of water from the well.  She boils some of the water in the big pot and brings it to the tub in the non-functioning bathroom.  He pours some of the the cold water in, and she pours hot. He tests it with his hand, and feels like he’s going to cry again.

“It’s good?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says, trying to keep the tears out of his voice. “it’s good.”

She smiles and turns to go.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

She smiles. It lifts his heart, her smile. It’s not quite like Grace’s smile, but it has some of the same warmth.  “Throw your clothes out the door of the bathroom,” she says.  “I’ll wash them.”

Washed clothes?  He remembers clean laundry, before the apocalypse. Jackets and clean shirts, shined shoes and ties.  He can picture all of it, though it’s been years.  He strips and throws his clothes out the door.  Then he closes the door most of the way–he should close it all the way but somehow he doesn’t want to—and climbs into the bath. He sinks down into it, covering himself with the water.

She called this water, he thinks. There’d be no water in this place without her singing it up from the earth. 

It’s almost as if he’s bathing in her.

He stays soaking for a long time. He could almost be in the Umbrella Academy years ago, soaking in the bath after getting home from Griddy’s late at night, while Klaus, Diego, Allison and basically everybody yelled for him to get out of the bathroom. He enjoyed pissing them off, and the water felt good.

He takes a rag and scrubs some of the grime off his skin.  He scrubs his fingernails. There’s some kind of tincture on the side of the tub that might be for hair.  He tries some of it.  When he combs it through, makes the hair slightly less tangled, and now he smells like a flower.  It’s such an odd feeling, to be wet and warm and clean.  He’s been longing for a shower or a bath for so long he’d almost forgotten what it would be like to actually have one. 

His mind drifts to Dolores, and then, without him intending it, to Lily. He gets hard, thinking of her grabbing his hand to keep him from overeating. But he doesn’t want to dirty the water—what if she sees?

So instead, he gets out, and wraps his lower half in the towel she’s set out, hoping nothing shows. He walks out into the kitchen. She’s washed his clothes in the remainder of the hot water, along with some of her own, and hung them out on a clothesline just outside the door.  He feels her eyes on him, on his bare chest.  He sees the look that she quickly smothers.  He suddenly wants to see under her sensible clothes.

“I think I’ll have a bath too,” she says. “Rather than waste the water.  It’s so precious.” She brushes past him, rubbing against the knot in his towel, and goes into the bathroom.  He hears the splash as she gets into the tub.

Is this a come-on?  Or is she trying to get away from me?  Or is she just clueless? 

Now he can’t think about anything but her naked body, and the door is still ajar. He’s trying so hard not to look, but he can imagine what her neck, breasts, waist, hips, knees must look like.  How the water must be beading on her exposed skin. How her lips might part if he urged them with his tongue. How soft her pussy would feel. 

“Do you need a towel?” he calls to her.  He knows she has one—he’s being an idiot. He just wants to hear her voice.

“I’m fine,” she calls back. “Go ahead and rest.”  She sounds like she’s trying to be casual but is actually nervous. He catches just a glimpse of her hand as she pulls the door a bit more closed.  He quietly steps closer, and he does see part of her for a moment.  Her wet hair. The curve of her shoulder. 

He steps back and goes quickly into his bedroom.  He needs Dolores.

Are you sure it’s me you need? Dolores asks as he leans against the door frame, gasping with want.  Are you sure it isn’t someone else?

“Come on,” he says to her. “Don’t tease. I’m horny, sweetheart.  You know I need you.”

I’m always here for you, mi amor.

He takes off the towel, puts it under the two of them, and makes love to Dolores the way he does, holding on to her as he strokes himself with his hand.  “You’re so good to me,” he whispers to her. “Ho bisogno de te. I need you so much.”

I need you too, she says.  So much more than you can know.

But he can’t stop imagining what it would be like to climb back into the bathtub with Lily under him.  To feel her soft hands caressing his skin.  To bury himself inside her. When he comes, hissing, into the towel, he’s thinking of Lily, remembering her scream when he grabbed the rifle from her, and pretending that’s what she’d sound like when she came.

 “I love you,” he says to Dolores afterward, trying to make up for his distraction. “Ti amo.”

Ti amo, she agrees, but she sounds brittle.  Dolores isn’t stupid.

He cleans the mess he’s left on Dolores with the towel.  Lily’s put a large pair of sweatpants on the bed, and a faded but clean large t-shirt.  He puts on the clothes, liking the feel of something soft and new against his skin. 

“I’m going to take care of you,” he promises Dolores. “You’ve been faithful to me through everything.”

But you’re only human, mi amor. And she’s a living girl. 

“You’re a living girl to me,” he says. “Always.”

I know, my darling. But I can’t give you what she can. You might come to want her more than me.

He sits on the bed, his back to the wall, his arm around Dolores’ neck. He notices her baldness.  Dolores hasn’t seemed bald to him in years.

“Are you jealous, mi amor?” he asks.  It’s a question he’s never asked her before.

I don’t know, Dolores says. Maybe.

4.

Lily makes dinner—a stew of canned corn and canned beans from the pantry, heated in the big pot, and leftover cabbage from lunch.  She wants to spread out the fresh vegetables until the new crop comes in. She opens a few little packets of saltines and sets those out, to dip in the stew. 

Five’s eyes get big when he comes in and sees the food.  Poor boy, she thinks.  She knows what it’s like. She’s been hungry too, of course, particularly at the beginning of the apocalypse. It’s been a while, but one never forgets.

“Do you want a drink?” he asks her.  She wasn’t expecting that question, but for the sake of making him feel like he’s contributing to their meal, she agrees to a glass of wine. He fetches a bottle from his stash of things and she finds glasses.  Then he pours for her, and for himself.  She notices again how elegant his hands are, how sensitive and arrogant his face is.  The wine’s good—a rosé.  She smiles at how normal it all is, drinking wine at a table.  As if they’re having a date.

They talk about botany and engineering: types of berries, irrigation ditches in ancient Egypt, potato famines and how to avoid them. 

“What does it feel like to move through time?” she asks.

“Kind of like a cross between ASMR and swimming in hot molasses,” he says, “though the truth is I’ve only done it a few times.”

“But moving through space is easier?” she asks.

He nods. “I still don’t do it much because I need calories to do it and I haven’t had enough, not for a while. But now, it would be easier–if I needed to.  I could even blink the two of us, if we ever needed that. We’d just have to be touching.”

His direct green eyes hold hers, and she looks down shyly. She knows by now that she wants him.  When she was in the bath, she wished he would come in.  But he has a significant other, or he thinks he does.  She doesn’t want him to think she doesn’t respect his boundaries.  So she doesn’t ask him to blink with her, to show her what it’s like.

“Do you miss your family?” she asks.

 “I miss my siblings,” he says. “I don’t miss my father. I do kind of miss my mom.”

“Kind of?”

“She’s a robot,” he says. “My father built her.  But she’s nice.  Her name is Grace. And there’s Pogo—he’s a chimp who can speak, and he looks after us.  One of my brothers, Ben, is dead. My five remaining siblings are kind of idiots.  But they’re my idiots, you know?  I have to look out for them.”

“You talk about them in the present tense,” she says. “I guess that makes sense, if you can jump back to them somehow.  I don’t think of my people as still alive. I have graves for them, not real ones, but I pretend they’re real so I can visit them and lay flowers.”

“I buried my family, but I can’t think of them as gone,” Five says. “I just can’t. I know I can get back. I’ll see them again.”

After dinner, Five starts to wash the dishes in the basin Lily keeps on the counter.  Lily says: “I’m going to go out for a walk.”

“It’s evening already,” Five protests, sounding a little worried. “A walk? Is that safe, in the dark?”

Lily shrugs.  “The moon’s full.  No clouds. There’s plenty of light.  I.. have things to think about. And you must want a break from my company.”

“All right,” he agrees, looking glum.  She’s surprised. She’d thought he might want to be alone, but maybe he’s been alone plenty for the last ten years.  Well, she won’t be gone long. 

“I’m just going for a few minutes,” she says reassuringly. “I’ll be back soon. I’ll take you on a walk tomorrow night, if you like.” She pauses. “You can bring Dolores if she wants to come.”

She can’t quite tell what the look on his face means—if it’s shame, or reluctance, or gratitude.

Lily takes her shawl, the wool one she was so lucky to find in someone’s closet. She goes out of the house and along the garden till she gets to the field by the her garden.  She flops down into the soft earth near the patches of green leafy plants and grasses, and gazes up at the moon.  For a long time now, she’s treated the moon as her mother, and always tells the moon what’s going on for her.  So she whispers to the moon about Five, and how she never expected to see another living person again, and now she has seen one, and he’s beautiful, and carries a pistol, and scares her and is also kind and wonderful, and she’s afraid he’ll go on his way and never come back. 

After she tells her story to the moon, she sings for a while. Slowly she feels a trickle rising from the soil and wetting her clothes.  He’s here, the water spirit that’s been her beloved, her friend, her confidant.  She called, and he came.

She holds still and lets him touch her.  She’s done this at least once a week for years. To be able to call him, have him caress her with flowing fingers—it’s saved her life.  For her, lying in this field has been lovemaking, comfort, company, and prayer. She doesn’t give the spirit a name, not one humans can pronounce.  His name is the sound of water welling from soil.  And the name he’s given her is the sound of water falling from a height.

You have a new human, the water says when she ends her song.

She nods, worried about what he’ll say.  Shee hopes he won’t be angry.

Good.  I am glad he’s come. You are human. You should have a human lover.  

He isn’t my lover, she protests inside her mind.

But he will be.  Will he be good to you, I wonder? It’s important that he be good to you.

She doesn’t know the answer to that, not really. I think so. I hope so.

If he isn’t, says the water, he’ll answer to me.

Will you still be with me? Or will you leave me, if something happens between me and him?  

I’m in your blood, little one. I could never leave you.

She soaks in the comfort of his cool presence. A while later, she rises from the wet pool she’s been lying in, her clothes muddy and soaking wet.  The moon sheds blazing silver light over the field.  She sings the water back down into the earth, and watches the little burbling fountain melt back into the ground.

When she turns to go, there’s a figure in the dark. It crouches like a wolf about to pounce, or a demon lying in wait.  It stands and stretches to its full height, taller than her. She screams and turns to run. 

“Wait,” a voice calls. “I’m sorry. I was just listening.  Your voice is beautiful.”

It’s Five.  He followed her here.   She’s relieved, but also so embarrassed.  He saw her lie down with the water.

“You could have told me you were here!” she says.

“I didn’t want to interrupt you.” His face glistens in the moonlight.  Tears.

Is he that moved by me?

“Five,” she whispers, staring at the ground. “I didn’t mean for you to hear me sing.”

“I’m sorry if it was private,” Five says hastily.  “It was just…  I stepped out onto the porch and heard your song, and it was so… haunting. I couldn’t help but come closer.”

“It’s all right,” she reassures him, a little teary herself. “It’s all right. I don’t mind.” 

He takes her hand.  She’s startled, but the warmth of his strong grasp feels good, and so different from the fluid chill of the water. “Please come back now,” he says. “It’s late.  I feel worried for you out here.”

“I’ve been alone here all these years,” she chides him.

“But you’re not alone anymore,” he says.  His voice is firm, sincere. She feels joy rising in her that maybe what he says is true. 

5.

The next day, he goes foraging with her.  They have to walk quite a way to get to buildings she hasn’t excavated yet, but there still are some, even after all the years.  The building they choose is half-sunk in mud.  It’s a karate school, he thinks–it has a poster of children in white and yellow and green belts on the half-sunk plate glass window. 

“Happier times,” Lily says, smiling at the children. “Maybe there are graham crackers somewhere.”

There’s a smaller window set into a half-sunken door.  Five breaks it.  He insists on climbing into the window and leaving Lily outside. “It’s dangerous if the building settles,” he says.

“I know that,” she tells him, “and you don’t have to take on all the danger by yourself!” 

But he’s not risking her. He holds up a warning finger, and slides in the window, ignoring her plea for him to share the task with her. He prowls through the dark, filthy rooms, finding the little lobby outside the changing room.  Twenty minutes later, he goes back to Lily, savagely triumphant, with a bag bulging with the contents of a vending machine.

“Did they have Cheetos?” she asks excitedly. 

“Yeah, a few bags, and pretzels too, and a little candy, and I have something that might be even better,” he says, showing her the packets of sugar and non-dairy creamer from the office coffee area.  “There can be milk in the oatmeal, maybe. If we decide to trust it.”

She’s so excited she hugs him, and that warms him all the way through, even when they have to walk back the long way to the house in a chill wind.  When they get back and he takes off his coat, she sees the gash on his arm.

“From breaking the glass,” he says when she asks. “It’s nothing.” It’s much less serious than other wounds he’s had to deal with by himself.

But she sits him on the edge of the bathtub, sits down next to him, and fixes him up as best she can with a gauze bandage. Her fingers linger on his muscled forearm, and he looks into her eyes even though he knows he shouldn’t. After she finishes, he takes her face in his hands and gently kisses her. 

He’s never kissed anyone, and he knows she hasn’t either. The feeling of her soft lips sends him out of his mind. Lily seems startled at first, but when he probes her lips with his tongue, she opens her mouth. He knows he’s being awkward, and once they click teeth, but the feeling of their tongues twining sends chills up his spine. 

“Five,” she whispers. “You’re a miracle.”

“If there are miracles, then you’re the miracle,” he tells her. He leans in to press his lips to hers again, and slides his arms around her waist.  He’s still kissing her as he blinks them to her bedroom.  He knows he’s doing wrong, but he can’t stop himself.  It’s like he’s a wolf after a deer, his vision narrowed till it contains only her.

In the bedroom, his tongue goes on ruthlessly claiming hers.  His hands run all over her body.  He starts to unbutton her black dress, claiming the skin he uncovers with sensual, gentle bites. He hears her little whimpers and it’s killing him. He thinks he might come at any minute–he tries to focus on her instead of the yearning in his groin. He kisses down her neck, her cleavage, her sternum. He almost doesn’t know who he is. It’s like something wild’s been set free in him.

“I don’t know if I can stop,” he warns her. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” she murmurs.  The feeling of her solid flesh is unfamiliar, yet somehow he can’t imagine a time before he was touching her. It all feels like a dream. It should be a dream, an illusion, but it’s real. 

As his lips explore her skin, he slowly unbuttons the dress and strips her of it.  He claims a particular inch of sensitive skin under her collarbone, then fondles her breasts—it seems she doesn’t wear a bra– and kisses them messily.  She reaches up, twines her fingers in his hair, pulls his mouth back to hers so she can kiss his lips again. 

“You’re beautiful,” he tells her between kisses. “You’re so beautiful.” She looks as if she doesn’t believe him. He bites her throat threateningly. “Listen to me when I tell you something,” he demands. He needs her to respect him.

His hard cock is still restrained inside his pants. He presses it into her groin, and she groans. She wants me, she thinks.  It’s exciting and strange. He can barely get his breath, and she’s breathing hard too.

She reaches out and pulls his shirt over his head, them runs her hands over his back. He shivers intensely as the air and her fingers thrill his skin.  She kisses his shoulder, slowly working her way down to where she can mouth his nipple. He tries to stifle his agonized hiss.  He can’t take it anymore. He roughly pushes her down on the bed, covering her mouth with his and fumbling with his belt and pants.

“I need you,” he whispers, his breath coming hard and fast. “Please let me.”

He could make her pregnant, he thinks, and what kind of life would that be for a child?  But he can’t resist this.  Her body, and his own bewildered aggression, are taking him over completely.

“Yes,” she says.

“Don’t say it unless you mean it,” he pleads.

“I mean it,” she insists.

They strip each other of everything below the waist, and now they’re naked, but he doesn’t feel the chill.  He’s biting her neck now, half-crazed by the first human-to-human sex either of them has ever had. She reaches down to the firm length of his cock. He nearly sobs as her fingers find and explore the balls, base, long veined pillar, rounded tip.  “Stop,” he orders her urgently. “Don’t.  Let me come inside you.”  It’s not right, he thinks, but he wants her so much.

He grabs her hips. She tenses a little as she feels his length pressing against her opening. 

“Are you scared?” he asks her, his voice rough.

“No.” She shakes her head.

“You are,” he says, worried.

“No,” she insists, and pulls him closer, her arms around his waist, urging him farther in.  “I’m not scared of you.  Not anymore.  I want you, Five.”

He feels scared himself, at that.  She touches his face, looks into his desperate eyes, and he knows she’s telling him it’s okay no matter what. 

He takes her hips. “Tell me if I hurt you,” he says, though he thinks she probably won’t tell him.

He enters her, sighing and groaning like a wounded animal, his desire like a fire he can’t contain.  “Oh, shit,” he gasps as he slides all the way in, shock and bliss warring in his body. It’s better than anything he imagined. “Shit. Fuck. You’re so wet and warm. This can’t be happening.”

“It is,” she says. “It is, Five. It’s real.”

“You feel like heaven,” he whispers.  As if either of them knows anything about heaven.

He moves, purposefully. He has some idea what to do; he’s read about a thousand dime novels.  He sees her mouth open, hears her little moan, and he smiles with sly triumph. 

“You like it,” he exults.

“Yes,” she gasps. “It’s good, Five.” She leans her head back into the pillow, closing her eyes.  “It’s so good.  I needed you all these years and didn’t know.  Not until right now.” 

He cups her face with his hand. “Look at me,” he demands.  “Please look at me.” 

She obediently opens her eyes.  He’s moving faster now, fucking her—that’s what this is called.  It’s different than what he does with Dolores.  It’s better than anything he’s ever felt.  It feels so, so savage and intense, so rapturous he has no words.

“Five,” she cries, when he’s fucking her hard and fast. 

“Oh,” he croons to her. “You’re mine. Yes, you are, mi amor.” His ears faintly register what he’s said, just as he can no longer hold back.  “Oh… I’m gonna…”  He stills and lets out a long, agonized groan like someone’s killing him. He feels his seed pouring into her.

“I’m yours,” she cries, and gives a brief, sharp shriek he knows means that pleasure has flashed through her body like gold in a pan.  They’ve come too quickly, he thinks, but it’s delicious all the same.

He softens and pulls out, and lies in the crook of her shoulder.  She strokes his hair, rubs his back.  He’s panting hard. “Thank you,” he says to her, not knowing what else to say. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” she replies. “I was at the end of my strength.  You saved my life.”

He looks at her, stricken.  “I’m glad if I did,” he says. 

And then he pulls away from Lily, turns and sits with his back to her, his head bowed.  He can’t hold back the tears.

“I’m so sorry, Dolores,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry. We were gonna go back home together.  And now look what I’ve done!”

Lily reaches to hold him. He turns and cries into her neck, but he knows he shouldn’t accept comfort from her.  He never should have kissed her in the bathroom.  This is all his fault.

He shouldn’t say any more, but words are spilling out of him. “Mi amor, you did everything for me,” he cries, “you kept me from losing my mind for a decade, and I’m not strong enough to do right by you!”

“Wouldn’t Dolores want you to be happy?” Lily asks tentatively.

“No,” Five snaps. “Not like this. She’s in the next room. She can probably hear us.  What’s she going to say when I go back there?”  He puts his face in his hands, tears spilling down his cheeks.

“Five,” Lily soothes. “We’ve both found ways of getting through the loneliness.  But we have each other now.”

Five is silent for a moment, mastering himself, controlling his tears. It’s not right for him to take this out on Lily.  How could she possibly understand who Dolores is to him?

“We can’t ever do this again,” he says to Lily, his voice gentle but firm. “I’m sorry.  You’re a strong, beautiful person, but I have a wife.”

Lily gives a small sob. Five’s heart breaks a little.  He wants to hold her to him but he knows that’s wrong. He feels sadder and even more like a thief than when he came into her house with a pistol pointed at her.

“Dolores and I will be gone in the morning,” says Five.  “This isn’t your fault, Lily. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you. I wish I could stay and help you with the garden.  I’ll just take some water from the well, and I’ll go.”  His voice breaks.  “Thank you for the food—you saved me from starving.  I’m glad I met you.”

Tears are running down Lily’s face, dripping onto the bed.  Five takes his clothing and slips out, his cheeks still wet, feeling so guilty he could die.  What a shit of a human being he is.  If all of humanity were like him, they’d deserve the apocalypse.

Five? Dolores says as he enters their bedroom.  Are you all right?

He puts his head to her cold breast. ”I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Dolores!”

He hears, in the other room, Lily sobbing into her pillow.

6.

She can’t sleep.  And that’s good, because she needs to be up before Five is.  She knows what she’s going to do.  She hopes he’s drunk or fast asleep, and won’t hear her. He’s given her the biggest gift anyone could have given her, even if he’s hurt her too.  And she’s going to repay him.

Tiptoing around, she packs a sack with a little clothing, some food (ramen packages, oats, things like that), several bottles of water, two books she loves, and a warm blanket.  She takes some seeds in her pocket.  She takes, weirdly, the cork from the wine bottle Five opened for them.  Just something small to remember him by.  She puts on her coat, and extra-thick socks.  She leaves a note telling Five how things work in the house.  Then she gingerly, carefully opens the door, and goes out to the well.

She stands in the dark by the deep hole into the earth. The water she called yesterday is still lapping at the rim. “I can’t bear for him to starve again,” she says to the water. “I’d rather die than let that happen. I want him to have all these things.  The house, the garden, my food stores.  Please flow for him a long time, long enough for him to find his way back to the past and erase this terrible future.”

Tears run down her cheeks. “If humanity’s saved, if the world is saved, I’ll be part of it.  I’ll have prepared this house for him. I’ll have been with him once. That has to be enough.”

The water in the well rises to lick at her fingers like a loyal animal.  “I know,” she says, sobbing. “I love you too and I always will.  Thank you for being by my side all this time. I hope we’ll find each other out there somewhere.  There’s water everywhere if I can dig deep enough.”

She bends to the water to kiss its rippling surface.  She feels, somehow, that it kisses her back.  Its cool smoothness helps her calm her soul. She’s grief-stricken that she won’t see Five again, but she’s no stranger to grief.

Still weeping, she shoulders her sack and starts walking.  First she descends the hill and goes into the abandoned town. Then she finds a road out of town and walks east.  She knows she shouldn’t exhaust herself, but she walks as fast as is reasonable for her body.  She’s got to be out of sight when Five wakes up, or else he’ll see her and blink to her.  He’s honorable enough not to want to go along with her plan—she intends he shouldn’t have the option of trying to convince her to change it. 

She follows the road, knowing she’s heading vaguely along the spine of an aquifer deep underground.  She doesn’t want to leave her beloved water spirit—that’s why she’s picked this route.  By the time the sky is turning to a pre-dawn indigo, she’s far enough away that Five may not be able to see her from the house on the hill–though he still might, if he uses the binoculars.  She imagines what he’ll do, what he’ll say, when he finds her gone.  Maybe he’ll be grateful, she thinks, and think of her sometimes.  Or maybe not, but he’s too smart not to take food, water, and shelter when it’s offered to him on a silver platter.

She knows she should get off the road and hide before he comes looking for her.  The sooner he accepts what she’s done, the less energy he’ll waste. Trying not to leave footprints, she strikes out across a big plain, one she’s seen before on her foraging expeditions. 

Except this time, the plain isn’t empty.  There are what look like two people in dark coats standing in the middle of it.  Scarecrows? she wonders, which makes no sense but it’s what her brain thinks of.  She approaches closer, trying to see what the two forms are.  Then one of the two figures moves.

A woman. It’s a woman.  She’s got dark skin, and looks clean, with good clothes, as if she’s come from the past. And like Five, she’s got a pistol. 

“Sorry,” says the woman. “You’re not in the Commission’s plans.”

“What plans?” Lily asks, confused.

“The Handler wants Five to be alone and desperate,” the man adds. “You’re fucking everything up.  You did great out here, though. I wish we didn’t have to do this.”

Who the hell is the Handler? Lily thinks. And what has she got to do with Five being on his own? And why are there still people? How did they get here? Why do they know anything about me?

She has the rifle slung on her back and she moves to lower it, knowing she doesn’t have much of a chance.  The woman fires the pistol. Lily screams, knowing it’s the last moment.  She’s glad she has memories of Five.

And then there are arms around her, and a falling sensation. She’s in her kitchen, in front of the ash-littered fireplace, as if she never left.  She’s not dead, not even wounded, and Five’s got hold of her.  She still has the rifle.

“Stay here,” Five orders, letting go and stepping back from her. He’s got his pistol in his hand. “I have to go deal with them.  If anyone but me comes up the hill, shoot the fuck out of them. If I don’t come back, get out of here and find somewhere safe, and shoot anyone you see coming near you. Do not come after me.”  He kisses her, a hard and passionate kiss, a man’s kiss, not a boy’s—as if he’s aged years in a single night. 

“Mind what I said,” he tells her when he releases her, his green eyes serious. And then, before she can say anything at all, he’s gone again.   

She grabs the binoculars she left hanging on their hook so Five would have them if he needed them.  She runs out to the hillside to see if she can see anything.  The plain is clearly visible—she was wrong about it being out of sight.  She can see Five in his ragged clothes, the ones she washed. And she can see that now there are no fewer than six figures in addition to Five.  They have him surrounded. 

They’re going to kill him.  He went there to defend her and they’re going to kill him.  He’ll be able to blink a few times, she thinks, to avoid them, but not forever—and she knows he won’t run.  He wants to keep her safe, for some reason that’s not quite clear to her, and so he’s trying to eliminate this death squad that’s after her.  None of it makes sense, but she doesn’t have time to figure it out. She breaks into a run, headed for the well.

“Help!” she cries to the water as she runs. “Save him!  Please!”

At the sound of her call, the waters bubble up faster than blood from a wound. They pour over the stone rim, and they boil and roil and spill out of the well in a torrent, not randomly but heading due east, toward the plain. Lily runs down the hill, her feet splashing in the spilling murk, showing the growing stream the way.  

“We’re coming, Five!” she cries, though she knows he can’t hear her.

The wave ahead of her broadens and grows to a massive size.  It lifts her off her feet, and pours down the side of the hill, becoming an immense waterfall.  Lily gasps and screams as the current carries her over the edge.  She tumbles and tumbles, but the wave catches her before she slams into the ground.

“Is it you?” she whispers to the tide, but there’s no answer, just the roaring sound of the wide river the well is pushing out of its bowels. The tsunami-sized wave pounds onto the earth and rushes on, flooding the plain. The dark figures look around, hearing the sound.  

One of the figures aims for Lily. Even over the intense sound of the water, she hears the gunshot, but it’s Five who’s fired, at her assailant.  The man goes down. Other figures raise their guns, aiming them at Five.  And now the water’s almost reached them all. 

Is Five going to drown? Lily thinks suddenly, terrified, borne along in foaming rapids churned up by the spilling water. Have I killed him?  Ahead of her, the wave rises high over the circle of armed figures and crashes down on them. 

“Five!” Lily screams as all the dark shapes disappear in the pounding surf. “Five!”

The froth from the crash cascades over her too. The wave flattens and flows over the earth.  It’s only a few feet deep now.  She sees bobbing bodies, dead ones, she thinks, but she can’t find Five among them.  She wails, sure the man who was her lover for a single night is now at the bottom of the dark sea she’s summoned.

She checks the faces of the dead to be sure.  They’re pale and still, with horrible eyes.  Their guns have been washed away by the flood. The dust of this place has turned to mud, and her feet can barely move.

Something bubbles up from below, a sphere of water that reminds her of the one that saved her when the apocalypse hit. The sphere floats beside her, shining and sparkling in the rising sun, like a spaceship from another world.  Lily reaches out to touch it. When her fingers connect, the sphere splits open and flows away.  Inside is an unconscious Five, rolled into a ball.  He too is pale and still. Lily catches him in her arms, shaking him as the torrent recedes.

“Five!  Breathe!”

She lays him on the marshy ground. The water slides out from under them, soaking back into the soil.  Five is breathing, she sees. His clothes, like hers, are soaked through.  He opens his eyes. 

She nearly throws up with relief. “Oh, my God, you’re alive.” Thank you, she says inside her head to the water.

“Yeah, I’m alive,” he says grumpily. “I would’ve handled it.”

“There were six of them, Five!” she exclaims.

“Well, there was one of me, and that was plenty,” he grumbles. “Thank you, water witch–you’ve saved me having to shoot all six half-assed would-be assassins who were threatening to ice me if I didn’t join their murder cult.  And your powers are fucking impressive. But next time, please just do as I tell you, okay?”

“Next time?” She sits down in the mud and gasps, almost laughing. “Five, there’s no next time. I’m leaving.”

“You’re not,” he growls, sitting up quickly and taking her hand in a strong grip. “You’re coming back with me, and you’re staying.”

She stares at him. “Or what?” she asks, testing what exactly is going on with him.

He rolls his eyes. “Or I’ll chain you to a wall until you come to your senses, idiot.  You can’t go wandering around in the wilderness by yourself! I don’t care what kind of powers you have. ”

Now she does laugh.“I was by myself for a decade, Five!”

He gives her an annoyed look, pushes his hair out of his eyes, and grabs her shoulders.  There’s blue light and the falling sensation. And then they’re in her bedroom, on her bed, getting muddy water everywhere.

He pulls her close, his arms tight around her waist. “You will stay here,” he orders. “Is that clear?”

He tilts his head and kisses her, and he’s different.  She can feel it. He captures her lips with a confidence he didn’t have a few hours ago.  She whimpers, and he smiles against her but doesn’t let up.

“I need you to be mine,” he tells her when they finally separate, gasping. “I cannot tolerate my life if you are not mine.”

“What about Dolores?” she asks. 

“When I realized you were gone, and what you’d done, and why, I went to Dolores, and she and I… talked about it,” he says.  “You’re right, she wants me to be happy. And… I need you. When I though you were gone, I couldn’t handle it.  I thought I’d bash my brains out against the doorpost.  So I think we can work this all out.”

Tears spring to her eyes. Five leans in and carefully, gently kisses them away, one by one. 

“I think we’ve had enough water for a while,” he says. “Fire this time.”

He kisses the little curve at the back of her jaw, and she loses her mind. He’s not kidding about the fire—she can feel the heat coming off him. She wants him so badly, even after last night’s mess. Can she put any faith in this?  Can she rely on him?  When she looks guarded for a moment, he sighs and ignores her reluctance, pulling off her soaking wet, muddy blouse and his own wet, filthy shirt.

“You’re not holding back on me,” he says to her with a smirk she hasn’t seen on his face before but she knows she’s going to see a lot of from now on. “That’s not gonna happen, even if you’re still mad. Trust me on this.”

He bites her neck purposefully, getting a squeal out of her.  The he sucks her earlobe until she gasps like a fish, and when he sees she still has some of her rational mind left, he squeezes her breasts together and attacks them with his mouth, making her cry out so that if there were neighbors, they’d surely hear.  This is clearly a shock and awe campaign—he’s making sure she can’t think at all.

Unable to stay upright, she flops backward on the bed. He comes with her, pinning her to the bed with his weight, kissing her nipples and then the tender skin under her breasts, and then each bump of her ribcage. Through her delirium, she realizes he's shimmying her skirt and underwear off her hips—she feels his hands fondling her ankles as he finishes undressing her.

What the hell? she thinks. It was just his first time last night.  He must synthesize information awfully fast.

She expects him to come back up to her eye level once he finishes what he’s doing, but instead his long fingers are prying apart her thighs.  He lies down between her legs, his mouth in alarming proximity to her wet private parts. He gives her a tiny, delicate lick that makes her yelp.  Then he leans in and kisses her slit just as passionately as he kissed her lips a moment ago.

“God!” she shrieks, overwhelmed. “Five!” She reaches down to grab his head, but his hands pry hers away.

“Don’t interfere,” he orders, and he takes hold of her thighs again and brings his face even closer so that his nose is brushing her clit and his stubble rubs at her petal-like flesh. His tongue does something she’s pretty sure is impossible. She screams like she’s being robbed or kidnapped.

Both of those, she thinks.

Then language fails her, as a wave of pleasure that seems as big as the tsunami that flooded the plain outside washes over her.  Five doesn’t stop his lapping at her until he’s sure she’s good and ruined. 

The wave passes. Lily breathes raggedly as if she’s been half-drowned. Five strips the rest of his sopping clothes and mercilessly climbs on top of her.  She’s wet enough that he easily slips inside her. He takes bunches of her long hair in his fists and stares into her eyes as he rails her hard but slowly, as if he wants it to last and last.  He looks almost exactly the way he did when he first entered her house, stern, purposeful, desperate and starving.

He sees before she does that she’s going to come again, and the gloating look on his face is so hot it pushes her over the edge.. His pace increases, and he manages to kiss her. “Ah, fuck!” he cries. “Lily!”  He draws out both syllables in a yell, and he comes with her, both of them riding the same wave this time.  He collapses onto her as if she’s a shore he’s washed up on. 

There’s a long quiet, except for their breathing. “As I was saying,” he whispers in her ear, nuzzling her neck, “you’re staying.”

“So are you,” she whispers back.

She can’t quite believe he called out her name. But he did.

7.

The first saplings are coming in.

He’s very proud of the little orchard.  He dug in a mountainous trash pile outside a supermarket, shoveling muck day after day, until he found some dessicated apple seeds, and a few days later, two peach pits.  He planted all of these in the new spot Lily designated, by the vegetable garden.  At a florist’s, he found some acorns, and even though they could have been used for flour, he and Lily agreed to plant them too. 

The trees won’t all grow, he knows that, but a few of them are poking green shoots up from the ground.  He waters and weeds. Lily’s been calling up enough water for the crops and the orchard both.  He knows she still talks to the spirit of the well.  He tries not to be jealous, though it’s hard for him.  At least now when Lily goes out under the moon to sing, she takes him with her.  

Lily has built Dolores her own little house, with furniture that fits her, and a warm quilt and books to read.  Five visits her there.  They don’t mess around anymore, not in the way that they used to, but they talk.  Dolores still gives him advice about his equations.  It’s even more important now that he get everyone back to a livable past. 

No other assassins have come.  He’s pretty sure the ones who came the first time didn’t get to report to headquarters what he said to them—which is that they could threaten him as much as they wanted, but he wasn’t working for anyone who’d just tried to kill Lily.  He doesn’t need the Handler, whoever that is.  He’s going to get back to his own time on his own, and he’s taking Lily with him, and Dolores too, if she wants to go. 

And, with Lily’s help, he’s figured out something useful.  Time passes somewhat more slowly underwater than it does in the air. It’s a very small difference but he can measure it, the difference between time in the pond Lily’s made for them in the orchard, and time in the garden.  And he can use his observations of this time differential to help guide him in going back and forth in time more safely. He can start small, and gradually, he can work up to larger trips.  He might be able to generate enough data to figure out how to get back to exactly where he needs to be. 

He works on this a lot in the evenings, and sometimes he comes back to the house drenched, and Lily towels him off and warms him up.  Usually he grabs her at some point during this process and blinks her to the bed.  All those years with Dolores, he did his best for the two of them, but he had zero idea how mindblowing sex could be. Now he thinks about it all the time, and nails Lily but good the second he gets a chance. 

He can afford to think about sex because there’s more food now—they’ve planted beans and used some poles from the debris in the town below for the beans to climb on.  The oats Lily held back from their breakfasts are coming up in the oat field, so at least they’ll have oatmeal going forward, and if they have enough oats, they can make oat milk too.  In the summers, there are raspberries, and one day maybe there will be apples. The whole plain that Lily flooded has plants now, and some of them are edible or medicinal. There’s plenty of hard work, but he isn’t hungry any more, except the normal kind of hungry when it’s time for dinner.  And having Lily to talk to, even when they argue, makes all the difference. 

He recognizes there might be children. If there are, he has to give them something better than the lonely life he lived for ten years. Plus, the assassins may come back.  He’s always a little on guard at night, or on foraging trips, in case they do. He’s got to make the time travel work, and soon. 

Sometimes he imagines appearing back in his siblings’ lives, working with them to stop the apocalypse.  His father dying, and not torturing them anymore.  Grace setting the table for a family dinner.  Having a normal life again, whatever that means.  He wonders what his siblings will think of his water witch.  Whether they’ll value her the way he does, or blow her off because they’re idiots.  They’ll have to accept her, he decides.  She’s one of them, after all. 

And she’s his. 

[iselinde]

Five is so lucky he can timetravel so he can get back to the person he's absolutely desperate for... Great story!

Coffee Flavoured Kisses

Five Hargreeves x Reader fic. Smut. Implied history of fucking that old man. (No gender is specified other than reader wears a bra...I guess?) [I don't know what else to write here so just...here it is]

Before you could knock on the door in front of you, you were stopped by a blue light next to you, barely having time to react before his hand grabbed yours and you were both swirling back through the blue and into his room where he pressed you against the wall.

"miss me?" You chuckled as his lips found your neck.

"you have no idea" he muttered back, trailing kisses down to your collarbone, his hands already unbuttoning your shirt.

"wow, Fiver, not even a 'how have you been?'"

"baby please, you and I both know you don't care for small talk, how long has it been for you?"

You smiled at his truthful comment before answering "about 2 months, but you looked older then"

He scoffed "you heard about it I assume, the age regression I mean?"

"yea in the office, how longs it been for you?"

"nearly 7 years" he grunts out before pulling you toward the bed

"holy shit, are you-"

Five cut you off when he pushed you into the bed, kneeling between your legs, "we can talk about it later, but right now I miss you, and I really fucking need you, please?" he practically whimpered as the last word left his mouth.

He grabbed your thighs, pulling you closer, as he leaned down to kiss you, removing the shirt he had been unbuttoning earlier, you moved your hand behind yourself to undo your bra, knowing what his target was, he grabbed it and flung it aside. His kisses started to move down your neck and chest before taking your nipple in his mouth, his fingers finding the other and massaging. You pushed your fingers into his hair, curling the longer hair between them. He moved his body down the bed, kissing further down your body to meet the button of your jeans, pulling away to undo and pull them off, followed swiftly by your underwear. You were bare before him, while he remained completely clothed, just how Five liked it, seeing you in a more vulnerable state and getting to be the only one to take care of you. "fuck, I thought I had this body memorised but nothing compares to the real thing"

He ran his warm hands up the outside of your thighs and moved to grab your ass grinding himself against you. "Five, please" you whispered. His eyes met yours before he kisses you deeply, pushing his tongue into your mouth. You moaned at the familiar taste of his coffee flavoured kisses.

[iselinde]

Wonderful writing about Five, his unsuspecting girlfriend, and the doppelganger of his nemesis. Poor Five-- the panic attack in this story is so real I nearly had one myself!

Que Sera Sera

Five Hargreeves x Reader, One-Shot, 2.8k words, reader request

Summary: Five is sent into an existential spiral when you ask him to meet your mother and she turns out to be an all-too familiar face from his past life

Warnings: Panic attacks

A/N: This was a reader request that I thought was a very interesting idea. What if Five met your mother and she turned out to be the Handler? This is set ten years after season 4, except everyone is still alive (obviously). And of course I had to torture the poor guy! Sorry Five!😭

“No,” Five whispered to himself, hissing through clenched teeth as he rocked back and forth on the edge of the bathtub, gripping the porcelain sides. “No. Do not spiral. This is fine. You can handle this. Think logically.”

He breathed out a few short, halting breaths; each one catching in his throat and lodging there like a sharp piece of bone. He wheezed in enough air to continue to remain conscious but his chest was tightening by the second. His eyes closed tightly and he brought his hands up to his head, tugging at his hair. “Get a grip. Get a grip. Get a grip.”

“Five?” Your soft, worried voice came drifting through the door. “Are you ok?”

Five opened his eyes and nodded as if you could see him. Then he croaked out a weak, “Yeah.”

There was a pause. “Are you sure?”

He cleared his throat as best as he could manage. “Yeah. Be out in a second.”

He heard your footsteps fade and he pressed his lips together in a thin line.

“You can do this,” he told himself again. “Just… act normal. She doesn’t know who you are. She’s not even the same person. Do not panic.”

Five got up and went to the sink. He turned the cold water on and splashed some on his face. Then he scooped some up in his hand and drank it down. He managed not to choke on it, which was a good sign. He stared at his reflection in the mirror.

The last time he had seen her she had just finished riddling his small body with bullets from an assault rifle after killing his entire family while he lay helpless in the dirt. The only reason he was still standing today was because of sheer determination and a little help from his Swedish friend.

He hadn’t really planned on seeing her face again. Except in his nightmares.

That was ten years ago, give or take a few months due to time travel and universal resets. They had not been an easy ten years, especially those first few. But as always, Five survived the best he knew how. Fighting against the odds, breathing, and taking each day as it came. His family was safe. Reginald and his wife were dead. The world was back in one piece.

There was no Commission, no subway, no Keepers. There was no Umbrella Academy. There were no powers.

Somehow, though, Five made it through. He wouldn’t say he was normal, necessarily; he will never be that. But he was normal enough. Enough to find someone who found him exceptional without his powers. Enough to be loved.

It had been a week ago that you had told him you wanted him to meet your mother. Five knew she lived outside of the city. You had been raised by her after your dad skipped out on you when you were four. You were very close, speaking on the phone almost every day. When he thought back on it, he wondered why he never saw a picture of her. Probably because he never asked. Sometimes he was inconsiderate that way; too lost in his own head to remember to be polite and ask questions that didn’t pertain directly to himself.

Five had happily agreed, although he wasn’t sure what kind of first impression he was going to make on a parent. Not when he was technically older than they were. But you and he had driven the three hours to her house for lunch so that the two most important people in your life could meet one another. The two people that loved you the most.

You had been so excited; bouncing on your toes as you waited for Five to get out of the car and walk up to the door. Five thought you looked adorable and he had been smiling at you when the door opened.

“Darling! Oh, it’s so good to see you! I missed you so much!” your mother had exclaimed loudly and happily.

Five’s face fell. He hadn’t even turned his head yet but he knew that voice. He’d know it anywhere.

“And you must be Five,” she said cheerily, and just the familiarity with which she had said his name made him break out in a cold sweat.

He turned to face her. This woman who had birthed you and raised you and made you into the wonderful person you were today.

“Five, meet my mother. Renate.”

Renate, he thought. A German name meaning reborn.

How fucking poetic. He almost laughed.

Instead, he had stared wide-eyed at the Handler’s outstretched hand and happy smile and his stomach lurched. The breakfast he’d eaten that morning threatened to come back up and he swallowed loudly while all of the color drained from his face.

He had instinctively reached for his Glock in his inner pocket. But he didn’t keep a pistol on him anymore. There wasn’t a need.

“Five? Are you ok? You don’t look so hot.”

Your voice was tinny and far away as it broke through the loud ringing in his ears. He patted his chest inside his suitcoat, as if checking for bullet holes.

He had nodded slowly, trying desperately to keep it together. Your mother was watching him with genuine concern as her eyes moved back and forth between the two of you, trying to gauge what was going on.

“I… I think the car ride made me a little nauseated,” he had said feebly.

“Oh no, I’m sorry honey. The bathroom is right through there, down that hallway on your left,” you had said as you gestured into the house.

“Thank you,” he answered while trying not to flip the fuck out. “Be right back.”

And so that’s how Five had found himself locked in your mother’s tastefully decorated bathroom in her condo upstate, having a full-on panic attack.

Five couldn’t stay in there forever. He was going to have to come out and talk to her. There was no getting around that. He tried to focus on the fact that he knew this was not his old villainous boss. At least, not that version of her. She was actually the opposite of the version he used to know.

This version had straight brown hair that framed her face and fell to just above her shoulders. She wore minimal makeup and jeans and a t-shirt. Her nails were short and unpainted. There was no overpowering, sickening perfume or cloud of cigarette smoke trailing behind her. No stilettos that were as sharp as ice picks.

No underlings cowering in her wake.

You were always reminding him that it was important for him to process his feelings. So, Five stared at himself in the mirror and tried to process this sickening, all-consuming, feeling of dread.

It wasn’t fear; he knew that. Five had never been afraid of the Handler. Suspicious and hateful, yes. But afraid? He probably should have been, but he wasn’t.

No, this was the horrifying realization that he was, once again, lost to the universe’s cruel tricks. He had spent the last decade working diligently on shoving all of his trauma so far down that it was nothing but a tiny black speck. He had things under control. His life was his own again. There was nothing waiting around the corner, ready to drag him into some alternate hell.

He was at peace.

Then, in the time it took for a door to open, it all came shattering down around him again. And all of that shit he had been carrying around inside of him, smashed down into the size of a fleck of dirt, had exploded. The blood and sweat and pain and pure panic that had been his main driving force of survival for his entire life coursed through him again; rushing up from the underbelly of his subconscious and enveloping him in a suffocating blanket of turmoil.

He was trapped. Stuck in another endless loop of fiery demises. Flailing in an infinite pit of quicksand. Slogging inch by inch through a sea of tar.

Five practiced his deep breathing exercises, just like you had taught him for his nightmares. He looked around. Everything was normal. Normal shower. Normal sink. Normal pink floral towels hanging on a hook over the door.

Normal.

That wasn’t her. Not in the sense that he knew her, anyway. Maybe this was who she was supposed to be all along. Maybe it was his father, or hell, even Five himself, that had turned her into a sadistic, power-hungry bitch in that other timeline.

Here, though, she was your mother. And from what you had told Five, she had been a strong, fiercely loving and protective one. Always sacrificing her needs for your own. Essentially the opposite of her other self.

Five loved you, he knew that much. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let some demon from his past ruin the good thing he had now. He did not go through hell and back just to fuck it all up in one afternoon.

After another deep breath in and slow exhale out, Five straightened his tie and smoothed his hair back into place. He tugged at the sleeves of his suitcoat and took one last look in the mirror. Then he opened the door and stepped out.

You were sitting in the living room, laughing and talking with her. You both stopped when Five walked in.

“Are you feeling ok now?” you asked hopefully. Just that loving look in your eye, aimed in his direction, made him feel more at ease.

“Yes, thank you, darling,” he said with a shaky smile before kissing your cheek. Then he straightened up and held out his hand to your mother. “My apologies, I’m not sure what came over me. Five Hargreeves, nice to meet you.”

Your mother stood up and put her hands on her hips, cocking her head to the side with a sly grin. Five’s palms started to sweat again.

“None of that handshake business, mister. You are dating my daughter… I need a hug!”

Before Five could react, she was dragging him into her, squeezing him tightly around the shoulders and rubbing his back.

“It’s so good to finally meet you,” she gushed with a laugh.

When she let go and stood back again, she clapped her hands excitedly.

“Sorry, I should have warned you she’s a hugger,” you said with a guilty smile in Five’s direction.

Five resisted the urge to scratch at his skin. It felt tight and hot, but he hadn’t recoiled from her hug, so at least there was that.

“Now, before we get to chatting, would you like some refreshments, Five?” she asked, already on her way to the kitchen. She stopped and turned around, still smiling. “I’ll bring out some drinks and snacks and then I want to hear all about you. Your whole life story!”

Five swallowed for about the hundredth time since he’d arrived there. There was no saliva in his mouth anymore, but he couldn’t help it. Something was stuck in there, lodged halfway down his esophagus. A cold, hard ball of anxiety.

He was sure you would notice. You were always so tuned into him. Always worried.

He faked another crooked smile. “Thank you…” Five faltered at her name.

“Oh, just call me Renate. None of that formality nonsense,” she scolded light heartedly, turning to you and mouthing “He’s cute” before disappearing into the kitchen.

Five faced you. “She seems nice,” he choked out.

You frowned. “Five, honey, what’s the matter? You were fine all the way here and then as soon as you saw my mother you looked like you saw ghost. What’s going on?”

Five shook his head, his hands shoved deep in his pockets so the trembling would stay hidden. “I’m fine. Really. Maybe I caught a bug or something, but I’m ok.”

You studied him, taking in the way his jaw was set and the habit he had of chewing on his bottom lip when he was nervous.

“Is it my mother? I know she can come on kind of strong but—”

“No!” Five burst out, much too loudly. He quieted down. “No, of course not. She seems lovely.”

You nodded slowly, still not quite believing him. Five came to sit down next to you on the couch. He patted your knee. “Darling, I promise. Nothing is wrong, ok? I’m glad we came.”

Five had never lied to you before and he felt horrible doing it now. The problem was, while he may have never lied to you before, he had withheld some information. Minor things like how he was from another timeline, he used to have the ability to teleport and travel through time, and his siblings once had their own powers. That he was raised by a lunatic alien with a British accent and a monocle, hell bent on destroying them in any way he knew how. How he was actually in his late sixties. Small things like that.

But how could he tell you? The minute he would start listing off the litany of deranged things in his life, you’d be heading straight for the door. And maybe that was wrong of him, but god damn it, couldn’t he get something good to last? Just once?

The way Five looked at it was that this was his chance to start over. To borrow his brother Viktor’s phrase, “New timeline. New me.” He hadn’t understood that back then but he sure as hell did now.

So, was this the universe’s sick way of telling him You can run but you can’t hide?

Your mother came waltzing out of the kitchen, carrying a tray of iced tea and glasses. The ice in the glasses clinked cheerfully as she set the tray down on the coffee table.

“Five, would you be a dear and go grab the charcuterie board from the kitchen and bring it through here? I didn’t have enough arms to carry it,” she asked.

Five nodded, happy for a chore to do. “Sure thing.”

In the kitchen, Five took a glance around. Just like the rest of the home, there was nothing unusual about it. Normal appliances. Normal table and chairs. Everything was tidy and put in its place. There was a framed picture on a shelf above the stove. In it, you and your mother were in costume for what must have been Halloween one year. You looked to be around eight years old and you were dressed in an adorable dalmatian puppy costume, smiling from ear to ear with your nose painted black.

Your mother was Cruella de Vil.

Five picked the frame up and studied it closer. She had really gone all out, it looked like. The elaborate, embellished dress and fur coat. The wig of half white, half black hair. The red spiky heels. The long cigarette holder posed halfway to her red lip-sticked mouth that was curled in a malicious smile.

Five’s gut spasmed again.

“Oh! I see you found my favorite picture!”

He turned, frame in hand, as Renate came fluttering into the kitchen. She closed in on him, standing next to him to peer at the photo with a smile.

“Wasn’t she just the most darling little puppy?”

Five swallowed. “Yeah. Cute.”

“We used to love going in matching costumes.” She sighed wistfully. “Until she got too cool for it. You know how kids are.”

Five nodded.

“Now she doesn’t even like Halloween and hates dressing up!”

Five knew this. It was one of the many things he loved about you.

“I guess you just never know how people are going to turn out later in life,” she said, taking the photo from Five and placing it back on the shelf. She turned to him with a smile that Five wasn’t sure how to read. “But, as I always say, there’s a reason for everything. Que Ser Sera, am I right, Five?”

Five stared at her, unblinking. Suddenly, he saw everything with a startling clarity. His muscles relaxed. His stomach unclenched.

He smiled, slowly. Ferally. “Couldn’t agree more, Renate.”

The permutation of Five’s past nemesis studied him for a second, before reaching behind him and grabbing a stack of napkins off the counter. Then she pointed to the charcuterie board that had been beautifully constructed by her earlier.

“Would you mind?” she asked, with that same sickening lilt to her voice that Five knew all so well.

Five’s grin widened. “Not at all.” He picked up the board. “Please, after you.”

Then Five followed her back in to the living room. Back to you. Ready to join with or fight against whatever the universe had decided to throw at him this time.

[iselinde]

Underworld

A Five Hargreeves OC one-shot (5.5k words)

This is my first published fanfiction and I hope that if you're into Five you read and enjoy. Kind comments welcome-- I'm new!

A miserably depressed Five is on his way to tell his siblings and Lila they all have to erase themselves in order to save the world.  But then he meets a mysterious woman on the train, and his life—and the timelines—will never be the same.  Warnings: smut, existential angst, mentions of Five x Lila.

Underworld

He has the feeling of floating on the surface of a vast abyss.

The subway rumbles on through timeline after timeline.  He has the sense that none of it matters.  At least not to him.  He’s not connected to any of it.  He’d reached out to Lila, finally been in a real relationship with another human—except none of it was real. It all vanished the second she got home to her kids.  And his brother. 

He shudders, thinking about it—how it was all a game, a distraction for her.  “None of this is real,” she said to him.  She didn’t know how right she was.  These timelines, the ones they’ve explored for years, they’re not meant to be here. A tangle to be combed into a smooth single line.  None of it ever mattered. 

Maybe he isn’t real either.  Has never been real, has just been a figment of everyone’s imagination, blinking in and out of the void like a ghost electron. That would explain a lot.  He’s just the vehicle for the timelines to undo themselves like a vast shoelace coming untied.

He’s going to have to tell them.  Tell Lila.  That the best thing they can do for the world is erase themselves.  Rewind the tape.  He’s going to have to take everything and everyone they love away from them.  He truly is the Grim Reaper. 

He does have questions: will being devoured by time-eating particles in their timeline really erase the marigold and durango in all the other timelines?  What about the original releasing of the marigold?  Is that going to be erased too?   Is this even going to work? 

But he can’t bring himself to care about the details.  It rings true that the best thing he can do is erase himself.  And maybe Lila will care a little bit, when he lets the durango eat him up.  Maybe she’ll hold his hand.  A tear slips down his nose.  He hates himself for it, a little, but it’s hard to care.  None of his tears matter now, so he may as well have them.  Poor tears.  They’ll all be lost to history anyway.  This moment only matters to him, and he’s not long for this world.

The train stops. He looks up reflexively, completely out of habit.  And so he sees, as the doors open, someone get on the train.

It’s not another Five.  No, it really isn’t.

It’s a woman.  A girl?  A woman, he decides, though she’s wearing knee socks that make her look girlish. Her hair is in three braids, two on one side and one on the other.  She’s wearing a light brown jumper or pinafore, and she’s got—hazel eyes?  He can’t quite tell. Why does he even care?  But this apparition is so startling it wakes him up a little from his despondent reverie. Especially since she looks alarmed to see him.

Pixie-ish, he would say. Maybe in her twenties. Her jumper might be a uniform she’s altered to be asymmetrical and quirky with lace pockets and shit. She’s quite lovely, really. It’s weird how he can’t take his eyes off her. 

“You’re one of those boys,” she says. “The ones who keep telling me we have to destroy the multiverse.”

“Who are you?”  he asks.

She shakes her head. “Just stay on your side of the subway car.  We don’t have to talk.”

In spite of himself, he’s irritated that she thinks he’s some kind of threat. He feels he has to explain himself.

“Look, the multiverse, at least the one connected to this subway—it does have to go,” he says, gently enough, he figures. “The Fives at the deli made that very clear to me. If we don’t destroy these broken timelines they’ll just keep blowing themselves up over and over again, causing virtually infinite amounts of suffering. There’s only one way to stop it.  I’m sorry about it.”  He is sorry, not for himself, but for her.  She seems so full of life.

She shakes her head stubbornly. “No. I’m going to fix it.  And you’re not talking me out of it.”  She puts her hands over her ears.

“You’re going to fix it?” he asks, incredulous. “How the fuck are you going to fix a marigold accident that blew the universe into thousands of different timelines? Entertain that delusion if you want, but the only thing to do is let the reaction work itself out, eat all the timelines, and end up back at the original.  It may not be perfect, but at least it won’t be destined to detonate itself.”

“Not talking to you,” she says. “You’re all tar pits of doom, all of you.”

He almost chuckles.  He kind of is a tar pit of doom.  “Look, can we start with who the hell you are?” he asks.  “’Cause you sure shouldn’t be here.”

“I have every right to be here,” she says. “I’m a Five, too.”

“A Five Hargreeves?” he asks, nonplussed.  But Sloane was a Five, at least in the last timeline, so maybe it’s possible.

“A Number Five, yes,” she says. “Obviously not the more typical variety.  I’m Persephone Hargreeves.”

“Persephone?” he repeats. “Like the myth?”

“Obviously.”  She rolls her eyes.

“So people have to say four syllables every time they want to talk to you?”  He’s being obnoxious and he knows it, but he just wants to keep her talking.  He doesn’t really know why, maybe her cute braids are dulling the pain he’s in.   

She huffs.  “People call me Pippi.  Yes, like Pippi Longstocking.  But you can call me just what you like.  We’re not going to know each other that long.”

“And you’re off to save the multiverse?” he says, knowing he’s being snarky enough that it’s unforgivable. “Did you bring a basket of cookies from Grandma’s house?”

“Drop dead,” she tells him. “But before you do, tell me where you’re going.  I need a place with a full marigold-durango reaction in progress, and it sounds like you’ve got one.”

The train stops.  He thinks for a moment of getting off, catching a different train, not getting involved with whatever this is.  But somehow he’s glued to his seat.

“Why do you need a place like that?” he asks.

“So I can do a restart,” she replies, looking away as if she doesn’t want to explain.

“A what?” he asks. He suddenly feels like a fist is gripping his heart.  A restart is what he always needed and never got.  A do-over, so he wouldn’t end up in the apocalypse.  Wouldn’t scatter his siblings all over Texas.  Wouldn’t lose Lila.

“A restart,” she says.  “That’s my power.  Processes that have ended—I can begin them again.”

“You mean you can restart a motor that’s died?” he asks.

“Right,” she says. “I can flame up a fire that’s gone out.  And…. I can usually start a heart again, or a brain.”

“Fuck,” he says. “That’s a pretty useful power. Though I don’t know why Dad picked you.  He wasn’t interested in saving lives.”

“But he was interested in restarting universes,” she says. 

“Oh.”  He stares at her. 

“I was his failsafe if things went wrong at Oblivion,” she explains. “I mostly didn’t go on missions. I stayed at home and read science and history. I was the backup.”

The train stops at another stop. Five ignores the doors opening.  “You say ‘was.’”

“When Dad killed Ben,” Pippi says, “I saved him. Dad brought him home, and went into the room where he was and started his heart again.  The others came in, kept telling me to stop, that it was gross, that he was gone, but I kept doing it until it caught.”

“You had a Ben too?” Five asks.

“There’s always a Ben,” she says. “I think it’s a rule or something.”

“What happened then?” Five asks, his mouth going dry.

“Dad shot at both of us, me and Ben. We ran.  We got away.  But Ben was drawn back to Jennifer,” she says.  “The Cleanse started.  To stop it, Dad made us go to Hotel Oblivion and press the restart button.  He made me go too, in case it didn’t work.  So I could restart the universe-reset machine, if he needed me to.”

“And then you were in a new timeline,” Five says. “A post-Oblivion timeline. With no Cleanse. But you still had powers?”

She shakes her head. “Not at first. But like I said, processes that have ended, I can begin them again.  There was a grain of marigold left in me, and I renewed it.”

“But… that introduced marigold into your timeline,” Five says.

She nods. “Which is why Dad brought me to the subway and told me never to come back.”

“Fuck,” Five says. “Like Hansel and Gretel.”

“Right,” she says. “I’ve been wandering around a long while, talking to guys who look like you.  They’re all obnoxious but at least they give good directions.” She pauses. “If I could find a world that was having the Cleanse, and it was at just the right point…”

“You could begin the timeline again,” Five says.  “Without the Cleanse.”

She nods.  “It’s a big process to restart, but I could do it, I think.  And if I did, it might save all the others. I’m not sure.”

Five’s mouth goes dry. He realizes how comfortable he’s been, thinking that everything and everyone he knows will be erased.  But what if it didn’t have to be like that?

“How come you’re my age?” he asks her. 

She shrugs. “Over the years, I had a few accidents switching timelines, where I think I got younger.  It was hard to tell, without anyone around who knew me.”  She looks at the floor. “If I get lost and can’t find the subway entrance, I have to steal a briefcase, or else restart an ended blinking process from before, which wears me out.  So I mostly stay on the train.”

He nods, not knowing quite what to say. 

“So what’s your story?” she asks.

“I can move in time and space,” he says. “But in spite of that, I’ve mostly been pretty stuck.”

He tells her about his childhood with the cold, hard sadist Reginald Hargreeves, knowing she already knows about all that.  He tells her about the apocalypse, about Dolores, about the Commission, about finally getting back to his siblings in a body he’d left behind years ago, about how the moon exploded.  He explains about jumping back to Texas to try to fix Victor, and what a disaster that was.  And he tells about the Sparrows, and the fight with them, and the kugelblitz and the final flight through Oblivion.  He doesn’t know why he feels comfortable telling her all this, but he’s probably about to die, and he may as well have one person know his story.  Just one, who isn’t a mannequin, or some self-centered tool who won’t listen.  And maybe telling her everything is keeping him from having to decide what to do next.

“We were the Wormwood Academy,” she tells him.

“Huh,” he says. “Gothic.”

“I do know about the Commission,” she says. “Mostly from some of the guys. But they’re going about it the wrong way.  The more you prune branches of the timeline, the more new branches grow.”

“Tell me about it,” Five mumbles.

“So when you got to the new timeline, you had no powers,” she prompts.

“Right,” Five nods, “but then we found a jar of marigold and idiot Ben spiked our sake with it.”

“Come on,” she says. “You’re too smart to fall for that.” 

“You’re right,” he says. “I am.  I knew he was doing it.  I was so depressed, like on meds and stuff, and I just so wanted to be myself again.” He grimaces, disgusted with himself. “Now I know it was just part of the process of getting erased from existence.”

“So you got your powers back, and then?” she prompts.

He sighs. “Suddenly I could blink here.  To the subway.  While we were all trying to solve the Ben and Jennifer thing, Lila and I came here and we got lost for, like, six years.”

“Lila?” she asks.

“My brother’s wife.” The words are bitter.  “But it was six years, you know?  Without anyone but each other.  We fell in love.  Or I thought we did.”

“What happened?” she asks in that voice that keeps startling him with its innocence.

And to his horror, his absolute, grotesque horror, he starts to cry. “I found the way home but I didn’t tell her for like, six months, because I knew she’d go back to her life and it would all be over.  It was wrong of me.  I know that.  I deserve to be erased.  But she doesn’t.  Not really.  She should get to have her life back just the way she wants.  I wish I could save her. I wish I could save all of them.”

He wipes his face with his sleeve, thinking this girl is going to run the second the doors open again. 

Instead, she comes to sit by him.  She doesn’t take his hand or anything embarrassing like that.

“We’re going to save her,” she tells him. “We’re going to use our powers together, and we’re going to save them all.”

He looks at her with a kind of reproach, like she has no right to be giving him hope like this.

“Where’s your stop?” she asks him, and when he doesn’t answer she repeats herself, like she’s talking to a crazed person or a small child.

He feels that it’s all out of his hands.  The doors open, and he just walks with her off the train into the subway station he knows is his.  She doesn’t try to push him, or pull him.  She just walks with him like she’s known him all her life. 

“I don’t know what we’re going to find,” he says. “The Cleanse was already in progress. The whole thing might be over.”

“As soon as we get there,” she says, “you have to blink me a little into the future.  Just a few minutes. Nothing crazy.”

“Why?” he asks.

“Because I need to be there exactly when the Cleanse is a few seconds from complete,” she says.  “If I’m there for any length of time, I’ll be infected like the rest of you.”

“Okay,” he says. “And then you want me to go back to the point when we arrived?”

She nods. “I know this will be hard,” she says, “but you have to do exactly what you would do if I weren’t here. Because this might not work, and if it doesn’t, then you have to reset the universe the other way, okay?”

So he does what she says.  They get off the subway and he blinks her back to the hallway of the building he left in a rage.  He blinks her into the future, squeezing his eyes shut so he doesn’t see how awful it is, though he can feel the terrible heat of it and hear the moans. She has him do it a second time, a minute or two later, to get the timing exactly right. He leaves her there, feeling like he’s abandoning her.  And then he goes back.

He tells his family the terrible news. He convinces Lila not to go with her children to the new/old timeline, which feels like the worst thing he’s ever done in his life, and he’s done some awful things.  He holds her while she cries, which is the last real act of love he can do for her.  He keeps telling everyone to let the Cleanse take them.  He powers up with the rest of them.  And while it’s happening, he comes to believe Pippi was a figment of his imagination.  She was just like Dolores, a way he helped himself survive.  She got him back here.  She made him believe it was going to be okay.

He feels so alone when he sees Lila take Diego’s hand, but he knows it will be over soon.  And then she offers him her other hand, and it’s something, not enough, but something, even if it’s about to be nothing.  As he clings to Lila’s hand as he’s dying, he thinks of Pippi—Persephone, queen of the underworld and new beginnings—and Dolores, and is grateful for them both, but he knows they aren’t real.  He doesn’t hold it against them.  He isn’t real either. Not anymore. 

The Horror closes over him, and it’s over. He’s over.  Not even dead. Just over.

He waits, without air, without light.  The last moment doesn’t come.  He’s suspended in time. It burns.  It’s agony.  He screams.  What’s happening?  His vision blurs.

He’s lying in a field of grass.  There’s sunlight.  It’s a dream, it has to be a dream.

He sits up, looking around.

He’s pretty sure he sees Viktor just over a hill, standing, arms spread, staring up at the sky.  And he can hear Klaus’s hysterical laughter coming from somewhere, mixed with Allison’s and Claire’s.  Luther’s sitting on a rock, his legs dangling down, and walking up to him is lovely Sloane. Ben’s floating in a pond downhill from where Five seems to be, and Five could swear Jennifer’s floating with him. And when he turns, he can see Diego and Lila sitting in a field, with the kids and Lila’s parents, picking dandelions.  That hurts. But the world is beautiful. 

How did it happen?

He can’t help but want to know.  He gets up to look around.

She’s sitting on the grass, leaning against a tree.  Persephone Hargreeves.  Her face is so white she looks like a porcelain doll.

“I did it,” she says. “I restarted reality.”

“Is this the original timeline?” he asks.

“No,” she says. “I don’t think so.  I’m not sure there is an original timeline anymore.  This is a new one.”

He can see blood soaking her blouse and jumper.  “What happened to you?” he asks. Her wrecked body doesn’t fit with this idyllic field they’re on.

“It’s a lot to restart a life,” she says.  “It always hurts, when I do it.  Engines, things like that, they’re easier, but a life is a big deal.  And to restart a timeline—it was so much more. Things broke, inside me. But you’re safe now.  Your family is.  There’s no marigold and durango anymore here.  You can just live your life.”

“No,” he says, trying to lift her.  “No, please!”  She’s sacrificed herself for him, he realizes.  And she only just met him.

“Just hold me,” she whispers.  “I just want you to hold me. And then let me go, Five.  Live your life.”

He puts his arms around her and leans her against him.  No one else around him is noticing what’s happening.  He still thinks it might be a dream.  He tries to think.

“Do you have any marigold left?” he asks, knowing she wasn’t devoured in the Cleanse the way he was.  “Any at all?”

“Maybe a kernel,” she whispers. “It’s fading.”

“You restarted your marigold before,” he says to her.  “Do it again.”

“There isn’t enough. And I’m too weak.” She looks up at him, torn between hope and resignation. “It’s best to let it peter out.”

“Do as I say,” he says sternly. He needs her to listen. “Gather your marigold and restart it.  Do it now before it all vanishes.”

“But Five, if I do, the Cleanse could happen here!” she says to him. 

“It won’t,” he tells her.  “Because we’re not staying here.”

“I don’t understand,” she pleads.

He grabs her shoulders and looks into her eyes. “Do it now,” he says. 

She throws out her arms sideways as if she’s balancing in a huge gale. Blood comes out of the rent in her chest in a gush, and it’s mixed with a clear blue-violet light.  Ssomething ignites in her eyes, as she looks back at him.

“Now do mine,” he orders, hoping it’s not too late. She’s exhausted, bleeding, barely conscious.  “Persephone.  Restart my powers.  Do it.”

She sighs, and throws out her arms again, like a branching tree.  He feels the grid of time and space come online inside him.  Blue light prickles at his fists.

He’d like to say goodbye to his family, but there’s no time. And Lila belongs here, with her kids and Diego.  He lifts Pippi in his arms. He looks around at the beautiful green world, nods in a satisfied way, and blinks the two of them to the subway.

“How did you know there still was a subway?” she whispers as he carries her down the stairs, careful not to bang any part of her on the tiled wall.

“Because your dad got you away from one timeline that had a Cleanse, and it didn’t eat all the others,” Five says, carrying her onto a train as one pulls into the station.  “Plus, our Cleanse didn’t destroy the new timeline, the one we were just in.  The Five in the deli was wrong.  The Cleanse is localized.”

“Right,” she agrees wearily, lying in his arms as he takes a seat on the subway, her arms loosely around his neck.  He’s so aware of her body against him.  “I’ll have to save each timeline from the Cleanse, one at a time.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” he soothes her.  “Please. Just be still.  I’ve got you.”

“Where are we going?” she asks, trying to look out the window. 

“The deli,” he answers. “Someone there will know what to do. I hope.”

Someone does.  One of the Fives is a surgeon, and knows exactly what kind of damage extra-ignited marigold can do. Clucking his tongue, he cleans her wound out and stitches her up on one of the beds in the deli dormitory.

“She yours?” asks Brisket Five while Five has a pastrami sandwich at the counter, waiting. 

“Yes,” says Five, although he knows he’s being a presumptuous jerk. ”So back off.”

“What’s so special about you?” Brisket Five asks. “Pippi never wanted any of us.”

“I don’t call her Pippi, asshole,” Five snarls.

He does call her Pippi, though. Or Pip, sometimes, though he longs to call her Persephone.  To reveal the weight of her presence in his life.  He makes her a kind of nest in a deli storeroom, since the deli dormitory gives her little privacy.  She needs to heal.  And he can’t handle the boys walking in, looking at her in her vulnerable state of undress.  Brisket Five does bring them food and water, and Five is grateful for that. 

“No sauerkraut,” Pippi says, wrinkling her nose, and Five faithfully conveys her wishes to the chef.

He’s not used to having more than one person to deal with.  Not after seven years with only Lila.  If another Five comes around to visit, he bares his teeth and insists that Pippi needs rest.  He does let the doctor see her, though he has his suspicions, and watches the guy like a hawk.

She does need rest.  She has a fever, the origin of which is unclear. She’s a little delirious. She sings snatches of songs from different timelines and tells him fairy tales from France and Morocco and Japan. Sometimes she calls for her mother—Five isn’t sure which mother she means. But she never, ever asks which Five he is. He’s grateful for that, too, so grateful he could throw up. If she talks about the multiverse, he changes the subject.  He tells her stories about the apocalypse, making them funny even though they mostly weren’t.  He bathes her face and limbs, trying to bring down her temperature.  The doctor comes back, and shrugs.  It’s not an infection.

“I hope she didn’t pick up any durango,” the doctor Five says casually as he leaves.  Five goes pale and spends the night not sleeping, watching Pippi’s face.  Please, he says, to whatever God he once told Luther to make his peace with.

He thinks of Lila, of course he does, but Pippi’s so close to him all the time, and she often scooches closer to him in the nest he’s made, seeking his warmth.  When she has nightmares, she reaches out in her sleep to shelter him—which shocks him almost to tears. He wakes her, making no mention of it.  He makes sure she drinks enough—tries to get her to eat the deli’s thin soup. One night, his resolve falters and he kisses her forehead. She gives a little pleased murmur and drifts off to sleep.

Sometime that night, her fever starts to break.

“Hey,” he says when she opens her eyes, “look who it is.”

“I can’t look at myself,” she points out, which makes him laugh. 

“I have to look at myself all day long around here,” he complains, which gets a giggle out of her. He won’t let her sit up until he’s felt her forehead to make sure it’s cool.

“You could bring me a mirror,” she suggests playfully. “Then I could see myself.”

“You don’t need a mirror,” he replies. “I can see you.” 

She smiles, and for him, it’s like the day breaking.  It’s like he’s been swimming through water with his lungs bursting, and he’s finally broken through the surface and can breathe.  He tells her all the silly things she said when she was delirious—well, almost all of them, some things he’s keeping to himself to treasure—and she blushes and giggles.  Brisket Five brings in some chicken soup, and some flowers stolen from some timeline where roses are purple.   Five chases their benefactor away as soon as possible.

As she heals, she pesters him about time and space and how he knows where to go and how he avoids objects.  He wants to know how she found out about her power, and she tells him about the dead goldfish she revived, just somehow she knew how to do it, and that some of her brothers teased her by calling her Fish Whisperer.  She wants to know how he found out about his powers, and he tells her how chubby toddler Luther threw a fist at him and Five just suddenly wasn’t there.  Reggie was so worried Five would run away, he spent months trying to figure out how to lock him up, but Five would always find a way out of any room or container eventually.

“I wish I’d blinked in to get Klaus out of the tomb,” Five says. “I could have been braver. I wish I had been.”

“You’ve been plenty brave since then,” she tells him, with a certain pride in her voice that makes his chest swell painfully. 

Once Pippi’s well, the Fives are instantly annoyed that he’s parading her around in front of them, reminding them of what they don’t have.  Even when she fixes the broken generator by looking at it, they’re not placated.

“Get out of here already,” says Waiter Five to him one morning. “You’re eating up all the leftovers Janitor Five and I are supposed to get.”

He knows it’s time to go. He packs up their nest and leads her onto the subway. The train lurches, and she bumps into him.  Right into his arms, her head knocking into his chest. He closes his arms around her, and when she looks up at him, he kisses her, tenderly at first, then desperately.  She kisses him back with wonder, as if he’s the first.  Maybe he is, and maybe he isn’t, but she sure isn’t shy about sliding her hands under his shirt, ot tugging at his earlobe with her teeth.

He drags her off the train three stops later, and blinks her to the grassy crest of a hill overlooking a lake full of strange whiskered fish that can wiggle themselves onto the beach.  He pushes her down in the grass and strips off her clothes, and then his own.  She has a body that’s always in motion, but she lies still for him, letting him explore her skin. She lets him play with her, until he teases her with little bites to her collarbone, and she grabs his hair and pulls his head back, and kisses his throat like a tender vampire.

That makes him feel out of control.  He shakes his head as if someone’s dumped water on him, getting himself free.  Then he slams her back onto the ground and grabs her wrists. Her now-unbraided hair falls all around her like willow branches. 

“I want you, Persephone,” he tells her. “I’ve wanted you since you told me to sit on the opposite side of the subway car. I have to have you.  I can’t stay away.” 

“I don’t have a timeline anymore,” she says, “but you are my timeline. Only you.”

He kisses her again, open-mouthed, needing to get his tongue next to hers.  He lets go of her wrists, satisfied she’s not going anywhere. His palms find her nipples and aureoles, massaging them in circles, relishing the little sounds she makes.  His mouth wants in on that action, and so he lets himself encompass her breasts with his lips. She cries out, her voice startling the birds in the air.  His ever-hopeful organ is jamming itself into her belly, making itself known.

She sighs with pleasure, and smiles. “Is that your marigold?” she teases.

“It’s my superpower, all right,” he says, and he takes her hips.  “Please,” he pleads. 

“Oh, yes,” she says.  “Do, love.  My umbrella.  My shelter.“

There’s something in his heart that’s saying: Don’t get hurt again.  If she doesn’t leave you, the world will find a way to take her.

But he’s not listening.  He can’t.  He’s already inside her, already moving, groaning, ready to unite his fluids with hers in this weird ancient human ritual. He doesn’t know what Ben and Jennifer felt, but it has to have been something like this.

Pippitropism, he thinks.  I just grow toward her.

Her mouth has fallen half-open as he ruts in her, and she’s so beautiful to him in this moment that he thinks he should look away or he might shatter into pieces.  But he doesn’t look away.  He watches hungrily while she comes, entranced, as if she’s a swan in the snow at midnight.  And then when he comes, groaning, and finds her looking at him, it nearly ends him.  He yells so loudly, looking into those eyes, that she asks if he’s all right. He tells her he is, and falls next to her, and laughs until his sides hurt. 

Am I all right?  I am fantastic, my girl.  Top-notch. I thought I was going to be erased from existence while watching my lover reconcile with her husband.  Now I am in some lovely weird-ass timeline with a girl who can conquer death, and she wants me.

“We need a place to be,” he says when they’re sitting up naked and watching fish crawl in and out of the lake.  He knows by now the timelines almost entirely covered by water, timelines with weapons on the moon, timelines where humans are few and rats are plentiful, timelines where the air is burning.  He can’t take her where he was with Lila.  That he can’t do.

“What about here?” she asks.

“You think we can eat those fish?” he wonders.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“You’re the fish whisperer!” he tells her. 

She giggles.  “I think you’re the Persephone whisperer.”

“It is my greatest aspiration,” he assures her solemnly.

“I love you,” she says, and claps her hands over her mouth as if she can’t believe she’s said it.

“Oh, I love you,” he tells her, and he’s kissing her again.  He doesn’t remember moving toward her—it’s just happening, like gravity.

She’s restarted him, he thinks.  Isn’t that her power?  He ended, and she began him again. 

He keeps kissing her, savoring her lips. She slides her arms around his waist, pulling him to her. He lets himself feel the feeling of her encircling him, keeping him with her.

“But, Five,” she says after a while, when he lets her speak. “We do have to go help the other timelines.”

He sighs. “Which ones?”

She frowns at him. “You know what I mean.  The ones where the Cleanse is happening.  We can save them.  You and me.  Together.”

“There are probably thousands of them,” Five says, despairing.  “How can we make a difference? None of the other Fives could.”  He just wants to build her a little house on this hill, with a garden.

“None of the other Fives had me,” she points out, and she takes his hand.  “Don’t you want to save your family? I mean, all of your families?  Our families?”

“But Persephone,” he says, his heart aching, “you might die.”

“Maybe,” she replies. “But I think you’ll save me. You’re good at that.”

He can see she’s serious.  She always has been, even in knee socks.  Well, he can relate. 

“All right,” he says. “I’ll do it with you.  If we can come back here to rest in between.”

“Of course,” she says.  “We’ll fry fish and read poetry.”

“And swim under the moon,” he adds, getting carried away with the romance of it.  “And I’ll bang you into the next millenium.”  He’s in earnest about that.

“Not bad for a tar pit of doom,” she tells him.  He laughs so loudly that he doesn’t think it’s him. 

Is this real? he asks himself. He finds it hard to believe, but he thinks it is.