Nuclear // Number Five

0.03 × Can't Touch but Still Feel

How cruel to be exposed to everything that I can't touch but still feel.

They were sitting in one of the various bathrooms in the house. Of the nineteen, Libby had claimed this one as her own. She had borrowed and swapped accessories from the others to make it feel more like her own little part of the house. The color scheme was light blue, to match the tiles on the floor. Previously, the room had been haphazardly thrown together by their mother, which Libby appreciated, but she wanted at least some part of the house to feel like her own.

Libby frowned as she watched Five stitch up the slash he had made in his arm earlier. She was resigned to handing him medical supplies from the cabinet, due to her inherent radioactivity. Touching the outside skin was one thing, but exposing someone's insides to radiation could have serious consequences. All she wanted to do was be helpful to him, in honesty.

Five hissed as he poured peroxide over the stitched wound, watching the liquid bubble over his skin. "Do you have anything to drink in this house?" He asked, grabbing the gauze that Libby held out to him.

Libby nodded and opened the cabinet under the sink to produce several bottles of liquor. "Pick your poison," she offered. "Klaus used to use this room to stash his booze when we were teenagers, I guess. I found it all when I started exploring the house."

"Jesus," Five muttered, taking inventory of the alcohol sitting in front of him. "Vodka, I suppose."

"How did you know?" she handed him the half-full bottle of Smirnoff. "Vodka's my favorite."

"I told you, you were there when I was in the future. We had a lot more time to get to know each other," Five replied, unscrewing the cap and taking a hefty gulp of the alcohol. "You were the only one of us left alive, besides me."

"Me? What happened? How did the apocalypse come?" Libby asked, taking the bottle from Five and stealing a sip. "I figured I'd die just like anyone else."

Five shook his head, "I already told you, I don't know. Pay attention."

Libya's hands raised in defense. "Alright, alright. I'm listening. You went to the future when you disappeared and everything was rubble. Everyone was dead but me. Go on."

"I spent years there. My consciousness is fifty-eight, but for some reason when I jumped back I miscalculated and wound up being thirteen again," Five explained, taking another gulp from the liquor bottle.  "Eventually, a woman approached me to work for an organization that protects the flow of time. I became a successful killing machine, eliminating threats to the timeline." 

"Back up," Libby said, taking two full gulps from the bottle Five had handed back to her. "I think you're skipping some stuff, because I'm pretty sure you said I was there. What happened between us?" 

Five got uncomfortable, and Libby could tell he was having a hard time choosing his words. He opened his mouth, but then closed it again, glancing at the open door behind Libby. His head shook and the only phrase he came up with was, "We might want to go somewhere else for this, yeah?"

Libby was confused, but she led him across the hall to her bedroom. With one swoop of her arm, the pages of scientific studies she was reading cleared off of the bed and onto the floor. Five still had the vodka clutched in his hand when he peered at the papers on the floor. 

"You've been reading," He said simply, picking up one of the sheets. The title read The Philosophy of Quantum Physics, the next page was from a different theory, titled The Logistics of Alternate Dimensions and Time Travel. 

"After you disappeared and Ben died, I was mostly alone.. down there. Klaus came to visit occasionally but I know it was only when Ben made him come down. Otherwise it was just me and these papers," Libby explained, reaching out for the bottle in Five's hand. Between the two of them, the bottle was beginning to look more empty than full. She tilted it back and swallowed. "I wanted to figure out how to find you. It was so lonely and cold. All I could do was read and work on my abilities. Dad tried to figure out if I could split atoms, like an atom bomb. I can't,  of course. So he finally left me alone, and all I could think to do was read as much as I could about quantum physics and travel through space and time."