When you're dropped into the timeline to kill Five Hargreeves, you're really not expecting to encounter the apocalypse. You're also really not expecting to not want to kill him. Yet, somehow, here you are: pining over a lost boy who has probably gon...
Your first night with Five in the Commission-issued housing was a reprieve from hardship that you would only receive once. Immediately after, you were whisked into a strict training regimen intended to make your muscles strong and your cheeks round.
For the first several weeks, they allowed you to remain in close quarters with Five 24/7. However, as the training sessions waned—yours was merely a refresher course, after all—they began sending you on isolated missions.
It's awful, standing in crowds as though you belong, only to swiftly strike an unsuspecting mark with a perfectly-placed blade. Unlike the Commission agents you slaughtered in the apocalypse, these people are innocent and wholly unprepared for your so-called cosmic vengeance. During your previous contract with the Commission, you grew numb to the assassinations. Now, after intimately experiencing how fragile life can be, you find yourself going numb to escape the pain each mission inflicts upon you.
Despite the hurt, you try to be strong for Five. They're clean kills, easy to mask on the outside. It's almost like you come home each day from a normal 9–5.
The routine continues. He wakes you up with coffee and toast every morning. Then, Five goes to training. You go to "work." The day drags on. Sometimes you're gone for more than one day, but never more than three, as stipulated by your negotiations with the Commission. In the evenings, you eat together, switching off on who does the cooking. It's a slow, easy existence in comparison to your time in the apocalypse.
Neither of you speak much about the apocalypse if it can be helped.
But, as you've certainly learned over the years, all good things have to come to an end. Five is learning that now, too.
The first kill's the hardest. That's what you'd reassured him of after the first mission he'd taken. You hadn't been wrong, but every subsequent death, he grows a little more numb to it, and that is unfathomably hard. He knows he's a villain, and he loathes himself for it. It weighs on his soul like an anchor—threatening to drown him in the sea of his own sorrows.
He doesn't want his life to be like this, but you're safe and alive, and you're holding yourself with ease, so he holds himself together.
Until you come home splattered in blood.
It's a sudden shift, one that yanks the rug right from under his feet. One minute, he's sliding a casserole in the oven and calling out to you as the door bangs shut; the next, he's on your heels until the bathroom door bangs in his face. Your breaths quiver through the door, painting a picture of salty tears that he can neither see nor feel. Somehow, they drown him all the same.
The apocalypse has aged him. He realizes this as he sits on the hallway floor, now aching back slouched against the bathroom door. It's uncomfortable, and he'll be stiff in the morning, but he stays until the oven timer goes off, desperate to be as close to you as physically possible.
When the casserole dish is on the counter, the shower starts. As he approaches the door, affection kickdrums in his chest; you've left the door open for him.
The choice to join you is as easy as breathing.
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"What happened?"
The question is a murmur in the column of your throat, nearly lost to the roaring water. He's pressed against your back, arms slung around your hips, body contoured to the familiar shape of you. It's the only way you feel safe enough to speak.
"It wasn't anything special... just this family in Puerto de la Cruz. One of the sisters ran."
A robotic report. Standard. Easy. At least, the Commission says it's supposed to be. But with each word, the memories of those you've killed vanish like steam, leaving you with an aching void in your chest.
"I can't—" You choke on your tears, doubling over in agony until Five manages to blink in front of you, bracing your body with his own. "I can't keep this up, Five." The grief threatens to swallow you whole.
"You won't." It's a promise he can't make yet, but he has to, so he does. "I'll get us out of here. I promise."
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The days drag on. A day fades to a week. One week fades to two. Two weeks turn to a month.
But Five Hargreeves is not a liar.
He's not a liar when he demands you get more days off.
He's not a liar when he strong-arms the Commission into pairing the two of you together on assignments.
He's not a liar when he shoots John F. Kennedy and opens a portal in a sunny Texas parking lot like it's the easiest thing in the world. A blazing blue whorl rattles the world around you. It's unnatural, but nothing about your relationship with Five has ever been natural.
"I want to go home. Back to 2019." He shouts it over the wind.
"Okay," you shout back, heart plummeting to your toes. Your chest burns. Your eyes sting. Your heart's a frantic rhythm in your ears. This is goodbye. This is goodbye. This is goodbye. Stall for him. Help him escape. "I can—"
"Come with me." It's as if he's never considered anything else—a statement, not a plea.
Your hand connects with his almost immediately. "Of course."
Because, no matter the timeline, you wouldn't have it any other way.
