JAY AND FIVE WEREN'T THE KIND OF PEOPLE TO TALK. Sure, they spoke to each other, trading petty insults and arguments that usually ended up with one of them getting hit. But they didn't actually talk. Not about the important things, the big things, the things you'd think they'd talk about.
Jay and Five, unwittingly or not, neither could really say, came to a lot of unspoken understandings. They were very similar people, which was mostly why they hated each other so much, but it was also why their understandings tended to be mutual and non-verbal.
Their first understanding was that they hated each other and that's how each of them wanted it. For whatever reason, neither cared enough to ask, it was easier to be alone, even in a partnership. So hate was easier and that was that.
The next few understandings were... more civil. Or as civil as assassins get. A kind of debt system sprung up between the two, keeping tabs on hits and jabs and patch-ups and life-savers. Jay saved Five's life in 1967, he now owed her the same should she ask for it.
Another understanding was a little more gruesome. When a job demanded they get their hands bloody, it fell to Jay to do it. Jay offered to work a man once early on, Five agreed. And that was that. Jay did the rough work, Five watched in morbid facination.
August 7th, 1935
Mission No. With Five 82
Five was coming to understand a lot about Jay. He was coming to understand her, and it scared him. He wasn't afraid to say it, wasn't ashamed. Only an idiot would've not been scared of Jay, and Five Hargreeves was anything but an idiot.
She'd been working the man for almost an hour. He had information they needed but not the sense to give it to them. Jay had offered to get it out of him, and Five had obliged. They did that a lot. Five certainly wasn't complaining and neither, it seemed, was Jay.
He'd taken to watching her. He wasn't sure why or when but Five's eyes, lately, had started going to her on instinct, watching and tracing and noticing. He'd been noticing a lot about her lately. Since he found her file and discovered her past, Five found himself searching. He couldn't say for what. Maybe a chance to bring it up? Maybe a link to who she used to be? Either way, he wasn't finding it.
"You're staring." Jay said, taking a step back. Her chest was heaving, words breathy. She'd ditched her jacket, pistols proudly displayed on her sides. She'd rolled her sleeves up to the elbows, her scarred forearms and hands coated in blood. Her flip-knife was in one hand, dripping red. She looked at him, grey eyes shining the way they did when she hurt someone. "You want in?"
"Just realising how much of a psycho you are." Five said.
Jay flashed a slanted smile. "Took ya long enough."
As Jay went back to working the man, taking his fingers one by one, smile growing each time, Five realised. In all the time he'd known her, almost three months, he'd refused to believe Jay was a true sadist. Masochist, maybe, but not sadist. That couldn't be true. But it was, he realised. As Five watched her torture this man, he realised that Jay was, in fact, a sadist.
Not long after that, he realised she was insane too.
It wasn't an exact moment he came to realise. But over time he'd slowly noticed more and more until Five couldn't deny his partner was downright crazy. Jesus, that woman terrified him.
December 21st, 1987
Mission No. Unknown
Mission No. With Five. 91
Jay didn't like how Five was looking at her. Ever since she'd patched him up in 1967 he'd been staring at like one of those maths equations he was always pouring over. She never got him to tell her what they were for. She just decided he was a nerd.
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Ruins (Five Hargreeves)
Fanfiction"You've ruined me, Five." Jay had spent what felt like her whole life at the Commission. She couldn't remember anything else, anything different. She didn't know how to do anything but follow orders and kill. She'd never leave, and she was okay wit...
