I grabbed Five by the hand and he spatial jumped into what looked to be a quaint little apartment.
"Where are we?" I asked as he broke away from me and started to walk around. He walked to the windows and checked them, laughing to himself. I found a cozy looking armchair to curl up in, and he sat down in the one next to me.
"We're at Vanya's place. I figured you two would be the best people to tell."
"Tell what?" I pestered.
"All in good time. Are you alright? You seem cold," he noticed my shivering, looking concerned.
"Yeah, a little bit. I guess cyro can do that to you," I said with a weak smile.
He stood up and strode to the couch, confusing me. That is, until he came back with a blanket. He gently draped it over my shoulders, and I in turn clutched it tightly around my small body.
"There you go," Five said, sighing slightly as he fell back into his chair.
"Thank you," I said quietly, with a content smile on my face.
We both heard the sound of keys jangling in the lock of the door, and saw Vanya crack open the door and walk in. Five flicked on the lamp next to him, startling the poor girl.
"Jesus- Five, you scared me."
I turned on my lamp too. "He always has had a flair for the dramatic," I said, rolling my eyes.
"You know you really should have locks on your windows," Five advised.
"I live on the second floor."
"Rapists can climb."
"You are so weird," Vanya and I said at the same time. She came over to the couch and sat down next to us, placing her bag on the floor.
"Is that blood?" She asked, gesturing to the red stain on his shirt collar and the splatters adorning my hands and blazer.
He glanced down at his shirt before looking up again. "It's nothing."
"Why are you guys here?"
"I've decided you two are the only ones I can trust," He repeated what he had told me minutes earlier.
"He still hasn't told me with what," I said, a touch of annoyance and impatience in my voice.
"Why me?" Vanya asked him, as confused as I was.
"Because you're ordinary," Five started.
"Hey!" I scolded him.
"Because you'll listen," he corrected, earning a slight huff of disapproval from me.
"Okay," I heard her breath sadly before heading to another room in the house, what for I didn't know.
"Seriously Five, 'you're ordinary'? Real tactful," I reprimanded, getting an eyeroll from him.
"I don't have time to nitpick my words right now, that doesn't matter?"
"Why?" I pestered, to no avail. Vanya appeared again in the hallway with some medical supplies to clean Five's wound.
"I'll take care of it, you don't need to get any blood on your hands Vanya, we've already intruded on your space enough," I offered. She handed me some gauze, cotton, alcohol and bandages.
I picked up a piece of cotton and poured some disinfectant on it, cringing as the liquid seeped into the small cuts adorning my hands.
"What's wrong?" Five asked, noticing my reaction.
"Oh, it's nothing-" I tried protesting, but he gently pulled my right hand towards him to examine it.
"Where'd you get all these cuts? Was this from Griddy's?" He questioned, his fingers hovering over the tiny slits in my skin.
"Probably. I may or may not have forgotten to keep in mind the fact that small pieces of glass and ceramic moving around my hands would probably cut them," I said with a slight chuckle, pulling away to continue what I was doing. "We'll deal with it after your arm."
"I'm sorry, what happened at Griddy's?" Vanya asked worriedly.
"Later," we both said in unison.
Having sufficiently doused the piece of cotton with disinfectant, I reached over to Five's wound, gingerly pulling off the piece of cloth he had covered it with and started to clean it. He didn't visibly flinch as I did when the alcohol made contact with the wound, but I did notice his fist clench as I dabbed away the blood.
"Do you know what I saw when I jumped forward in time and got stuck in the future?"
"No?" Vanya answered Five's rhetorical question.
"Nothing," he said.
I paused, in the middle of the motion of wiping away his blood. "Nothing?"
"Absolutely nothing," he confirmed grimly. "As far as I could tell, I was the last person alive."
I heard Vanya scoff, more in confusion than anything else.
"I never figured out what ended the human race, but I did find something else: the date it happens."
I held my breath.
"The world ends in eight days, and I have no idea how to stop it."
What a time to wake from a coma.
"I'll put on a pot of coffee," Vanya said, rising from the couch.
"I'd say that's an appropriate enough reaction," I mumbled, pulling out a suturing needle to close his wound.
Wordlessly, I prepped the thread and started working.
"Hey, are you alright?" The boy asked me in a quiet voice, concerned.
"I just woke from a coma in the body of thirteen-year-old me to find 17 years have passed, I just found out our dad and brother died, you're here and you also look thirteen, and you just told us the world is going to end."
I paused.
"So to answer your question, I'm fine."
"Zero, come on, listen to me," he urged. "I didn't want to drop this bomb on you, and I know it's a lot to take in, but this is literally a ticking clock situation."
"I know that it's just- I- I haven't seen you all in so long. I wish I could have some time to enjoy everyone's company. It's been so long."
"I- me too." He said, resigned.
The house slipped into silence, spare the bubbling of the coffee maker and the faint thrumming of the washing machine in another room. Vanya came in, holding a tray with three cups of coffee. She set it down on the table, and I eagerly grabbed a mug. Despite the fact that I had just had a cup, I was quick to sip the scalding liquid. I was exhausted, and I was sure everyone could tell. My weak body was constantly shivering and trembling, and the fight at Griddy's didn't help replenish my energy in the slightest.
"We had to survive on scraps. Canned food, cockroaches, anything I could find," Five said with a dark laugh. "You know that rumor that Twinkies have an endless shelf life? Bullshit."
"I can't even imagine," Vanya said softly, in shock.
"You do whatever it takes to survive, or you die," he stated simply, taking a sip of his coffee.
"So, we adapted. Whatever the world threw at us, we found a way to overcome it," he continued.
"I'm sorry, we? Like, one of us?" I inquired, confused at his choice of words.
"You got anything stronger?' Five asked, lifting his cup and ignoring my question. Vanya went back to the kitchen to fetch some alcohol.
YOU ARE READING
The Catacombs
Fanfiction"It sounds like heaven, doesn't it? Then you start to notice the little details..." Number Zero was a student of the inaugural class of the Umbrella Academy. But one fateful day, she was gravely injured during an accident on one of their missions. S...
