End of the Beginning [Five]

One

What scene is everyone most looking forward to?

Emery Lamont was in trouble.

This much he vividly remembered as he watched Klaus fling himself into the air, the apocalypse breaking down the doors and shattering the windows— impaling himself on the horn of the animal head plastered on the wall of the Buffalo Suite.

Reginald had betrayed them. He'd killed Luther and had left Emery and Klaus to die, blocking the exit off to Oblivian.

Emery remembered the feeling of his heartbeat in his ears; the way it seemed to rake through his being and then push itself out of his body. The fires of the apocalypse were kissing his cheek then as he closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath.

His ears wrung, crying out in time with the world around him, and his head pounded, filled with raging thoughts.

Not yet.

Not now.

Not when they were this close.

He didn't want to die.

If only there was another way.

He remembered how the world went quiet then, how he felt submerged in something that was not water or any element at all. He felt his heart lurch, his breath stolen from his lungs, and his body thrown not outwards, not forwards or backward, but through time.

It was a striking sensation, one that he had felt only once before, when he'd traveled to the sixties and encountered the Handler and Five on Grassy Knoll all that time ago. It twisted the contents of his stomach and stripped him of his balance despite knowing his feet were placed securely on the ground. It made his fingers go momentarily numb, his mind reel as he realized what he had just done.

And when he opened his eyes again, it was to the hotel— not in its state or ruination, but how it was before. And Emery knew that he had done it again. He was alive, gloriously alive. But the world outside was still ending and he could hear footsteps outside of the suite, of panicked cries and ushering calls from the inglorious Sir Reginald Hargreeves summoning his children into the passageway of Oblivian.

Cursing, heart still pounding, and frankly not wanting to go through another round of both paradox psychosis and the ultimate betrayal of the ever-righteous ever-bastardly old man, Emery ran once more to the wall, fingers tracing the patterns of the grooves, searching in vain for the hidden door.

His hands shook as he fumbled, already imagining what it would be like to have to live through his death again when he finally found the latch. Yanking it open, Emery pushed inside, turning and closing it tight behind him.

It was only then, sitting in the dark of the passage, head pressed against the boundary between here and the hotel, did he let himself breathe.

Blond hair fell into his eyes, sticking to sweat-sleeked skin but he made no move to brush it aside as his breathing subdued and he found the strength to turn his back on the hotel and toward the other end of the passage.

To Oblivian.

This was where he had found himself wandering the halls, hiding from Guardians with Samari's and long broad swords— where he had the unfortunate experience of running into one of the monsters and had gotten the unfortunate jarring cut across the corner of his brow, and where he eventually found Five in the Stygian laundry room with two flickering bulbs that spluttered in faint attempts to produce light.

The rest was more ingrained in Emery's mind; a constant reminder of what he had gone through; of his final moments where he and Five would be together.