The Sparks Between Us | Five Hargreeves x Reader

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—————༻☂︎︎༺—————
༻ Y/N'S POV ༺

The car rolled to a slow stop on the desolate road, fields of tall grass swaying in the wind around us. We'd come up with a plan—meet Hazel and Cha-Cha, hand over the fake briefcase, and hope for the best. In the passenger seat, Five tapped his fingers on the armrest, his expression unreadable. Luther gripped the steering wheel like it was the only thing tethering him to reality. I sat quietly in the back, running diagnostics on my systems for the third time, more out of habit than necessity.

The silence stretched, until Five finally broke it. "You know," he began, his voice quieter than usual, "I never enjoyed it."

Luther glanced over, his frown deepening. "Enjoyed what?"

"The killing," Five said simply. "I was good at. And I took pride in my efficiency, in how precise I was. But it never gave me pleasure." His eyes stayed fixed on the horizon, his tone detached but heavy. "Not once. It was all those years alone... Solitude can do strange things to the mind."

Luther nodded, his grip tightening on the wheel. "Yeah. Well, you were gone for a long time. I only spent four years on the moon, but even that was enough to mess with me." He paused, his voice dipping into something raw. "It's the belief that breaks you. The belief that none of it matters."

Five nodded. "I wasn't always alone," he murmured, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror. He locked eyes with me for a moment, his expression softening. Even though I was just a program in a synthetic shell, I could still feel the weight of that look—the way he stared at me as though I were his anchor in a timeline spiraling out of control. For a second, it was just us, like it always had been. But then he looked away, his walls snapping back into place.

"You think they'll go for it?" Luther asked, gesturing to the fake briefcase lying between him and Five.

Five leaned back in his seat, his confidence slowly returning. "The odds are slim they'll turn it down. Desperation makes people sloppy," he said. "It's like a cop losing their gun. If the Commission finds out they lost the briefcase, Hazel and Cha-Cha are as good as dead."

"Not to mention," I added, finally speaking up, "without the briefcase, they're stuck here. They have no choice but to take the bait."

Luther glanced back at me briefly, an unspoken tension in his eyes. "And if they figure out it's fake?" he asked.

Five's expression didn't waver. "Then we're already dead. So, let's hope they don't."

The conversation lulled for a moment. I looked out the window at the swaying grass, and for a second, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass. My face—her face. The designers had made it so convincing, so lifelike, down to the faint scar above her left brow that she'd once had. But every time I saw it, I couldn't escape the cold truth: I wasn't her. I was a copy. A program. And no amount of emotion they'd written into my code could change that.

Luther's voice broke through my thoughts. "I should hold onto the briefcase," he said suddenly.

Five raised an eyebrow, skeptical. "What?"

"I mean, if they make a move on you, it's safer if I have it," Luther said.

Five studied him for a moment, his sharp eyes narrowing. Then, surprisingly, he nodded. "Okay, Luther. But be careful," he said, his tone uncharacteristically soft. "I've lived a long life. You've still got yours ahead of you. Don't waste it."

Five turned his gaze back to the road, his expression unreadable. I watched the exchange in silence, running a subroutine to analyze the tension in the car. The emotional data was overwhelming, almost too much to process. I shouldn't have cared so much. But I did.