Five ✘ Lila • Survival

#5 Good listener

Lila was about to scold Five. How she'd cool her thirst on him after feeling so uncomfortable with Diego and now he was the one who'd transported her without warning to who knew where. She wanted to scold him about how everyone around her was acting like she belonged to them, like everyone could do whatever they wanted with her, but she stopped herself mid-word.

"You..."

She looked around and noticed they were in the lobby of an abandoned old factory. She knew this place, they'd been here together before, though not exactly - it was in another of the timelines.

They'd sheltered there together from a snowstorm when they'd been picking up some scrap metal together and had no way to get back to the subway. They huddled together around a makeshift fire pit, trying to warm each other as they hugged. At the time, they were both still trying to tell themselves that they were doing it for survival, that each other's proximity and rapid heartbeat were just side effects of trying to survive together.

A little later, Lila took out her frustration there, throwing rocks angrily at the windows to get her anger out of her about what was happening to them. Five found her there and joined her, cursing together at everything that was weighing them down and laughing together afterwards as an unexpected sense of relief set in. It felt good to get it out of themselves.

Five didn't say a word as he watched Lila walk slowly down the hall, all the memories and thoughts from their past together swirling in her head.

After a few steps she picked up a rock and threw it in front of her, there was a loud sound and the clink of metal hitting the rock.

She reached down for another, threw it over, again and again. Whenever something broke, it was as if something in her loosened, and after a few more throws, the words began to pour out of her like an avalanche. They were words someone else had said to her, words that remained in her memory like an unwelcome shadow.

"Lila, do it for your mother! You don't want to let me down! You can be the best, so do your damn best!"

Another stone.

"I know you don't like it, but you have to get over yourself! You have to kill him! You've got to hurt anyone if it gets us where we need to go! Forget any stupid feelings!"

Broken window.

"Lila, this is what you wanted! You wanted a family with me, so why isn't that enough? Why am I the only one trying to hold our family together?"

A rock hitting the wall.

"Lila, you can't be serious! What will people say? You're a mother now, act like it! You have to set an example for your children!"

Tears were streaming down Lila's cheeks, but she didn't even notice.

"Do you know what you'll look like? Like a horny mother away from the kids, compensating for something with a young boy! No one will be on your side! No one will ever understand, so get a grip!"

Another rock ended up just a foot in front of her. She didn't have the strength to throw it any further.

"You can't love him, you're just confused and distraught. You've got everything you could want, so finally realize it..."

Lila dropped to her knees on the dusty ground and the three other rocks she was holding rolled out of her hands. Her hands were dirty with dust.

For a moment there was complete silence.

"You know what the worst part of all this is?" Lila asked, but didn't wait for an answer, she continued immediately. "I've been given a chance to have a better life, and everyone expects from that moment on that I'll never do anything to hurt or disappoint anyone again, that I'll never make mistakes, that whatever happens I'll always be happy and content, because after everything I've ever done, I should be grateful for everything I've been given since then. Everyone expects me to be perfect - the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect daughter, the perfect friend, the perfect woman who just smiles and doesn't care, and when I go down a path that others don't like, immediately everyone knows exactly what's best for me and they expect me to just do it. Because that's all I've been expected to do all my life, to do what I'm told... and then others get angry when I don't actually know what to do with my life myself..."

Five knelt down across from her. He hadn't said a word the whole time.

Lila was still looking at her dirty hands when Five grabbed her hand and she grabbed his other hand as well, holding his hand in hers. She had to smile at the gesture. He was probably the only person who could accept her even with her dirty hands, literally and metaphorically.

"I was happy... you know? In our strawberry patch." She spoke softly, still looking only at their hands, unable to look at his face right now. "I was hoping that if I told myself enough times that it wasn't so, it would be easier to go back... easier to continue living the life everyone expects me to live."

Five put his other hand on hers.

"You've been an incredible influence on my life from the very beginning... even Diego I only got to know to get closer to you... isn't that crazy?" She laughed mirthlessly at that. "Everyone says how ridiculous this whole thing is... how it shouldn't have happened... and yet, being stuck here in the middle of nowhere with you feels so... right..."

She looked up and looked into his face. Five was looking at her with such tenderness, he only looked at her like that. She could see in his eyes that he actually cared about what she was telling him. That he was one of the few who actually listened to her. It was as if a thread of fate had woven them together until they were irrevocably entangled in it.