ZERO! the umbrella academy

quartorze

POINT BLANK

"REMIND ME WHY WE brought him along again?" I asked Five who sat next to me in the backseat of the Cadillac. Luther shot me a glare in the rearview mirror.

"Because he's the muscle. Hazel and Cha-Cha will see him and know that we're not messing around." He shrugged. "That, and he wouldn't let us go without him."

"Right." I rolled my eyes.

Luther pulled the car over to the side of the road at our meeting spot. It was in the middle of nowhere with nothing nearby except a parked, green semi truck carrying horses and a barn with a sign that read "Welcome to Dyment's" on it. We unbuckled our seatbelts and waited, a thick silence enveloping us.

Five's voice sliced through it like a knife. "You know, I never enjoyed it."

Luther looked back at him over his shoulder. "What?"

"The killing," he clarified. "I mean, I was good at my work, and I took pride in it, but it never gave me pleasure." There was a far off look in his piercing, green eyes. "I think it was all those years alone. Solitude can do funny things to the mind."

"Yeah, well you were gone for such a long time," Luther agreed. "I only spent four years on the moon, but that was more than enough. It's the being alone that breaks you."

I took my bottom lip between my teeth. "I liked it."

Five looked at me and furrowed his thick brows. "What?"

"Being alone." I stared out the window at a twisted tree stretching its limbs up towards the bleak sky. "It's easier that way. You don't have to pretend, you don't have to change or try to be someone you're not." I looked down at my hands in my lap. "That's why I left and shut everyone out, so I couldn't hurt anyone, so I could suffer in silence."

Five took my hand in his. "Well, unfortunately for you," his eyes connected with mine, "you're not going to be alone for a very long time."

I forced the corners of my lips up into a weak smile. "We'll see about that."

Luther rested an arm on top of the black briefcase in the passenger's seat. "You think they'll buy it?" he asked us.

"Well, what I do know is that they're desperate," Five explained. "It's like a cop losing his gun. If the Commission finds out, they'll be in deep shit. Oh, not to mention the fact that they'll be stuck here until they get it back."

"Well, I should hold onto it," Luther said.

Five quirked a brow. "Hm?" he hummed.

"In case they make a move on you."

"Okay, Luther, but be careful," he warned him. "I mean, I've lived a long life, but you're still a young man. You got your whole life ahead of you. Don't waste it."