illicit | five hargreeves - EDITING

fifty seven

chapter fifty seven: Mr Pennycrumb

Anthony had decided that he really just needed some time alone right now to clear his head and to get himself thinking properly again. Ever since he had been told about the kugelblitz, his mind had just been jumbled together with trying to figure out how to stop it and worrying about what would happen if they couldn't stop it in time. So he definitely just needed to take a step back for a few minutes, and maybe even get his beating heart rate down a bit.

He wasn't sure why this apocalypse was making him worry a lot more than the others, maybe if was just that he had grown tired of them, or maybe it was the fact that he had read too many Commission handbooks to know what the kugelblitz was capable of and what it could do to him and his family.

It felt a lot different this time around, and while he still had a lot of faith in his husband, he still had too many doubts. He knew how smart Five, and he knew that he shouldn't underestimate his own intelligence either, but this just seemed a lot more complicated than their previous ordeals. This time there wasn't a cause and Viktor wasn't the bomb, there was nothing the could really do to stop it, other than somehow get that briefcase working to time travel out.

Anthony had spent a lot of his life thinking about the concept of death, wondering how long he had left and also considering if he should just speed up the process and do it himself. He had decided against it mostly, apart for a couple of times when he had gone too far and almost followed through, only to wake up the following morning feeling worse than he had before.

Death was too common at the Commission, it didn't effect anyone and everyone had just grown so used and desensitized to it that no one even batted and eyelid. Of course many people has to job of literally assassinating innocent people, and even the ones in case management were choosing the deaths, so there really was no escape from it.

Anthony remembered vividly the day at the Commission when the one survivor of the apocalypse was discovered, and instead of helping, the staff there began placing bets on how long the scared and little thirteen year old would last, some even hoping for his death to come quick just so they could win a couple of bucks by exploiting him.

Time moved differently there, so it only was a few months before the thirteen year old was then an adult, making his own way to the Commission and hugely disappointing many of the workers who had bet hundreds of dollars on his death date. No one there was glad to see him alive, just upset and angry that they hadn't won the bet.

Anthony was perhaps the only person who really cared even now that Five was alive, probably more than the boy's siblings whom he had tried so hard to get back to. They didn't care much, just blamed him for everything and called him selfish as if he hadn't sacrificed his entire life for them.

The anticipated death of Five Hargreeves was something always talked about at Commission, even once he had left people wanted to see Hazel and Cha Cha murder him, then the Swedes and finally the Handler herself. His death had been something so many people had been anticipating and even working towards, and he had managed to escape it an obscene amount of times.

Anthony wasn't exactly sure how the kugelblitz would take people, but he couldn't lie and say that his biggest fear right now was it taking Five before it took him, because he knew that they'd all go eventually but the last thing he wanted was for his husband to go before him, he wasn't sure he would even be able to handle that.

He wasn't even exactly sure where Five even was right now, because they had walked to the hotel room together but the boy had blinked back out of it almost as soon as they had gotten there. Usually Anthony wouldn't worry, but his new fear of his husband disappearing was just making him anxious.