End of the Beginning [Five]

Sixteen

What's your favorite word?

It shouldn't have been possible to make a fire out of scraps. It shouldn't have been possible to bend rigid metal into roasting sticks and makeshift plates. It shouldn't have been possible that Emery and Five found themselves lost in the timelines with no clue where they were or where home was.

But the universe seemed keen on playing on big fat joke on them— a joke that had gone on for far too long.

And now here Emery was, convinced he could make a fire out of sheer spite. The one before him now happened to be made out of the traditional firewood and a spark, the flames hungrily eating the wood as it blazed alight on the platform just outside the train. Emery stared at it, glowering.

Three months they had been searching for their way home. Ever since the train decided to take them on the ever-so-special VIP route to the very end of the line, they were effectively stranded without anything to tell them where they had ended up.

Emery called it a cruel joke. It was the only thing he could say about it or risk losing his mind. For three months straight they'd been searching timeline after timeline, idiotically hoping that each time they stepped out into the light of a new day, that they would find home.

They had yet to find such luck.

"Anything?" Emery asked as Five trod down the steps of the station, head hung low as he shook it no. The blond sighed as he pulled the master map of the stations out from his inner pocket and crossed their particular platform off, an angry red x obscuring the alien symbol. Another dead end.

"Nothing but some extra firewood." Fives said. "I thought I'd grab some to roast the rats with." This timeline had been a wasteland, bits and pieces of broken trees littered on a cascading ground. Emery liked to play a sort of guessing game where he figured out the most probable cause of the end of the world but soon grew bored with it.

"Never in a million years would I have thought that I'd actually be looking forward to eating a cooked rat," Emery said as he stoked the flames with a long stick. Five took a seat across from him, the fire lighting up his sunken features, the depth of his eyes, the shadow of his nose.

"I've learned the best way to cook them from my time in the apocalypse. Trust me, this will taste like a grand meal. Rat for an appetizer, rat for the main course, and rat for dessert." Five said as he screwed the skinned corpse of his latest hunt.

"I have a different idea for dessert," Emery said, pulling something from his pocket. He wanted to wait but figured there was about just enough a right time as any.

"Where'd you get that?" Five asked, a grin creeping across his lips. Emery traced the upturn of his lip and relished in the sight of it. He made an effort now to get the boy to smile more than just occasionally. Two months into their little journey, his smile had become less and less of a visitor, a perpetual frown finding its place instead.

"About six or seven timelines ago? There was that small corner store. Nearly entirely looted out except for these in one of the staff's lockers." Emery said, turning the Twinkie around in his hand.

Time didn't make sense to him anymore, and he gave up all hope in trying to track it. Not like Five who kept a tally in the back page of Emery's journal at the end of every day. In an hour, he would make the eighty-fifth mark, driving a large cross through the bundle of four to mark another week.

"Impressive." Five commended as he rotated his rat. Emery watched the motions, as simple as they were, transfixed. Jumping timelines had quickly become a new normal for them and Emery found himself settling into an odd sort of routine.