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Number Five hasn’t even been here for one whole day when he meets her.
He’s practical, Five, so the first thing he does – after giving himself a moment to have a justifiable breakdown – is collect supplies. He could potentially be here for weeks, months even, before his powers recharge enough for him to go back, so food is his number one priority.
The Academy was a lost cause, his siblings weren’t there; so he just keeps walking.
Pulling the children’s wagon that he found behind him, Five covers his mouth with his hand in lieu of a bandana – that’s his next priority, he decides – to avoid breathing in the ash that clogs the air. He doesn’t want to go home with breathing problems or something.
He manages to find some canned food, and none of the people – corpses – in the supermarket wake up when he shakes them, so he moves on. He thinks he might be in a state of shock, actually, but eventually decides that that’s probably a good thing.
He finds water. It tastes weird, but ultimately Five tells himself that the effects of dehydration – especially since he probably expelled so much water crying today already – would be worse than whatever temporary queasiness he might experience now.
At the clothing store, he also finds a mannequin lying under a piece of what used to be a brick wall, and he feels like it’s only proper for him to help her out. He puts her in his little wagon for the time being – he’ll find somewhere to leave her later. There’s something about her that makes him feel less alone. With her serene, almost clever smile, she doesn’t have the expression of bewildered wide-eyed shock that the other corpses have, and that makes him feel better.
Eventually, after maybe half a day of this, he stumbles across the remains of the Icarus Theatre.
He finds—
Well. He finds the eye, and like his attachment to the mannequin, he pockets it before he even knows whose hand he found it in.
Luther. Diego. Allison. Klaus.
It’s the tattoos that clue him in, in the end. Who knew the brands of their father’s possession would turn out to be useful for something?
Five chokes on ash when he cries.
“Hello? Hello?”
His head shoots up. No, no, he can’t be hallucinating already, that’s far too soon.
The effects it could have on your body, even on your mind—
“Hello? Is someone there?” He says, trying to sound tough and not like a scared little kid. Because that’s not what he is.
“Oh my God,” says a woman’s voice, and then she stumbles out from behind the collapsed building to his left and stares at him. He’s not imaging it. He can’t be. “A kid? Am I hallucinating?”
“I thought I was,” Five says, trying not to cry. He’s not alone.
For a moment, they just watch each other, gaping.
The woman is dressed extremely strangely, in a completely white suit that somehow remains untouched by the ash and dirt, pristine and almost blinding against the backdrop of rubble and flames. Looking at him like she’s seen a ghost, she takes a step forward, then slips on a brick and almost falls over. Five jerks forward to help, but she steadies herself, staring at him with wide, wide, brown eyes.
“Who are you?” she says, and then cringes, puts a hand to her head. “And what happened?”
“I’m Five and I don’t know what happened,” he says, speaking so fast he almost stumbles over his words. “I just got here. I thought everyone was dead – who are you?”
She looks around. Maybe she has a headache. She squints. “Five? Like the number?”
“Yeah,” he says impatiently, ushering her over. She seems very, very unsteady. “And your name is…?”
“I can’t remember,” she says dumbly. “I don’t know. I can’t – I –”
It doesn’t seem like she’s lying.
“Right,” Five says, and nudges her until she sits in the wagon. He crouches down beside her, trying to subtly examine her for signs of a concussion or something. Up close, she looks kind of familiar. But the year, according to the newspaper, is 2019 – there’s no way he could have known her. Unless…
“Are you a time traveller too?” He asks, the idea lighting up inside him. Maybe that’s why she survived. She could be like him and his siblings – she could have special powers too. Maybe she was born on the same day as them. In 2019 they would be about her age, he reckons. “Is that how you survived?”
“Time traveller?” She mutters. “What?”
He grabs her shoulder and she flinches. Even that sparks a feeling of familiarity in him, the way she looks nervous and small. Maybe it’s the brown eyes. “Do you have powers?”
“My head is killing me,” she says. “Um – no? I don’t know? I can’t remember anything.” Her face crumples, and she looks like she might start to cry. Five twitches uncomfortably – he’s bad at comforting.
“Right,” Five says, again, and sits down in the dust.
She sniffles. “Why can’t I remember anything? Why does my head hurt so much?”
“I don’t know,” he says testily. “How would I know?”
“Sorry. I don’t know.” Her bottom lip trembles, and although she’s like twenty years older than him, he feels really bad for her.
“Your memories might return soon,” he tries. “You never know.”
She hums, and wipes a hand across her face. She stares at the tears on it curiously. “Are feelings always this - strong?”
“Uh,” he says, “Yeah?”
“Huh,” the woman says, then turns to him and seems to force herself to focus. “So you don’t know what happened here?”
“No,” Five huffs, glad for the change of subject. “I just time travelled for the first time, got too confident. Now my powers need energy to recharge before I can go back and – prevent all this, I guess.”
The woman frowns. “How are you gonna prevent it if you don’t know what happened?”
“I’ll figure it out,” he says, looking her up and down, at that eerily white suit. She definitely has powers. Maybe not time travel – perhaps her power is like, a force field or something, that protected her from whatever exploded around here, but like him, it sapped all her energy and took away her memories. She doesn’t have any signs of physical trauma.
Lost in his thoughts, he doesn’t notice her looking around his cart. “Is this your friend?”
He glances up and sees her smiling at the mannequin. “Oh, her. That. I just found her. It didn’t feel right to leave her, you know.” He realises, with a start, that he’s embarrassed.
“That’s sweet,” she says, and she sounds genuine. Her brown eyes seem kind, though tired. “I get it. I was wandering around here for a few hours before I found you. I thought I would go crazy.”
“Well, luckily we found each other,” he says, and stands up. “I’m going to find some shelter.”
“Need some help?”
“Not really, but you can come anyway,” Five says, taking the handle of the wagon and dragging. She’s very small, and she doesn’t weight that much, so he can drag the cart with her inside it without much effort. He remembers seeing a shop with part of the roof still intact; that’s where he’ll go. It’s a bit of a trek, but he’ll make it.
“Won’t you be time travelling back once you’ve eaten?” She asks curiously.
“My powers require a lot of fuel,” he grunts. “Teleporting across the street could take a sandwich. Jumping seventeen years into the future – then again into the past – that’s going to be a lot of food.” He has to be realistic. Not to mention the equations he’s going to have to do… ugh.
“Oh,” the woman says. “I can walk—”
“No, you can’t,” Five says, which is true. She goes quiet.
As they walk – well, he walks – Five thinks regrettably about the table piled high with lunch that he abandoned in 2002. The roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes – his stomach growls loudly. He wishes he’d eaten. He wishes, privately, that he had at least said goodbye before he left. Not to Dad, but. To Vanya. Ben. They must be worried sick. Vanya always worries when they go on missions, so he can only imagine how anxious this is making her. It doesn’t help that in the past week his temper has been strained… he hopes she’ll be too relieved when he gets back to be too mad at him.
Once he tells her that he time travelled, really time travelled, she’ll have to be impressed. Everyone will be, even Dad.
He’ll be home soon. He’ll see them all again soon.
The woman catches sight of a piece of cloth on the ground – a flag, they think, but it’s hard to tell – and he tears it into two pieces to use as masks. She seems appreciative, but sad at the same time.
“Hey, kid, I’m… sorry about all this.”
He glances behind him. “Sorry for what?”
“That I’m,” she pauses. “I don’t know. Dragging you down. Don’t worry about me, okay? You can leave me here when you go back.”
“Oh, right,” Five says, then feels his face flush red with shame and hopes she can’t see it. Truth be told, he hadn’t even considered it. Bringing this stranger back with him hadn’t crossed his mind. “Well, you’re not dragging me down. It’ll be good to have the company, alright? Otherwise I might’ve gone insane before I could even finish my equations.”
Honestly, he’s just glad he’s not alone. Looking after her, having her there as a reminder that this isn’t in his head, might be the only thing keeping him from having another breakdown, and if he did that he might never stop.
“Maybe you’d have started talking to the mannequin,” she says, a smile in her voice.
He huffs, feeling stupidly protective. Maybe he’s thinking of Mom. God, he wishes Mom were here too. “It’s perfectly normal, you know, for humans to seek companionship in inanimate objects during times of isolation. We’re social creatures, and—”
“You remind me of someone,” she muses. He shuts his mouth. He thinks the same thing of her.
Every once in a while, they’ll encounter a body, and Five has to go and shake them to make sure. Just in case. If she survived, why not someone else?
But every time it’s still a shock when they only stare at him with big, dead eyes.
Eventually, after about forty minutes of him pulling and her making sparse conversation and then dozing off, he pulls the cart over to the bit of a shop he saw earlier that day, with the roof still partly intact. This is where he’ll make their camp.
There’s no point in making a fire – there are still plenty of those all over the place, plus the sun has barely started to go down. The last thing they need is even more smoke in the air.
He lays a few bits of cloth he’s collected down to sleep on, helps the woman out of the cart – her suit is still insanely clean given the amount of dirt floating around, further cementing his theory that she has supernatural powers – and onto the small flat area he’s cleared out. She still seems incredibly exhausted, and can barely stand, without swaying. He worries about how she’ll manage when he’s gone, and then remembers that she’s a stranger and that when he’s gone he’ll make it so that none of this ever happened.
Still, though. She is very apologetic, no matter how often he tells her it’s fine.
They have a can of food each. The labels have been burnt off, and the metal is slightly warped, but whatever’s inside should still be fine, so he hits them with a rock until they break open.
“Thanks,” the woman says.
Her, the mannequin, and Five sit in a quiet circle. His can turns out to be peaches, and hers turns out to be green beans. He gives her a peach and she gives him a bean, and they sit companionably as the sun goes down.
“You really can’t remember anything?” He asks quietly. He doesn’t want to seem like he’s interrogating her, especially seeing as how they might be stuck together for a while.
“No,” she says, mumbling. “I wish I could. Sometimes I get – flashes, déjà vu – like, I recognise that street, you know, or sometimes when you talk, I feel so strongly that I’ve known someone like you before. But I don’t remember my life at all.”
“I think you’re like me,” he shares eventually. He doesn’t know how to comfort her, though she sounds so lost. “With powers.”
“Powers,” she says, forehead creasing as she furrows her brow. “I don’t know. That doesn’t seem right.”
“Well, how else could you have survived this giant—” he waves a hand excitedly, “—explosion, or whatever this was?” He’s considered earthquake, asteroid, nuclear bomb, – he really hopes it’s not that one or else he’s radioactive as fuck right now and will probably be dead in a day. His money’s on an asteroid hit. How he’s going to stop that, he… doesn’t know. But he’ll figure it out.
“Maybe.” But she doesn’t sound convinced. “Wouldn’t they have shown up, or something?”
“Powers have a battery life,” he says. “Maybe they’ll come back with time. Like mine will.”
“Sure,” she sighs. “I guess you’re the expert, Mister Time Traveller.”
He snorts. She shakes her head and smiles. He thinks for a moment that she seems very accepting of the concept of someone having superpowers, but dismisses the thought.
“So, Five,” she says a few quiet moments later. “What kind of a name is that?”
“That’s rich, coming from the woman who doesn’t have one.”
“Touché,” she murmurs.
He slurps the peach juice from the can and then sighs. “I was supposed to get a real one, you know. I told everyone I didn’t want one, but now I’m here, and they all have them, and I’m still just Five, you know?”
“Who’s everyone?”
“My siblings,” he says. “There are seven of us, all numbered, because out father doesn’t believe in such sentimental things as names.”
She frowns at him, the creases in her face suggesting she does that a lot. “That’s depressing.”
“Well,” he goes on, looking down. “I said I didn’t want one. Maybe I wanted to make him mad. Anyway, I guess it was stupid. Now they all have names, and I don’t. I don’t know if I even do want one.”
“You can always make up your mind later, when you go back, though,” she says. “Right?”
He smiles. He appreciates her optimism. “Yeah. I can. If I want.”
“Well, Five is a fine name,” she says, eating another bean, brushing her straight brown hair back out of her face. It is a very familiar gesture. But he’s certain he’s just projecting his sister who he misses onto this random woman, which is probably rude. It’s not this woman’s fault that she has brown hair and brown eyes and pale skin. Many people have these qualities. It doesn’t mean anything – he can’t be that lucky. “If you wanted to stick with it. I like it.”
“You do?”
Besides. Vanya’s regular. She would have died with everyone else, probably in her own apartment, hopefully asleep. Hopefully she didn’t feel anything. A very selfish part of him is glad that his two best friends, Ben and Vanya, were the two bodies he never found. Maybe, he imagines, they live together, away from the Academy they never liked, going to university, having jobs, watching movies. That’s what he hopes.
“We should give you a name,” he announces, and the woman makes a surprised noise. “At least until you remember your own.”
“Yeah?” she says, thoughtful. “Yeah, you can practice your name-picking skills on us for when you get back to your family.”
He blinks. “Us?”
“Yeah, me and Manny over here,” she says, then laughs. “Oops. I guess I already named her in my head.”
“Manny is a shit name,” Five says sharply. “She’s not called that.”
She smiles, looking amused. “Oh yeah?”
“If you’re really going from ‘mannequin,’ then,” he sniffs, tries not to seem too defensive of an inanimate object he met that day. “Quinn would be the far better choice.”
“Quinn, huh?” She tilts her head. “You’re right. That’s way nicer.”
“Yes.”
“First name Manny, last name Quinn?”
“No!”
“Okay, okay,” she says, covering her mouth and laughing. She reaches out and lightly takes Quinn’s white plastic hand in her own white, human hand, and gives it a gentle shake. “It’s nice to meet you, Quinn. I’m…”
She looks at Five with a raised eyebrow. Oh. He fumbles for a name that he likes. “You’re, uhh, you’re… Dolores,” he chooses. Dolores is a nice name, he thinks.
“Dolores,” she says, sounding it out. She nods thoughtfully, looking pretty funny in her spotless white suit. “Okay. I like it.”
“Just until you get your memory back,” he says, trying to be reassuring.
“Or until you go back in time to save us all,” Dolores says. “Hey, when you go back, do you think you could find me?”
“Oh, sure,” he says. He likes this woman – she’s friendly and quiet and sure, he could go back and find her in the past and make sure she’s alright, after he’s prevented the apocalypse. It’s pretty weird that the two of them have become fast friends in less than a day, but something about her is so familiar, that he feels like he’s known her longer. Normally Five doesn’t excel at making conversation with people, and people find him disagreeable. That suits him just fine. “Might be hard when I don’t know your name though.”
“Good point.” Dolores leans back. She sighs. “I wish there was more I could do to help you. I feel like a dead weight. And my head is killing me.”
“I already told you, your company is more than enough,” Five says, and then yawns. “Oh, look at this,” he says, and pulls out the eye.
“Oh, gross!” she squeals.
He frowns. “How old are you again?”
“I thought it was rude to ask a lady’s age,” Dolores huffs. “And there’s probably a rule in there about pulling bloody eyeballs out of your pocket, too.”
“You don’t think I’m being the perfect gentlemen?” He jokes. “I got you your beans, didn’t I?”
“I’m the one wearing a suit, and you’re in knee socks,” Dolores says. “And you’re also, like, twelve, by the way.”
He scowls. “I’m thirteen.”
“Oh? I thought you were Five.” He glares and she tries not to smile.
“Look, just – does the eye ring any bells?”
She grimaces at it. “It’s staring at me.”
“Any memories in there wanna show themselves?”
She looks at it long and hard, and then shrugs. “Sorry. It’s just giving me the creeps.”
“You’re giving me the creeps,” he mutters, and pockets it anyway.
“Ugh! At least clean the blood off it!”
“Oh yeah, I’ll get blood on my pristine outfit,” he says, rolling his eyes and gesturing to his ash, dirt, and filth-caked self.
Dolores shakes her head. After a few minutes of staring into the sinking sun, she says, “I’m gonna get some rest.”
“Alright,” he says. “Should I keep watch?”
“There’s nothing out there,” she says, yawning, and then she takes Quinn and lays her down, so it looks like the mannequin is sleeping too. She lays down on the side where Quinn is missing an arm. “Goodnight, Five,” she murmurs. “Get some sleep, okay? To help you… recharge… or whatever…”
And she’s out like a light.
Literally. Five is certain their little shelter gets just a little dimmer when her breathing evens out. Magic.
He goes outside, and stares into the twilight, and then decides she’s right. There’s nothing to defend against, here.
He pulls his mask firmly over his face so that he doesn’t inhale any smoke, makes sure Dolores’ is also fixed so that she doesn’t either, and then he tries to sleep. The silence is the strangest part – the only sound for miles and miles is the faint crackling of the fires.
Eventually, he dozes off.
…
“So tell me about your siblings,” Dolores says, when they are packing up to move on the next morning. She hasn’t asked where they’re going – he thinks she might still be a bit, well, out of it. But she’s trying, and she managed to walk a few steps, and she says that her head doesn’t hurt as badly as it did.
“Oh,” Five says. No harm, really. It’s not like she can tell him anything about herself. “Well, first there’s Luther. He’s Number One.”
“I see.”
“He’s like, bossy, and he always does what Dad says, which also makes him a tattle-tale.” Five scowls, and tries not to think of Luther’s corpse. “His power is strength and endurance. And he cares a lot. About all of us.”
“He seems like a good brother,” she says carefully. “Do you two get on?”
“Sometimes,” he says. “He’s supposed to be the leader but he doesn’t ever take risks, which means that some of his plans don’t work. So we fight about that.”
“You’d take the risks?”
“If I had to.” He swallows. “Anyway, Number Two is Diego. He’s… volatile. He hates being in our family.”
“I doubt that.”
“Well, he hates being on our team,” Five corrects, putting Quinn back in the cart. “His power is trajectory manipulation, and he’s constantly jealous of Luther and starting fights.”
“Troubled kid?” Dolores suggests.
“He cares about Mom, though. And he’s protective of Ben.”
“Ben?”
“Number Six. I’m getting there. I have to go in order.”
Dolores looks at him curiously as he helps her into the wagon. “Really?”
He hesitates. “Well, I guess… it doesn’t matter.” He clears his throat and takes one last look around to make sure he hasn’t left anything, before he takes the wagon and starts pulling. His limbs ache – didn’t have enough food for breakfast, since he’s trying to ration it. “Ben is quiet, and friendly. But he’s also a pushover, and he’s too shy to stand up for himself, which is why me and Diego have to do it for him.”
“You sound like a good brother. What’s his power?” Dolores asks, and Five swallows.
“He has, like, a monster inside him. We call it the Horror.”
“Ah.”
“Then there’s Allison,” he says quickly. “Number Three. She can mind control anyone to do anything.”
“That sounds terrifying,” Dolores says quietly. “Does she use it much?”
“More than she should,” Five scowls. “She’s pretty full of herself. She always has to be the centre of attention.”
“But?”
“But… I think she’s also afraid. Of being alone. So that’s probably why she uses her power so much and why she’s always doing magazine interviews. She’s also funny.” He sighs. “Then there’s Klaus.”
Dolores laughs. “You and Klaus don’t get along?”
“He never takes anything seriously,” Five says. “He can see ghosts, but they’re—”
“Ghosts?”
“Yeah, ghosts. And he—”
Dolores won’t stop interrupting him. “Like, real, actual ghosts?”
“Oh my God, yes, real ghosts—”
“So there could be ghosts here?” She presses, and he stops walking.
“I… guess.”
“Woah,” she whispers.
Five looks around uneasily, but he can’t see anything, and keeps walking. No point in speculating. He won’t be able to see them. “Well, Klaus doesn’t like them. He says they shriek at him, or something, but Dad says he just needs to conquer his fear and banish them or whatever. But instead, Klaus is just high all the time now.”
“It sounds like he’s hurting.”
“What are you, a therapist?”
“Maybe? Do therapists dress like this?” She muffles her laughter behind her hand. God. No wonder she reminds him of Seven – Vanya does the same thing. “No, but have some compassion. People use drugs because they’re hurting, mostly.”
“Hmm.” Five manoeuvres around a body on the road. “I guess.”
“There’s one more, right?” Dolores asks eventually.
“Oh yeah. Vanya. Number Seven.”
When he doesn’t elaborate – there’s a lump in his throat – Dolores prompts him. “Yeah? What’s she like?”
“She’s my best friend,” he grits out. “She’s – short. And she doesn’t have any powers.”
He feels bad for describing her like that, so matter-of-factly, but that’s better than what Vanya always calls herself when she’s feeling self-deprecating. Just ordinary, just ordinary, just ordinary. He figures it’s been drilled into her. No matter how much he tries to explain that it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
She never says that she’s normal, or typical, but just ordinary. Lesser. Unworthy. It leaves a bad feeling when she says it. But she doesn’t seem to notice.
“No powers,” Dolores muses, and he feels a pang of hurt in his heart, even though it’s true. “That’s interesting. So she’s your best friend?”
“Yes.” He clenches his jaw, to try and strangle the emotion welling up inside him. He will get home. He will. Soon. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
Dolores pauses. “I’m sorry.”
After a few unbearable seconds of silence, Five blurts, “Vanya plays the violin.”
“Oh?”
“And she’s learning to speak Russian.”
“That’s really cool.”
“And I know for a fact that she hates peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches.”
“Um, those sound disgusting.”
“But she always eats them anyway,” Five says, his mouth trembling, “because she knows they’re my favourite.”
He doesn’t turn around to see the expression on Dolores’ face. She probably feels bad for him. He feels pretty bad for himself too. “She sounds nice, Five. It’s okay if you miss her.”
“It’s not that,” Five snaps, even though it kinda is. “I just forgot to say goodbye. That’s all.”
“I’m sure she’ll forgive you,” Dolores says kindly. “You’ll see her soon and you can tell her you’re sorry.”
Five scowls, and swipes a filthy sleeve across his face. “Yeah. I guess.”
God, he hates it here.
The sun rises, hot and unforgiving, and he imagines that he can feel the soles of his shoes sticking to the asphalt. No matter how many layers of cloth they put on their faces, he and Dolores can still taste the dust in their mouths, gritty and disgusting. He’s glad he doesn’t have a mirror. He must look a sight.
Dolores seems to be recovering slowly, and when he tells her that he can see a department store up ahead, she gets out of the wagon and walks with him for a little bit. He helps her balance – new shoes, that’s what they both need. His companion’s heeled boots are impractical.
Even wearing them, she’s still a little shorter than him, which he thinks is funny. Though her suit is still impossibly clean, her face and hands are quickly becoming just as dirty as his own, and when they reach the department store, he finds them some new, more durable clothes.
Then, he gathers supplies from the gardening section.
“Gloves and boots,” he announces excitedly. It’s the little things. He goes back to the cart. He also has a trowel, and some rope. Just in case.
“Oh, nice. Useful. I found us some scarves,” Dolores tell him, grinning tiredly. “And candy.”
“Excellent,” he says seriously, trying not to get too excited about the candy.
“You can eat it now if you want,” she says knowingly.
“If you insist.” He tears open the package and stuffs gummy worms in his mouth.
“I’m going to look around some more,” Dolores says, and he nods. Not like she’s going to get lost.
He likes the department store. There isn’t much in the way of food supplies, but the roof is mostly intact and three of the walls are still standing. He considers that they could stay here for a while and be safe.
“What do you think?” He asks Quinn.
She just smiles. Typical.
His eyes fall on the book section. If he could find something to make notes in, he could start working on those equations. His powers aren’t nearly close enough to being ready to make the jump, but there’d be no harm in getting a head-start…
“Hey, Five!” Dolores calls out, breaking him from his thoughts. Lucky she’s here to do that. Sometimes, Five can think about equations for hours and forget to do anything else.
“What did you find?”
“A sunhat,” she says proudly, sticking it on her head, “and sunscreen,” she holds up a bottle, “and sunglasses!”
“These are really awesome, Ven,” he says, examining the bottle. It doesn’t look like it’s been ruptured. “Thanks.”
He looks up and she’s smiling at him oddly.
“What?” He says, self-consciously.
She hesitates. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“I can tell you’re lying.”
Dolores looks embarrassed, and she sits down beside him. He frowns. “Ven is Vanya’s nickname? For… Seven?”
Five freezes. He clutches the sunscreen tightly. “Oh. Yeah.” Shit. It was inevitable.
“You’ll see her soon, Five. It’ll be okay.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t… you just…”
“Hey, I’ve only known you for a day and you’re already like a little brother to me,” Dolores says awkwardly, but kindly, bumping their shoulders. “Don’t be embarrassed.”
“I’m not. Also, I’m the only person you know.”
She doesn’t rise to the challenge. “I consider it an honour that I remind you of her, really. She sounds great.”
“Yep.” His face burns.
Dolores leans closer. “Are you sulking?”
“No.”
“Okay,” she says easily, and leans back while he stews in silence. Like Vanya, it seems as though Dolores has a hard time accepting silence, and always feels like she has to fill it. “This place sucks. God. Time travel, apocalypse, amnesia, superpowered siblings. How on Earth did we end up here, kid?”
“Superpowers,” he says. “Definitely superpowers, both of us.”
She laughs again. “If you say so!”
“I don’t know how you can deny it,” he says. “I mean, look at your suit.”
She looks down at herself. “It’s a nice suit.”
“It’s practically glowing!”
“That’s the light.”
“How could it possibly be so clean?”
“Okay, so my magic suit protected me from dying in the apocalypse?”
He grumbles, frustrated. “No, you must have powers that expelled an energy field around you to save yourself and you infused your clothes with the properties—”
“Oh my God, kid, take a breath—”
“—and that’s how you survived!” Five says triumphantly. “Trust me, I’m the superpower expert here. I’m Mister Time Traveller, remember.” He feels stupid as soon as he says it. He eats more gummy worms.
Dolores giggles, covering her face, and as much as he doesn’t want it to, it makes him laugh as well.
“Stop laughing!” He says. “I’m serious!”
“I know you’re serious, Five,” she says. “But I don’t know. Something inside me is just telling me that you’re wrong, that it’s impossible.”
“Well, how could you possibly know?” Five frowns, but he’s sure it must come off as more of a pout, which isn’t what he was going for. He is genuinely curious, though. Could it be possible that her powers had never shown themselves until that one life-or-death situation? Intriguing.
Dolores holds her hands up helplessly, and seems to reach for the right words. “Because—” she falters, laughs, looking at him helplessly. “I don’t have powers!”
“Yes, you do,” Five says slowly. “Obviously, you do. We have established this.”
“We haven’t established anything,” Dolores says. “But I just – I can’t.”
Her stubbornness frustrates him, and he gestures wildly with his hands. “Well, why not, Dolores?”
“Because I’m – I’m just ordinary!”
And Five’s heart falters for a second.
“What?” He manages to say, shakily.
“Well, I’m normal,” Dolores (?) mumbles, looking embarrassed.
“No, say that again.”
“I’m normal?”
“The other thing.”
“Ordinary.”
“You said just ordinary.”
“Yeah?”
No. No. No?
He stares at her face. She squirms. “What?”
There’s no way. That would be – he’s insane. He has to be.
“Five, what is it?” She looks concerned, eyes flicking over him like she thinks he might be sick. Five can’t even – say anything, he’s – no. It couldn’t be her. “Five?”
But she could definitely be the right age. And, he can see now, the resemblance is uncanny.
And that furrow between her eyebrows appears, like it always does when she’s worrying herself sick about something, or concentrating hard.
She reaches out for his shoulder, maybe to shake him, and he snatches her hand out of the air and holds it tightly. She freezes. Five, desperately hopeful, searches in her eyes for something, anything, and says;
“Vanya?”