Work Text:
Five sits, legs dangling down the edge of the roof.
The city lights blink and blur in front of him, shifting and flickering in a bright coalescence of color.
He’s not quite sure how he got here, just that being indoors had suddenly felt too warm, too oppressive - stifling - and he couldn’t breathe. Dizzying, claustrophobic and far too enclosed. The wallpaper had looked garish, shifting and warping, and the floors seemed to tilt beneath him, walls bending inwards. Panic had risen in his throat and suddenly he realised he couldn’t see the sky and he couldn’t breathe and he had to go outside. Well. It may partly be because he’d been pretty drunk. (He still is.) But anyhow - he’d needed to get out, and decided the roof was the best place to sit.
He’s shucked off his jacket and settled the bottle of whiskey next to him, can feel the cold stone underneath his hands, sharp wind biting at his face. It feels wonderful. He’s sure he can almost feel the heat radiating off him, even with his jacket off and tie mostly undone. Five lets out a small sigh. His shoulders feel lighter, and his muscles relax. There’s something comforting about sitting so high up, above everything else, above any ash or insects or dust. Where the air is clean.
Five is not okay.
He watches the edges of the sky unfurl with orange fire-clouds, strangely beautiful patterns, and kicks his feet aimlessly like a a child into the vast empty space beneath him, the ledge that he’s sitting on. There’s something mesmerizing about it, about the uncurling and shifting of black, gold, auburn-orange slowly pluming like soft fire, gently burning skies. It’s bizarre to think that such destruction could be so beautiful.
After all, it wasn’t beautiful the first time round.
Five walked for decades in a horrific, barren wasteland of rubble and ash and the memory of death. Burnt corpses and insects and collapsed houses and fire and so, so much loneliness. At least this time, the end is softer, more complete. (Well, if you could call a kugelblitz releasing violent waves and evaporating matter from existence ‘soft’. But Five would - because he still has a roof over his head and all of his family is alive.)
There is a certain comfort in knowing that everything will be eventually consumed. Knowing that he won’t be left behind again, fighting his own fierce insanity in a dead world, desperate to hear a familiar voice, desperate to break physics and find a way back.
Five is tired.
He is so tired. Five has been fighting with a brutal fierceness since… ever since he could remember. He has had a very, very long life and now he’s just… tired. An awful, selfish part of him was almost relieved when he was told to ‘not save the world’. A certain weight, a scratching anxiety, off his chest, and it is disgusting and shameful and cowardly but it was there.
The city in front of him burns so brightly, the night sky black and stark, electric lights flickering and blurring in a fluorescent dance of life. The stars are faint pinpricks in the sky. If he tilts his head back enough, he can see them, so distant and so and so far away. Everything is sharp, bared in a dizzying image of twisting glass and metal and buildings and cars and people and -
“I miss Delores,” he says out loud. He hadn’t mean to.
The city glitters in front of him.
He wonders what it would be like to go into free-fall.
To let himself slip from the ledge. To fall with heavy weightlessness. The acceleration of the fall, the breathless drop. Not that he would actually do it, of course. Five frowns, unwittingly. He’s not suicidal. The world’s ending in a few days, and there is nothing he can do about it. Better to die with the rest of them. But who says he can’t have fun beforehand?
That was his logic before he got supremely drunk. A couple of drinks, get absolutely wasted, have a great time in total oblivion. Ha. Oblivion. He snorts to himself almost bitterly.
But he’s not having fun now. He’s had far too much to drink, consciousness seems to be losing its grasp on him - admittedly, the edges of his vision are starting to blacken. And he feels like throwing up. But who cares? The world’s going to end anyway.
He doesn’t even know what he’s thinking about anymore.
I miss Delores, he thinks again, and he’s not sure if he said it out loud or not.
Wait - what if..?
His disassembled thoughts start to come slowly together. It’s like shifting through a pile of broken glass, painful and tedious and confusing. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing.
But what if he could… jump from the roof, let himself fall for half a second, and blink himself right down to the bottom near the pavement before he could gather any actually fatal momentum or acceleration?
It could work.
Inhaling sharply, he rummages through his jacket pockets and finds the black marker in his pocket, drawing it out with slightly trembling fingers and uncapping it eagerly. Oh, oh, shit - this could actually work. Quickly scrawling down some sloppy equations on the cement floor he is sitting on, Five’s thoughts are incomprehensible and barely arranged. His head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton and he feels himself swaying alarmingly sometimes, the numbers and images in his head flickering and sputtering. But he’s done much harder maths in far worse conditions than this.
If he can just calculate his acceleration, then integrate to find his velocity, and therefore momentum - shit. He can’t think very clearly but he thinks it could work. Five writes rapidly on the cement, loose hand scrawling to barely legible - time taken for displacement, almost completely accurate measurement of the distance? He crooks his head slightly, analyzing the drop. How much of a distance is that? Probably… what, eighty-seven feet? Probably more. Ninety-one. His calculations don’t leave too much margin for error, but he’s always had excellent special awareness, and can often tell innately certain distances or measurements - probably a side effect of his powers. The physics taken for his powers require a little more than just pure math. But then, he is pretty disoriented right now.
If he can let himself fall for, what? one-point-two, one-point-three seconds? That should be enough time to feel a drop in his stomach, but not enough to gather enough momentum that would be fatal when he blinks back to the ground. After all, momentum carries through - whether a spatial jump or a time jump, momentum will always carry through, simply because of the kinetic energy - energy is never destroyed, not matter what physics-bending feats his powers perform. Shit, what was the distance he said again? He’s forgotten.
His head is cloudy and his eyes feel sluggish, and there’s more than a likely chance that his maths is off because he’s still fucking drunk and that he could like, break an ankle at the bottom. But who cares?
Why is he even doing this again?
Five glances down at his sloppily drawn equations and calculations again, frowning. The numbers don’t make sense. They’re swimming in front of him, too blurry to comprehend, and he’s got that tightness in his chest, that numbness in his hands, and shit not again -
He takes a quick swig from the bottle still next to him. What even is it, anyway? He doesn’t remember. Whiskey, maybe. It doesn’t matter.
God, he’s so drunk.
He wonders what everyone else is doing.
Whatever. Five pulls himself to standing, clambers on to the ledge, rolling up his sleeves. The world tilts alarmingly for one, dizzying second, and the city flashes like a neon stop sign. His breath catches in his throat before he can right himself again. Five can feel the cold wind whistling and cutting sharp, whipping his hair up, biting into his flushed skin. It feels exhilarating.
Why had he ever doubted it? This is an excellent idea. Well, probably not very safe, but who cares about… safety… and stuff. He’s not a child.
His last thought before he moves to pull space instinctively around him, head buzzing with drunken math, is I wonder if anyone’s noticed I’ve been gone.
He steps off.
Lila’s been having a nice, if uneventful, evening. Diego’s gone out to actually spend time with Stan - he took him to a McDonalds’, or something, good for him. So, she’s been left pretty much alone with no one for company. Well, Allison’s in the house but Lila’s pretty sure she’s either drinking/ brooding/ smoking (probably all three) and doesn’t want to be disturbed. Lila is fine to just have some alone time, she can do that, sure. She doesn’t need to be surrounded by people - she can occupy herself.
Fuck it, no she can’t, she’s so so bored.
Luther’s probably out and Viktor is… well, she’s not sure, but as nice as he is, he doesn’t make for very interesting company. He’s fine, but just not someone Lila could like… have a laugh and a drink with.
Which leaves… Five.
Lila grits her teeth. As loathe as she is to admit it, Five is probably the only person in this house she could have an intelligent conversation with. She’d never, ever, in a million years actually admit that to him. The bastard would never let her live it down. But… it’s true, really. He’s the only person who probably has a similar thought process to her, having been at the Commission for a while too - although he’s definitely more cold-hearted than her, the little psychopath.
Not that she’s completely normal. But oh well.
Fact remains, Five is the only person in the house to have an intelligent conversation with. She’s curious to hear his theories about this stupid kugelblitz , and she hasn’t actually spoken to him since they came back from the Commission, where Five literally spoke to his 100-year old self who died in front of him. So. She can’t blame him for being a little reclusive.
As much as she despises him, loathes him, really - for literally murdering her parents in cold blood while she watched from a little grate as a four-year old - she has to admit, he’s… growing on her. Five is a miserable old man who’s spent most of his life alone and has no idea how to talk to people, and a heartless killer whom she’d very much like to murder herself given the chance. But he had saved her life. She’d seen the footage. Mum - The Handler - had shot her, multiple times, dead in the heart. Then shot everyone else around her. And then Five had rewound time and saved everyone’s - including hers.
And as much tension and hostility there is between them, Lila finds that she actually kind of enjoys their little spats. He’s annoying and a thorn in her side, but the adrenaline of fighting with someone who just as good as her, if not better, is exhilarating. He secretly likes it too, the little shit, with his stupid acerbic grins.
So, she just has to find him. She is actually interested to see what he’s come up with so far with this grandfather paradox, because to be fair, he’s probably already gotten halfway through some crazy maths shit.
She starts with the room he’s staying in with Klaus and Luther. Raps on the door, opens it slowly - surprise, surprise, he’s not there. The room is empty, his bed perfectly and neatly done. Lila sighs. She has absolutely no idea how big this hotel is, and he could be anywhere.
Turning around, she walks irritated through the rest of the carpeted, dim corridors. On one of the staircases, Lila finds Allison sitting languidly, smoking, looking pensive. She hesitates. It is really not her place to tell her how to deal with her own life. But she looks so depressed, Christ, and could probably do with a bit of cheering up. But the thing is, Lila is terrible with emotions, and has no idea what shit Allison’s going through right now - and she’d probably just make it worse. Maybe it’s better to let her deal with her own stuff.
“Hey,” she says softly. Allison looks up, surprised. Her eyes are red rimmed and her knuckles are angry, bruised.
“Hey.” She looks back down again. Takes a swig at a bottle next to her. Great. Lila sighs, doesn’t say anything for a moment.
“Um.” Lila stares at her for a moment, unsure. “Are you okay?”
“Fucking fine, Lila,” Allison spits. Right, okay, Christ.
“Uh, right. Yeah. Have you… have you seen Five?” Allison just stares at her for a moment.
“I thought you hated him.”
“I do,” she says wryly.
Allison looks at her more, unnervingly. “He’s drunk.”
“ Riiight.” It’s clear Allison is not going to give any more useful information. Hesitating, she turns away and begins to walk back again.
“You should probably check up on him,” comes Allison’s quiet voice at the last minute. It sounds like she’s trying to sound caustic, or careless, but Lila can tell these Hargreeves siblings like an open book. Allison doesn’t not care about her family without abandon. If she says Lila should check up on Five, then even if she’d disguised it as an offhand comment, she was probably at least vaguely concerned.
“Yeah. I will,” Lila replies, smiling.
The problem is where to look.
The contrary old man is probably holed up somewhere ridiculous and completely unlikely. Especially if he’s drunk.
So that’s where to start. Just rule out all the probable places, like his room or the bar or literally any place a normal person would go. Well, Lila checks the bar just in case, but sure enough, he’s not there. There’s a couple of half-finished bottles, so he probably was here before. Where is the most unlikely place she could think of? The boiler room, were they teleported to the Commission?
It’s a good guess, but he’s not there. He’s not in Viktor and Allison’s room, either, so Lila starts trying to think more… like him. The… kitchen??? Nope. Kitchen’s empty, as is the massive venue hall, the sofas downstairs, the White Buffalo Suite, the library, the stationary elevators (??), and literally any other places she could think of.
At this point she’s just going to grab herself a drink and settle down for the evening.
But then something hits her - oh. She’s been looking in all the wrong places. She’s been looking indoors. Chances are, he’s probably still in Hotel Obsidian, but not inside.
She never checked the roof.
Lila sighs. If the little idiot is actually on the roof, she’ll probably declare him the weirdest person Ever.
Making her way up the laborious path to the roof (she’s not even sure how to get there, just makes random paths in what is probably the right direction), Lila wonders why she’s even going through so much effort. The man is an asshole on normal days, who knows what he’s like if he is actually drunk like Allison said? God. Well, she supposes it’s worth a shot. Drunk Five might actually be a little… looser.
She comes across discreet-looking door with a printed ‘ROOF ACCESS’ on it and wrenches it open. Dear God. There’s a whole goddamn spiral staircase leading up to it. Sighing, she muses that at least she’s wearing some comfortable cargos instead of an inconvenient skirt.
Making her way up, Lila wonders what exactly to expect - and passes a section of the metal staircase railing scattered with randomly-scrawled maths in black marker. Great, so Drunk Five is still a nerd. She peers at it for a second before deigning that even if she could understand that, it’s far too illegible to even read. He’s probably up there moping, nursing a bottle of strong alcohol, and is probably going to be a misery. All the same. Allison asked her to check up on him.
Sure enough, as she gets further up the staircase, she can feel a little tingle as the nudge of his power comes into her peripheral senses, almost. Things sharpen around her minutely, and all at once Lila can feel exactly where every little thing is, completely spatially oriented. It must be great to constantly feel like this - probably handy in a fight, actually. Probably also why Five is so precisely spatially aware; his powers literally accommodate for every single object and distance in the vicinity, and for some reason, Lila can instinctually tell all the exact distances and measurements of everything around her. Which would be cool, if it wasn’t so annoying.
Lila sighs and blinks straight to the top, impatient. She wasn’t going to go up another forty-seven steps when she could literally teleport. Cracking the door open a nudge, it creaks open and she steps out onto the roof, immediately feeling sharp cold wind, calling out a resigned “ Five -“
Her heart leaps into her throat.
She isn’t really sure what she had been expecting, but -
Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.
Standing
poised
on
the
ledge
Is Five.
With just a thin shirt on, no jacket, dark hair whipped up.
Standing. On the fucking ledge. About to move forward.
Adrenaline floods her veins like fire, and before her brain can catch up to what’s happening, a scream caught in her throat, before she can do anything, Lila moves -
Tears space around her and blinks immediately right onto the ledge.
She grabs his arm tight as she reappears instantaneously next to him.
All she can hear is the pounding of heart. She doesn’t think she’s breathing. They’re standing too close together, and Five registers her presence just a beat too late. He jerks back violently at her sudden appearance, eyes too shocked, too sluggish - he should’ve sensed her beforehand - jerks back, slips on the ledge and trips backwards. Lands ungracefully with a hard thump on the concrete below, sprawled on his back. He begins to stutter, “L - Lila -“
“What the fuck , Five.” She cuts him off viciously. “What - what the FUCK ,” she repeats. Her voice is shaking.
Silence.
He just looks up at her with big, wide eyes. “What the HELL . Five. You- you - “ she’s stuttering now. Her breath is coming too fast, too sharp. As everything goes blurry, she realizes with dismay that there are tears in her eyes. Stupid fucking tears.
“ Five. What the fuck were you doing.” She hates the way her voice shakes. Five just lies there slumped inelegantly, wide-eyed and silent. “Five-“ she clears her throat. “I - I was looking for you. Diego’s gone out, Allison said you were drunk - but… Five.”
He’s still silent.
Her breathing speeds up. “You- you should’ve said something… how - why, why would you - Five, Five, what the fuck were you doing.”
Five sits up sharply. His hair is mussed and falling in all directions. He stands up and comes near to Lila, face looking softer than she’s seen it ever before.
“Lila,” he says softly. He puts a hand on her arm, tentatively. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”
Lila sputters, suddenly angry. She wrenches Five’s hand away, ignoring the look of hurt that crosses his face. “Then - then what the FUCK were you doing then, you idiot, because it certainly LOOKED like it!” she shouts explosively, tears still blurring her vision. She wipes them away harshly. “What - what.. Five, you little idiot, you -“ she trails off, breathing hard.
He just looks at her. His eyes are sad.
“Five, fucking… say something. I - you can’t - why…” She’s stuttering again. “Why do you want to kill yourself, Five. That’s - that’s not - “ Her chest is heaving.
Five turns abruptly, and swipes the half empty bottle of whiskey off the ledge, taking a massive swig. His face crumples, and he sinks to the floor, breathing heavily. Lila just watched him in disbelief.
“I - I’m sorry,” he says finally.
Like is incredulous. “What do you mean you’re sorry, you prick, you just tried to - Five, get away from that fucking ledge, you can’t - “
He scoots away minusculely, taking another swig. “I wasn’t…” he makes a vague gesture with his hands, “trying to… kill myself.” His eyes seem darker in the dim light, and he just stares down the bottle of his whiskey. “I was just -“ a sharp intake of breath, “i don’t know, testing something out.” Five shrugs nonchalantly. He’s not entirely focused.
“What - “ Lila is seething. “Testing what out, Five? To see if you’d die if you jumped off a ten storey building? Guess what, yeah, you probably would!” She bites out. She probably shouldn’t be being so… agressive with someone who was just about to jump off a roof, who is supremely drunk and looks incredibly sad. But it’s Five.
He doesn’t say anything, just looks vaguely at the cement. Lila stops for a minute to actually watch him more clearly. He’s… unconsciously warping space around him with his powers - a faint ripple of blue surrounds his hands and the bottle he’s holding seems to shift and warp a little. What the hell? Does he even realise he’s doing it?
“Five, your… your hands.”
He looks down lazily and regards his glowing hands with some nonchalance, barely giving it a glance before the light fizzles out, and he slumps even further down on the floor, against the ledge. Clutching the bottle, Five takes another swig absently and stares at a patch of concrete next to him. As she comes closer, Lila realises it’s got maths scrawled on it in black marker, sloppy and barely legible. But they’re calculations. What the hell is going on?
“Lila,” he says. His voice is slightly hoarse. “I…” Five trails off. He gestures vaguely.
Shit, Five is really bad at talking. Really bad.
Lila sighs shakily and unclenches her hands, walking over to Five, where he’s slumped against the ledge on the cold floor. She drops herself down to sit next to him, and he barely gives her a glance.
“Five.” He turns to look at her. His eyes are slightly unfocused - so contrary to the usual intense gaze that he gives people. Everything about him is screaming wrong at the moment - his flat, unfocused eyes, pupils wide, slumped shoulders, shaking fingers, slightly shivering frame. God, he’s so skinny. He’s not wearing a jacket, only a thin shirt, sleeves rolled up, tie undone, cheeks flushed. Lila touches his hand. It’s freezing. He doesn’t even react to her touching him, doesn’t flinch or pull away like he usually would, just keeps looking at her with those sad eyes. Wrong, her brain screams at her, as Lila keeps her hand on his arm and he doesn’t even move to counteract her. Five hates touch.
She feels his pulse. It’s way too fast. He’s clearly had.. far too much to drink.
She pushes down his sleeves. “For God’s sake, Five, wear a bloody jacket.” Spotting his smart blazer tossed carelessly on the floor, she picks it up and drapes it around him.
He glares at her. “‘M not a child,” he spits.
“I know.”
Five just shoves his arms in the jacket and stares numbly at the bottle again.
“What the fuck was that,” she repeats flatly.
He smiles faintly. “You’ve said ‘fuck’ eight times in the past minute.”
Lila grabs his arm again, uncaring if Five hates it or not. He doesn’t even react, just stays still, that awful look in his eyes. “Five.” Did he not… realise? She just found him on the ledge of a roof . “Look at me. Just…” she sighs. “Just, God, don’t ever. Do that again. Why - why were you up there… you could’ve - you could’ve said something, anything, you didn’t have to - “
Five smiles suddenly, all edges. It’s a sharp smile, like glass. “I am not suicidal, Lila.” His eyes bore into her, the most focused he’s been so far. “If I’d wanted to kill myself, I’d have done it decades ago.” The awful sharp smile slides from his face and he slumps back down again. Then he mumbles something, barely loud enough for her to hear. “Almost did, once, but not anymore.”
Something hits Lila, like a wave of nausea. If I’d wanted to, I’d have killed myself decades ago. She feels sick.
With his constant arrogance and polished sarcasm, sometimes she forgets that he lived completely alone, in an apocalypse, for forty-odd years. Until Mum came along and scooped him out of there.
She lets go of his arm. “I don’t believe you.” He’s looking at his sloppy maths again, brows slightly furrowed. “Then what the hell were you doing, then? You keep saying you weren’t - “ her breath hitches, “you weren’t.. trying to kill yourself. But you’re not giving any other reason. Why the hell were you standing on the ledge, then?”
Five sighs and scrubs his hand over his face. He looks tired. Suddenly, he stands up and blinks back onto the ledge again.
Panic seizes her again. “Five -!” She starts to scream, and grabs his arm in a flash. He just smiles faintly back at her.
“Calm down.” He shrugs off her hand and lowers himself down to sitting on the ledge. Legs kicking aimlessly into air. He looks… wistful. “I like to be high up.”
Lila doesn’t know what to say, so she just sits down slowly next to him. She is still very cautious, because Five doesn’t seem to be focused right now, and is still clearly drunk - so she sits close to him, hand splayed out a little, just in case. “Okay… so. Why were standing? You looked like you were about to- to jump.”
He smiles sardonically, but there’s no bite to it. “Think you forgot I can teleport.”
What has that got to do with anything? He can only teleport like, across distances, right? Not down a building. At least -
“You know, Lila.” He looks out to the city in front of them, eyes reflecting the brilliant lights. “When I was eight, I tried to teleport down the stairs.” His eyebrows quirk up. “I broke my arm,” he says simply. “I was an idiot. I was a kid, and I barely knew anything about my power, but. It worked.” Five is slurring his words slightly. Gripping the bottle loosely. “Teleporting is literally my power. I’d be an idiot not to know the ins and outs of how it works.”
Lila stays silent. She doesn’t know where he’s going with this, but she listens. Tries to pretend her heart still isn’t beating faster than it should be.
“I worked on vertical jumps, large spa - … spatial jumps,” he spells out. “Anything and everything.” Then he looks at her. “Teleporting downwards from jumping is a lot harder, with the… the momentum and direction.”
What. She looks at him flatly. He doesn’t mean -
“Luther threw me off the staircase once,” he says lightly, taking a drink. “Vertical displacement is harder, especially when going… from the top to the bottom, but.” Lila can barely hear him, he’s mumbling so much. “Yeah.” Then he doesn’t say anything else. Just stares out at the city with wide, haunted eyes.
“Five.” When it’s clear he’s not going to say anything further, she clears her throat, something horrible rising in her chest. “So… you’re telling me…” Lila says slowly, “that you were going to… to jump off the roof of a ten-storey building.” Her tone is completely disbelieving. “…To see if you could teleport down to the bottom, mid-jump, as - to, to what, test it out?” She grinds out, almost incredulous of what she just said. Lila wills him to scoff at her, to say no, you idiot -
He shrugs. “I guess.”
A beat passes. Silence.
Something rises in her throat, sharp. “What… what the fuck is wrong with you, Five?”
“Lot of things, don’t know,” he says, almost looking amused. He laughs bitterly. “Why do you care so much, Lila?” His eyes are dark. “Why does it matter to you what I do?”
“Why - why does it matter?” She sputters. “You - you could’ve died , Five!”
“So what?” He says flatly. “Thought that’s what you wanted.” Something violent twists in her chest.
“I - Five, that was before, not- not anymore,” she says tightly. She can’t breathe properly.
Five switches his hands holding the bottle and takes another long drink. “Okay.”
He doesn’t say anything else for a long while, just stares at the buildings and cars and vibrant city with vacant eyes.
“Wouldn’ta died,” Five slurs at one point.
“What?”
“If I did - “ he gestures with his bottle, “y’know, do it.”
“Okay.” She can’t think of anything better to say, not past the boiling writhing something in her chest still.
“Prolly woulda just… I don’t know, broken an ankle, maybe.” His casual nonchalance throws her off. Then, earnestly, he says as clearly as possible, “I did the math though. Lila.” Five tilts his head lazily toward the scribbled-on patch of cement. “It’s prob’ly not… really accurate, but y’know. Did my best.”
“Why… why d’you even want to try something like that? So… stupid ?” She can’t even believe she’s saying this. “You’re smart, Five. I don’t think you’d do something like that just for the sake of it.” She’s still confused. Everything Five does, everything that he’s ever done, has always been for a higher cause, an ultimate goal. He’s pragmatic, calculating. He wouldn’t just throw himself off a roof for the sake of it. She doesn’t believe that he would. It’s so intrinsically wrong for Five. But then again, everything about him right now seems wrong .
“I did my best,” Five repeats softly, more talking to himself. “M’ best is never fuckin’ good enough,” he mumbles. He’s clearly not listening to Lila. Looks as if he’s forgotten she’s there.
For lack of anything better to do, Lila speechlessly sits on the ledge next to Five, kicking her legs. Meanwhile, Five completely avoids eye contact and continues steadily drinking, looking somberly out to the bright city with unfocused eyes.
There are taxis being hailed, cars flitting by and zooming past, people bustling down the street. Well, considerably less people than normal, what with the kugel-waves obliterating most of existence, but. There’s still so much life. Half of the night sky is barely recognizable anymore - breaking and splitting vibrant orange clouds of roiling destruction. A side effect of the kugelblitz. Everything - even the sky - is being consumed. Slowly eaten up. Not for the first time, she wonders how Hotel Obsidian has remained so perfectly intact still.
“I see dead people, Lila,” Five mumbles suddenly. Lila whips her head toward him in alarm. What? “Every day. All the damn time. Walkin’ down the street…” he trails off, looking sad. “There’s so many people . They just.. go around walking as if.. as if they haven’t been dead-“ he hiccups - “i don’t know. But. ‘S weird. They’re all dead people walking,” he finishes with a half-hearted flourish.
Okay, Five, what the fuck? Casually, she leans over and pretends to ignore what he just said. “Pass us some of that whiskey.” Five hums and hands her the bottle nonchalantly. She regards it for a moment, shrugs, takes a swig, then promptly smashes the bottle against the hard cement. It shatters into a million brilliant shards, tumbling away. The fragments scatter, and they glitter darkly, catching the light.
Fives jaw drops. “ Lila! I was - I was drinking that!”
“Yep! And you’ve had enough for tonight,” she replies briskly. “Bit more than enough, Five.”
He still looks disbelieving. “Wha… fine. I don’t… need it anyway.” There’s a scowl on his face now. “But don’t make me go inside yet,” he mumbles angrily.
“Okay.” She shrugs. They can sit for as long as he wants - as long he’s not still drinking that damn whiskey.
“Okay.”
They carry on watching the city in silence. Lila picks up a dark, wet shard of glass and turns it over in her hands, feeling the razor-sharp edges. It’d make for a brilliant weapon. Small, lethal, deadly. Could probably cut a man’s jugular in one swipe. Not that she needs to right now - the man next to her is someone she’s wanted to kill for a long time, but in this pathetic state, she wouldn’t even think of it.
“I’ve tried really, really hard, Lila.” His tongue seems to be tripping over her name. Lila. “All m’life, just been -“ Five lifts an arm lazily and gestures vaguely, “chasing this- this one thing. Tryna stop my family from… dying. The apocalypse .” He says it so bitterly. “They were dead for- for forty-one years, y’know. A lifetime.”
He looks at Lila, gaze still unfocused but earnest. “And I finally came back, I finally managed it. Made a whole new branch of math n physics, just to get back. I did it - only to what, huh? Fuck it up all over ‘gain.” He smiles, and there’s no humour. “Story of my life. So… so now- this one last time, all I’ve gotta do is… sit. Wait for the ‘pocalypse. Let it happen. I…” breath irregular, he lets his hands fall limply into his lap again, and regards them with some detachment. “See, nothing I do is ever gonna be good enough. Can’t save ‘em.” And that’s it. He falls silent again.
What is she meant to say to that? There’s literally nothing she can say. Lila fidgets with the fabric of her trousers, slips the shard of glass in her pocket instinctively. “I’m sorry, Five.” He doesn’t say anything.
The image of Five, standing on that ledge, is seared into her brain. She cannot shake the image. The way her breath caught, the way adrenaline flooded her veins and urged her to move before she could think. The horrible empty look in his eyes.
Five is a man she’s wanted to kill for a long time. But. Not anymore. How can she, when he just looks downright pathetic now, hair sticking up on all ends, shadows under his eyes, slurring his words? He killed her parents, but to him they were just a number, another name on a list. He never killed out of spite, hatred. They were just names on a list, orders he had to carry out. But somehow, that makes it all the more hurtful.
The city warps and dazzles strangely.
She sighs, breath clouding in the cold air ahead.
Her thoughts are interrupted by a sudden thump and a weight falling on her shoulder. She startles, jerks in surprise -
Then looks down, to see… Five’s dark head, resting on her shoulder. For a moment she can’t breathe. Panic grips her as her first instinct is to think oh my god Five passed out on me he’s passed out what the hell i should’ve taken away the alcohol sooner what if he falls off - but after a few moments, when he doesn’t move, when she can feel his shoulder muscles still tense against her, Lila realises that he just. Rested his head on her shoulder. Voluntarily.
What what what what do I do her brain screams mantra-like, heart thudding wildly. Oh my god. Is she sure she’s not asleep? Dreaming? Because the Five she knows is not the one next to her.
His hair is soft, tickling her shoulder slightly, and he breathes deeply, relaxed. He’s letting his guard down completely. Not for the first time, Lila realises that Five is so small . He’s stuck in a small, unmarred teenage body, so deceiving. His weight leaning against her is barely anything. She sits, frozen.
After a few minutes, he stirs slightly. “Wonder where Delores is,” he mumbles. Lila doesn’t move. “Dunno if even… she might not even exist here. Chaos theory. Butterfly effect. Maybe she doesn’t exist. I - “ his breathe hitches, and he swallows. “Wish I got to see her before the world ended.”
God. A wave of sadness passes over Lila. He’s so fucking sad, so fucking lonely. Underneath it all. A weird attachment to a mannequin actually makes sense considering how long he was alone for. He starts rambling. “Chaos theory and the butterfly effect ensures that in th’ grand scheme of - “
“Five?”
“Yuh,”
“Shut up.”
She can feel him smile against her.
The wind whips cold into them, and the shard of glass in her pocket digs into her side. Her hands have gone numb. Five shivers minutely against her. They watch the sky, the rapidly-disappearing stars. Lila’s pretty sure Five’s accidentally fallen asleep against her, from his heavy breathing and additional slumped weight - but she actually doesn’t mind, even surprises herself with a little secret smile at how endearing it is. He’s such a softie. A fiercely protective, cold-blooded mass killer, determined beyond anything, borderline self-destructive, but. A softie.
“Lila?” Comes a muffled, soft voice. So, not asleep.
“Yeah?”
He hesitates a little. “Are you…” he begins tentatively. “Are you - my… friend?”
There’s something so painfully child-like about his question, his tone. Something in her chest twists. She thinks about it for a moment. “No,” she replies honestly.
Lila can hear his breath hitch. “No, Five. You’re a little shit that’s worth more trouble than good, if I’m being honest. But you know what?”
“What,”
“Diego cares about you. And so do the rest of your siblings. They do care about you. They love you to bits, even if you’re an asshole, so. Because I’m almost ‘part of the family’ now, I guess that makes me wanna care about you too.” Five huffs. “I’m not your friend… at least I don’t think I am - not with the amount of times we’ve tried to kill each other, but. I’m part of your family now. And I think I care about you, Five. Think you’re growing on me, asshole.” She nudges him playfully.
A quiet laugh bubbles out of him. “Okay,” he says, seemingly satisfied.
They don’t talk for the rest of the evening. Not when Five’s breathing evens out, and she shifts some of his hair out of his face and he doesn’t even stir - he’s out cold. Lila’s not quite sure what to do, if she should wake him and get him inside (it’s bloody cold), or if they should just. Sit. For a while longer.
In the end, she decides to stay. They sit there for ages, cold and freezing, legs dangling over a precipice of something dangerous - something breathtaking and violent, like a secret. Like a murder. The city still dazzles in front of her, even if it pulses less vibrant every half-hour, by some strange warping force.
She sits there for ages with Five asleep against her, and she looks at the stars. She kicks her feet. She thinks about drunken maths and are you my friend?
The world might end tomorrow.
It’s probably going to end a couple days after. So for now, Lila just sits in the midst of a half-destroyed, half-beautiful world. The sky split in two - pulsing orange clouds and quiet, sharp stars.
The world tilts one final, dazzling time, half the street emptying, and Lila -
Lila watches. She tilts her head up to the sky and thinks that she should be patient.
Five is drunk, asleep, against her, and she’s freezing cold, but everything is beautiful right now. And it’s okay. Diego will come back soon, Five will sleep in his bed, everyone will retreat to the safety of the hotel.
She doesn’t think they’re going to find a way to stop this, in the end.
But it’s okay. For now, she just sits on the roof, kicking her feet.